Dracula Presents: The Sixth Annual Golden Stake Awards

Dracula 01-24-2013 07:35 PM

Dracula Presents: The Sixth Annual Golden Stake Awards



Yep it's back. For those who weren't hear when I did this in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, this is an part of a tradition of year end rituals I put together each year and after a pretty solid year for cinema I'm ready to do it all over again.



Basically what I want to do here is post one category a day for four weeks. The First week will be scene based categories (best fight etc.), The second week will be technical awards (best editing etc.), The third week will be acting awards, and the last week will be genre awards and will culminate in Best picture which will be announced in a top ten format.



These awards will be entirely based on my opinions, but I don't plan to have this being an entirely self indulgent pursuit. I hope that each category will lead to discussion and that people will find themselves playing along and giving their opinions about these various categories.



So, without further ado I'll give out the first of the scene based awards:



Fight of the Year

The first of my “scene based awards” will be the category for the year’s best fight scene. Pretty much any scene that focuses on melee combat between a limited number of individuals is eligible. The fights can involve knives, swords, or other weaponry, but this year the nominated scenes all seem to revolve around fights that only involve people’s hands and feet. The scenes will be judged not only for their fight choreography but for their overall impact.



Batman Vs. Bane - The Dark Knight Rises: Hans Zimmer’s score is omnipresent in The Dark Knight Rises, but the music goes quiet for this scene in which batman finally meets his match. In this scene bane robs Batman of all his usual tricks and forces him into a straightforward fists fight. Needless to say it doesn’t go well for Mr. Wayne. Bane outmatches and humiliates batman and clears the way for his evil scheme.



Jack Vs. Rakes – Lawless: Have you ever wanted to see Shia LaBeouf get the crap beaten out of him? If the answer is “yes” then I’ve got the perfect scene for you. In this scene the hilariously evil federal agent played by Guy Pierce shows a couple of hillbilly moonshiners who’s boss by savagely punching and stomping the youngest brother of the Bondurant clan. It’s not the most exciting scene here, but it’s certainly the most brutal.



Freddie Vs. Guy in Department Store – The Master: Proving that this category is not just the domain of large scale action films, this early scene in The Master is both hilarious and expertly shot even if it isn’t exactly what you’d traditionally think of as a fight scene. Further establishing Freddie’s unpredictable volatility this scene shows him snap on a slightly rude guy at a department store. What really makes the scene memorable is the way Anderson films it in a long shot and seems to have the camera at just the right level from the ground.



Rama and Andi vs. Mad Dog – The Raid: Picking a single fight scene from The Raid is hard because the whole film is almost a long series of mini-fights, but this climactic showdown seems like the logical choices. Judged strictly on fight choreography, this is clearly the best of these five fights. It’s an elaborate martial arts showdown between our two heroes and a vicious bastard who holds his own despite being outnumbered. It also ends with gloriously gory death.



Silhouette Fight – Skyfall: Most of Skyfall’s derivative elements are stolen from The Dark Knight, but for this memorable moment Sam Mendes has looked toward the king of re-appropriation: Quentin Tarentino. Shot almost entirely in silhouette, this scene shows James Bond take down a rifle toting assassin in front of a window high up in a skyscraper. It’s a short scene which lasts less than a single minute, but it is a memorable moment that shows off Roger Deakin’s cinematography well.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



IanTheCool 01-24-2013 07:43 PM

This wasn't so much a fight as an ass-kicking.



Jack 01-24-2013 08:42 PM

Oh I just love these.



Solid choices, I especially like the inclusion of The Master. One of the reasons I am not a fan of The Raid is that while they have terrific performers on hand to do great stunt work, the scenes are so chopped up in the film you can't even appreciate it. I don't know if it was a matter of most moves not being able to be strung together in longer takes or just an itchy editor, but it really cheapened the film for me.



One I'd throw into the ring - the Mandingo fight in Django Unchained. I'd argue it is the most visceral violence QT has ever put on the screen, and works well to shift the tone of the film towards Candieland.



JBond 01-24-2013 08:45 PM

Good choice.



I look forward to more Skyfall bashing.



Dracula 01-24-2013 09:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jack (Post 2844758)

One I'd throw into the ring - the Mandingo fight in Django Unchained. I'd argue it is the most visceral violence QT has ever put on the screen, and works well to shift the tone of the film towards Candieland.

Hmmm... I didn't even think of that, but I wish I had.



Quote:

Originally Posted by JBond (Post 2844759)



I look forward to more Skyfall bashing.

There won't be much Skyfall bashing, but lots and lots of Skyfall directed passive aggression and backhanded compliments. Also expect a lot of angry comments from Neverending about how I "snubbed" the film in every category from Best Fight to Best Documentary.



JBond 01-24-2013 09:06 PM

Ooooo, this is going to be fun!



Justin 01-24-2013 10:58 PM

Indeed. Good start, Drac.



jonk 01-25-2013 03:34 AM

Agree with the winner. This was the one that got the biggest response from me. I was on the edge of my seat through the whole fight!



MovieBuff801 01-25-2013 01:25 PM

Excellent choice. A fight that left a big impression on the audience, and as you said, was a critical turning point for the story and character.



DarthVader 2004 01-25-2013 02:08 PM

If ask me Hulk gave Loki the more dominating rear kicking. But I liked fight 2 between bane and batman for some reason more.



PG Cooper 01-25-2013 02:14 PM

Would have gone with The Raid myself, but excellent choice none the less.



shained 01-25-2013 02:15 PM

Solid choice but I would have went with The Raid personally. That fight was brilliant!



Dracula 01-25-2013 06:55 PM

Best Musical Performance

This is and always has been a strange category for me, one which looks at scenes which involve the life performance of a song by a character onscreen. The actual performance isn’t what I’m judging, in fact the music itself can be quite bad if that’s the intention, it’s the overall scene that I’m judging. The performance can take the form of anything from a song in a musical to a impromptu sing-along at a party, what matters is that the song contributes to an overall scene that makes for an important moment in a film.



Bernie Sings – Bernie: I’m cheating a little bit here because I don’t really have a specific scene in mind here, but there were a number of scenes in Bernie where the titular character would begin singing in churches, at funerals, and as a part of community theater productions and they contribute greatly to the film. The guy looks like an absolute dork while he’s doing this and you begin to realize just how un-self-conscious the guys is. On top of that you do get a good idea of how his personality, strange as it may seem to us blue-state urbanites, would be completely charming to the older set in his East Texas small town. It’s a great twist on Jack Black’s usual comedic singing act.



National Anthem – The Dark Knight Rises: If you saw the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises you probably heard this musical performance by a young child singing the national anthem at a football game. The song’s performance in this part of the film acts as a sort of symbol for how unprepared Gotham is for the “storm” that’s about to hit them. More importantly it sets up a neat little moment where Bane, evil person though he may be, is able to stop and recognize that the child has a beautiful voice.



Accordion entr’acte – Holy Motors: In a film full of weird, random, and glorious moments, this was the weirdest, the most random, and the most glorious. Midway through the film the character we’re following enters a seemingly abandoned building and suddenly begins leading a small mostly accordion based band in a rendition of R.L. Burnside’s “Let My Baby Ride.” It comes out of nowhere, but it’s a joyous moment in a joyous film.



I Dreamed a Dream - Les Misérables: There was only so much I could take of the music in Les Misérables, but there were definitely moments where I got sucked in. Anne Hathaway’s performance of the song “I Dreamed a Dream” is clearly a highlight in the film both musically and dramatically. Sung by a character while she is at her lowest point, this song ruthlessly tugs at the heartstrings and Hathaway does everything in her power to make stick the landing.



Party Singalong – The Master: The one scene involving a musical performance this year which is sure to be loved by both The New York Times and Mrskin.com is this sequence in The Master where Lancaster Dodd starts singing some weird old song at a party and everyone starts singing along with him. Freddie Quell is not amused and uses the opportunity to start picturing all the women at the party naked. The scene manages to convey both the unself-aware dorkiness of Dodd and the hopeless perviness of Quell all at once.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



MovieBuff801 01-25-2013 08:29 PM

Completely in agreement.



PG Cooper 01-25-2013 09:20 PM

Good choice. I do love that scene from The Master as well.



MasterChief117 01-25-2013 11:56 PM

Awesome choice using Bane vs Batman. Absolutely brutal scene, executed brilliantly.



Justin 01-26-2013 01:53 AM

I would've went with the fight scene from The Master. That was pretty funny.



Nilade 01-26-2013 02:53 AM

The Dark Knight Rises fight was a pretty powerful scene. The Raid would be my second choice if only for choreography and sheer brutality. I haven't seen Les Misérables yet, but I hear that "I Deamed A Dream" is the musical scene stealer of the year.



Dracula 01-26-2013 01:01 PM

Shootout of the Year

They say real men fight with their hands. **** that! In modern action films the weapon of choice is the firearm and the five films nominated for the shootout of the year all show that scenes can be just as exciting when bullets fly as when blows are thrown.



Plantation House Shootout – Django Unchained: Quentin Tarentino builds a certain degree of tension through the second half of Django Unchained until it finally turns into a full-on Tarentino Mexican standoff. Finally everything explodes in an orgy of bloody violence as Django tries to shoot his way out of the Candieland plantation. Though he’s eventually cornered and captured, he certainly doesn’t go out without a hell of a fight.



Ending – End of Watch: The fact that End of Watch ends with a shootout is a big part of why it’s a stupid movie, but I’m not going to hold that against it because in a vacuum this is a pretty interesting scene. The scene involves two cops trying to escape an ambush even though they’re outnumbered and out gunned. David Ayers does a pretty good job of conveying the cops desperation and uses a couple of interesting visual tricks throughout.



The June Rebellion – Les Misérables: Les Misérables starts to get kind of boring in its second half, but there’s a jolt of excitement when a little bit of revolution finally pops off. Using old-school firearms like muskets and cannons, this streetfight between the French military and a group of rebellious students manages to be a pretty exciting battle scene that lives up to the production values of the film it’s in.



Shot Car/Trench Drug War – Miss Bala: This short but effective scene from the little seen Mexican thriller Miss Bala makes the phrase “drug war” seem frighteningly literal. The scene begins with our protagonists in a car that gets shot up and as she escapes the film begins a single long shot in which we see cartel members using a bunch of cars as cover while the shoot at some unseen enemy in the distance. It looks more like something out of a WWI trench than something out of a street fight.



Abbottabad Raid – Zero Dark Thirty: There isn’t really all that much shooting in this shootout, in fact I strongly considered classifying it as a set-piece rather than an actual shootout, but in the end it just felt a little more natural here. The reason there aren’t a ton of bullets flying is that the people with the guns are incredibly effective at their jobs, the enemy hardly gets a shot off because they’re quickly neutralized by SEAL team six pretty much the second they show up.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



iv3rdawG 01-26-2013 01:24 PM

Out of the ones listed I'd have gone with Django or Miss Bala. As for Zero Dark Thirty, I found the ambush on Maya to be more effective than the raid.



Justin 01-26-2013 01:33 PM

I'm surprised you didn't end up going with Django. That would've been my choice.



PG Cooper 01-26-2013 02:01 PM

I'm with you on Zero Dark Thirty.



MovieBuff801 01-26-2013 02:15 PM

I see why you picked ZDT, but me personally, I would've gone with Django in a heartbeat.



JBond 01-26-2013 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iv3rdawG (Post 2844940)

As for Zero Dark Thirty, I found the ambush on Maya to be more effective than the raid.

I agree.



Dracula 01-27-2013 01:22 PM

Best Use of Source Music

While the “musical performance” category looks at sequences that involve live onscreen performances, this award is about how well a film can use a pre-existing song within a scene. Emphasis there needs to be on “pre-existing,” the song generally has to have been made separately from the film in order to be eligible for this (so no, the opening credits for Skyfall are not eligible). Bear in mind that this isn’t an award for “best song that happened to be used in a movie this year,” it’s an award for the best synergy between song and imagery.



“Top of the World” by The Carpenters – Dark Shadows: This montage scene from the needlessly over-bashed Tim Burton film Dark Shadows shows Johnny Depp’s character adjusting to being a vampire in the 70s to the dulcet tones of a Carpenters song and ends with that “reveal yourself tiny songstress” joke you’ve probably seen in the trailer. The scene perfectly encapsulates the juxtaposition of 18th century gothic and 1970s kitch which is at the center of that movie’s humor.



“The Payback/Untouchable” by Tupac and James Brown – Django Unchained: What better soundtrack could you find for a former slave’s moment of true resistance than a mash-up of songs by two icons of 20th century black empowerment: James Brown and Tupac Shakur. I’m bending the rules slightly on this one since it’s a mash-up that was made for the film by Tupac engineer Claudio Cueni, but given that the song (which incorporates traditional western musical elements) perfectly embodies the film’s mix of 19th century settings and 20th century attitudes.



“Feelin’ Alright” by Joe Crocker – Flight: There are definitely some corny soundtrack selections in Flight, and even this song is something of a clichéd piece of movie music as of late, but I still like the way it’s employed on two occasions in the film. One could call this song “the cocaine theme from Flight” because it’s played immediately every time that Denzel Washington snorts a line. The tone and lyrics of the song clearly match the character’s state of mind when he’s lit and it makes for a good callback the second time.



“Firework” by Katy Perry – Rust and Bone: I hate Katy Perry and I hate this song, but this category isn’t about song quality, it’s about the art of crafting a scene. This song is used twice in Rust and Bone, once while the main character is acting as an orca trainer and again when she’s coming to terms with a tragic accident and trying to remember the job that she can no longer participate in. The first use is diagetic, the second is non-diagetic and in that second use has some pretty strong symbolic value.



“What is and What Should Never Be” by Led Zeppelin – The Silver Linings Playbook: This song is used in a long and tricky scene where the Bradley Cooper character in The Silver Linings Playbook is having a bad Bi-Polar episode which walks the line between comedy and domestic violence. The song choice is oddly brilliant because it’s a tune that very quickly goes from being down tempo to being aggressive, not unlike the psyche of a manic depressive.



And the Golden Stake Goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 01-27-2013 01:40 PM

Good choice.



iv3rdawG 01-27-2013 01:45 PM

I love that Rust and Bone scene so much. Cotillard was robbed of a nomination.



VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:



JBond 01-27-2013 06:21 PM

I love hearing Zeppelin in movies because I instantly know they really wanted it in there to pay for it.



Also, I think you mean "Joe Cocker."



Dracula 01-27-2013 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JBond (Post 2845067)

I love hearing Zeppelin in movies because I instantly know they really wanted it in there to pay for it.

Yeah, them and The Beatles.



JBond 01-27-2013 07:56 PM

That's why you have to give Mad Men a lot of credit for spending a small fortune on Tomorrow Never Knows, of all Beatle songs.



jonk 01-28-2013 05:00 AM

Big agreement from me on your two musical category selections. These are two very powerful moments.



While Les Mis didn't quite reach all the hype for me, Anne Hathaway's scene gave me chills.



Dracula 01-28-2013 05:07 PM

Best Chase Scene

Of the three major action movie scenes, the chase can be the most versatile. It can take the form of a traditional car chase, of a motorcycle chase, of a foot chase, or of a mid-air chase, a mix of those, or even of some other kind of random chase that further outside the box. It also doesn’t necessarily need to be a high speed affair; sometimes it can be a cat-and-mouse style chase that emphasizes tactics and maneuvers over horsepower.



Escaping Bill Smoke – Cloud Atlas: This chase scene from the “Luisa Rey” section of Cloud Atlas begins with a car crash and then turns into a foot chase in which a hitman played by Hugo Weaving pursues Halle Berry and Keith David through the streets of San Francisco. I don’t love the ultimate resolution of the chase, but I don’t know, something about the sight of Weaving in hot pursuit just gave me flashbacks to The Matrix.



Chasing the Bomb - The Dark Knight Rises: Nolan’s Batman trilogy reaches its final climax with this large scale action scene where Batman is in his aircraft and is trying to get to the truck with the nuclear bomb in it in time. Batman needs to dodge a number of guided missiles and then has to pursue the truck until it crashes. Most of the action in this series has been a little more personal, but this scene clearly shows that if Nolan had wanted to compete with the spectacle of Marvel’s superhero films he is more than capable.



River Scene – The Grey: This scene from The Grey comes after the protagonists have done pretty much everything imaginable in order to ward off the wolves and finally they reach a point where all they can do is run. Of course no human is ever going to outrun a damn wolf so out of desperation they end up chased into a freezing cold river and need to try to keep the currents from pulling them under. The scene ends very badly for one of the characters and that makes this stand out.



Tunnel Scene – Kill List: Kill List is a movie that keeps you guessing about where it’s going to go next. There are a couple hints early in the film that it would eventually go in an occult direction but still, I doubt many people giving it a first viewing would assume that it would eventually reach a point where the heavily armed protagonists would eventually find themselves being chased through a dark tunnel by a bunch of masked naked cult members with knives. It’s just a really tense and unconventional scene that really stands out in your memory.



Opening Scene – Skyfall: Though this pre-credit sequence is essentially a giant chase scene, it doesn’t really feel like one because of its fragmented format. It begins as a motorcycle chase between Bond, Moneypenny, and an enemy agent with classified documents on a thumb drive. Bond must then pursue the agent as he boards a train, forcing Bond to employ a every means at his disposal including a backhoe that happens to be parked on a flatbed train car. Bond movies always open on a bang, and this is no exception.



And the Golden Stake Goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



JBond 01-28-2013 05:21 PM

Well done.



iv3rdawG 01-28-2013 05:29 PM

I like the Bond one but I'd have gone with Kill List out of all the nominees (that I've seen). It's just terrifying.



PG Cooper 01-28-2013 06:45 PM

My favourite chase of the year is Sam escaping the cub scouts at the end of Moonrise Kingdom.



jonk 01-29-2013 05:41 AM

Agreed. This was a great start to the film.



Deexan 01-29-2013 07:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PG Cooper (Post 2845206)

My favourite chase of the year is Sam escaping the cub scouts at the end of Moonrise Kingdom.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonk (Post 2845227)

Agreed. This was a great start to the film.

weknowmemes.com/wp-content/up...n-template.png



FranklinTard 01-29-2013 11:03 AM

man i hated kill list. talk about a movie with no point.



Justin 01-29-2013 11:18 AM

Skyfall deserved it. Never saw Kill List.



FranklinTard 01-29-2013 12:12 PM

it is the best scene in all of skyfall.


Dracula 01-29-2013 05:14 PM

Set-Piece of the Year

The set-piece award is meant to be a place where large-scale action sequences that don’t easily fall into the “fight,” “shootout,” or “chase” categories. Past winners have included the Waterloo Station scene from The Bourne Ultimatum, the theater fire in Inglourious Basterds, and the dawn of life sequence from The Tree of Life. This year there seems to be a theme amongst the nominees of “things going badly fast,” they’re all disaster sequences of one form or another



Embassy Siege – Argo: Before the escape scenario that makes up the backbone of Argo, there was of course the famous embassy siege that sparked the whole hostage crisis. This recreation of that siege starts the movie off on a huge bang. Affleck patiently shows how this situation got out of hand over the course of about an hour by giving us a good view of the unruly mob and of the fear of people inside the embassy as they desperately try to shed sensitive documents.



Monsters Escape – The Cabin in the Woods: The Cabin in the Woods is a film that’s largely built around pandering to horror fans, but in its last twenty minutes this pandering goes from being kind of lame to being downright transcendent. This sequence works both as an exciting action scene and as a hilarious laundry-list of horror iconography. It’s like the “Imaginationland” episode of South Park meets Jurassic Park, and it’s unique from pretty much everything else we saw in cinema this year.



Plane Hijack– The Dark Knight Rises: They say that real stuntwork is dead because of the proliferation of CGI, but fortunately Christopher Nolan never got that memo. This crazy man actually hired a bunch of stunt skydivers to tie a prop plane to another plane so that it could be ripped to shreds in mid-air. The action inside the plane is good too with bane establishing himself as a true badass while fighting in a vertical environment.



Plane Crash – Flight: Robert Zemeckis gave us one of the most memorable plane crashes of all time in his 2000 film Cast Away and it’s clear that he had every intention of topping himself when he made Flight. I think he might have done it too because he manages to make the crash here into a very tense situation, especially when the plane twists upside-down and the flight crew is forced to save passengers who’ve fallen out of their seats.



Sinking Boat – Life of Pi: This year’s other straight-up disaster scene is this sequence from Life of Pi in which Pi’s boat is scuttled by a hurricane and our hero is forced to find his way onto a lifeboat. This is one of the rare cased where 3D improves the sequence in a big way, especially when Ang Lee’s camera breaks the waterline at certain tense moments. The fact that there are loose zoo animals running around everywhere throughout the scene also adds a nice surreal element to the proceedings.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



JBond 01-29-2013 05:21 PM

Just like Skyfall: best scene of the movie.



PG Cooper 01-29-2013 09:38 PM

No nomination for the final battle in The Avengers?



IanTheCool 01-29-2013 09:52 PM

I like those choices.



Neverending 01-29-2013 10:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PG Cooper (Post 2845282)

No nomination for the final battle in The Avengers?

It's obvious Dracula doesn't like The Avengers.



Dracula 01-29-2013 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PG Cooper (Post 2845282)

No nomination for the final battle in The Avengers?

I considered it, but decided I liked the other five better. That Avengers finale is fine, but it's pretty typical of what we see at the end of most summer blockbusters like Transformers. It just didn't seem all that noteworthy.



jonk 01-30-2013 06:25 AM

I did love the Cabin in the Woods set piece.



Dracula 01-30-2013 05:39 PM

Best Sound Design

I still rue the day that I thought it was a good idea to turn this into an award category. I’m in no way qualified to judge sound quality in films, so let’s just get this over with shall we.



The Avengers: The Avengers is probably the noisiest movie of the year, and that makes it distinctly qualified to have its aural merits noticed by me. Lots of explosions and **** popping off all over the place in multiple directions.



Cloud Atlas: What’s interesting about Cloud Atlas’ sound mix is that it manages to be consistent even while it cuts between the six different stories. That could have easily led to an aural mess with the volume levels jarringly going up and down as the film swaps between quiet and loud scenes, but instead it manages to seem natural throughout.



The Grey: All the other nominees here had the benefit of having been seen by me in top of the line theaters. This sound mix, on the other hand, managed to impress me even though I was listening to it through the crappy speakers on my TV. The wolves various howls and snarls really add to the film’s tension.



The Hobbit: The sound quality in The Hobbit was almost disorienting because it sounded really smooth and normal, unlike the visuals which were being actively distorted by the film’s ridiculous 48 FPS presentation. Beyond that it’s about as noisy as The Avengers so, yeah.



Zero Dark Thirty: While many of these other films were nominated because of how loud they were, I nominated Zero Dark Thirty because of how quite it could be. Things seem really calm and subdued in this movie… until it stops being quiet and things explode. Also, those silenced rifle shots in the Abbottabad scene sounded pretty sweet.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:





That write-up sucks, so here's a bonus award:



Best Makeup

Though CGI characters are all the rage these days, there are still a lot of movie that opt to use high-end makeup effects in order to create interesting and fantastical things. This year there’s a distinct battle at work between makeup effects that strictly look “real” and effects that look “interesting.”



Cloud Atlas: If there were an award for “most” makeup Cloud Atlas would have it locked down. With thirteen actors playing sixty-one separate roles (many of them crossing racial and gender lines) there’s no doubt that the makeup team behind this film had a massive undertaking. The catch is that the results can be a little inconsistent, some of the makeup jobs look great but some of them (especially the cross racial ones) can look rather awkward.



Holy Motors: The makeup in Holy Motors is unique because the act of applying said makeup is actually a part of the film’s story. Over the course of the film its protagonist wears a variety of costumes and disguises and many of them involve elaborate makeup applications that certainly look very real. By doing so he creates a number of interesting “characters” that seem distinct but which are really just the creations of the film’s true protagonist.



Kill List: Gore effects. Almost every year a movie gets into this category for having the nastiest looking blood and gore and Kill List easily gets that trophy this year. I’m not going to go into much more detail because I don’t want to spoil any of the grisly imagery, but it should be said that if their goal was to unsettle their audience’s stomach this makeup department most certainly succeeded.



Lincoln: Though his Oscar campaign would like you to think that Daniel Day-Lewis managed to look like our sixteenth amendment through a combination of the Stanislavski method and sheer willpower, but the truth of the matter is that he was made to look like that through the application of high end make-up effects. Additionally, the makeup team does a lot of work to give everyone else in the film a distinctly old-timey look.



Prometheus: There’s some iffy old age makeup on Guy Pearce, but beyond that there’s some really interesting prosthetic work going on with this film’s makeup. This is especially true in the case of the “Engineer” characters which are these sort of grey funny looking muscle-bound guys. Beyond that there are some interesting bits with mutated humans, slug things that try to eat you, and other assorted bits of wholesome goodness.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 01-30-2013 07:09 PM

I really wish I had a shot to see Cloud Atlas.



Dracula 01-31-2013 05:49 PM

Best Art Direction

What’s in a name? Is this category “art direction,” “set decoration,” “production design”, or all of the above? Who knows. What is clear is that the act of designing and building sets for a film can greatly increase how interesting the whole film looks. Some of this art direction brings you into a whole new world or a different time, other examples just make you stand up and look at our modern world in a different way.



Beasts of the Southern Wild: Though he was working on a very small budget Benh Zeitlin art direction team was able to turn the Mississippi delta into a sort of American gothic fairy tale world, albeit one with strong roots in the modern day and that’s a pretty unique accomplishment. The whole world of the movie sort of artfully messy, Hushpuppy lives in a sort of exaggerated squalor and there’s all kinds of garbage everywhere.



Lincoln: Period epics are always a good place to show off set decoration, and this distinctly American take on the period epic recreates 19th century Washington D.C. with a lot of detail. Of course Washington during wartime wasn’t necessarily the most vibrant place in the world, so these dark interiors aren’t necessarily “pretty” but they definitely felt like very real recreations to my eyes.



Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson has always done an amazing job of using art direction to turn contemporary American settings into a sort of whimsical storybook illustration and this film’s 60s setting really gives him a chance to outdo himself. He really makes the island of New Penzance seem like a world unto itself by throwing in some really interesting touches like the wood sign in front of the Khaki-scout camp or the church pageant with elaborate cardboard waves.



Prometheus: Science fiction movies are definitely good places to show off art direction. I for one am a big sucker for highly detailed spaceship dashboards and the like and Prometheus has that stuff in abundance. Not only does it have a clear design for the titular spaceship, but it also provides an elaborate set for the alien ship and it also gives us a bunch of interesting foreign planetscapes.



Skyfall: This is the only nominee here that isn’t set in either a fantasy universe of some sort or in the past, which means it kind of has to go the extra mile to stand out. Of course the James Bond franchise has been great at doing just that going back to the days of Ken Adams. Here we get a lot of interesting and exotic locations like the Macau casino, Javier Bardem’s wacky island, and of course the film’s titular location.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



JBond 01-31-2013 06:01 PM

You said "titular" twice. That's a pair of titulars.



IanTheCool 01-31-2013 07:20 PM

:hehe:



jonk 02-01-2013 05:51 AM

Agreed on the Prometheus choice. This film certainly has it's flaws, but the visual design was spot on!



Dracula 02-01-2013 05:39 PM

Best Original Score

There are a lot of film buff out there who keep really close track of the various film composers and their bodies of work. They collect score CDs, they recognize it every time a composer recycles some of his old material, and they walk out of nearly every movie with a firm opinion about that film’s score. I’m not one of these people. A film’s score is usually the last thing I pay attention to while I’m watching it, so the ones that stand out to me tend to be either very big and noticeable or they’re doing something truly unique. Keep that in mind as you read on.



Argo: Alexandre Desplat appears to have supplied a score to at least eight different movies this year and having done a side by side comparison of the ones I’ve seen, this stands out as the most interesting. I usually think of Desplat as a pretty straightforward classical composer, but for this movie he’s incorporated a lot of Persian instrumentation which gives the whole movie an exotic flair. The percussion also give the film a nice sense of danger.



Beasts of the Southern Wild: Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin himself collaborated in order to create the score for Beasts of the Southern Wild and the director’s hand is clear because the music contributes greatly to the film’s mood and style. The much like the film, the music is catchy, propulsive, and whimsical and on top of that it uses a lot of unique instrumentation in order to reflect the musical heritage of the delta region the film celebrates.



The Dark Knight Rises: Deh-Shay, Deh-Shay, Bah Sah Rah. Bah Sah Rah. Hans Zimmer is certainly building upon music used in previous Batman films here, but I like that he’s able to add a lot of new elements to the proceedings as well. Namely, I love that vocal chant that he uses to great effect throughout the score in order to really make the whole film seem larger than it already is. It’s not a subtle score, but it’s not a subtle movie either.



Life of Pi: Mychael Danna’s score could have easily just done some Bollywood sitar stuff and called it a day, but instead Danna has delivered a very diverse score which incorporates a lot of different inspirations both eastern and western. He does a very good job of emphasizing both the film’s sense of adventure and its emotional underbelly. It goes a long way towards making a one-man-show of a movie feel like it has a lot going on in it the whole time.



The Master: Jonny Greenwood’s score to There Will Be Blood was an instant classic and he’s back to do Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up as well. While that previous score was all about a sort of controlled intensity, this one is a little more relaxed. There’s a certain ethereal quality to a lot of this music in keeping with post-war setting, but that intense string/percussion combo does show up again from time to time in order to represent Freddie’s troubled mind.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



IanTheCool 02-01-2013 07:22 PM

It certainly has its own style. I liked that score quite a bit also.



Dracula 02-02-2013 12:52 PM

Best Soundtrack

While the best score category looks at original work done by composers, the “best soundtrack” category looks at a film’s use of popular music throughout its runtime. Generally this music should source music, but the presence of music commissioned for the film can be counted as well. It is not an award for the film’s soundtrack album, it’s for the film itself and how its music fits in with the action onscreen and with the themes and overall tone of the film.



Django Unchained: Like the film itself, the Django Unchained soundtrack has two halves to it. On one hand it has a lot of music that firmly rooted in the Spaghetti western (including excerpts from Ennio Morricone scores and songs like Luis Bacalov’ Django theme as well as some American country music like Johnny Cash’s “Ain’t no Grave” and Jim Croce “I Got a Name”). On the other hand the film has a lot of newly recorded music by African-American artists like Anthony Hamilton, Elayna Boynton, John Legend, and Rick Ross that both give the film attitude while also sort of fitting in the setting. Then it’s all brought together by the song “Unchained” which has Tupac Shakur rapping over James Brown music that’s been augmented by traditional western sounds.



Lawless: I’m always a bit iffy about nominating soundtracks that are largely made up of music that was recorded for the film, but this one was too interesting to ignore. Instead of making an ambient score like they have with previous films Nick Cave & Warren Ellis put together a band and contacted folk and country legends Emmylou Harris, Ralph Stanley, Willie Nelson and had them do Americana covers of rock songs that were written long after the era the film is set in like The Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” The music give the film modern energy without seeming all that out of place in the setting.



Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson has leaned heavily on British Invasion music for most of his career so it’s kind of surprising that when he finally got around to making a film set in the mid-60s that he left that behind. The music here still has Andersonian whimsy but the selections are more experimental. He draws heavily from a composer named Benjamin Britten as well as some strange “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” records from the 60s. On top of that he also adds some Hank Williams recordings in order to accentuate the wilderness adventure aspect of the film.



Rust and Bone: For Rust and Bone director Jacques Audiard has augmented a pretty good Alexandre Desplat score with a number of interesting and eclectic song choices. He bookends the film with a pair of Bon Iver songs that set a serious tone, but there’s also some lighthearted stuff like the B-52s “Love Shack” in the film. Beyond that there’s also some less recognizable stuff that couldn’t have been all that easy to find. It’s a worthy follow-up to Audiard’s similarly interesting soundtrack to “A Prophet.”



The Silver Linings Playbook: In my “Best use of source music in a scene” category I already praised this film’s use of Zeppelin, but there’s a lot beyond that. Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” plays a key role in the film’s plot and there’s also an awesome montage set to the Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash duet “The Girl From the North Country.” Beyond that are a number of less prominent songs that work really well in less noticeable contexts throughout the film.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



MovieBuff801 02-02-2013 02:38 PM

Both excellent choices. Beasts had a particularly interesting score.



Justin 02-03-2013 01:15 AM

I don't even remember the soundtrack for Beasts...



Dracula 02-03-2013 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin (Post 2845685)

I don't even remember the soundtrack for Beasts...

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:



PG Cooper 02-03-2013 10:07 AM

My favourite score of the year was The Master, but I haven't seen Beasts of the Southern Wild.



Dracula 02-05-2013 08:06 PM

Fell a bit behind over the weekend, doing two today to begin catching up.



Best Editing

Ah, editing. The trickiest ***** of a category to judge from memory. I think everyone has a pretty good idea of what makes good editing, but unless you’re actively watching every movie you see to try to determine if it’s among the year’s best edited it’s unlikely that you’re going to remember the most nuanced of cutting months later. Still, I feel like there are five nominees this year that I can firmly get behind.



Argo: This is probably the most “normal” film among this batch of nominees, but it does a number of key things really strongly, and that makes it stand out. Most notably, the film’s editing does a great job of ratcheting up the tension during the suspense scenes like the recreation of the embassy siege and the final scene in the air port. Outside of the espionage scenes though, it also does a great job of editing the film’s comedic scenes when Alan Arkin and John Goodman are doing their thing.



Cloud Atlas: Six separate stories. They had to cut six separate stories into a single film in order to make this film, and while some of the cross-cutting between the different narratives was likely present in the script long before the film went to post-production, they still needed to work out the fine details and make each cut both very logical and also visually congruous. That scene where the film cuts between Doona Bae crossing the future bridge with David Gyasi crossing the ship’s mast alone should have made this film worthy of consideration.



The Grey: Most action movies these days move at a breakneck pace and believe that this is necessary in order to keep the audience engaged. The Grey takes something of an opposite approach and tries build a slower, almost lyrical pace in order to give the audience the same melancholy desperation that the characters are dealing with. That’s not to say that the cutting doesn’t also have you pumped up whenever the characters are dealing with killer wolves.



The Master: It was said that the editing in There Will Be Blood “re-defined the language of cinema.” The editing in The Master doesn’t necessarily re-re-define the language of cinema but it does effectively build upon many of the great things that Anderson was able to do with that movie. Much of the appeal in The Master is in the way that it keeps the audience guessing and the surprise edits play a big part in how the film is able to place the viewer in Freddie Quell’s head.



Once Upon a Time in Anatolia: Usually “good editing” means speeding a film up and making its set-pieces comprehendible. However, sometimes the effect that’s desired by a film’s editing will do the opposite, it will slow things down and create a mood. That’s what’s happening in this Turkish art film. The goal is to allow shots to linger on certain thing for just the right amount of time to allow the audience to think about what they’re seeing, and the effect is kind of hypnotic.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:







Best Cinematography

Film is of course a visual medium, so what could be more important than they guy who decides how a film looks: the cinematographer. There was a lot of good cinematography this year but not a ton of great cinematography, there were only a couple films that I would have tipped for the final award but a multitude of films that could have easily gotten the nomination under slightly different circumstances.



Kill List: Low budget British horror movies aren’t generally expected to have great cinematography, so it’s always a nice surprise when such a movie has exactly that. Laurie Rose’s work as DP on Kill List really makes the film look a much grander production than it maybe was and it adds immensely to the film’s atmosphere, especially in the film’s second half when it takes a pretty dramatic turn in both plot and tone.



The Master: I didn’t get a chance to see The Master projected in 70mm, but I did see it projected in a high end 4K digital presentation and it looked luscious. Anderson had to use cinematographer Mihai Malăimare, Jr. instead of his usual DP Robert Elswit, but he doesn’t seem to skip a beat. The cinematography here gives The Master a vivid look that perfectly captures its period while also just being beautiful.



Prometheus: Much as it did in the Art Direction, Prometheus had the unenviable task of having to replicate the iconic look of the original Alien that was captured by the late Derek Vanlint back in 1979. Fortunately Dariusz Wolski is up to the task. He gives all the interiors an appropriately dark and brooding look and he also make the planetary landscapes an appropriately otherworldly look.



Rust and Bone: Maybe J.J. Abrams has given deliberate lens flare a bad name, but in the hands of someone like Rust and Bone cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine it can be the backbone of an excellent visual aesthetic. Fontaine perfectly captures the humid heat of the resort town in which the film is set and gives the whole project a subtle unreality that really elevates it. The aesthetic is also malleable enough to feel just as natural when the film transitions into different settings late in its run time.



Skyfall: Why does a James Bond movie need to be shot by someone as skilled as Roger Deakins? I don’t know, but it seems to have mostly worked out. I think the reason Deakins accepted this job is because Sam Mendes pretty much told him he could do whatever he wanted to do in order to make the film look as pretty as possible. The results are a bit masturbatory but the film does indeed look really good and I suspect that Deakins’ work has a lot to do with why this entry in the storied franchise is being taken so seriously.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 02-05-2013 09:18 PM

I went with Skyfall myself, but The Master is a great choice and you explained yourself very well.



Knerys 02-06-2013 02:30 PM

I like that you've got The Grey nominated in here several times. That movie deserved a better marketing plan. One of my surprise favorites of the year.



Over all nice work so far.



Justin 02-06-2013 03:00 PM

The Master does indeed have the best cinematography of the year.



MovieBuff801 02-06-2013 03:08 PM

Excellent call on Cloud Atlas. Completely agree there.



Dracula 02-06-2013 06:36 PM

Villain of the Year

Everyone loves a great villain and I’m no exception. An evil bastard can make any film more fun and/or more disturbing. That said I have a lot of strict rules about this category: 1. The villain must be a true antagonist to the film’s main characters, no anti-heroes. 2. They actually need to be evil, so an otherwise noble person like a non-corrupt cop who happens to oppose a hero is unlikely to be nominated. 3. No animals. 4. No literal monsters unless they have a distinctly human intellect like a vampire or something. 5. No groups, the villain must be an individual, but if they are the leader of a group of evil people that will be considered. 6. While not a strict rule, I’m not interested in nominating real historical figures, at least no ones who haven’t been fictionalized.



The Man on the Phone- Compliance: Evil can certainly be banal, as evidenced by the sicko responsible for all the chaos in the indie thriller Compliance. This ordinary person casually ruins a number of lives just to get some kind of weird thrill out of getting people to do inappropriate things by posing as a cop on a telephone. He does this by being an incredibly smooth operator, he knows exactly how to play off the biases of the people he talks to ad fully understands the power of suggestion.



Bane- The Dark Knight Rises: One of the less remembered sins of the Joel Schumacher crapfest Batman & Robin was the way it turned the character of Bane into a dumb henchman. Nolan knew there was a lot more to this legendary comic book character than that and he went the extra mile to turn Bane into a character that was not only physically intimidating but also an intellectual leader driven by a fierce ideology. He’s a comic book villain that is truly scary and makes Loki from the Avengers look like a simplistic little wimp.



Stephen - Django Unchained: Calvin J. Candie is certainly a sick SOB, but the even more interesting villain from Django Unchained is his manservant Stephen, played by the illustrious Samuel L. Jackson. Stephen is perhaps more sympathetic than Candie because he is himself a victim, but his victimhood has led him to become an especially wretched kind of conformist. He’s been so warped over the course of decades of enslavement that he’s come to truly believe his master’s ideology and betrays his people for reasons that go well beyond self-preservation.



Special Agent Charlie Rakes – Lawless: Sometimes a villain can be almost too evil. You just want to look at the guy and say “dude, why you got to be so evil.” Charlie Rakes, who’s played by Guy Pearce in John Hillcoat’s bootlegger epic Lawless, is pretty close to being that. Pearce gives the guy all kinds of creepy mannerisms like white gloves and a bizarre haircut and the guy does stuff that is just mean. He’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t hesitate to murder a teenage cripple, that’s not very nice.



Tama Riyadi – The Raid: Audiences don’t necessarily expect a whole lot of nuance when the first thing that they see a villain do is line up and handful of people to be shot and then kill the last person with the claw end of a hammer, and indeed this guy turns out to be a pretty sick bastard throughout The Raid. He creates a lot of menace by simply being the voice at the other end of the housing project’s P.A. system and in general he’s the kind of scumbag you just want to see die.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



IanTheCool 02-06-2013 07:02 PM

I liked Bane a lot. He certainly had a presence.



MovieBuff801 02-06-2013 07:35 PM

Good choice. Just like The Joker in TDK, whenever Bane showed up on-screen or when you heard the first few notes of his musical theme, you knew s--t was about to go down.



Jack 02-06-2013 10:01 PM

Bane is not one I get behind. His motives and ideology are fuzzy at best. His voice is absurd. They tried to inject to much Joker into his pathos. Stephen is a great pick, though. How about Killer Joe?



Dracula 02-06-2013 10:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jack (Post 2845996)

Bane is not one I get behind. His motives and ideology are fuzzy at best. His voice is absurd. They tried to inject to much Joker into his pathos. Stephen is a great pick, though. How about Killer Joe?

Stephen definitely would have been my second choice, but his screentime was limited and he didn't really have the time to become an overarching foe within the film. Bane, on the other hand, dominates his film and he's also made a hell of an impact on popular culture.



As for Killer Joe, he didn't seem like enough of a true antagonist to me. He's straight up working for/with the main characters for most of the movie, and those characters aren't all that noble themselves, so he just kind of feels like one of many a--holes within that cast (albeit a much more interesting a--hole than the rest of the dumbasses who fill the cast of that stupid movie).



Justin 02-06-2013 11:15 PM

Bane feels like the obligatory choice considering the other options.



Neverending 02-06-2013 11:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin (Post 2846019)

Bane feels like the obligatory choice considering the other options.

Bane is more amusing than anything else. Of Dracula's nominees, I would have chosen Sam Jackson in "Django."



Dracula 02-07-2013 06:45 PM

Cameo of the Year

This award has typically walked a fine line between what you’d traditionally think of as a cameo (celebrity walks on, does something weird, then leaves), and what is closer to being strong performances that happen to be in very small roles like Viola Davis’ role in Doubt for example. This year I’ve leaned almost entirely on real bona fide cameos of the first variety, in part because there have been a ton of them. This category has been so jam-packed with possibilities that I’ve had to make some heartbreaking cuts (sorry Franco Nero and Stan Lee).



Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise - 21 Jump Street: The short-lived late-80s TV series “21 Jump Street” is mostly known today as the series that introduced America to a young actor named Johnny Depp, who would go on to be a major star. People wondered if Depp would make an appearance in this big screen take on the show and not only did he show up but he also brought along his co-star Peter DeLuise and managed to hide in plain sight during key scenes of the film.



William Shimell – Amour: I love this cameo because only people who know their foreign cinema (or their opera) are going to view it as a cameo appearance at all. William Shimell is an Opera singer whose only other film credit is in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. Given that Kiarostami is one of only a few directors that I suspect Michael Haneke is likely to keep up with, I’m sure that this isn’t lost on him. If nothing else it amuses me that Shimell has become the go-to guy when you need to cast a British intellectual in a French-language film.



Cillian Murphy- The Dark Knight Rises: Nolan’s recent string of Batman films have gotten bigger and bigger, but Nolan never forgot where the series started and so he’s added an interesting throughline to the series in the form of reoccurring appearances by Cillian Murphy, the Scarecrow from Batman Begins. His appearance in The Dark Knight was kind of throwaway but Nolan totally makes up for it here by making the character the acting judge in Bane’s kangaroo courts which sentence people in the Gotham resistance to “death by exile.” The sight of the guy wearing a wig in a makeshift courtroom is macabre genius.



Jason Schwartzman - Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson is one of those filmmakers who has a sort of repertory cast that frequently appears in his films, and one of the actors who’s been with him almost since the beginning is Jason Schwartzman whom the young “lovers” meet at the Khaki-scout jamboree and acts as a sort of Friar Laurence to them and presides over a sort of unofficial marriage ceremony for them. Schwartzman comes into the movie at just the point in the film where we could use a familiar face and he also doesn’t overstay his welcome.



Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg – Seven Psychopaths: The opening scene of Seven Psychopaths brilliantly pull off the “introduce recognizable actors and then kill them” trick by having Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg playing gangsters straight out of a 90’s Tarentino ripoff babbling amongst themselves about mundane things only to be shot in their heads by a masked figure which approaches them from behind. What makes the cameo work is that these guys are famous enough to be believable as supporting characters throughout the film, but just unknown enough that you aren’t wondering the whole time why they weren’t in the film’s advertising.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Neverending 02-07-2013 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dracula (Post 2846111)

The short-lived late-80s TV series “21 Jump Street”

Is 5 seasons and 103 episodes short-lived?



Quote:

Nolan never forgot where the series started and so he’s added an interesting throughline to the series in the form of reoccurring appearances by Cillian Murphy, the Scarecrow from Batman Begins.

All he really did was turn the Scarecrow into a laughing stock.



Quote:

In short, it’s a cameo that goes above and beyond what anyone expected, and that’s why it gets the award.

It's also, arguably, the best scene in the movie.



JBond 02-07-2013 07:48 PM

Peter DeLuise has a lot of cameo experience from SG:1 where he cameoed in every episode he directed....the putz.



Neverending 02-07-2013 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JBond (Post 2846116)

Peter DeLuise has a lot of cameo experience from SG:1 where he cameoed in every episode he directed....the putz.

His father had great cameos in Mel Brooks movies. It runs in the family.



MovieBuff801 02-07-2013 08:29 PM

This is already one Golden Stake too many for that piece of s--t movie.



PG Cooper 02-07-2013 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MovieBuff801 (Post 2846122)

This is already one Golden Stake too many for that piece of s--t movie.

Boo!



*Throws garbage



Neverending 02-07-2013 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MovieBuff801 (Post 2846122)

This is already one Golden Stake too many for that piece of s--t movie.

24.media.tumblr.com/7e46f4fb5...ry4co1_500.jpg



Justin 02-07-2013 11:01 PM

I didn't realize MovieBuff had such strong feelings about 21 Jump Street.


JBond 02-07-2013 11:18 PM

I've known for 20 years.



MovieBuff801 02-08-2013 01:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin (Post 2846139)

I didn't realize MovieBuff had such strong feelings about 21 Jump Street.

Singlehandedly the most overrated and obnoxious movie of 2012. Not to mention the most pissed off I've been at a comedy in a long time.



jonk 02-08-2013 07:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MovieBuff801 (Post 2846153)

Singlehandedly the most overrated and obnoxious movie of 2012. Not to mention the most pissed off I've been at a comedy in a long time.

Really?



I was the complete opposite. Expected this to be a pile of garbage and instead ended up laughing all the way through. I thought it was brilliant!



JBond 02-08-2013 11:56 AM

I don't really go to comedies anymore.



MovieBuff801 02-08-2013 02:39 PM

You were better off skipping this one, anyway.



shained 02-08-2013 05:23 PM

Put your tongue back in your mouth boy!



Dracula 02-08-2013 05:41 PM

Best Supporting Actress

This category is often one of the hardest to come up with for some reason and this year’s roster seems uniquely eclectic. A couple of notes, I’ve heard that Helen Hunt is great in The Sessions but I didn’t get a chance to see it, secondly I’ve left Anne Hathaway’s work in Les Misérables out of this because her role is almost small enough to be a cameo and I already gave her that Best Musical Performance award and that seems like enough.



Isabelle Huppert – Amour: A ton of well deserved attention has been lavished upon the two lead actors in Amour, so much that I didn’t even know going in that great French actress Isabelle Huppert was even in the film. Playing the distraught daughter who’s trying to makes sense of her parents’ health woes. While her father is facing the situation with a degree of stoicism, Huppert’s character is devastated and noticeably sorrowful.



Shirley MacLaine – Bernie: After a long career, Shirley MacLaine has become one of the finer older actresses around today. In Bernie she plays a town pariah, a woman who becomes absolutely hated less because of any overtly horrible behavior and more out of an abundance of extremely rude behavior. MacLaine needs to be make the audience believe that the character could truly be that hated without seeming like a bizarre caricature and she defiantly pulls it off.



Anne Hathaway – The Dark Knight Rises: Let’s be frank: most female superheroes have been lame (don’t kill the messenger). Aside from a couple of the lady X-Men there’s hardly been a single female costumed vigilante on the silver screen worth a damn. Given that, I really appreciated how well Hathaway was able to create a truly feminine anti-hero out of Catwoman who could also legitimately kick ass. Hathaway has had a hell of a year and I don’t for the life of me understand why anyone ever doubted her.



Amy Adams – The Master: Amy Adams used to be the go-to actress when you needed to cast someone to be a adorable sweetheart and she brings a little bit of that to her role in The Master, but she’s grown a lot and is now bringing a lot more dimension to her roles. Her character in The Master is something of an enigma, is she just a doting wife or something more? Hint: There are theories I’ve read that the film’s title refers to her character.



Jennifer Ehle – Zero Dark Thirty: The “other” heroine from Zero Dark Thirty is this more experienced agent who serves as something of a blueprint for what Jessica Chastain’s character could be like when she chills out a little bit and gets more comfortable in the world of espionage. Veteran character actress Jennifer Ehle didn’t have a whole lot to work with in creating this character, but she manages to create a memorable character and you’re sad when she dramatically exits the film.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 02-09-2013 08:35 AM

Same choice for me. I'm also happy you gave Hatheway a nod for The Dark Knight Rises.



Dracula 02-09-2013 03:16 PM

Best Supporting Actor

As is often the case, this is a super-crowded category this year, but also one that has a pretty obvious pack in the lead. There were a lot of interesting actors I needed to leave off like Alan Arkin, Jason Clarke, Tom Hardy, Samuel L. Jackson, and Ben Wishaw but I am pretty happy with the final shortlist I’ve come up with.



Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained: There are an abundance of supporting male actors in Django Unchained and many people felt like Leonardo DiCaprio was the standout, but I think the Academy got it right when they picked Christoph Waltz as the standout. One could argue that the performance is just an evolution of Waltz’ mannerisms in Inglourious Basterds, but he brings a lighter touch here and his line deliveries are the backbone of the film’s comedy.



Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln: Tommy Lee Jones is of course a master at playing grumpy old men, and he turns the radical abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens into a man who’s grumpy for all the right reasons. In addition to being a good imitation of the real man, Jones does a great job of portraying how conflicted Stevens is in his compromises and at simply commanding the room whenever he’s onscreen.



Phillip Seymour Hoffman – The Master: When you watch The Master you forget that Phillip Seymore Hoffman has worked with Paul Thomas Anderson four times before simply because what he’s asked to do here goes above and beyond the relatively one-note bit parts that he’s previously played in movies like Boogie Nights. Here Hoffman manages to give his L. Ron Hubbard surrogate just the right mix of intellectual, guru, and dork.



Clark Peters – Red Hook Summers: Alright, if you put a gun to my head there probably are a couple of supporting performances that I would have put ahead of this, but they’re getting plenty of kudos elsewhere and I wanted to bring a little more attention to this one. Peters (who you might recognize as Lester on The Wire and Big Chief on Treme) plays a Baptists preacher with a hidden past in this flawed but interesting Spike Lee film and he does a lot to bring nuance to a character that could easily be a caricature in the wrong hands.



Robert De Niro – The Silver Linings Playbook: Anyone who has a father around Robert De Niro’s age can probably relate to what the storied actor is able to pull off in this role in The Silver Lining’s Playbook. Many have made the accusation that De Niro has gotten more attention than he deserves for this role simply because he “does more than just show up” but I think those cynical accusations are being made by people who aren’t seeing a lot of the nuances that De Niro does bring to his work in the film.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 02-09-2013 03:52 PM

Really? That's pretty surprising. I'd have gone with Hoffman myself. Jones is good in Lincoln but I feel like it's too similar to his usual roles.



Dracula 02-10-2013 03:35 PM

Best Actress

Hollywood has been typically stingy in its willingness to give quality roles to women this year, and because of it there’s really only one Hollywood film represented in this bunch of nominees (The Silver Linings Playbook). Three of the remaining nominees are for European films and one of them is for a true independent film. To be fair to Hollywood, there have been a handful of female led blockbusters (The Hunger Games, Brave, Snow White and the Huntsman) but they still seem to want to leave the really challenging stuff for the men (don’t kill the messenger).



Emmanuelle Riva – Amour: Emmanuelle Riva began her career by staring in Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon Amour and now, over fifty years later, she may have sung her swan song in another more understated film with the word “amour” in its title. She’ll break your heart I this film by creating a very realistic character and then slowly forcing you to watch her descend into the depths of sickness both physical and mental.



Ann Dowd – Compliance: Ann Dowd was campaigned as a supporting actress throughout the award season, but I think the role is very clearly a lead. Playing the real life manager of a fast food restaurant that finds itself embroiled in a bizarre incident sparked by a strange prank phone call, the veteran character actress creates a middle-aged heartland woman who comes to do terrible things while thinking that she’s completely justified the whole time. Dowd does a good job of portraying the character’s bizarre self-justifications.



Nadezhda Markina – Elena: I didn’t necessarily love this Russian film from Andrey Zvyagintsev, but it did have a very strong performance at its center by this fine actress whose name I cannot pronounce. Playing a woman put in the difficult position of having to choose between her new husband and her grandchild and you aren’t entirely sure where she’s going to go with her choice until something shocking happens midway into the film’s runtime.



Marion Cotillard – Rust and Bone: Though most of her best work is done in foreign language cinema, Marion Cotillard is a movie star if ever there was one. In Rust and Bone she plays a young woman who loses her legs in an accident and has to try to rebuild her life from there. Cotillard does a good job of making her disability seem real, but I also like how she never forgets that she’s supposed to be playing a really cool character in spite of the injury.



Jennifer Lawrence – The Silver Linings Playbook: What can I say about Jennifer Lawrence except that she’s obviously had a hell of a year. While Winter’s Bone was her critical debut and The Hunger Games proved that she could head a major commercial production, I think that The Silver Linings Playbook may mark her true ascendance to stardom. Playing a character who could have easily fallen into goth girl or manic pixie dreamgirl clichés she manages to really create a genuine character that can’t be so easily labeled of dismissed.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



MovieBuff801 02-10-2013 04:36 PM

Personally, I would've gone with Waltz for Supporting Actor. He was the one supporting character out of any movie this year that had me excited to see more of him and wishing he could be in every scene possible. That, and it was a ****ing awesome performance.



Have yet to see Amour.



Dracula 02-10-2013 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MovieBuff801 (Post 2846377)

Personally, I would've gone with Waltz for Supporting Actor. He was the one supporting character out of any movie this year that had me excited to see more of him and wishing he could be in every scene possible. That, and it was a ****ing awesome performance.



Have yet to see Amour.

Waltz was really funny and interesting in Django, but what he was doing in it was a little to close to what we've seen him do before in Basterds and in other roles. I wanted to see him expand what he does a little more before I go giving him another Golden Stake.



Dracula 02-11-2013 08:22 PM

Best Actor

A lot of people turn off award shows after they give out the awards to the actors and actresses. I guess you can’t blame them, after all it’s the actors who are front and center in a given film, and no matter how hard you try to convince them that the writers and directors have more influence it’s hard for them to look past what they see with their own eyes. It’s been a really strong year for this category and I had to leave off a lot of strong performers like Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jack Black, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Liam Neeson. Also, I didn’t get a chance to see The Sessions, so I can’t weigh in on John Hawkes’ acclaimed performance in that film.



Denzel Washington – Flight: In Hollywood there are character actors and then there are movie stars. Awards usually tend toward character actors (and often rightly), but there is a certain artistry to putting together a great movie star performance and that’s exactly what Denzel Washington does in Flight. This is the kind of role that a character actor couldn’t have played, no one would have ever believed that someone like Paul Giamatti could behave the way this character does and get away with it for as long as he did, that’s something that takes intense charm and likability of the kind few other stars possess.



Denis Lavant – Holy Motors: Denis Lavant’s work in Holy Motors is something to behold in part because it represents a style of acting that is rarely seen in this day and age. He doesn’t portray a “character” per se (well, technically he does, but that’s not important), instead he transitions through a series of makeups throughout the film and transitions into a variety of personas. The entire focus is on the actors physicality and mannerisms, not unlike what one would have expected to see from the silent masters like Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton.



Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln: Daniel Day-Lewis has only been in five films since the turn of the century for the simple reason that he never ****s around. If he’s in a movie you can count on him giving a once in a lifetime transformative role that seems far removed from the mild-mannered Brit you see being interviewed every once in a while on talk shows. It was no surprise to anyone that he did exactly that in Lincoln, where a variety of bold choices were made in the creation of what may be the definitive take on the great emancipator.



Joaquin Phoenix – The Master: We knew from his work on Walk the Line that Joaquin Phoenix was capable of some very strong work, but I’m not sure anyone was quite ready to believe that he was capable of anything quite as amazing as what we see in The Master. Phoenix has a certain old-school Rock Hudson look to him that I’d never quite recognized in him and he brings it to the fore-front for this post-war epic and beyond that he’s created a wild and unpredictable character which has you locked on the screen all throughout the film.



Bradley Cooper – The Silver Linings Playbook: Before I saw The Silver Linings Playbook I really hated this guy. Like, really ****ing hated him. He has a real douchebag aura to him in the Hangover movies and that also extends to the other crappy movies he’s in like Limitless. And yet, as he did with Mark Whalberg before him, David O. Russell seems to have seen something in the guy which I couldn’t and got a really fun performance from him upon which much of the film’s success rests. That ****’s amazing.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 02-11-2013 09:21 PM

I made the exact same choice for the exact same reason. Excellent choice.



MovieBuff801 02-12-2013 12:29 AM

My personal choice this year would be Denzel Washington, for pretty much the same reason you chose Phoenix over Day-Lewis. Washington has become stuck in the role of badass in so many action movies lately, that his performance in Flight is made all the more great because of it. Also because of the charm Washington brings to Whip, we're really able to root for him, even though we know he deserves all he's being threatened with in the film.



I'm not knocking Phoenix, though, because he was indeed great. But it's been Denzel Washington's performance that has stuck with me the most since seeing it.



Justin 02-12-2013 07:24 PM

Phoenix's role stuck with me because it's the most insane, frustrating, enigmatic, and borderline hilarious performance I've seen since DDL's in There Will Be Blood. That would unequivocally be my pick for this year.



Dracula 02-12-2013 09:59 PM

Best Acting Ensemble

There’s a lot to be said for the achievement of individuals, but perhaps the greater glory should go to the achievement of full ensembles. This award looks at the merit of a film’s entire cast from the stars to the bit players and tries to look at which films have the fewest weak spots. Bear in mind that while the film’s main stars are taken into account here, they are not necessarily the part that is being most heavily weighed. If the supporting cast isn’t also notable a film is unlikely to show up here.



Cloud Atlas: The first film to win this award back in 2007 was Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, a film which seemed pretty wild because it had six different actors playing one character. Cloud Atlas is the opposite; it has thirteen actors playing something like sixty different characters. That’s a really bold decision and it makes for some very interesting casting choices (Hugh Grant as a war chiefton?). The standout I think is Ben Whishaw, who just so happens to have also been in the aforementioned I’m Not There.



Killing Them Softly: It was important to me that this film showed up here because, while there was no individual performance that I even considered in the individual categories, I think the cast as a whole is really solid. The scenes with James Gandolfini are some of the year’s best and there’s also great work from character actors like Richard Jenkins, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Scoot McNairy, and Sam Shepard. I actually thing the film’s star (Brad Pitt) is a little miscast, but otherwise this is a near-perfect cast for what the film needs.



Lincoln: Where do I begin on this one. There are 145 speaking roles in Lincoln and Steven Spielberg manages to cast a known character actor in all of them. The Spielberg name clearly makes people come running and Spielberg uses his powers for good with this one. Almost all of the many known actors in this film have to portray historical characters and get their various mannerisms right while making the most of their relatively limited screen time.



Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson is one of those “it” directors, so he seems to be able to work with whatever celebrities he wants and that allows him to cast people like Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton at will and usually gives them some very interesting roles. In Moonrise Kingdom he also gives us an interesting narrator in Bob Balaban and brings in people like Jason Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel for small roles. Of course his greatest accomplishment was finding a bunch of quality child actors like Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman, and that’s not easy.



The Silver Linings Playbook: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert De Niro already scored big nominations in the individual categories, but there’s also some depth in this cast. Jacki Weaver does good work in a relatively small part and Chris Tucker (who makes a rare appearance) livens things up whenever he’s on the screen. The less famous actors like Anupam Kher, John Ortiz, and Paul Herman also manage to make interesting characters with the limited time they have.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



JBond 02-12-2013 10:10 PM

Yeeeah, I still liked Silver's cast better. But Lincoln's a good choice too.



PG Cooper 02-13-2013 08:13 AM

I'm with Jibbs. Quality over quanity. That's not to say Lincoln doesn't have great people, but I feel like Silver Linings Playbook's cast was used much more effectively.



MovieBuff801 02-13-2013 02:34 PM

Agreed. I thought the cast of Silver Linings uniformly did more impressive work and made a more lasting impression than the cast of Lincoln.



Dracula 02-13-2013 09:22 PM

Line of the Year

The category for best line in a film is one of the hardest categories to think through year after year because I not only need to sort through all the movies I’ve seen but also the multiple lines from each one of those movies. Inevitably I’ll miss some real gems and there’s also a good chance that I’ll completely overlook a line that could become iconic in the future… but them’s the breaks.



“Captain America: ‘Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?’ Iron Man: ‘Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.’” –The Avengers: The Avengers is a film that’s way too reliant on one-liners, but that does benefit it in this category. This line from early in the film when the heroes are still at each other’s throats perfectly encapsulates what makes Tony Stark such an arrogant prick and what makes Steve Rogers such a self-righteous ass. I love hearing comebacks like this whenever movie characters get to high on their soapbox.



“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean! Do I have your word as a lawman not to shoot me down like a dog in the street?” - Django Unchained: If there’s anything wrong with this line it’s that it needs context. It’s part of a brief negation between Dr. King Schultz and a town’s marshall and is meant as a response to the Marshall’s accusation that Schultz had murdered the town sheriff in cold blood. Christoph Waltz delivers the line in a perfectly confident and ****-eating fashion and it becomes one the film’s biggest laughs.



“Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I'll ever know. Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day.” – The Grey: I looked this up to make sure it wasn’t simply a quotation of a real poem, and it appears that it is indeed an original verse written for the movie. The poem becomes something of a melancholy (if badass) rallying cry for a film that is, oddly enough, melancholy and badass. The fact that a poem is so integral to one of the year’s most macho action movies does sort of telling about the work as a whole.



“The modern travesty of Thomas Jefferson’s political organization to which you have attached yourself like a barnacle has the effrontery to call itself ‘The Democratic Party.’ You are a Dem-o-crat. What’s the matter with you? Are you wicked?” – Lincoln: There are a number of lines in Lincoln that could have ended up here if I didn’t think they were essentially verbatim quotes from historical documents. It’s possible that this line spoken by Thaddeus Stevens in a private conversation is also a paraphrasing of a real quote, but my ten minutes of googling didn’t reveal any clear source, so I’m allowing it. The line itself is very witty and emblematic of the film’s use of old-timey speech and it also does a good job of addressing the strange reversal of party ideologies in this era.



“No it doesn't. There'll be one guy left with one eye. How's the last blind guy going to take out the eye of the last guy left whose still got one eye left? All that guy has to do is run away and hide behind a bush. Ghandi was wrong. It's just that nobody's got the balls to come out and say it.” – Seven Psychopath: This strange little confection of a speech comes out of the mouth of the film’s most psychotic psychopath. What I like about it is that it perfectly encapsulates how hard it is to discuss much of anything with an idiot who will come up with any pedantic argument he can come up with in order to justify (even if it’s only to himself) whatever wrong-headed belief he wants to further.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Neverending 02-14-2013 12:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dracula (Post 2846618)

Line of the Year

Quote:

And the Golden Stake goes to…

Seven Psychopaths

25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me...hahwo1_500.jpg



Quote:

I’ll completely overlook a line that could become iconic in the future…

24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8...hahwo1_500.jpg



25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8...hahwo1_500.jpg



25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8...spdmo1_500.gif



25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mc...8zpeo1_500.jpg



25.media.tumblr.com/f782b1778...l9k7o1_500.jpg



24.media.tumblr.com/ac583b9b6...uh7lo1_500.jpg



24.media.tumblr.com/d6db1a695...uh7lo2_250.jpg



Justin 02-14-2013 01:03 AM

I always liked the quote from The Grey a lot.



Neverending 02-14-2013 01:39 AM

25.media.tumblr.com/a46eef453...eaw6o1_500.png



Justin 02-14-2013 02:46 AM

I think those memes are the reason why Drac went against the choice.



ViRUs 02-14-2013 03:40 AM

I do think a quote from Bane should have been nominated though. He had some good lines.



Henri Ducard 02-14-2013 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ViRUs (Post 2846658)

I do think a quote from Bane should have been nominated though. He had some good lines.

Agreed. No other movie character in 2012 was quoted more than Bane. Almost everything he said became a pop culture phenomenon.



"Perhaps he's wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him off a plane."



"You're a big guy."

"For you.



"Yes, brother. The fire rises."



"There's no money here."

"Then why are you all here?"



"Does that give you power over me?"



"You think the darkness is your alley? You merely adopted to it. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see the light till I was a man."



"When Gotham is in ashes, you have my permission to die."



FranklinTard 02-14-2013 11:11 AM

we must have different definitions of 'phenomenon'.



JBond 02-14-2013 05:05 PM

Agreed. I'd love to know how "May the odds be ever in your favor" (or any of those Bane quotes) are good.



shained 02-14-2013 05:11 PM

I like that quote from 7 Psychopath, cracked me up when watching the film.



Henri Ducard 02-14-2013 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JBond (Post 2846696)

Agreed. I'd love to know how "May the odds be ever in your favor" (or any of those Bane quotes) are good.

They're memorable and connected with people. That's all that matters. "Yo Adrian" and "Hasta La Vista, Baby" are stupid lines on paper but they worked. Lots of factors go into what makes a line good. It isn't just about the written word. Performance, delivery, and context make a big difference. The line in "Hunger Games" , for instance, stands out because Elizabeth Banks shows up in a ridiculous outfit with a stupid voice to announce the two kids battling for their survival. It represents the absurdity of it.



Dracula 02-14-2013 11:06 PM

Trailer of the Year

Trailers are a huge part of film-going culture, even moreso in this era of streaming video when the release of a trailer has gone from being merely something that suddenly shows up at your local multi-plex to being something that gets hyped and tweeted all across the internet. In this category I choose the best trailer of the year, but let’s make a couple of rules clear. One, this is judging the best trailer to a 2012 film, not the best trailer that was released in the 2012 calendar year. Trailers for 2013 movies that have already been released will be eligible next year. Also, I’m only going to be looking at trailers for movie’s that I ended up seeing so I can know that it accurately captures the spirit of the film and that it doesn’t spoil too much of the film.



Argo:

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:



This is probably the most traditional trailer of all the nominees, but it does a lot in a rather modest way. For one, it manages to summarize a fairly complicated scenario in a very efficient way while keeping the piece exciting and enticing. It also adds a number of nice tricks like the “shredded document” title cards and just when you thing the trailer is leaning to far toward one-liners it brings in Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” which is the perfect song to re-emphasize the seriousness of the situation while still making it look like a good time.



The Dark Knight Rises:

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:



This trailer came late in TDKR’s advertising campaign but I think that it’s clearly the best of the film’s many many trailers. What makes this trailer stand out is that it’s advertising the year’s biggest and loudest action blockbusters and turns it into one of the quietest trailers ever to grace a summer tentpole. The people who cut the trailer leaned on some of the subtler moments Hans Zimmer’s score and some key bits of dialogue in order to ramp up the tempo.



The Master:

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:



I for one would have been sold on The Master if they had just put Paul Thomas Anderson’s name up on the screen for two and a half minutes before flashing to the title card. When a film has this kind of promise it’s best to create trailer that simply gives the audience a quick taste of what to expect and then leaves them wanting more. That’s what this trailer does by giving the audience a glimpse at the film’s style, period, and themes and then gracefully exiting. All the while the film used that metronome-like sound to give a sense of the madness beneath the surface.



Prometheus:

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:



What I love about this trailer was that, in this world where branding and franchising is everything, they never once whore out the Alien name. It certainly hints at the original film in a number of cool ways that only the fans will recognize (E.g. that sound effect from the original trailer and flashes of the stargazer) but it never overtly billed itself as a prequel to Alien. Do you know the balls it took to do that?



The Woman in Black:

VIDEO-CLick to Watch!:



Fake nursery rhymes have been a staple of horror cinema since the days of “one two, Freddy’s coming for you.” This trailer has a good one and I like the way that it makes it the centerpiece rather than the film’s less savory aspects (like Daniel Radcliff). The trailer also adds some appropriately creepy sound effects and shows just enough of its eerie imagery to intriguing the audience without revealing all that much. Then it ends on a quality scare. If only the movie was this good.



And the Golden Stake Goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 02-15-2013 12:02 AM

Agreed.



MovieBuff801 02-15-2013 12:19 AM

Me too.



JBond 02-15-2013 01:18 AM

No contest. And I agree it was "too good."



Deexan 02-15-2013 09:08 AM

Yup.



IanTheCool 02-15-2013 09:25 AM

Prometheus and Batman both had great trailers. Hard to pick between the two.



Jack 02-15-2013 08:10 PM

No contest. A few honorable mentions for me...Holy Motors, Cloud Atlas (6 minute one), Skyfall (teaser), Chronicle. Best trailer for worst film - Savages.



Dracula 02-15-2013 11:01 PM

Best Original Screenplay

While adapting is certainly an art unto itself, the act of having a story go directly from the mind of a writer to the screen may be the true dream of the many writers who dream of creating films. That said, it’s really hard to get much of anything made without some kind of pre-existing brand behind it, so original screenplay often don’t get made unless it’s sired through the system by a powerful filmmaker. Consequently, all five of these nominees happen to have been written (or co-written) by their directors.



Amour: Amour is a very stripped down and minimalistic film with only a few characters, more or less one setting, and very little in the way of visual effects or flashy direction. That means that like no other film nominated here it needed to rely heavily on Michael Haneke’s screenplay. The script isn’t necessarily the most creative story and the dialogue isn’t necessarily great either. I suppose what makes the screenplay work is its honesty, its realism, and its unflinching stare.



Django Unchained: Quentin Tarentino is almost certainly the modern master of the original screenplay. Every one of his films (except Jackie Brown) has been an original work (albeit with elements drawn from existing pop culture) and Django Unchained is certainly one of them. Tarentino does a great job of applying his usual dialogue patterns to older speech patterns. Beyond that he’s crafted a funny and fearless script that no one else could have come up with.



The Master: While his last film was an adaptation (sort of), Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up was made from scratch. Bits and pieces were certainly taken from the real story of the early days of scientology, but it’s been thoroughly fictionalized and the film’s most enigmatic character (Freddie Quell) is also completely original. It’s a film with big and resonant themes and never takes the easy way out when constructing a story around them.



Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson has made original films that are so fluid that you don’t exactly think about them as having been written, they just seem to flow from the guy’s imagination. With Moonrise Kingdom he and co-writer Roman Coppola have captured a sort of idealized version of childhood and crafted a fairytale of sorts for these belivable characters to live through. Along they way he creates a lot of neat little quirks like an onscreen narrator and a largish character who is known only as “Social Services.”



Oslo, August 31st: Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt’s screenplay for Oslo, August 31st isn’t the most original work, in fact its basic story bears some clear similarities to that movie A Single Man from a couple years ago, but it still manages to really capture the rhythms of life in a way that rings truer than a lot of films. The people writing the film clearly know quite a bit about what it’s like to hit a low spot in your life and desperately try to deal



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:


Justin 02-15-2013 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jack (Post 2846808)

Cloud Atlas (6 minute one)

Also a good choice.



PG Cooper 02-16-2013 08:36 AM

I went with Moonrise Kingdom, but The Master is a great choice too.



MovieBuff801 02-16-2013 12:05 PM

Eh.



Dracula 02-17-2013 12:12 PM

Poster of the Year

They probably aren’t really a huge part of a film’s publicity anymore, but they remain a cherished tradition within film culture and are major artifacts that become part of a film’s mythology. As with the trailer category, this will only be covering posters from film’s that have been released in 2012 and will only be looking at the posters to films that I’ve seen.



Beasts of the Southern Wild:

img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...uthernWild.jpg

It’s not easy to advertise a non-genre film with no actors and with a concept that is kind of hard to explain. What the Fox Searchlight did to work around this was to pick an evocative image and stick with it, in this case the shot of Hushpuppy running with a pair of sparklers. The poster then keeps the image out of focus in order to give it an aura of the fantastical.



The Cabin in the Woods:

img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...intheWoods.jpg

The Cabin in the Woods was a tough movie to market because it had a concept that wasn’t supposed to really be revealed and didn’t really have a monster that you could put front and center. Instead the people at Lionsgate have focused in on the key word in the title: the cabin. The poster they came up with is a nicely creepy and surreal representation of an evil cabin as sort of Rubik’s Cube.



Looper:

img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...2012Looper.jpg

Most movie posters are either really busy or really minimalist, and this one skews closer to the later. Of course if you’re going to make a poster that’s pretty much just your two main actors standing in the center you can still do it with style, and that’s what the people at Tristar did with this poster. The idea of putting Bruce Willis right in the center of Joseph Gordon Levitt is a pretty good representation of the film’s concept and I dig the explodey dissolvey effect.



Sleepwalk With Me:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Me_Poster.jpg

This is a poster that can most certainly be called “quirky.” There’s a lot of negative space and I dig the way that it combines pencil sketch with a photographed actor. These sketches give a neat little step by step version the most dramatic part of Mike Birbiglia’s story and I also quite like the tagline: “A Comedy for anyone who’s ever had a dream. And then jumped out a window.” Good job IFC films.



The Woman in Black:

i473.photobucket.com/albums/r...ie-poster1.jpg

I’m usually a little hesitant to nominate teaser posters in this category, but this was creepy enough to earn an exception. We’ve seen these “photos with scratched out faces” thing before in movies like One Hour Photo, but it works well here especially with the twist of this being a really old photo. The subtle demon in the back is also well incorporated and the whole “children seeing things” theme ties in well with the film’s plot.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



MovieBuff801 02-17-2013 03:51 PM

Interesting, albeit unexpected, choice. But I agree -- that poster is great.



FranklinTard 02-17-2013 03:58 PM

i think the cabin in the woods poster is awesome.



PG Cooper 02-17-2013 04:07 PM

I'm with Franklin.



Neverending 02-17-2013 05:00 PM

Spring Breakers will win this award next year.



Jack 02-17-2013 05:24 PM

That Mondo Cabin in the Woods poster is even better.



IanTheCool 02-17-2013 10:01 PM

Yeah, Cabin in the Woods should have won.



JBond 02-17-2013 10:06 PM

This is like Marisa Tomei all over again!!



Dracula 02-18-2013 09:17 AM

Best Adapted Screenplay

At the First Annual Golden Stakes the adapted screenplay category was clearly stronger than the original category, but every year since then it’s been either the original category that was clearly better or it was maybe more of an even split. This year the adapted category has finally come back to its dominant role, at least when it comes to shoe-in nominations.



Bernie: Richard Linklater and Skip Hollandsworth screenplay for Bernie (based on Hollandsworth’s own Texas Monthly article) feel like a rather modest accomplishment, but reveals a lot of interesting material beneath the surface. The film’s structure (which is a hybrid of drama and mockumentary) allows you to perceive this true story from multiple perspectives and paints an intriguing portrait of the town in which it’s set. That pays off late in the film when it becomes a quirky look what “justice” really means in such a town.



Cloud Atlas: When I heard that there was an adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas in the works I thought the people behind it were nuts. Mitchell’s novel seems to have almost been written in an attempt to defy Hollywood and any adaptation would face major challenges. Well, I guess I was wrong because the three filmmakers behind this adaptation have managed to overcome most of the obstacles a lot better than I would have thought. Not every choice they make is perfect, but I’m more than willing to honor the film based on the degree of difficulty.



Life of Pi: Speaking of adaptations seemingly unfilmable novels, David Magee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s popular novel The Life of Pi also had an uphill battle. Magee does a great job of balancing the story’s fantastical and realistic elements and also of keeping the story active even though there’s only one (human) character on screen for much of the film’s screen time. There are some story elements like the frame story that you could quibble with, but I think way they serve the film’s excellent ending makes up for it.



Lincoln: Lincoln’s status as an adapted screenplay is a little questionable (I’m willing to bet that Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lincoln biography wasn’t the predominant source used to write it), but I’m not going to fight the classification. There’s a whole lot of complex history that Tony Kushner needed to fit into a relatively short run time while keeping everything moving really quickly. Kushner has clearly put a lot of work into this project and it shows on the screen.



The Silver Linings Playbook: I can’t say that I’d ever heard of Matthew Quick’s novel The Silver Linings Playbook before David O. Russell turned it into a film, but I can tell just by watching the movie that Russell did a lot of work to make the story his own. There are some bits here that could be said to be taken from the “romantic comedy” formula, but Russell’s screenplay works around these tropes so well that you just don’t care. It does a great job of creating characters you care about and giving them great dialogue.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



JBond 02-18-2013 11:29 AM

Good choice. It's the one that bugs me the most in my Oscar picks...



PG Cooper 02-18-2013 11:55 AM

Woot!



MovieBuff801 02-18-2013 11:58 AM

Great choice. Good call on Cloud Atlas, too.



Dracula 02-18-2013 04:59 PM

Most Under-appreciated Film

All in all, I feel like most movies this year got credit where it was due. More so than usual anyway. Still I feel like there have been some movies that have somehow or other gotten a bad rep either from critics or audiences or both and this award is meant to give them a place to shine.



Cloud Atlas: Cloud Atlas was a bold experiment of a film, at least by the standards of 100 million dollar special effects films with large Hollywood casts. It wasn’t perfect, and some people disliked it for valid reasons, but I feel like a lot of people dismissed it out of sheer closed mindedness. I understand that a three hour film which tells six stories with cast members playing multiple roles could be a little hard for some audiences to handle, but maybe critics should be challenging them to broaden their horizons rather than indulging them in their biases.



Compliance: There’s something about this movie that pisses some people off. When it debuted at Sundance there were reportedly a number of walkouts and the press conference after the screening was… hostile. This reputation followed the movie to its main release, where it got a slightly more open minded reception from the general release critics but I still feel like it didn’t get the audience it needed. The film recreates a compelling and disturbing story and I don’t think it sparked the public debate that it should have.



Kill List: It might be different on the other side of the Atlantic, but Kill List never got a fair shake in the America simply because it had a really shaky release schedule. Rather than giving the film a real platformed release, IFC threw the film out on VOD in January (a month where no one is focusing on this kind of genre fare) and then just barely put in just ten theaters a month later. Consequently, the film never really became the center of discussion and was only seen by the most dedicated of horror fans.



Prometheus: Maybe not under-appreciated so much as ridiculously over-bashed. Granted, the film’s detractors did have legitimate reasons to be disappointed, the film has problems, but good god the way this film was nitpicked to death was disappointing. I feel like the internet has made film-goers way to sensitive to “plot holes” possibly because they need to find ways to “objectively” judge a film rather than relying on a subjective opinion (The Dark Knight Rises suffered from this trend as well).



Red Hook Summer: I think there’s something categorically unfair about the way that Steven Soderbergh has had every last experimental whim indulged by both critics and the studios while Spike Lee’s more experimental works have largely been either ignored or treated with hostility. This latest effort of his is far from perfect, but it harkens back to the kind of personal filmmaking that characterized Lee’s work in the 90s, and that was something I was more than happy to relive.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Neverending 02-18-2013 06:12 PM

How is The Avengers safe? Marvel took C-list characters (Iron Man, Thor), a hero that alienates non-Americans, and rebooted The Hulk and crossed their fingers in hope that these series of films would lead to the big payoff. Then they hired Joss Whedon, a niche entertainment figure, to helm a lighthearted summer fare in a Post Chris Nolan world of cinema. It was a very expensive gamble. You don't see Warner Bros and FOX doing this.



MovieBuff801 02-18-2013 06:52 PM

Totally agree about Cloud Atlas; it's one of the movies from last year that I'm most looking forward to watching again. In fact, it nearly cracked my Top Ten list for 2012.



Dracula 02-18-2013 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverending (Post 2847047)

How is The Avengers safe? Marvel took C-list characters (Iron Man, Thor), a hero that alienates non-Americans, and rebooted The Hulk and crossed their fingers in hope that these series of films would lead to the big payoff. Then they hired Joss Whedon, a niche entertainment figure, to helm a lighthearted summer fare in a Post Chris Nolan world of cinema. It was a very expensive gamble.

The movie itself is boilerplate. It's a remake of Transformers with the robots replaced with superheros whose viability in the marketplace had already been proven by the previous films. There is nothing risky about making a CGI driven superhero movie in 2012, especially not one that is essentially the third sequel to a known hit (Iron Man) and especially not one that follows the correct formulas and panders to the audience shamelessly at every turn.



Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverending (Post 2847047)

You don't see Warner Bros and FOX doing this.

The studios which made Cloud Atlas and Life of Pi? I think they know a thing or two about taking risks.



Neverending 02-18-2013 10:08 PM

Warner Bros didn't make Cloud Atlas. They only distributed it. Cloud Atlas was funded by dozens of European investors. But I'll give you Life of Pi. FOX doesn't generally take risks, especially under Tom Rothman, but they made an exception this time. Good for them. But, really, every expensive movie is a risk. I'm sure Disney considered John Carter a "safe" movie when they made.



Dracula 02-19-2013 05:55 PM

Action Film of the Year

The most popular film genre has traditionally been the action film, if only because it’s the genre that aims to entertain mass audiences on the grandest scale. It’s a genre that seeks to get the blood pumping above all else and because of that it often becomes hard for an action movie compete with less adrenaline fueled fare on critics’ year end lists. That’s why I have a special award for films that seek to provide action thrills. Keep in mind, this award is meant for true action films, films which are entirely driven by action. More conventionally dramatic movies that happen to have an action/suspense scene or two will not be eligible.



The Avengers: The superhero movie is a dominant strand of the modern action film genre, and this is the film within that sub-strand that clearly pleased the most audiences. Part of the film’s draw was its snappy dialogue and famous characters, but the main attraction was of course the special effects and action scenes. Between a handful of fights with the film’s principle heroes, the attack on the flying aircraft carrier, and the climactic battle in New York, this deffinately had a lot of that.



The Dark Knight Rises: While The Avengers held it down on the CGI-driven side of the superhero genre, TDKR fits more in the lineage of the analog blockbuster, a sort of Die Hard with capes if you will. Even without the superhero angle the basic set-up of a terrorist taking over a city would easily be the makings of a good action film. Between the fights with Bane, a couple of chases, and the large scale battle scene at the end of the film, Nolan ends this trilogy on an action-packed note.



The Grey: Liam Neeson has been in “**** it, pay me” mode for the last couple years and it’s led him to become an unlikely action star. This wilderness adventure utilizes him way better than the Taken movies and gives us a different kind of action film which is slower and more contemplative than what people usually expect from a Hollywood action flick. It’s probably the least “action-packed” of the movies here, and I did consider disqualifying it, but there certainly were pulse pounding and exciting moments like the chase scene in the river and the rope crossing, so I’m allowing it.



The Raid: Hollywood is arguably the world’s action movie capital, but Asian cinema has also contributed greatly to the genre in part through its creation of the martial arts film. Hong Kong used to be the capital for this stuff, but recently film distributors have looked toward other countries like South Korea and Thailand. This film is Indonesia’s entry in the great action movie race, and it’s a wall to wall knockout which utilizes both John Woo style gun-violence and also displays of the local martial art known as Silat.



Skyfall: Alright, so I’ve made it known that I’m not this movie’s biggest fan, and find it less than thrilling both as a Bond movie and as an a film in general. However, in the grand scheme of things it is certainly above average and when weighed against a lot of this year’s lesser action movies it is at least worth short-listing. That opening scene was pretty awesome and there were some other decent action scenes elsewhere in the film like the final shootout.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



IanTheCool 02-19-2013 05:56 PM

Do you find its getting harder to define a film as an action film?



Dracula 02-19-2013 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IanTheCool (Post 2847137)

Do you find its getting harder to define a film as an action film?

Kind of, especially this year. Is Zero Dark Thirty an action film? How about Django Unchained? Cloud Atlas? Prometheus? The Hunger Games? My answer to all of those would be "no," but all of those movies have prominant action elements. Hell, two of the year's best action scenes were in Flight and Life of Pi, but those certainly aren't action movies.



I heard people calling Source Code an action movie last year as well as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, that certainly didn't make sense to me. In 2009 a lot of people called The Hurt Locker an action movie.



It used to be that action movies were easy to spot (they all involved dudes in headbands mowing people down with M60s), but now it kind of bleeds into everything.



MovieBuff801 02-19-2013 06:47 PM

Meh. I personally find The Raid to be overrated.



JBond 02-19-2013 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dracula (Post 2847142)

It used to be that action movies were easy to spot (they all involved dudes in headbands mowing people down with M60s), but now it kind of bleeds into everything.

That's because the action movie is dead...along with the comedy.



Neverending 02-20-2013 12:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by IanTheCool (Post 2847137)

Do you find its getting harder to define a film as an action film?

Hollywood barely makes pure action films anymore. Ever since The Matrix and the rise of superhero movies, genre-blenders have become the norm. That being said, if you wanna see a great 2012 pure action film than look no further than Mel Gibson's Get the Gringo which is avaliable on Netflix streaming.





24.media.tumblr.com/488015177...ezvqo1_500.jpg



Dracula 02-21-2013 10:49 PM

Comedy of the Year

When it comes to horror movies and action movies I’ve been very strict about what does and doesn’t belong in the genre being examined. In the case of comedy that isn’t really an option. If there were enough good pure comedies this year I’d probably be just as strict, but there really weren’t. I had to either expand into movies that were only partly comedic or I could nominate movies like Ted and The Dictator which I didn’t even like or find funny, and I went with the former. For the record I’m looking at all of these nominees strictly from a comedic perspective and will only really be judging them based on how funny they are and how they handle their humorous sides.



21 Jump Street: Around 2007 or 2008 this category would have been filled with the Judd Apatow-style “frat” comedies that had been all the rage not too long ago. I liked those movies a lot and have been increasingly disappointed by that movement’s slow death. Pretty much the only Hollywood movie that really held that torch this year was 21 Jump Street, a film which used the basic concept of the old T.V. show and used it as a jumping off point for some pointed high school satire, some cool comedian cameos, and some quality comedic interplay between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.



Django Unchained: Quentin Tarentino’s films have never billed themselves as comedies, but they’ve had an irreverent tone which had them walk close to the line of being an outright comedy. With Django Unchained I think he may have finally come as close as he ever will to fully crossing that line, which is ironic given that it’s tackling subject matter which most directors would only come close to with the utmost reverence and solemnity. There are a ton of laugh-lines in Django Unchained, especially when Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson are on screen.



Klown: Klown is probably the most laugh out loud funny subtitled film I’ve seen since The Dinner Game, but that’s probably not saying much because the companies that distribute foreign films usually aren’t really looking to bring movies that are simply “funny” over to our shores. They are (rightfully) more interested in bringing over film’s that are artful and sophisticated, two things that Klown is absolutely not. The film is far closer to being The Hangover than it is to being Amour, but the jokes do work even across language barriers.



Moonrise Kingdom: Wes Anderson doesn’t always make films that have you laughing uproariously, but all of his films are at their hearts comedies. Moonrise Kingdom is a good example, it has a lighthearted tone which allows for much merriment, but it doesn’t necessarily go out of its way to generate a laugh every minute. Still there are a lot of genuinely funny moments to be found here, in part because you’ve got actors like Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, and Frances McDormand playing it at eleven.



The Silver Linings Playbook: Normally when you hear the phrase “romantic comedy” you take both the promise of “romance” and “comedy” with a grain of salt. Every once in a while though, you get a film like The Silver Linings Playbook; which is both more romantic and more comedic than most movies that specialize in both. David O. Russell has an ear for local dialect and knows how to build witty banter around it, and all of the film’s actors have a good sense of comedic timing.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Henri Ducard 02-22-2013 01:52 AM

The best comedy of 2012 was Silver Linings Playbook, but if we're going for funniest it would be 21 Jump Street.



PG Cooper 02-22-2013 06:45 AM

I agree with Henri.



Deexan 02-22-2013 06:46 AM

I agree with Henri. Though it hasn't exactly been a stellar year for comedy, truth be told.



Dracula 02-22-2013 07:05 PM

Horror Film of the Year

2011 was a horrible year for horror and that year I had to nominate a bunch of crap just to get up to five nominees and the winning film pretty much just got in by default. This year wasn’t quite as bad, but there still wasn’t a truly great film that clearly deserved to win. I don’t know what’s preventing truly great horror cinema from being made recently, but hopefully it will turn around next year.



The Cabin in the Woods: The Cabin in the Woods is not a scary film, at all; I don’t think it was even trying to be. For that reason I almost thought about disqualifying it, but at the end of the day it is too rooted in the genre tropes of the horror film to really leave off. I didn’t respond to the film as positively as a lot of people did, but it does do some interesting things within the genre and there are monster-related set-pieces that make it memorable.



The Innkeepers: From the indie side of the horror genre we get this little ghost story from Ty West, the director of The House of the Devil. This film, about a hotel worker’s close encounter with “the other side” on that supposedly haunted hotel’s last day of operation. The film lacks a certain degree of scope that would have launched it to the next level, but it does have some very effectively creepy moments.



Kill List: It’s almost a spoiler to call this a horror movie because it’s meant to seem more like an assassin movie when it first starts, but as it goes on it becomes clear that this is entrenched in the world of some really dark stuff. If nothing else, it’s a horror movie that doesn’t follow any of the usual conventions and it always keeps you guessing.



Sinister: This is a last minute addition to the nominee lineup since I just got a chance to finally see it last night. It advertises itself as coming from the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious, and like both of those films this is a good example of a supernatural Hollywood horror film which is surprisingly better than its trailer promises. While it goes for a few too many jump scares, its best moments are really disturbing and it leaves you fairly unsettled once it’s done.



The Woman in Black: We don’t see a lot of period-piece horror films anymore and that gives The Woman in Black a sort of odd uniqueness. Like The Innkeepers, it tells a sort of low key ghost story which isn’t wildly original but which does have a handful of nice little scares to impart on its audience. The titular woman appears in the film at the most frightening possible moments and the fact that many of her victims are children adds to her wickedness.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Jack 02-22-2013 08:43 PM

Kill List is a terrific movie. I'll take this moment to plug my number 1 of 2012 - The Loved Ones. Top notch acting, ick factor, great writing - it is the most satisfying horror film I've seen in years.



Justin 02-23-2013 02:01 AM

I guess I should check out Kill List.



Deexan 02-23-2013 04:30 AM

Dracula, did you see V/H/S?



Dracula 02-23-2013 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deexan (Post 2847433)

Dracula, did you see V/H/S?

No. I'm not a fan of anthology films in general and I heard that one was bad.



Jack 02-23-2013 07:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dracula (Post 2847436)

No. I'm not a fan of anthology films in general and I heard that one was bad.

Good call. It is awful.



Dracula 02-23-2013 10:04 AM

Documentary of the Year

As is often the case, there are a number of high profile documentaries from this year that I didn’t have a chance to see. This year the list includes The House I Live In, The Central Park Five, The Gatekeepers, and West of Memphis among others. Still, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of great documentaries this year, so many that I almost wanted to extend the number of nominations so I could include such titles as Searching For Sugar Man, The Invisible War, The Queen of Versailles, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and Mea Maxima Culpa.



5 Broken Cameras: When Israeli settlements threatened to overtake lands near the Palestinian city of Bil’in, the citizens launched a series of non-violent protests which were met by hostile Israeli soldiers who beat back the crowds with tear-gas and batons. Amateur journalist Emad Burnat was there to document it all on his own with consumer grade cameras which kept getting broken in the various scuffles. Most documentaries are made by seasoned professionals with large camera crews and full research staffs, but this documentary shows how much can be done by a lone man with a camera.



Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry: One of the most used formats for documentaries these days is the “profile movie.” These documentaries follow a noteworthy person around for a few weeks and also delve into their pasts through stock footage. The best example of this in 2012 was probably Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which looks at the life and work of the famous Chinese dissident artists and his various campaigns to bring change to his home country. The film serves as both an education about this interesting man and also gives its audience a good idea of what it’s like for someone like that in China.



How to Survive a Plague: As someone who was very young and disengaged during the 90s, I never really understood the impact that the AIDS epidemic during its first years. This documentary does a good job of bringing the fear, desperation, and injustice of that era to life. The film only makes minimal use of talking heads and instead opts to use archive footage from the era in order to build a rather thrilling narrative about the way that grassroots activism was able to turn the tide on the then contentious issue.



Indie Game: The Movie: I had assumed that this movie was mostly just getting attention because it was about video games, but when saw it I was actually very impressed by how well it was made. At it’s very core, this is mostly a talking head documentary, but it doesn’t feel that way because directors James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot do a lot of interesting things to open the film up and turn it into a real narrative. Along the way you meet some interestingly eccentric people and get a sense of how much they’re putting into their work and how many challenges they face.



The Impostor: You may have heard the story about the family that thought they were having their kidnapped son returned to them only to find out later that the person they welcomed into their house wasn’t kidnapped at all, but you probably haven’t heard it told quite like this. If nothing else, The Imposter is the most impeccably crafted of all the documentaries I’ve nominated this year. Taking a number of cues from Errol Morris, Bart Layton has managed to combine stark interviews with reenactments in order to bring a strange and almost unbelievable story to the screen in a highly cinematic fashion.



And the Golden Stake goes to…

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



FranklinTard 02-23-2013 12:04 PM

i've really been slacking on my doc watching, i thought searching for sugar man was good, but it is the odds on favorite to win the oscar. not sure if it is that good, but an interesting story. still need to see plague, 5 broken cameras and the impostor before i make my decision though.



IanTheCool 02-23-2013 12:12 PM

I am very interested in checking out The Imposter.



Dracula 02-23-2013 01:36 PM

My Top Ten



Going to try to reveal one title every hour or so throughout the day



The Number 10 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:


MovieBuff801 02-23-2013 01:54 PM

Off to a good start.



Dracula 02-23-2013 02:19 PM

The Number 9 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Dracula 02-23-2013 03:19 PM

The Number 8 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Neverending 02-23-2013 03:26 PM

You know Wes Anderson hit a home run with "Moonrise Kingdom" when mainstream audiences embraced it. It's definitely this year's "Midnight in Paris." The indie comedy from a niche filmmaker that caught on.



Dracula 02-23-2013 04:08 PM

The Number 7 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Justin 02-23-2013 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FranklinTard (Post 2847452)

i've really been slacking on my doc watching

Same here. I need to check out 5 Broken Cameras and How to Survive a Plague.



Dracula 02-23-2013 05:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin (Post 2847480)

Same here. I need to check out 5 Broken Cameras and How to Survive a Plague.

They're both on Netflix watch instant, if you have that



The Number 6 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 02-23-2013 05:38 PM

Good stuff so far. Thrilled Moonrise Kingdom made the list.



Dracula 02-23-2013 06:29 PM

The Number 5 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



MovieBuff801 02-23-2013 06:30 PM

Glad to see Cloud Atlas make the list, Life of Pi as well.



Dracula 02-23-2013 07:09 PM

The Number 4 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Dracula 02-23-2013 08:04 PM

The Number 3 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Dracula 02-23-2013 09:05 PM

The Number 2 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



Justin 02-23-2013 09:50 PM

I'll admit, I fell in love with Life of Pi. That was a joyous and visually enthralling experience.



Neverending 02-23-2013 09:51 PM

#1 will be The Master. It's kinda obvious.



MovieBuff801 02-23-2013 09:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverending (Post 2847508)

#1 will be The Master. It's kinda obvious.

More like painfully obvious.



Neverending 02-23-2013 10:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MovieBuff801 (Post 2847511)

More like painfully obvious.

It wouldn't be Dracula if he wasn't going for the film snob choice.



Justin 02-23-2013 10:00 PM

There's nothing snobby about it.



Dracula 02-23-2013 10:01 PM

The Number 1 Movie of the Year:

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:



PG Cooper 02-24-2013 12:54 AM

You and I share the same top two. Cool.



Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverending (Post 2847508)

#1 will be The Master. It's kinda obvious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MovieBuff801 (Post 2847511)

More like painfully obvious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neverending (Post 2847512)

It wouldn't be Dracula if he wasn't going for the film snob choice.

Don't listen to the haters. You chose wisely.



FranklinTard 02-24-2013 10:55 AM

i side with the haters.



although in the top movies of 2012, we have more than one film snob.



Dhamon22 02-27-2013 06:30 PM

Good stuff Drac'.