Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 1, 2023 6:41:39 GMT -5
For those who weren't here when I did this in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 and 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. 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. So, without further ado I'll give out the first of the scene based awards: Fight of the Year
And once again we start our proceedings with the award for the best fight scene, which honors any scene of melee focused action. It can be a one on one fight or a fight between an individual and a group or two small groups but cannot reach a scale where it could be called a battle between armies. Guns can be present in the scene but should not be the focus of the combat, which can be done either with fists or with melee weapons like swords and knives or with improvised weapons. Opening Fight – The Batman: The Batman opens with this rather stark fight scene between Batman and a gang of hooligans who he interrupts mid-mugging on Halloween night. These petty criminals aren’t sure what to make of this so they attack him and he proceeds to beat a bunch of them savagely, introducing himself not as Batman but as “vengeance.” There have been much more highly choreographed fight sequences in previous movies and also later in this one but there’s something to the smaller scale to this, if feels more like a violence street fight than a usual superhero fight sequence and it kind of makes you wonder if you can get behind what this version of Batman is up to. Jamie Foxx Vs. Granny Vamp – Day Shift: This scene from the Jamie Foxx vampire hunter vehicle Day Shift opens the movie in a really nice fashion with a scene where Foxx breaks into a house and encounters what appears to be a sweet old lady… but she’s actually a vampire and what follows is this knock down drag out fight with a super powered but still frail looking old woman, which is just an inherently amusing idea to begin with and the choreography here takes full advantage of the supernatural athleticism of this opponent, including a really clever shot where we see part of the fight in a mirror, making the vampire appear invisible under their clothing. Man, this movie just really comes alive during its action scenes. Alpha Agents Unleashed - Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: This rather lengthy fight sequence comes about midway through Everything, Everywhere, All At Once when Alpha-verse Gong Gong sics a bunch of alphas on Evelyn via cross dimensional possession. We then get this absolutely epic fight sequence that plays out across multiple stages starting this epic brawl in which she wields a riot shield against a crowd of guards in Jackie Chan fashion, moving on to this wild moment where a woman starts whipping a dog at her then on to another bit where she uses a keyboard to fend off a guy fighting with led pipes. Finally the absurdity hits something of a height when butt plugs enter into the equasion and but the whole stunt crew keeps a completely straight face through all of it and keeps up the choreography throughout. Oh and there’s also a bit about super powered pinkies, and through all of this the sequence displays exactly how the film’s universe jumping mechanics make all of this possible. Volcano Fight - The Northman: The Northman ends with what has to be one of the greatest acts of sheer unadulterated machismo ever captured on film. Amleth and his uncle/rival Fjölnir meeting at the edge of an erupting volcano (fulfilling the prophesy that this will be a battle at the gates of Hel) where they proceed to fight mano-a-mano armed with a sword and shield each but otherwise butt naked for some reason. Robert Eggers was regrettably forced to obscure the characters’ junk for commercial reasons but otherwise this is just a slice of pure manly conflict… and like most acts of manly masculinity it ends with both men killing each other in what is in retrospect a senseless act that accomplishes nothing and leaves Amleth’s wife a widow and his unborn children fatherless. First Reveal to Humans – Prey: For much of the first half of Prey the Predator does his usual hiding behind invisibility and picking off people (and bears) but in this scene he finally reveals himself Naru’s Comanche hunting party, commencing a brief but one-sided fight between the two parties. This is a scene that exists to show just how much the deck is stacked in favor of the Predator because he kind of annihilates all the people in front of him in gory fashion. His foes do put up a valiant if doomed fight though before Naru has to flee and reunite with another member of the party… who is also immediately killed in gory fashion. And the Golden Stake goes to…Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
 Michelle Yeoh is, among other things, a superstar in the world of martial arts and it would have been ridiculous to give her this whole adventure without taking advantage of this and giving her a big fight sequence; fortunately the Daniels found a way to incorporate such a fight scene and what they came up with was an epic that mixes totally legit martial arts choreography with the directorial teams raw absurdism into this daring scene that is both wildly entertaining while also being a display of how thought out the film’s science fiction world is. It’s an absolute stunner. |
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 1, 2023 7:20:18 GMT -5
Definitely a standout pick, though the category looked pretty stacked this year.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Feb 1, 2023 8:41:59 GMT -5
Multiple Golden Stake Winner incoming:
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Post by PhantomKnight on Feb 1, 2023 8:57:44 GMT -5
Yeah, Everything Everywhere takes the cake here.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 1, 2023 19:50:31 GMT -5
Best Use of Source Music
This category focuses on the use of an existing song in the context of a scene in a movie, either diegetically or non- diegetically, with a focus on how the song affects the scene and movie. The song itself can be remixed or adjusted a bit by the movie but it must be a song that existed before the movie was made, no original songs and nothing being performed live on screen. “Under Pressure” by Queen/Bowie – Aftersun: This late, and in many ways climactic scene in Aftersun is the point in the film where the main story and the sparingly alluded to framing story finally converge. In it we see Calum and Sophie attend a dance event on the last day of their Turkish vacation and Calum, somewhat out of character, begins dancing (very poorly and dad-like) to the Queen and David Bowie song playing in the background and Sophie starts to join him but part way through the film starts cutting to the rave footage it’s been incorporating to symbolize the darkness that’s in Calum’s future and the song starts turning to this slightly distorted remix version of the song we all know. It’s the moment when the film’s nostalgic memories can no longer sustain themselves and in that sense it’s the perfect climax to what the film is doing which marks that this may well be the final happy memory she has of this man.
“Sailing” by Christopher Cross – Ambulance: This fun little moment from the movie Ambulence has the two protagonists trying to calm themselves down in the middle of a tense chase by putting on headphones and playing the yacht rock classic “Sailing” by Chistopher Cross, which is apparently a favorite of theirs. That this is one of the most canonically uncool songs of the 80s adds to the absurdity of these hardened criminals stopping to listen to music and since they’re listening on headphones we get a comical cutaway to their hostage in the back listening to them croon along to this poorly without hearing the music in the background.
“Something in the Way” by Nirvana – The Batman: The Nirvana song “Something in the Way” was a bit of a surprise inclusion in the trailer for The Batman and its inclusion there and its incorporation into the film’s score almost overshadows how well the track works in the actual movie but its use there is indeed quite solid. The tune bookends the film accompanying a pair of monologues by Batman about the effect he’s having on the city. The song itself, the closing track of “Nevermind,” was about a period in Kurt Cobain’s life when he was homeless and living under a bridge after running away from home. That perhaps makes it an odd pairing with these scenes about a billionaire but it taps into a similar loneliness in this character’s life after growing up as an orphan and it perfectly sets the mood for the movie to come. “Love Song” by Lesley Duncan – Men: This would be another great example of a movie sort of adopting a song as its theme music and in this case they went with a song that, to me, was a bit of a discovery. Lesley Duncan was an acclaimed singer-songwriter in the UK in the 70s but only got so far with her career as she didn’t really chase the spotlight. Her song, simply titled “Love Song” is featured in Men during a striking opening sequence in which the protagonist watches her husband fall to his death in slow motion after a tense altercation. The song extends to a scene of driving into the country afterwards and the song perfectly fits both the mourning and the country road. On top of that the movie bookends this by playing a cover version of the song by Elton John in the credits. “Sunglasses at Night” by Cory Hart – Nope: This needledrop pops up somewhat unexpectedly midway through Nope when the Brandon Perea is pulling up to the ranch while listening to this 80s synth pop classic when suddenly its cut off when the electronics in his van are shut off by the alien’s emp powers. Later in the morning the emp effects finally leave and as the car comes back to life the song picks up where it left off but is now heavily distorted by the electronics and has been chopped and screwed in a way that makes this cheesy song sound downright ominous. The song itself was likely chosen more for its sonic qualities than for any lyrical illusions, but was well chosen as that synth line really works with the kind of distortion they were trying to do. And the Golden Stake goes to…Aftersun Believe it or not there was at least some competition for the sub-category of “Best use of a remixed David Bowie song in a club scene that sort of takes place in the protagonist’s head.” This one did however prove to be more impactful than the comparable scene in Bardo and every other needledrop from the year for that matter. Aftersun is a movie that really has you waiting before it shows its hand and this is probably the point at which everything is supposed to really click into place. The song itself is perhaps a bit over-used and cliché in some ways, but cheap resorts in the 90s aren’t exactly known for playing deep cuts so it does fit in the scene on that level and the remixing makes it fresh and the emphasis the mix places on the line “this is our last dance” really tells you want you’re watching.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 1, 2023 20:11:22 GMT -5
Glad The Batman got a nod here. That would probably be my pick. Maybe I'm giving it too much credit because I associate needledrops in superhero movies with immense cringe ("WAKE ME UP INSIDE") but this really felt special. Haven't seen Aftersun though.
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Post by IanTheCool on Feb 1, 2023 20:16:46 GMT -5
Glad The Batman got a nod here. That would probably be my pick. Maybe I'm giving it too much credit because I associate needledrops in superhero movies with immense cringe ("WAKE ME UP INSIDE") but this really felt special. Haven't seen Aftersun though. I was about to say "It better not be Batman" |
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Feb 1, 2023 20:20:18 GMT -5
Gotta see Aftersun.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Feb 1, 2023 20:31:37 GMT -5
Me too.
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frankyt
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Post by frankyt on Feb 1, 2023 22:28:46 GMT -5
Deserving winner - I woulda went nope for number 2 myself. Even thought it had a dark horse shot at the crown. Er stake.
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Post by IanTheCool on Feb 2, 2023 7:39:10 GMT -5
Best Use of Source Music
This category focuses on the use of an existing song in the context of a scene in a movie, either diegetically or non- diegetically, with a focus on how the song affects the scene and movie. The song itself can be remixed or adjusted a bit by the movie but it must be a song that existed before the movie was made, no original songs and nothing being performed live on screen. “Under Pressure” by Queen/Bowie – Aftersun: This late, and in many ways climactic scene in Aftersun is the point in the film where the main story and the sparingly alluded to framing story finally converge. In it we see Calum and Sophie attend a dance event on the last day of their Turkish vacation and Calum, somewhat out of character, begins dancing (very poorly and dad-like) to the Queen and David Bowie song playing in the background and Sophie starts to join him but part way through the film starts cutting to the rave footage it’s been incorporating to symbolize the darkness that’s in Calum’s future and the song starts turning to this slightly distorted remix version of the song we all know. It’s the moment when the film’s nostalgic memories can no longer sustain themselves and in that sense it’s the perfect climax to what the film is doing which marks that this may well be the final happy memory she has of this man.
“Sailing” by Christopher Cross – Ambulance: This fun little moment from the movie Ambulence has the two protagonists trying to calm themselves down in the middle of a tense chase by putting on headphones and playing the yacht rock classic “Sailing” by Chistopher Cross, which is apparently a favorite of theirs. That this is one of the most canonically uncool songs of the 80s adds to the absurdity of these hardened criminals stopping to listen to music and since they’re listening on headphones we get a comical cutaway to their hostage in the back listening to them croon along to this poorly without hearing the music in the background.
“Something in the Way” by Nirvana – The Batman: The Nirvana song “Something in the Way” was a bit of a surprise inclusion in the trailer for The Batman and its inclusion there and its incorporation into the film’s score almost overshadows how well the track works in the actual movie but its use there is indeed quite solid. The tune bookends the film accompanying a pair of monologues by Batman about the effect he’s having on the city. The song itself, the closing track of “Nevermind,” was about a period in Kurt Cobain’s life when he was homeless and living under a bridge after running away from home. That perhaps makes it an odd pairing with these scenes about a billionaire but it taps into a similar loneliness in this character’s life after growing up as an orphan and it perfectly sets the mood for the movie to come. “Love Song” by Lesley Duncan – Men: This would be another great example of a movie sort of adopting a song as its theme music and in this case they went with a song that, to me, was a bit of a discovery. Lesley Duncan was an acclaimed singer-songwriter in the UK in the 70s but only got so far with her career as she didn’t really chase the spotlight. Her song, simply titled “Love Song” is featured in Men during a striking opening sequence in which the protagonist watches her husband fall to his death in slow motion after a tense altercation. The song extends to a scene of driving into the country afterwards and the song perfectly fits both the mourning and the country road. On top of that the movie bookends this by playing a cover version of the song by Elton John in the credits. “Sunglasses at Night” by Cory Hart – Nope: This needledrop pops up somewhat unexpectedly midway through Nope when the Brandon Perea is pulling up to the ranch while listening to this 80s synth pop classic when suddenly its cut off when the electronics in his van are shut off by the alien’s emp powers. Later in the morning the emp effects finally leave and as the car comes back to life the song picks up where it left off but is now heavily distorted by the electronics and has been chopped and screwed in a way that makes this cheesy song sound downright ominous. The song itself was likely chosen more for its sonic qualities than for any lyrical illusions, but was well chosen as that synth line really works with the kind of distortion they were trying to do. And the Golden Stake goes to…AftersunBelieve it or not there was at least some competition for the sub-category of “Best use of a remixed David Bowie song in a club scene that sort of takes place in the protagonist’s head.” This one did however prove to be more impactful than the comparable scene in Bardo and every other needledrop from the year for that matter. Aftersun is a movie that really has you waiting before it shows its hand and this is probably the point at which everything is supposed to really click into place. The song itself is perhaps a bit over-used and cliché in some ways, but cheap resorts in the 90s aren’t exactly known for playing deep cuts so it does fit in the scene on that level and the remixing makes it fresh and the emphasis the mix places on the line “this is our last dance” really tells you want you’re watching. Yeah, good choice, and well said. Especially that last line. It really hits. |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 2, 2023 9:37:11 GMT -5
Shootout of the Year
This has been an oddly quiet year on the shootout front, to the point where I’ve kind of had to stretch the category a bit to qualify things. In the past I’ve wanted both sides in a shootout to be shooting, this time though I’ve kind of opened it up to scenes where there’s definitely some hand to hand combat mixed in, but I haven’t stretched it too far and I still consider full scale battle scenes to be better saved for the set-piece category. Opening Skirmish – Avatar: The Way of Water: There are a lot of action scenes in Avatar: The Way of Water but the one that probably best fits this category is the very first one, in which we’re introduced to this new guerrilla campaign that Sully and the rest of the Na’vi tribe find themselves forced into. This scene has them taking down a convoy on banshee-back, some of them wielding bows and others wielding human guns. The scene in some ways snaps the audience out of the wonder of Pandora as this is a pretty clearly dangerous and battle with clear fatalities even if it’s kind of “all in a day’s work” within the larger context of this war. Hive Takedown – Day Shift: The “shootout” classification on this scene is a little dubious; the good guys have guns but the bad guys are mostly just armed with their vampiric powers and both sides to a decent bit of fighting here with melee weapons, but the sequence just has the feel of a shootout so I’m going with that. The scene has our heroes and a pair of other vampire hunters entering a suburban house which they discover is secretly a hive of bloodsuckers and have to clear the place out as said vampires attack. Some of the carnage is a bit diminished by making the vampire blood black instead of red, but the scene does come up with some pretty creative kills and the mundane domestic setting makes for an interesting dichotomy. French Massacre – Prey: This scene has the French voyageurs that our characters encounter in the second half of Prey attempt to hunt the predator by tying our heroes to a tree as “bait” and then opening fire on the alien. This goes about as well for them as you might think and leads to the hunters becoming the hunted. This would be another slightly dubious choice as a true “shootout” as only the French are shooting with conventional firearms but many of the devices the Predator uses to fight back are projectiles so I do think it counts. It’s an exciting thing and that bit with the net is… some good stuff. Forrest Shootout – RRR: I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of the Indian action film RRR, but credit where it’s due, it’s over the top action scenes are certainly… big. This sequence, which occurs shortly after the heroes have pulled off a prison escape, is a good example of it’s over the top silliness. In it Raju finds himself without the rifles he’s long coveted and instead picks up a bow and arrow and starts meticulous taking out his British pursuers while taking on the appearance of the legendary Rama from Hindu mythology. The film makes this fight of arrows vs. bullets seem kind of possible, well not really, but it certainly films the idea in a compelling way. House Shootout – Vikram: Speaking of over-the-top shootouts from the Indian subcontinent, we got another one this year from the Tamil-language spy movie Vikram. The back third of that movie involves a series of increasingly absurd shootouts culminating in such sights as a literal cannon being used to take down a group of bad guys and someone dual-wielding assault rifles, but for the nomination I opted for a slightly more restrained sequence where Agent Vikram needs to return to his home and retrieve formula for his baby grandson while a group of goons are ransacking the place. He dual-wields a pair of revolvers to take down most of them in this well-choreographed bit of mayhem. And the Golden Stake goes to…Avatar: The Way of Water
 I was a bit conflicted on this one as none of these choices were a full on standout and each one had its weaknesses, but at the end of the day I had to give it to Cameron. The verticality of this shootout made it stand out quite a bit and it had some fairly impactful arrow hits and bullet hits for a PG-13 blockbuster. The whole thing seems like a sci-fi take on something out of Lawrence of Arabia in its guerrilla nature and it’s kind of crazy that the movie is only getting started when this pops off.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Feb 2, 2023 15:03:36 GMT -5
Hell yeah.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Feb 2, 2023 15:36:27 GMT -5
Of the ones I've seen...not the strongest year for shootouts, it seems.
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Post by Dracula on Feb 2, 2023 19:20:12 GMT -5
Best Musical Performance
What a difference a year makes. Last year Hollywood put out something like a half dozen prominent live action musicals plus some animated ones, some musical biopics, and a handful of non musicals with prominent musical scenes. Needless to say this was very good for this category focusing on onscreen musical performance. This year? Not so much. In fact I don’t think Hollywood put out even one true big budget live action musical and even the animated movies weren’t too interested in singing. So I had to dig a bit deeper for this category but I think I found some okay choices. “My Girl’s Pussy” – Babylon: This sequence, which is incorporated into the film’s elaborate opening bacchanal features the Anna May Wong inspired character of Lady Fay Zhu singing this double entendre laden serenade to her girlfriend’s cat (wink wink). “My Girl’s Pussy” is an actual vintage song (albeit one that wouldn’t be written until four years after this scene takes place) but the song was originally written with a male singer in mind, so having a woman perform it gives it this transgressive vibe that’s accentuated by the character’s male tuxedo dress, which is almost certainly inspired by a similarly Sapphic scene with Marlene Dietrich from the 1930 film Morocco. Just a home run of references for film buffs to pick up on. “As Tears Go By” – Corsage: This scene comes late in Corsage and is one of the film’s more outlandish anachronisms. In it the empress and other guests are entertained by a court musician who’s playing a harp and singing. The thing is the song she’s playing is not a work of late 19th century classical music… it’s the 1964 ballad “As Tears Go By” by The Rolling Stones. The film doesn’t necessarily call attention to this bit of rock and roll being snuck into a costume drama and its anachronism may not be immediately detected by people who don’t know the song. More importantly the song itself kind of fits the moment of depressed melancholy that the film is going for in that moment and it works quite well. “Suspicious Minds” – Elvis: This scene from Elvis has the title musician performing on stage at the International Hotel in Las Vegas and doing a blistering rendition of his 1968 song “Suspicious Minds,” which was a song he was very famous for playing at this venue but the song selection here clearly serves another purpose. As Presley is performing on stage we cut to his evil manager Colonel Tom Parker as he stabs his star talent in the back by making a sleazy deal with the hotel’s owner that in the film’s narrative is essentially signing his death warrant. So Elvis would have had good reason to have a suspicious mind about this whole situation but it’s only because the performance is so great that you believe this hotel owner would pay so damn much. “The Rowan Tree” – Living: This scene in Living occurs when the film’s protagonist is one something of a “living spree” alongside a local scoundrel and has been drinking at a bar for much of an evening and asks to have a moment at the bar’s open microphone and asks the man at the piano if he knows an old Scottish song called “The Rowan Tree,” which reminds him of his Scottish deceased wife. He then goes into an amateur but decently delivered rendition of this semi-obscure folk song and you can see in his eyes the mourning and melancholy that’s going into this rendition. Those who have seen Kurosawa’s Ikiru will recognize this as the counterpart to a scene in that film where the protagonist sings a song called “Life is Brief,” which is perhaps a touch on the nose. Making it a more oblique song choice and tying it to his wife was probably a smart improvement, at least here, maybe not in the song’s reprise that fans will be waiting for at the end. “Another One Rides the Bus” – Weird: The Al Yankovic Story: This sequence from the parody biopic of Weird Al Yankovic has Dr. Demento bringing the singer into the heart of fame and decadence by bringing him to a pool party attended by “major celebrities” like Tiny Tim and Gallagher (all of them played by famous comedians doing cameos). Things turn sour however when Wolfman Jack (Jack Black) challenges him to play something on the spot, but Yankovic blows the crowd away with a rendition of his “Another One Bites the Dust” parody “Another One Rides the Bus.” Obviously the focus here is on the comedy of the situation rather than the music itself, but Daniel Radcliffe does give the performance a certain forcefulness that makes the scene make sense. And the Golden Stake goes to…Elvis This would be another tough choice with some drawbacks to each scene but this one probably took it just on sheer musical quality. “Suspicious Minds” is probably my favorite Elvis song and you can find some good video footage of the real Elvis performing it at the International and this scene recreates that pretty faithfully. Additionally I just kind of like the poetry of watching this guy knock himself in front of all these people all while this callous manager signs his life away to pay a gambling debt.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 3, 2023 10:55:59 GMT -5
Chase of the Year
One of my staple action scene categories, Chase of the Year covers any scene where one party is pursuing another. Car chases are the most common but any set of vehicles will work, and foot chases are also a viable option. I’m also not entirely judging this by how big or how fast the chases are either, a chase can also excel because it’s doing something that’s simply unique or comedic or in defiance of convention in some invigorating way. L.A. River – Ambulance: This is kind of a tricky movie for this category because most of the film is kind of an extended chase scene with the escaped robbers in the ambulance being pursued by police, so picking out one scene to nominate as its official competitor is a little tricky. Ultimately the scene that stuck out to me was this bit where the drive the emergency vehicle into the famed “L.A. River” that we’ve seen in many a chase scene previously. This one ups the ante a bit by having them pursued by a pair of low flying police helicopters before doing a crazy looping maneuver onto a the wrong way of a freeway. This looked like a pretty dangerous thing to shoot, and they pulled it off quite well. Space Whaling – Avatar: The Way of Water: I’m not sure this one hundred percent fits as a “chase” but at the end of the day it’s one entity pursuing another so I think it works. In this scene we get a demonstration of how the RDA affiliated fisherman go about hunting the whale like Tulkans in the waters of Pandora. The process, which involves trackers, crablike underwater mechs, and big harpoons is displayed with a procedural detail that really shows how carefully James Cameron has considered everything in this world and what you learn from this really prepares the audience for what’s going on in the film’s final act. On top of that, you really feel for this whale once the hunt is completed and get why the Na’vi are so angry about all this. Penguin Chase – The Batman: One of the more interesting choices made in Matt Reeves’ new Batman movie was to discard the tank-like “tumbler” featured in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy in favor of a batmobile that looked more like a modified muscle car and that vehicle gets a workout in this stylish mid-film car chase. In it Batman and his allies have tried to take down The Penguin only to have him flee in a car, undeterred Batman chases right after him even as he begins to go the wrong way onto a freeway and starts shooting at our hero with a mac-11. FanCon Chase – Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers: This chase scene from the middle of this year’s surprisingly charming Chip ‘n Dale reboot is hardly the most accomplished scene here as a piece of action filmmaking but it makes up for it with some clever references and concepts. It features the title duo being chased through a fan convention by a CGI polar bear and a dwarf (washed up actors from bad Robert Zemeckis motion capture films). That the heroes are these tiny little rodents running through a human sized world give this chase an interesting dimension, but really this is here more for its comedic value and fun Easter eggs. Chase up the Hill – Decision to Leave: In this brief but memorable scene from Park Chan-Wook’s Decision to Leave we see a pair of detectives try to arrest a suspect who ends up fleeing on foot and runs down the stairs of his apartment like a bull in a china shop before going out into the street and up a huge flight of outdoor stairs. Hae-Jun’s partner proves to be not so fit and collapses in exhaustion, but our protagonist is in it for the long run even though he’s running in a full business suit and both him and the suspect are completely out of breath by the time they get to the top, which affects the little skirmish that happens there. Park films this with his usual precision and includes a pair of really effective behind the head Steadicam close-ups along the way. And the Golden Stake Goes To…The Batman
 At the end of the day this wasn’t a very hard choice. I like to find more unique twists on the chase to nominate but at the end of the day it’s these showstoping pure car chase action scenes that I want to see in this category and The Batman plainly delivered that like no one else this year. And what really puts it over the top is how it ends; the way Batman manages to get the upper hand with a lucky last minute jump over the vehicles The Penguin made crash sets up an absolutely iconic closing shot where The Penguin is caught upside down, looking with fear as Batman walks toward him with fire in the background is pure cinema.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Feb 3, 2023 11:23:20 GMT -5
Yeah, that Batman chase is all kinds of awesome.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Feb 3, 2023 18:10:56 GMT -5
Pretty secure pick
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 3, 2023 19:19:54 GMT -5
Best Set-Piece
My Best Set-Piece award is kind of like my “Best Miscellaneous Action” scene award, though something does not strictly need to be an action scene to get in. Any sort of large scale sequence that required a bunch of production value and choreography to put together but doesn’t fit in the more specific action categories like the Fight, Shootout, or Chase of the Year will be eligible. The Tank Battle - All Quiet on the Western Front: This battle scene from about midway through All Quiet on the Western Front is a pretty big turning point in the movie as it’s basically the moment when it becomes pretty clear to the protagonist if not the whole German army that this war is not going to be something he’ll truly recover from. It begins as an attack on a French trench which seems to go alright for the Germans, but then they hear the rumbling of armored Saint-Chamond tanks and find themselves facing down these things that they don’t appear to be familiar with. And just when it seems like they’ve figured out how to deal with the tanks they find themselves being pursued by a flamethrower unit. Truly one of the most hellish depictions of warfare you’re likely to see and it all leads into the famous sequence at the bottom of a crater. Opening Scene – Athena: If the movie Athena is remembered for anything it will be for its extremely bombastic opening sequence, which is shot to look like it’s an unbroken ten minute shot. It begins at a police station where a press conference about a police shooting is going on when a gang in the back throws a Molotov cocktail and proceed to attack the station, steal a safe full of weapons, load it onto a van, drive the van several blocks while surrounded by dirt bikes and waving a French flag ironically before arriving at their housing project… and then we get a little more material before finally getting a title card. The “one shot” illusion is pulled off well but the bigger takeaway is just this vision of urban warefare made manifest and how “big” this attack clearly makes them feel. Sinking Ship – Avatar: The Way of Water: So… it turns out that James Cameron is pretty good at filming ships as they capsize and sink, who knew? It felt a bit unfair to nominate the entirety of the extended battle scene at the end of Avatar: The Way of Water for this award so I will be focusing on the second part of the finale in which The Matador begins to sink when the Sully’s are trapped inside and need to find their way out. Of course it would be impossible to watch this scene and not think about Cameron’s work on Titanic, and this does similar things but in a science fiction setting and with 2022 visual effects technology and the results are stunning and the scene in exciting as hell. Berzerker Raid – The Northman: This scene from The Northman picks up with Amleth now as an adult having joined a raiding party as they attack a walled village after having gotten hyped up through a ritual into a berserker state. He catches a spear thrown at him, tosses it back and then he and his compatriots proceed to climb the walls and go through the village taking down all defenders with his hatchet in one hand and a big knife in the other. It culminates with him knocking a dude off of a horse and going in for the kill while literally howling like a wolf. It’s an exciting scene made to look like it’s playing out in a single shot, but before you get too excited by it Robert Eggers does deflate things in the next scene by reminding you that you’ve essentially just watched an attack on an innocent village filled with people whose lives are going to be irrevocably disrupted. The Trench Run – Top Gun: Maverick: Pretty much the entirety of Top Gun: Maverick is leading up to an action scene that the airmen have been trainging for the entire film, a slightly contrived mission in which they must fly their planes at low altitudes through a canyon before climbing over a cliff in order to drop a bomb on a target before fighting off enemy aircraft. We’ve known from the training exactly how this is supposed to go, and yet you are still in a good bit of suspense once they finally start running the mission. The whole setup kind of resembles the final sequence in the original Star Wars, which is not a bad template to try if you’re putting together a dogfight. And the Golden Stake goes to…All Quiet on the Western Front
 War sequences like this have been done a whole lot in the twenty five years since Saving Private Ryan and while this sequence doesn’t exactly break the mold as far as these things go it’s certainly a further refinement of it and the sheer number of different dimensions of it all in this one scene is just really impressive. It is a little odd to look at a scene of incredible human misery intended to show war as hell like it’s an action scene but the production values here are excellent (perhaps minus one kind of fake looking bit of CGI fire) and it’s just a really amazing bit of filmmaking.
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Feb 3, 2023 20:31:31 GMT -5
Two great picks these last categories
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 4, 2023 8:55:11 GMT -5
Best Makeup
Best Makeup is the closest thing I have to a visual effects category I have and has become a good place to reward different things like horror movies and the like. This year the category is pretty dominated by two movies but I think I found some interesting choices. The Batman: There are some neat makeup ideas throughout The Batman but this nomination is almost entirely centered around the work they did turning Colin Farrell, of all people, into a gangster rendition of The Penguin. To be frank, if I didn’t see his name in the credits and wasn’t told that Farrell was in the movie I still to this day would have no idea who this actor was. It’s that transformative. And the movie manages to do all of this pretty casually as well, they really need to use this character in a lot of places and in full close-up and it really works. Men: Alex Garland’s Men has two main makeup challenges. The most obvious of them is all the gooey goriness that goes on during the ending, which is partly CGI but there’s still some makeup in there as well. But the thing that really put this over the top would have to be what they did to allow Rory Kinnear to play something like a half dozen different roles in the film. The work they do to allow this is kind of subtle, they don’t cake him in prosthetics but instead make some subtle changes and change around the hairstyle. One more computer assisted disguise didn’t work quite as well, but the rest are quite effective. Thor: Love and Thunder: This fourth Thor movie was disapointing in a lot of ways but there was one thing in it that I quite liked and that was Christian Bale playing Gorr the God Butcher and he’s brought to life through a pretty cool makeup job. The comic book version of this character notably doesn’t have a nose, which they don’t really replicate here but they do make him this bald gray slinking thing with interesting textures all over his face and scary teeth. He’s like a black and white figure within a color film and has this creepy Marilyn Manson vibe. The Whale: There has been some controversy over the decision to use makeup and a “fat suit” to allow Brendan Fraser to play the 600 pound protagonist of The Whale, which I do think is a rather misplaced complaint. The character he’s playing is not a run-of-the-mill overweight person, he’s an extreme case who’s large to the point of being on death’s door and as a simply practical concern I don’t think there are really many world class actors who fit that role without the assistance of makeup. And the makeup here totally pulls it off, you don’t see a divide between his face and his body and it never gets in the way of Fraser’s acting. You Won’t Be Alone: I usually reserve a slot each year for a movie that achieves in gore department and this year I went for this not very widely seen Australian produced Macedonian horror film about a pair of witches who can essentially possess dead bodies. This possession is done through a fairly disgusting process in which internal organs are ripped out of a body and placed inside of the other, and the movie renders this in ways that are appropriately graphic but still seems kind of classy as rendered. Additionally, one of the two witches is covered head to foot in burn wounds and while this isn’t quite as seamless it nonetheless works for the movie. And the Golden Stake goes to…The Whale This was pretty obviously a contest between The Whale and The Batman and The Batman actually did put up a good fight. Shot for shot I might go so far as to say that the makeup for The Penguin is even more seamless and more transformative… maybe a little too transformative. At a certain point you start to wonder why they even cast movie star Colin Farrell in this part if he was going to be completely unrecognizable. The Whale, by contrast, manages to preserve a whole lot of Brendan Fraser in that particular makeup job and it really augments the performance beyond simply transforming him.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Feb 4, 2023 11:30:40 GMT -5
Probably the same at the Oscars?
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 4, 2023 22:03:03 GMT -5
Best Sound Design
And here comes this category that I feel uniquely unqualified to comment on year after year. I don’t really go to movies planning to parse their sound mixes and on top of that there’s a not insignificant number of movies I watch at home on the mono TV speakers I use because I’m a cheapskate. So maybe these are smart picks or maybe they’re not, I don’t know. All Quiet on the Western Front: So, this movie’s title is kind of false advertising. As depicted in the film, the Western Front actually seems rather noisy. These kinds of war movies are something of a staple of sound categories simply because taking all the sounds of flying bullets explosions in the distance and enveloping your audience in all of them while also finding ways to mix in dialogue and footsteps in the mud and the like just seems like an inherently difficult thing to do. This World War I movie keeps up that tradition in nice form. Avatar: The Way of Water: The original Avatar won this category pretty handily back in 2009 and set something of a new benchmark for what these kind of bombastic action movie soundtracks are supposed to sound like. Once again James Cameron delivers an IMAX worthy auditory experience with the sequel and also has new challenges to address like a whole lot of splashing water and some new animal sounds that need to be created. Giving language to the Tulkuns in a way that wasn’t corny was also definitely an achievement. Nope: While maybe not exactly the kind of movie you’d normally peg as a sound showcase there are actually a number of elements in Nope that are pretty taxing on the sound department. For one, horses are a huge part of it, and you probably can’t just use the stock galloping sound since you’re doing a lot of at night atmospherics. But of course the big challenge is the alien creature at the center of the film, which makes a bunch of creature noises rather than technological flying saucer noises and there’s also a lot of neat wind noises that signal its arrival. It’s quite the load of challenges and the team makes it work. Tár: Every year I try to include at least one movie in this category that isn’t just trying to organize a lot of action movie noise and is instead trying to do something subtle and atmospheric with its sound. This year Tár served that purpose nicely. One would think that the challenge of mixing the film’s classical music would be part of this, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but what really set it apart is how it used creative surround effects in order to get into its protagonist’s head. Anyone who saw this theatrically remembers when that knock at the door popped up on the right side of the auditorium. Top Gun: Maverick: Airplanes are many things but they’re certainly not quiet. In order to bring Top Gun: Maverick to life they needed to record all sorts of aircraft both from inside and outside the cockpit and then decide exactly how much of that sound to use during a given scene in order to avoid becoming disorienting. Beyond that they needed to record all sorts of missile explosions and machine guns and the like, plus create an auditory effect for when people start losing consciousness when elevating too far and too fast. Tough stuff, glad they pulled it off. And the Golden Stake goes to…Nope
 In my nomination blurb I did even have time to get to the sequences that really put it over the top: the flashback to the chimpanzee Gordy attacking his on set cast mates, which is rather broadly rendered with sound rather than through gory visuals. We arrive on the set hearing thumping noises in the back ground and once to get under the table that the younger version of Steven Yeun’s character is hiding beneath we do see the ape striking a victim but their head is obscured behind a sofa and you only hear the splattery impact of what’s happening. It’s a memorable moment that’s only possible because of some really skilled audio technicians.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Feb 5, 2023 7:31:48 GMT -5
Best Art Direction
Art direction refers to set decoration and overall design choices and it’s a category that has long brought in a lot of eclectic nominees and frequently it means nominating movies that kind of bombed by overloading audiences with cool looking stuff. This year I seemed to really lean into that tendency because four of this year’s nominees are movies that were one degree of box office calamity or another, and then the fifth nominee was the highest grossing movie of the year. Such are the risk/reward dynamics of giving audiences new and creative worlds. Avatar: The Way of Water: The original Avatar won the 2009 Golden Stake for Art Direction without having to break a sweat given how extensive its world creation was. This sequel stands on the shoulders of that giant but brings a lot new to the table as well. For one thing, we’re introduced to the new location where the “Reef Na’vi” live, which look like these sort of coastal tent village. Additionally they needed to basically create the oceanscapes of Pandora pretty much from scratch and also the seagoing vehicles of the human invaders, which feel like really thought through devices. Babylon: Babylon is in many ways a movie about opulence and its sets needed to reflect that. The design of the mansion at the beginning did a good job of setting the tone in that it is in many ways a typical Victorian mansion but it was being turned into the party from hell through all the mess being created. The film then needed to pivot to recreating film locations, firstly by showing the outdoor multi-film filming operation from the silent era and then by recreating the early soundstage and all the logistical challenges in making spaces like that work. Don’t Worry Darling: Don’t Worry Darling is set in what appears to be a fictional town somewhere in the western United States during the 1950s or early 1960s that has becomes a sort of self-contained company town with its own idealized suburbia on the outskirts of some sort of secret government compound. To do this Olivia Wilde and production designer Katie Byron needed to kind of pull a Bioshock in building what could be perceived as a utopia by some and a dystopia by others. The houses go the full “Mad Men” in being decked in midcentury nostalgia but the ominous elements like the traincars keeping people trapped and the imposing working center towering over everything keep the whole thing balanced. Empire of Light: Empire of Light has been lumped in as one of the “magic of the movies” movies this year, but it’s actually more of a tribute to movie theaters than to the movies themselves, and to do that Sam Mendes and production designer Mark Tildesley needed to create a movie theater at its center that would feel uniquely special and bring in a certain warm nostalgia. To do this they used the art deco exterior of a live event space in Margate, England and then created its interior on a soundstage which did look like a lived in and slightly dated 80s movie theater but which nonetheless felt warm and inviting. Really nailed an essential task in making this movie work even a little. Three Thousand Years of Longing: If nothing else Three Thousand Years of Longing likely has a leg up from its peers in terms of sheer variety as it’s set across various different times and places, all of them needing to be handled in ways that are slightly fantastical in different ways. There are sequences in the film that go all the way back to old testament biblical history and then into the Ottoman Empire and finally into the 19th Century and into today. Even the contemporary scenes, which are meant to be a mundane contrast to everything else comes with their own design challenges and those flashback scenes are these imaginative George Miller fantasies that are rendered really effectively. And the Golden Stake goes to…
Three Thousand Years of Longing
 Avatar: The Way of Water came really close to taking this one, and on some level I do think I’m docking it some points just because I don’t want this franchise to dominate this category for a decade, but I felt like George Miller’s “visionary” work on his misunderstood effort this year did manage to do more in showing people things they hadn’t seen in quite the same way before. It needed to get a whole bunch of different time periods right that we don’t normally see and put a special stamp onto each of them.
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frankyt
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Post by frankyt on Feb 5, 2023 8:54:20 GMT -5
Had the chance to watch that on the plane and passed... Maybe next time.
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