Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 5, 2019 7:02:19 GMT -5
For those who weren't here when I did this in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 this is part of a tradition of year-end rituals I put together each year and I'm ready to go through with this once 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 chase 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: Blanket Spoiler Warning Please note I have not held back when discussing spoilers of certain movies. On the old forum I could black these spoilers out but here I can't do that so easily. Best Fight
We will once again be starting the Golden Stakes with the Best Fight category. As usual this is a category for melee combat sequences in film. These can be one on one fights or fights between small groups or small groups and individuals, but not full on battle scenes. Thanos Vs. Various Avengers – Avengers: Infinity War: To be clear I’m kind of including a lot here. I’m basically going from the point where Iron Man ambushes Thanos on Titan all the way up to where he stabs Tony through the stomach. The scene is kind of done in two parts with the film cutting back to the Wakanda battle for a little while (which doesn’t count) and also the interlude where Thanos is briefly subdued. An awful lot of superhero fight awesomeness happens in those eight minutes including Spider-Man going in and out of portals, Thanos doing all sorts of cool things with his infinity stones, Dr. Strange getting super trippy, and meteors from a moon getting rained down on our heroes. T’Challa vs. Killmonger (Ritual Fight)– Black Panther: I wasn’t overly impressed with the climactic fight scene of Black Panther in which the hero defeats the villain, which I thought was marred by questionable CGI and conceptual dullness. However, this earlier first round of their bout stood out a lot more. In this fight T’Challa duels with Killmonger for the Wakandan throne on the cliffs over a waterfall much like an earlier scene in the film, but unlike that scene Killmonger is really going for the kill. The two are using African weapons and the fight is strongly choreographed and it was interesting seeing Killmonger getting the upper hand on the hero. Jack-Jack Par Vs. Racooon – Incredibles 2: The Incredibles 2 was a movie that I ultimately found to be quite literally forgettable, but one part that stood out to me was this rather comedic set-piece where the infant Jack-Jack is first starting to sprout his powers and decides to make an enemy out of a feisty raccoon that’s been scavenging from the family’s garbage. The fight lacks the serious choreography of some of these other fights but the film finds fun slapstick uses for the child’s surprising array of powers and I just find the idea of a baby holding a grudge with a woodland creature to be really amusing. Bathroom Fight – Mission Impossible: Fallout: Mission Impossible: Fallout is a movie that’s primarily known for gigantic largescale stunts and yet one of the highlights of the film ended up being a relatively small scale fight in a nightclub bathroom between Tom Cruise, Henry Cavil, and a guy named Liang Yang, who is a professional stuntman rather than an actor. Initially it looks like the fight is over before it begins when Cavil smashes a briefcase into Yang’s head but soon after Yang wakes up and a bigger fight ensues. The fight doesn’t really have much of a gimmick to it but it makes up for that through sheer choreography and relative brutality. Kitchen Fight – Upgrade: Upgrade is at best a decent B-movie but it does manage to pull off the idea of someone losing control of their body much better than the more expensive Venom, and that is best exemplified in this early scene which is a clear highlight. In it our hero is about to get choked out by someone and so he gives himself over to the A.I. that’s been implanted in his body and this A.I. instantly turns him into someone who fights with almost superhuman efficiency. Star Logan Marshall-Green really sells this by having a totally confused look on his face the whole time and the movie does a lot simply by adding a machine-like sound effect to every movement and the whole thing ends on an image that’s outrageously gory. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
Avengers: Infinity War
 This ultimately came down to a fight between this scene and the one in Mission: Impossible. I didn’t originally expect to be giving this award to Infinity War as I would normally be more into the purity of a fistfight between stunt performers than a CGI filled extravaganza like the Thanos fight, but when I reviewed the two scenes I found that there was a lot more going on with the Infinity War scene and it became kind of hard to deny. It’s just such a perfect example of how superhero powers can be used in unison and really fits the teamwork ethos of the Avengers movies. |
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FShuttari
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Post by FShuttari on Feb 5, 2019 7:33:50 GMT -5
Mission Impossible for me. No doubt Infinity War had some great collaborations with super heroes who haven't shared the same scene yet.
But Mission Impossible made the best action movie of all time.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 5, 2019 11:15:49 GMT -5
Cool! Good first choice too.
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frankyt
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Post by frankyt on Feb 5, 2019 14:15:35 GMT -5
Yea solid pick. Bathroom scene was cool and all but Tom cruise still looks old and slow.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 6, 2019 6:14:17 GMT -5
Best Shootout
This category looks at the best action scenes of the year where people attack each other with firearms. Like in the fight categories the number of combatants involved does need to be somewhat limited and should involve full-on battle/war sequences. Also, while firearms should be the main weapons in these scene there can also be some knife/melee combat in these scenes as well, which comes up a lot this year for whatever reason. Finale – Bad Times at the El Royale: In this climactic scene of Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale our heroes seem to be at the end of the line as the cult leader at the center of their problems is about to murder the Jeff Bridges character when suddenly its revealed that another character who has up to now seemed kind of useless was in fact a Vietnam sniper who finally bursts into action and casually shoots the bad guy and his henchmen. The shooting includes some nice touches like someone being shot while stupidly taking cover behind a soft chair. Hillside Charge – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: The Coen Brothers’ anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has a number of stories and some of them involve more action than others but the real showstopper is this sequence from late in the fifth segment “The Gal Who Got Rattled.” In the scene Grainger Hines and Zoe Kazan find themselves isolated and under siege by a small band of Native Americans on horseback and Hines’ character is forced to pick up a rifle and stand his ground. I’m not sure how authentic any of this is, but it feels like some thought was put in to how a frontiersman would really handle this situation and his ability of hold his own against greater numbers is impressive. Deadpool and Cable vs. School Workers – Deadpool 2: As one would expect from a movie where the hero carries both a pair of guns and a pair of swords a lot of the actions scenes in Deadpool 2 sort of combine gunfire into more standard superhero melee combat. The scene that most clearly works as a gunfight is this section late in the film where they’re attacking the school and have to contend with a group of “armed pedophiles in nursing shoes.” Cable attacks them with his standard shooting and shield combo, but a newly disarmed Deadpool is stuck attacking them with a brick but finds ways to use his enemies guns against them. Killing the KKK – The First Purge: For the latest installment of The Purge series producer Jason Blum (coming off the box office success of Get Out) has let director Gerard McMurray really lean into some of the more political and racial undertones of the franchise. That culminated in this scene where a group of good guys are pinned down by a gang of purgers dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes before the cavalry arrives and starts shooting the shit out of these racist mercenaries. There’s some stabbing in this scene as well but at its heart this is still a shootout and it allows for exactly the kind of anti-racist catharsis we need in times like these. Machine Gun Standoff – Hold the Dark: Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark is not a very good movie. It’s a muddled thriller that makes very little sense, but it does suddenly come alive during a sequence at about the two thirds point where a group of sheriffs try to arrest a guy at his Alaskan shack for reasons I don’t remember and he responds by opening fire on them with a giant machine gun in his attic. The officers do their best to return fire but are mostly just graphically mowed down when they leave cover. What follows is a giant standoff that only concludes when the lead finally breaks into the house and shoots the attacker up close. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
 There were actually two scenes in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs that easily could have competed here and another shootout from the first segment of the movie almost certainly would have been nominated if I wasn’t spreading the wealth. The scene I went with stood out a little more just because it seemed a little different from the western norms. The scene does not provide the most nuanced portrayal of Native Americans, which is an issue, but still I was intrigued by the way our hero managed to handle the situation and the Coen brothers manage to add some creative touches like characters being thrown by their horses and the move where the Native American conceals himself on the side of a horse. Of course this is all leading up to a tragic ending, one you could see coming if you were thinking harder about what’s going on, but the scene has you too caught up in the excitement to notice that.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Feb 6, 2019 7:55:52 GMT -5
Yeah, good choice. I read your nominees, and that's the one I would have went with.
As for above, but Avengers and MI are good choices. I see what you mean about Avengers having more going on, but I also see the MI fight as being more intense and explosive.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 6, 2019 8:19:10 GMT -5
Yeah, good choice. I read your nominees, and that's the one I would have went with. As for above, but Avengers and MI are good choices. I see what you mean about Avengers having more going on, but I also see the MI fight as being more intense and explosive. Yeah, when I went into this I was leaning pretty heavily towards MI, but the more I thought about it the more I wondered "if that same fight was in a standard Hong Kong action movie, would anyone care?" |
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Post by Dracula on Feb 7, 2019 6:21:33 GMT -5
Best Musical Performance
Best musical performance, the category that I’m always afraid I won’t be able to populate but then always manage to find more than enough choices for. This is the category for any scene which features a character on screen performing a song. The category is not exclusively judging these scenes for how good the singing/music is (though that helps obviously) but about the scene as a whole. Also, want to give a quick honorable mention to the movie Cold War, which has a number of great musical performances in it but no one showstopper for me to really highlight. “We Will Rock You” in Madison Square Garden – Bohemian Rhapsody: Bohemian Rhapsody ends on the band’s Live Aid performance, which many view as a highlight, and it is a very good sequence but it’s basically just a move for move recreation of a moment that we have video of and the CGI used to fill out the crowd is questionable. Instead I’m going to point towards another performance in the film where we transition from them working on “We Will Rock You” in the studio to a crowd in a sold out Madison Square Garden stomping and stomping and clapping along to the song in unison in what is almost certainly that song’s natural habitat. If you watch the film in a theater with a great sound system this will really shake the place. “Whitey on the moon” – First Man: Gil-Scott Heron was a radical poet from the late 60s and 70s who made something of a career of setting his poems to music and releasing them as albums. His most famous works are probably “The Revolution with Not be Televised” and “Comment #1” but another key poem from his debut album was a piece called “Whitey on the Moon” which was critical of all the money the government was giving to the space program while African Americans were struggling in ghettos. Damien Chazzele was clearly a fan because he hired actor Leon Bridges to portray Heron to do a rendition of the poem over a montage in First Man, a movie that clearly doesn’t agree with Heron’s point of view on this issue but to its credit was willing to give voice to the ideas in a fun and culturally relevant way. “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” – First Reformed: Paul Schrader’s First Reformed has an ending that’s a bit… out there. It’s so out there that it’s sometimes overlooked that it’s held together by a performance of the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” as performed by the Esther character played by Victoria Hill. That hymn already has something of a filmic legacy having been incorporated into the score of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit and also for having been sung by Robert Mitchum’s villainous faux pastor in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. In that movie its used rather ironically as the song is very much about the comfort that faith is supposed to provide despite being sung by a killer and the message here is not dissimilar. While Esther and the people in the church are finding great comfort in faith it’s tearing apart Ethan Hawk’s character. “Impromptu Rap” – Sorry to Bother You: This is a musical scene that’s specifically built around a musical performance by someone without actual musical skill. In it Lakeith Stanfield’s character is attending a party populated by new money white people of the worst kind and is pressured into giving a rap performance despite insisting he has no skill as a rapper. After stumbling over some simple lines he starts to realize what this crowd wants from him and starts to just rhythmically chant the words “n---a shit” over and over again. There is something kind of disturbing about the way this largely white crowd starts singing along and throwing back this racial epithet in a scene that is clearly trying to show the mixed feelings that Boots Riley (himself a rapper) must have about selling black music to the masses. “Shallow” – A Star is Born: When you have a movie called “A Star is Born” you do kind of need to live up to that title by making you believe that the person at the center of the film can be a true star and with this scene you really do see the birth of Ally’s identity as a star. To do that you need to do a lot. For one thing you need to have a pretty damn good song and while “Shallow” isn’t necessarily the best written song ever it does have the perfect dynamic to really let Gaga belt while also feeling like a song that does have some meaning. The film also manages to rather effectively build up to that moment and really make you anticipate that moment where Ally walks out on the stage and claims her place in the pop world. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
First Reformed
The safer and more conventional choice here would have of course been A Star is Born, and don’t get me wrong that scene was great and on sheer singing and musical ability, but as a whole that scene is not imbued with layers of meaning in the same way this one is. The hymn, with lyrics like “what a blessedness, what a peace is mine” and “safe and secure from all alarms” is all about the kind of comfort people can find in blind faith while Ethan Hawk’s self-mutilation is all about the existential dread that comes from really thinking through what certain tenants of faith really mean, and the juxtaposition of these two really drives home the message. The final shot is not necessarily meant as an embrace of the kind of blissful ignorance that the people in the church are displaying but it is suggesting that you shouldn’t take the weight of the world on your shoulders.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 8, 2019 18:11:02 GMT -5
Best Chase
The third action scene category is of course the Chase of the Year, the category that looks at any scene where someone is trying to chase someone else. They can be car chases, foot chases, motorcycle chases, whatever. Shrinking Car Chase – Ant-Man and the Wasp: The hilly streets of San Francisco have been an ideal setting for car chases going back to Steve McQueen’s Bullitt and they get another workout in this standout sequence from Ant-Man and the Wasp. During the lengthy scene our heroes try to escape a great number of bad guy cars and make extensive use of their shrinking powers both to escape pursuers by getting small and also by using their discs to make their enemies and their vehicles small all while maintaining the film’s sense of humor, a trait that culminates in a giant Hello Kitty Pez dispenser being tossed at the bad guys. Busan Chase – Black Panther: The car chase through the city of Busan South Korea midway through Black Panther is kind of like a James Bond gadget car chase brought to the level of a Marvel superhero movie. The basic chase route is nothing too special but the scene uses a lot of cool Wakandan technology like a car that’s remotely controlled from a holographic model from the home base. There’s also this cool gun that the bad guy has which sort of shatters cars into a million pieces as well as a cool moment where Okoye takes down one of the bad guy’s cars by throwing a bo staff into the ground and flipping it. Elastigirl Chases Train – Incredibles 2: This scene from The Incredibles 2 uses animation to do some neat things with the car chase format that you can’t necessarily imagine happening in a live action film even with modern visual effects. The scene has Elastigirl chasing after a runaway train on a custom-made motorcycle that splits into two halves so that Elastigirl can use her stretching powers to elongate the whole vehicle. She uses this both to spring it across jumps and also to do cool stuff like ride horizontally through a tunnel, and turn herself into a parachute in order to move back on the train quickly. Helicopters– Mission Impossible- Fallout: This scene, in which Ethan Hunt hitches a ride on a helicopter in the most difficult way possible before pursuing Henry Cavil and the detonator he’s carrying. It’s not something you immediately think of as a chase scene because of how many component parts there are in it but it is ultimately about catching up to someone over a great distance so I think it counts. The scene is if nothing else a showcase of Tom Cruise’s complete and utter disregard for his own safety. That he learned how to fly helicopters himself for the sequence is crazy, that he climbed up to the top of that rope for real is crazy, that he fell off the helicopter onto the payload is crazy. Yeah, I’m sure he took all the usual precautions while doing this stuff, but the amount of dedication he put towards entertaining people is pretty amazing. Chased by Doc Ock – Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: This scene comes after Miles Morales and Peter B. Parker have infiltrated Alchemax’s research facility and after stealing one of their computers they find themselves being chased by this universe’s lady Doctor Octopus. They make their way out of the facility they have to go through the surrounding forest without getting killed by their pursuer’s metallic tentacles. Key to the scene is teamwork, both webslingers need to hold on to the computer with one hand while swinging in unison in what turns out to be something of a bonding experience between the two. Between that and an assist by Spider-Gwen you’ve got a pretty cool scene. And the Golden Stake Goes To…Helicopters– Mission Impossible- Fallout
 Does this really need explaining? I will say that the one thing that could have prevented this from winning is that Mission Impossible: Fallout has another standout chase sequence that I thought about putting here and bumping the helicopter chase to the “set-piece” category, which for the record would have meant Ant-Man and the Wasp winning here. However, the more I thought about it the more the Helicopter chase was in fact a chase and it’s a damn good one.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 8, 2019 18:24:01 GMT -5
This category seems pretty tight this year. I think you could make a good argument for just about any of these scenes winning, and I especially like the incorporation of Elastigirl's stretching powers. But yeah, I think you made the right choice. Cruise may be a scientologist, but he's willing to do a lot to entertain lazy dicks like me and he also hates motion smoothing.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Feb 8, 2019 18:31:01 GMT -5
The foot chase was better than the helicopter fight. What you smokin, son?
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 8, 2019 18:50:14 GMT -5
This category seems pretty tight this year. I think you could make a good argument for just about any of these scenes winning, and I especially like the incorporation of Elastigirl's stretching powers. But yeah, I think you made the right choice. Cruise may be a scientologist, but he's willing to do a lot to entertain lazy dicks like me and he also hates motion smoothing. I had the helicopter chase in set-piece initially, until I moved it to chase I was leaning towards giving this to the Ant-Man chase. The foot chase was better than the helicopter fight. What you smokin, son? The Helicopter chase > The Motorcycle Chase > The Foot Chase |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 9, 2019 16:25:05 GMT -5
Best Use of Source Music
Where the musical performance category is about songs that are sung onscreen by characters the Source Music category is about how a movie utilized pre-existing music to accentuate the scene. As with the other category the whole scene is being considered. Must say this has been a pretty weak year for the category. “Too Late to Turn Back Now” by Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose – BlacKkKlansman: The exact appeal of this song in this scene is a little hard to put my finger on. On its face it’s a pretty run of the mill disco dance sequence, one that’s not very meticulously choreographed and on a set that sort of shows the film’s budget. It’s also a bit of an on the nose song choice lyrically. It’s a scene where a dude falls in love with a woman set to a song where a dude sings “I believe I believe I believe that I’m falling in love,” which is unsubtle even for this movie. But man, that song has a groove, and frankly I’m just kind of glad that the movie brought this deep cut to my attention. “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets – Cold War: Cold War is a movie that’s filled with a lot of traditional Polish music, traditional pop, and a touch of jazz so the one musical scene that really stands out is the one set to a straight up oldies rock song. Here it is playing in a club as our potagonists have gone through another of their many difficult relationship moments and Zula is pretty tipsy. As the song begins she stands up and starts wildly dancing with various men in the room before jumping up on the bar and dancing. Wiktor looks at this, clearly in love but not entirely sure what to think. “Material Girl (200du)” by Sally Yeh – Crazy Rich Asians: The “makeover scene” is a pretty standard trope of the romantic comedy but Crazy Rich Asians manages to breathe a little bit of new life into its comparable scene through a canny soundtrack selection. While the protagonist tries on a bunch of dresses the film plays a cover of Madonna’s “Material Girl” but like a lot of the songs in the film it’s a version in Chinese, specifically Cantonese. That cover, by Sally Yeh, is actually about as old as the Madonna original and it’s not a particularly faithful translation of the original (as you can tell by the occasional English lyrics about temperatures and bodies), but that probably isn’t going to occur to most audiences in the moment and the clever comment about materialism will. “Orinoco Flow” by Enya – Eighth Grade: This is not the first time that this Enya song has appeared in this Category. The song was previously used rather famously in a much different film: David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, where it was the soundtrack to Daniel Craig being tortured by a serial killer. I wasn’t so sure about a song getting recycled so soon by another movie but it still ended up working for this montage of Eighth Grade’s protagonist browsing the internet before going to bed. This is a song that’s supposed to be calming though I think its use here has less to do with that and more to do with the fact that it has a certain temp that… flows… in much the same way the character is going through the internet and how this serves as something of an escape for her. “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes – The Miseducation of Cameron Post: This is a little scene in a little movie, a movie I didn’t even like that much (probably would have liked it better if I knew Boy Erased was in my future), but the scene managed to stick in my memory just the same. In it a group of teens at this awful gay conversion therapy camp are doing routine kitchen chores when the song “What’s Up” by the 90s one hit wonders 4 Non Blondes comes on the radio. The teens are sort of laughingly singing along to the song, basically having fun for the first time in a while, and Cameron jumps up on the table and starts really getting into it before the headmaster steps in and immediately snaps them back to reality. The song itself is well chosen, while not a favorite tune of mine it’s totally 90s, popular enough to believably on the radio, and not very heterosexual. That such a song would be an oasis in what is otherwise a very unpleasant situation is, interesting. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
Cold War
In modern America “Rock Around the Clock” is largely seen as a kitchy song that served as a “Happy Days” theme song in the early seasons, but in 50s Europe it was serious representation of rebellion that was known to cause riots at concerts. I’m not sure if that history was in the front of Paweł Pawlikowski’s mind when he chose the song for this scene but it’s there to be minded if one wanted to. Mostly though this is just a scene set to music that was memorable in a film that was full of them and that gave it a bit of an edge.
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Post by Doomsday on Feb 9, 2019 16:32:26 GMT -5
I haven’t seen Cold War so can’t comment however I loved the Too Late To Turn Back Now scene from BlackKklansman.
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Feb 9, 2019 18:59:33 GMT -5
I still kinda like What's Going On? as a song, if not also that song that Linda Perry did with Grace Slick for The Crow: City of Angel's soundtrack
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Post by Dracula on Feb 10, 2019 15:29:48 GMT -5
Best Set-Piece
Best set-piece is generally meant as a catch-all category for any sort of bit noteworthy scene in a movie that doesn’t quite fit in the other action categories like Best Fight, Best Chase, or Best Shootout. Some of them are action scenes that just use a lot of elements like that equally and some of them aren’t really action scenes at all but still have the kind of resources and precision behind them and become centerpieces of movies. Lighthouse Confrontation – Annihilation: This scene is an unmitigated mindfuck that in some ways defies description. In it Natalie Portman enters the lighthouse at the center of “The Shimmer” to discover the fate of her husband, encounter Dr. Ventress as she’s consumed by whatever force is behind all of this, then see herself doubled and that is where the real centerpiece of all this comes in. Her double seems to pursue her up the stairs and prevents her from leaving, but what follows isn’t really a fight. The double then sort of imitates her every move, possibly as part of the process of becoming her, until Portman sets off a phosphorous grenade in her hands and burns everything down. Prison Convoy – Deadpool 2: This was a scene that was sort of a Best Chase contender but also sort of a Best Fight contender, and I ultimately decided to split the difference and put it here as a hybrid action scene. To be clear starting this when Deadpool lands and begins going after the convoy up to the point where it crashes off of the bridge, I’m not including the parachuting gag or the fight with Juggernaut at the end. Even in that section there’s a lot there to like including the gag where Domino is able to run through wreckage unscathed, Deadpool’s arrival on the bus, and a nice confined space fight between Deadpool and Cable. The Shining – Ready Player One: Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is often characterized by filling its frame with pop culture references but its most striking moment came when it stopped and focused in on one single reference at length. In the scene the film’s characters find themselves inside a meticulous recreation of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and take a rapid tour of some of that film’s finest moments including the twins, the blood filled elevator, room 237, and the hedge maze. Spielberg’s ability to completely mimic the Overlook Hotel is quite the technical feat (the scene is apparently 100% CGI) and it manages to have a lot of fun with a classic film. Childbirth – Roma: This is a bit of an unconventional choice for this category as it’s not an action scene, but does fit fairly well alongside some past nominees like the dawn of life scene from Tree of Life or the kidnapping from Nocturnal Animals. In the scene Cleo has been rushed to the hospital after her water breaks at the worst possible time (another scene I considered for this) and she’s brought to an emergency room in hopes of saving the child. The scene is done in a single shot which contrasts the professional calm of the doctors with Cleo’s emotional breakdown in a way that really underscores how one’s life can really shift in a matter of moments. Dance of Death – Suspiria: Dario Argento’s Suspiria was known for its elaborate murder sequences and that put a lot of pressure on Luca Guadagnino to really deliver some innovative gore. Early in the movie he started to rise to the occasion with this sequence in which Dakota Johnson does an elaborate dance to Thom Yorke’s “Volk” composition after having seemingly unknowingly been placed under a spell where her every move pushes and throws another girl who’s been placed in a room full of mirrors. The beauty and sensuality of the dance juxtaposed against some pretty grizzly pain on the part of the victim make for some really unsettling if captivating cinema. And the Golden Stake Goes To…
Annihilation
 The moment I saw this scene in Annihilation back in February I knew it was going to be fairly difficult for anything to measure up to the way this movie ended in this category and sure enough the scene held on to its lock here. The bear scene might also have competed here but it was this ending that was the true standout with its combination of vivid imagery, mysterious storytelling, and just flat out strong action filmmaking to boot. It’s a scene that aspired to the kind of unexplained grandeur of a Tarkovsky or Kubrick sequence and it comes damn close to being worthy of those comparisons.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Feb 10, 2019 16:10:55 GMT -5
If it's any consolation, Doomsday, I would have voted for Ready Player One. |
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Feb 10, 2019 16:31:37 GMT -5
Well, okay. I'll be honest, I wasn't a big fan of that scene. The bear though...
Also, ready player 1? Really?
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Feb 10, 2019 17:46:25 GMT -5
The minute I saw Annihilation listed I knew exactly which scene it was. First thing I did when I bought the movie on 4K was watch that scene again. Motherfucker, that's good cinema.
And yet, it doesn't have "You killed Black Thom, YOU RACIST SON OF A BITCH!" so it loses.
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 10, 2019 18:48:33 GMT -5
Good set of nominees. Childbirth came close for me, but I think you made the right choice. Not only is the scene in question amazingly well-staged and exciting, but it also concludes the film's themes and story arcs about doubling and, more crucially, how we face our own traumas (and how that shapes us). Also the music rips.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Feb 10, 2019 19:13:24 GMT -5
Best Set-Piece
And the Golden Stake Goes To…
Annihilation
The moment I saw this scene in Annihilation back in February I knew it was going to be fairly difficult for anything to measure up to the way this movie ended in this category and sure enough the scene held on to its lock here. The bear scene might also have competed here but it was this ending that was the true standout with its combination of vivid imagery, mysterious storytelling, and just flat out strong action filmmaking to boot. It’s a scene that aspired to the kind of unexplained grandeur of a Tarkovsky or Kubrick sequence and it comes damn close to being worthy of those comparisons. |
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Feb 10, 2019 19:16:24 GMT -5
Well, okay. I'll be honest, I wasn't a big fan of that scene. The bear though... Also, ready player 1? Really? Drac was right in that the entire Shining set was built from the ground up CG. If anything got RPO the Oscar nomination it was the Shining sequence. |
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frankyt
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Post by frankyt on Feb 10, 2019 19:43:28 GMT -5
I preferred the opening race in rpo to be honest.
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donny
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Post by donny on Feb 11, 2019 12:42:52 GMT -5
Regarding the source music, I saw Cold War yesterday. Other than knowing it existed, I had little knowledge of the film. Thought it was very good, namely that scene you are referencing. It was jarring hearing at first, in a good way albeit, mostly because up until that point, it's all classical, European music.
One of the better scenes in the movie. Good selection.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 11, 2019 20:45:41 GMT -5
Best Makeup
Pretty self-explanatory, this is the category for the most interesting and skilled use of makeup effects within a movie. Should probably give the disclaimer that I have not seen Stan and Ollie or the Oscar nominated Mary Queen of Scots. Black Panther: While not quite a movie built around makeup effects there are a number of them in various places in the movie. The most notable makeup effect is of course the scars that Killmonger has placed all over his torso to represent each of his kills in battle. Those probably took a long-ass time to apply every day and keep from falling off. Beyond that a number of the Wakandans have various forms of tribal jewelry including those disc lip things, and no those weren’t real African tribal members, they were extras wearing makeup. Border: When you first see the Eva Melander and Eero Milonoff characters from Border you aren’t quite sure what their deal is. Are they people with some kind of birth defect? Are they disabled? Are they just ugly? Turns out they are in fact trolls. Literal trolls of the variety that live under bridges and shit. That little plot twist puts everything in perspective and clarifies that this is actually a pretty clever modern take on these mythological creatures, one that’s just weird enough to stand out but not so weird that these people couldn’t move through society without being dissected for science or something. Halloween: I usually add a movie each year to this category to just cover some of the best gore makeup effects and while there were other movies with better individual core moments than this one few were as consistent in their bloodletting. Some highlights include, a mouth having been smashed open on a table, a butcher knife going through a neck, a fencepost going through a hanging body’s mouth, and the coup de grâce is probably the part where Michael Myers stomps a dude’s head in causing a nice brain splatter. Suspiria: Dario Argento’s Suspiria wasn’t necessarily a classic of horror makeup but it did have some cool moments. For the film’s 2018 remake Luca Guadagnino decided to up the ante a little. The film’s gore effects are pretty top notch but where the film really shows off its makeup are in the multiple roles played by Tilda Swinton, which range from a grotesquely overweight and deformed witch to that of an old man who is so well disguised that many audience members had no idea who played him. Vice: Christian Bale did one of his famous weight gains for his work in Vice but it took a little more than that for him to be so completely transformed into Dick Cheney. The specifics of the makeup work have not been very widely discussed in promotional materials, possibly because they want to maintain the illusion that Bale is doing all this on his own through his sheer thespian skill, but something was clearly done to give him that receding hairline and the old man wrinkles of a sixty five year old politician. And the Golden Stake Goes To…Suspiria
 This was not a hard decision, and frankly it’s a choice that I can’t imagine anyone who saw the movie wouldn’t also make. In many ways the film manages to up the ante on a lot of its competition. Its gore effects are just as good as Halloween’s, it’s old age/actor transformation makeup is as good as Vice’s, and it’s fantasy makeup is as good as (or at least more show than) Border’s makeup.
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