On Blue is the Warmest Color

What if everyone color-coded their outfits with the people they happened to be in love with?

I found the span of time to be a bit confusing, it seems like the movie covers about ten years in the life of Adele (two years of high school, followed by six years of college (she says she needs a master’s then specific training to be a teacher, in the US at least that’s 6 years, more if the master’s is in something other than teaching), then the crisis occurs her first year of teaching and the meet again at least one but no more than three, years after that. So by the end of the film, Adele should be 27-30 years old. Maybe she skipped college and went right to work?

I say it’s confusing because Adele shows none of the signs of maturation or growth that most humans go through during their twenties. She begins her love affair in intoxication, seemingly convinced that not only have they discovered sex, but invented it as well. Perhaps it’s that addiction that stunts her growth, that prevents her from forming a fully adult relationship. Their meeting in the last third plays like a junkie taking heroin out for coffee, trying to be friends when they both know they have only one thing in common. Kechiche wants to get right up close and examine the tragedy (helpfully defined in class as the inevitability of destruction) of a person whose libido is limited to a single other person, who may not be that compatible otherwise.

As such, the film is strongest in its first half, a minute exploration of the first stages of love and teenage life (17 years old in France in 2013 is apparently much different than 17 years old in Spokane in 1993 was). The plot points are bluntly melodramatic (Adele’s friends react poorly to her apparent lesbianism, Emma’s parents are open while Adele is closed to hers), but the relaxed pace and close-up camera allows the actors room to create a realistic world (I especially liked the overlapping dialogue of her friends, as they argue about whether one girl was too harsh: clearly not all of them are jerks, but its unclear who the friends and enemies are as the group begins taking sides and Adele wanders off). The verisimilitude of course extends to the sex scenes, which seem a bit excessive, but that’s also kind of the point I guess.

I guess too that the realism falls apart with that ending. I just have never met anyone that was (or at least thought she was, which amounts to the same thing) attracted to only one other person. But the world is a weird place, what do I know? I think it likely that the film elides over Emma and Adele’s adult years because they never really have an adult relationship. They try to extend that chaotic passion of first love for as long as possible, but seem incapable of relating to each other as fully-formed individuals. Perhaps a useful comparison is Annie Hall, a far more convincing examination of the destruction of a relationship founded in some of the same issues (lack of self-respect driven by a perceived difference in class and intelligence). Annie and Alvy break up, reunite, break up again as they love each other but kind of hate each other as well. Adele and Emma have a passive aggressive fight, exchange some mournful glances at a party and then infidelity (of all things! In a movie about sexual obsession with one person, to be ruined by a dalliance with another!) ruins everything. Kechiche can’t dramatize a more interesting relationship, and a more interesting collapse to the relationship, because its sole basis is in that first look, that rush of lust and love that comes with a sidelong glance in a crosswalk. The film can’t go any deeper than that, but I’m also not sure that it should.

2010 Endy Awards

Two years ago, I gave out a bunch of awards for the best films of 2010. Of course, due to the vagaries of film distribution, many great films from that year were only released (or became available to me) long after I handed them out. So here is an up-to-date accounting of my 2010 Endy Awards.

Other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are presented in alphabetical order, the winner is bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .


Best Picture:

1. Carlos
2. Certified Copy
3. Hahaha
4. Let the Bullets Fly
5. Love in a Puff
6. Meek’s Cutoff
7. Mysteries of Lisbon
8. Oki’s Movie
9. Thomas Mao
10. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Director:

1. Olivier Assays, Carlos
2. Abbas Kiarostami, Certified Copy
3. Hong Sangsoo, Oki’s Movie
4. Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff
5. Raúl Ruiz, Mysteries of Lisbon

Best Actor:

1. James Franco, 127 Hours
2. Edgar Ramirez, Carlos
3. Jiang Wen, Let the Bullets Fly
4. Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island
5. Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Best Actress:

1. Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy
2. Emma Stone, Easy A
3. Miriam Yeung, Love in a Puff
4. Michelle Williams, Meek’s Cutoff
5. Jung Yoo-mi, Oki’s Movie

Supporting Actor:

1. Teddy Robin Kwan, Gallants
2. Mark Ruffalo, The Kids are All Right
3. Chow Yun-fat, Let the Bullets Fly
4. Bruce Greenwood, Meek’s Cutoff
5. John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Teddy Robin Kwan is a Hong Kong icon, a rock star from the 60s and 70s who appeared in a number of films, in particular wacky Cinema City and Tsui Hark comedies.

Supporting Actress:

1. Lesley Manville, Another Year
2. Wei Wei, The Drunkard
3. Greta Gerwig, Greenberg
4. Rosamund Pike, Made in Dagenham
5. Rooney Mara, The Social Network

This is the first of three consecutive Endy wins for Gerwig, as she’ll go on to win Best Actress Awards for Damsels in Distress and then Frances Ha. Safe to say she’s a favorite here at The End.


Original Screenplay: 

1. Olivier Assayas, Dan Franck & Daniel Leconte, Carlos
2. Abbas Kiarostami, Certified Copy
3. Pang Ho-cheung & Heiward Mak, Love in a Puff
4. Hong Sangsoo, Oki’s Movie
5. Zhu Wen, Thomas Mao

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Carlos Saboga, Mysteries of Lisbon
2. Laeta Kalogridis, Shutter Island
3. Catherine Breillat, The Sleeping Beauty
4. Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
5. Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit

Foreign Language Film:

1. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
2. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
3. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)
4. Oki’s Movie (Hong Sangsoo)
5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Documentary Feature:

1. Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)
2. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog)
3. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
4. I Wish I Knew (Jia Zhangke)
5. Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman)

Unseen Film:

1. Insidious (James Wan)
2. Aftershock (Feng Xiaogang)
3. Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung)
4. Outrage (Takashi Kitano)
5. The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier)

Had some trouble coming up with five movies I really wanted to see. I must be overlooking a bunch.

Animated Feature:

1. A Cat in Paris (Jean-Loup Felicioli & Alain Gagnol)
2. The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)
4. The Secret World of Arrietty (Hiromasa Yonebayashi)
3. Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

Short Film:

1. 607 (Liu Jiayin)
2. Day and Night (Teddy Newton)
3. Inhalation (Edmund Yeo)


Film Editing:
1. Carlos
2. Film Socialisme
3. Hahaha
4. Mysteries of Lisbon
5. Shutter Island

Cinematography:

1. Andrew Lau & Ng Man-ching, Legend of the Fist
2. Luca Bigazzi, Certified Copy
3. Christopher Blauvelt, Meek’s Cutoff
4. Jeff Cronenweth, The Social Network
5. Roger Deakins, True Grit

Art Direction:

1. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
2. Let the Bullets Fly
3. Mysteries of Lisbon
3. True Grit
5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Costume Design:

1. Carlos
2. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
3. Meek’s Cutoff
4. Mysteries of Lisbon
5. The Sleeping Beauty

Make-up:

1. 127 Hours
2. Black Swan
3. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
4. Meek’s Cutoff
5. Shutter Island

Sound Mixing:

1. Black Swan
2. Film Socialisme
3. Meek’s Cutoff
4. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
5. Shutter Island

Sound Editing:

1. Let the Bullets Fly
2. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
3. Shutter Island
4. True Grit
5. Unstoppable

Visual Effects:

1. 127 Hours
2. Gallants
3. Inception
4. Resident Evil: Afterlife
5. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Give me an Army of Millas over Christopher Nolan any day.

Original Score:

1. 127 Hours
2. The Illusionist
3. Never Let Me Go
4. The Social Network
5. True Grit

Adapted Score:

1. Black Swan
2. Carlos
3. Greenberg
4. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
5. Shutter Island

Olivier Assayas will win Adapted Score again in 2012 for Something in the Air. The man has good taste in music.

2012 Endy Awards

 A year ago, I gave out a bunch of awards for the best films of 2012. Of course, due to the vagaries of film distribution, many great films from that year were only released (or became available to me) within the past year. So here is an up-to-date accounting of my 2012 Endy Awards.

Other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are presented in alphabetical order, the winner is bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .

Best Picture:

1. Drug War
2. Leviathan
3. Like Someone in Love
4. Lincoln
5. The Master
6. Moonrise Kingdom
7. Night Across the Street
8. Romancing in Thin Air
9. Viola
10. Wolf Children

Anderson’s dollhouse, DIY, 90 degree angle aesthetic is the ideal match for a children’s fantasy of adventure and escape. The need for the kids to create their own universe contrasts eloquently with the sad rigidity of the adults. Some of the other nominees are more mysterious, but no movie this year is more perfect.

Best Director:

1. Johnnie To, Romancing in Thin Air
2. Abbas Kiarostami, Like Someone in Love
3. Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master
4. Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom
5. Raúl Ruiz, Night Across the Street

Best Actor:

1. Sun Honglei, Drug War
2. Denis Levant, Holy Motors
3. Tadashi Okuno, Like Someone in Love
4. Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
5. Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

In the end, Levant’s versitility and centrality to the film edge out Phoenix’s remarkably physical, extreme-method performance, and Day-Lewis’s uncanny ability to breathe life into an impersonation, either of which would be more than worthy winners in any other year.

Best Actress:

1. Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha
2. Isabelle Huppert, In Another Country
3. Anna Kendrick, Pitch Perfect
4. Sammi Cheng, Romancing in Thin Air
5. Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Supporting Actor:

1. Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained
2. Louis Koo, Drug War
3. Yu Jun-sang, In Another Country
4. Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
5. James Franco, Spring Breakers

Supporting Actress:

1. Amy Adams, The Master
2. Samantha Barks, Les Misérables
3. Amy Acker, Much Ado About Nothing
4. Rebel Wilson, Pitch Perfect
5. Lola Créton, Something in the Air


Original Screenplay: 

1. Abbas Kiarostami, Like Someone in Love
2. Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master
3. Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom
4. Wai, Ka-Fai, Yau Nai-Hoi, & Jevons Au Man-Kit, Romancing in Thin Air
5. Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty

The seemingly innocuous structure of Kiarostami’s film, a series of apparently mundane conversations with wildly spinning depths that over time accumulate such weight, such possibility, that builds to a crescendo with the year’s most shattering momentum, wins out over Boal’s screenplay that is more than just the effective distillation of a decade of history, but a radical (for Hollywood at least) rethinking of character and a fascinating, open-ended exploration of what counts as evidence and certainty in the post-Iraq War world.

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Li Luo, Emperor Visits the Hell
2. Tony Kushner, Lincoln
3. Joss Whedon, Much Ado About Nothing
4. Raul Ruiz, Night Across the Street
5. Alain Resnais & Laurent Herbiet, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

In a year with unusually great films about argument and reason, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, The Master, it’s Kushner’s screenplay that is the best. He had me as soon as the President explained the complexities of the Emancipation Proclamation’s post-Civil War legal status in three minutes or less. The later rhetorical flourishes are wonderful (Stevens’s ripostes to his interlocutors, Lincoln’s powerful clothing) but the trust and clarity and efficiency of Kushner’s exposition is truly remarkable.

Foreign Language Film:

1. Drug War
2. Like Someone in Love
3. Night Across the Street
4. Romancing in Thin Air
5. Wolf Children

Documentary Feature:

1. The Act of Killing
2. Leviathan
3. People’s Park
4. Room 237
5. Three Sisters

Tremendously great year for both categories. It pains me how many great foreign language films don’t quite make the cut.

Unseen Film:

1. Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
2. Gangs of Wasseypur (Anurag Kashyap)
3. Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
4. Passion (Brian DePalma)
5. No (Pablo Larrain)

Animated Feature:

1. Brave
2. It’s Such a Beautiful Day
3. Wolf Children
4. Wreck-It Ralph

Animated Short:

1. The Longest Daycare
2. Paperman

Live Action Short:

1. Lovers are Artists, Part 2 (Lu Fang)
2. My Way (Ann Hui)
3. Walker (Tsai Ming-Liang)
4. You Are More than Beautiful (Kim Tae-young)

Film Editing:

1. Drug War
2. The Master
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. To the Wonder
5. Zero Dark Thirty

Cinematography:

1. Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel, Leviathan
2. Mihai Malaimare Jr., The Master
3. Robert D. Yeoman , Moonrise Kingdom
4. Inti Briones, Night Across the Street
5. Emmanuel Lubezki, To the Wonder

Using 70mm to film interiors and close-ups rather than, as was traditional, expansive vistas and landscapes was a stroke of genius, but The Master‘s images and the old school inventiveness of Night Across the Street‘s sepia tones and rear projections and Moonrise Kingdom‘s crystal-clear storybook aesthetic all come up short versus the “throw the camera on a fishing boat and see what weird horrors and beauties surround us” aesthetic of Leviathan.

Art Direction:

1. Blancanieves
2. Moonrise Kingdom
3. Night Across the Street
4. Resident Evil: Retribution
5. Tai Chi Zero

Costume Design:

1. Django Unchained
2. Holy Motors
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. Night Across the Street
5. Something in the Air

Make-up:

1. Ace Attorney
2. Django Unchained
3. Holy Motors
4. Prometheus
5. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

Sound Mixing:

1. Leviathan
2. The Master
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. Neighboring Sounds
5. People’s Park

Rarely is sound design more important to a modern movie than in Neighboring Sounds. Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Recife is connected not by spatial geography, but by the way sounds bleed together in an urban environment, trumping class and racial barriers. But I’ve got to go with the revolutionary work in Leviathan. We’re in the midst of a golden age of sound experiment documentaries, and the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab is leading the way.

Sound Editing:

1. The Avengers
2. Django Unchained
3. Drug War
4. Skyfall
5. Zero Dark Thirty

Visual Effects:

1. Ace Attorney
2. Night Across the Street
3. Prometheus
4. Resident Evil: Retribution
5. Tai Chi Zero

Original Score:

1. The Master
2. Mekong Hotel
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. Zero Dark Thirty
5. Wolf Children

I really want to give this to Moonrise Kingdom, for Alexandre Desplat’s suite that complements and builds upon the Hank Williams and Benjamin Britten music on the soundtrack. Or Masakatsu Takagi’s melancholically triumphant theme from Wolf Children that makes me tear up just thinking about it. But Chai Datana’s guitar score for Mekong Hotel, a meandering bluesy acoustic guitar melody that wanders and noodles and swirls back on itself, is fundamental to that film’s evocation of life by a river, where past and present, myth and reality fuse.

Adapted Score:

1. Holy Motors
2. Moonrise Kingdom
3. Pitch Perfect
4. Something in the Air
5. Tabu

1934 Endy Awards

For the end of the year episode of The George Sanders Show a few weeks ago, we did a 1933 year in review, with awards and top 5s and reviews of a couple of films from that year. We had so much fun with it that we’re planning to do the same thing this year, for 1984. In the meantime, I figure I’ll go through the rest of the years ending in ‘4’ that I can reasonably give awards to, starting now with 1934. In the Endy Awards Index you can find entries for 2011, 1932, 1939, 1964, 1957, 1994, and 1933, along with a bunch of much older, less good award posts. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .

Atalante,L'

Best Picture:

1. L’Atalante
2. Man of Aran
3. No Greater Glory
4. The Scarlet Empress
5. Twentieth Century

Best Director:

1. Jean Vigo, L’Atalante
2. Robert Flaherty, Man of Aran
3. Frank Borzage, No Greater Glory
4. Josef von Sternberg, The Scarlet Empress
5. Howard Hawks, Twentieth Century

Vigo was a winner in 1933 for his short film Zéro de conduite. This is a posthumous Endy as the immensely talented young director died of tuberculosis shortly after L’Atalante was released.

Best Actor:

1. Clark Gable, It Happened One Night
2. WC Fields, It’s a Gift
3. Will Rogers, Judge Priest
4. William Powell, The Thin Man
5. John Barrymore, Twentieth Century

Best Actress:

1. Ruan Lingyu, The Goddess
2. Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night
3. Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlet Empress
4. Myrna Loy, The Thin Man
5. Carole Lombard, Twentieth Century

Colbert also starred in John M. Stahl’s acclaimed Imitation of Life this year, but I haven’t seen it yet (it just missed the cut for an Unseen Film nomination) and Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra, which I have seen. Dietrich and Loy both won Endys in 1932, Loy in the Supporting Actress category. This was Lombard’s for a long time, and then I saw The Goddess.

Supporting Actor:

1. Michel Simon, L’Atalante
2. Boris Karloff, The Black Cat
3. Stepin Fetchit, Judge Priest
4. Peter Lorre, The Man Who Knew Too Much
5. Sam Jaffe, The Scarlet Empress

Supporting Actress:

1. Anne Dvorak, Heat Lightning
2. Glenda Farrell, Heat Lightning
3. Louise Dresser, The Scarlet Empress
4. Chôko Iida, The Story of Floating Weeds
5. Yoshiko Tsubouchi, The Story of Floating Weeds

A kind of a make-up Endy for Glenda Farrell as this is the third year in a row she has been nominated in this category, losing to Myrna Loy in 1932 and Ginger Rogers in 1933. The nomination for Stepin Fetchit is highly controversial, of course, as picketers protest that the star actor puts his comic gifts to use perpetuating horribly demeaning stereotypes, while supporters argue that Fetchit’s persona is in fact subversive of those same stereotypes. The Endy ultimately goes to Karloff because the Endy Committee are cowards.

Original Screenplay:

1. Jean Vigo & Albert Riéra, L’Atalante
2. Robert Riskin, It Happened One Night
3. Charles Bennett & DB Wyndham-Lewis, The Man Who Knew Too Much
4. King Vidor, Elizabeth Hill & Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Our Daily Bread
5. Yasujiro Ozu & Tadao Ikeda, A Story of Floating Weeds

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Irvin S. Cobb, Dudley Nichols & Lamar Trotti, Judge Priest
2. Jo Sewerling, No Greater Glory
3. Eleanor McGeary, The Scarlet Empress
4. Albert Hackett & Frances Goodrich, The Thin Man
5. Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur, Twentieth Century

1934 is the breakthrough year for the screwball comedy, and three of the best examples of the genre see their screenplays nominated, with wins in both categories. This is the first (but surely not the last) win for Ben Hecht, who was nominated in 1932 for Scarface and 1933 for Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.

Non-English Language Film:

1. L’Atalante (Jean Vigo)
2. The Goddess (Wu Yonggang)
3. Liliom (Fritz Lang)
4. A Story of Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu)
5. Street Without End (Mikio Naruse)

Short Film:

1. The Goddess of Spring (Wilfred Jackson)
2. The Grasshopper and the Ants (Wilfred Jackson)
3. The Big Bad Wolf (Burt Gillett)

Unseen Film:

1. Chapaev (Georgi & Sergei Vasilyev)
3. Le grand jeu (Jacques Feyder)

Film Editing:

1. L’Atalante
2. The Gay Divorcee
3. Man of Aran
4. The Man Who Knew Too Much
5. Our Daily Bread

Cinematography:

1. Boris Kaufman, L’Atalante
2. John J. Mescall, The Black Cat
3. Robert Flaherty, Man of Aran
4. Bert Glennon, The Scarlet Empress
5. Inokai Suketaro, Street Without End

Original Score:

1. Dames
2. The Gay Divorcee
3. Liliom
4. Our Daily Bread
5. The Scarlet Empress

Original Song:

1. “I Only Have Eyes For You”, Dames
2. “The Continental”, The Gay Divorcee

Soundtrack:

1. The Black Cat
2. Dames
3. The Gay Divorcee
4. The Merry Widow

Art Direction:

1. L’Atalante
2. The Black Cat
3. Cleopatra
4. The Merry Widow
5. The Scarlet Empress

Costume Design:

1. Cleopatra
2. The Goddess
3. Les misérables
4. The Scarlet Empress
5. The Thin Man

Make-up:

1. The Black Cat
2. Cleopatra
3. The Scarlet Empress

Sound Mixing:

1. Dames
2. Man of Aran
3. The Merry Widow
4. The Scarlet Empress
5. Twentieth Century

Sound Editing:

1. Dames
2. The Gay Divorcee
3. The Lost Patrol
4. The Merry Widow
5. No Greater Glory

Visual Effects:

1. The Black Cat
2. Cleopatra
3. Liliom