Nominees: the 2006 Independent Spirit Awards

The Independent Spirit Awards (voted on by members of Film Independent and the Independent Feature Project) are to be presented on March 4th, the day before the Academy Awards. IFC will carry the live broadcast.

Nominees:

Best Feature:

• Brokeback Mountain


• Capote


• Good Night, and Good Luck


• The Squid and the Whale


• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Best Female Lead:

• Felicity Huffman, Transamerica


• Dina Korzun, Forty Shades of Blue


• Laura Linney, The Squid and the Whale (image placeholder)


• S. Epatha Merkerson, Lackawanna Blues


• Cyndi Williams, Room

Best Male Lead:

• Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale


• Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote


• Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow


• Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain


• David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck

Best Supporting Female:(image placeholder)

• Amy Adams, Junebug


• Maggie Gyllenhaal, Happy Endings


• Allison Janney, Our Very Own


• Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain


• Robin Wright Penn, Nine Lives

Best Supporting Male:

• Firdous Bamji, The War Within


• Matt Dillon, Crash


• Jesse Eisenberg, The Squid and the Whale (image placeholder)


• Barry Pepper, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (image placeholder)


• Jeffrey Wright, Broken Flowers

Best Director: (image placeholder)

• Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain


• George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck (image placeholder)


• Gregg Araki, Mysterious Skin


• Rodrigo Garcia, Nine Lives


• Noah Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale

Best Screenplay:

• The War Within


• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada


• The Squid and the Whale


• Capote


• Nine Lives

Best Cinematography:

• Good Night, and Good Luck


• Keane


• Capote


• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada


• Last Days

Best Foreign Film:

• The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romania)


• Duck Season (Mexico)


• Head-On (Germany/Turkey)


• Paradise Now (Palestine/Netherlands/Germany/France)


• Tony Takitani (Japan)

Best Documentary:

• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room


• Grizzly Man


• La Sierra


• Romantico


• Sir! No Sir!

Best First Feature:

• Crash


• Lackawanna Blues


• Me and You and Everyone We Know


• Thumbsucker


• Transamerica

Best First Screenplay:

• Fixing Frank


• Me and You and Everyone We Know


• Junebug


• The Beautiful Country


• Transamerica

John Cassavetes Award (Best feature made for under $500,000):

• Brick


• Conventioneers


• Jellysmoke


• The Puffy Chair


• Room

IFC/Acura Someone to Watch Award (To emerging director):

• Ian Gamazon and Neill Dela Llana (Cavite)


• Robinson Devor (Police Beat)


• Jay Duplass (The Puffy Chair)

Truer Than Fiction Award (To emerging documentary director):

• Rachel Boynton ( Our Brand Is Crisis)


• Garrett Scott & Ian Olds (Occupation: Dreamland)


• Mark Becker (Romantico)


• Thomas Allen Harris (Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela)

AMC/American Express Producers Award (To emerging producer):

• Caroline Baron (Capote, Monsoon Wedding)


• Ram Bergman (Brick, Conversations with Other Women)


• Mike S. Ryan (Junebug, Palindromes)

I’m always interested to the see the results of the Indys. I can’t comment on many of these films as they have not yet received a nationwide release here in the U.S. But we will talk about them as they are released.

Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Alternate 100"

The list that follows is Jonathan Rosenbaum’s “Alternate 100”: a list the critic offered in 1998 as an alternative to the “100 Greatest American Movies” list published by the American Film Institute. Rosenbaum writes:

“if I were drawing up my own list of the 100 greatest American movies, roughly a quarter of the AFI's list would be on it. But it seems more useful to offer an alternative list of 100 features rather than an unwieldy composite of the 25 or so AFI titles I can live with and 75 others . . . . Above all, my impulse is to defend the breadth, richness, and intelligence of the American cinema against its self-appointed custodians, who seem to want to lock us into an eternity of Oscar nights. And the most salient fact about my list is that it's far from exhaustive”

(note: Rosenbaum’s original list appeared with the titles in alphabetical order; here I have taken the liberty of rearranging the list into chronological order with the notion that one might approach this list as a sort of viewer’s guide to an alternate history of American cinema.)

Intolerance (1916)
Broken Blossom (1919)
Foolish Wives (1922)
Nanook of the North (1922)
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Greed (1925)
The General (1927)
Sunrise (1927)
The Crowd (1928)
The Docks of New York (1928)
Lonesome (1929)
Thunderbolt (1929)
Laughter (1930)
Freaks (1932)
Love Me Tonight (1932)
Scarface (1932)
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933)
Man's Castle (1933)
The Black Cat(1934)
Judge Priest (1934)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
The Great Garrick (1937)
Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Christmas in July (1940)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
Cat People (1942)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
This Land is Mine (1943)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Scarlett Street (1945)
Gilda (1946)
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Force of Evil (1948)
The Lady from Shanghai (1948)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
The Sound of Fury/Try and Get Me! (1950)
Stars in My Crown (1950)
Panic in the Streets (1950)
Hole/The Big Carnival (1951)
The Steel Helmet (1951)
The Big Sky (1952)
My Son John (1952)
Park Row (1952)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
The Naked Spur (1953)
The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Track of the Cat (1954)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The Phenix Story (1955)
Bigger Than Life (1956)
The Killing (1956)
While the City Sleeps (1956)
An Affair to Remember (1957)
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)
The Wrong Man (1957)
The Tarnished Angels (1958)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Shadows (1960)
The Hustler (1961)
The Ladies' Man (1961)
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
The Nutty Professor (1963)
Vinyl (1965)
Point Blank (1967)
The Shooting (1967)
Tom, Tom , the Piper's Son (1969)
Scenes from Under Childhood (1970)
Woodstock (1970)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Wanda (1971)
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971)
Avanti! (1972)
The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
Eaweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974)
11 x 14 (1976)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
Mikey & Nicky (1976)
Last Chants of a Slow Dance (1977)
Eraserhead (1978)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
The Scenic Route (1978)
Real Life (1979)
Love Streams (1984)
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Housekeeping (1987)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
To Sleep With Anger (1990)
That's Entertainment! III(1994)
Dead Man (1995)
 

AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies

100 YEARS...100 MOVIES
(America's Greatest Movies by AFI)


1.  Citizen Kane (1941)  - RKO
2.  Casablanca (1942)  - Warner Bros.
3.  The Godfather (1972)  - Paramount
4.  Gone With The Wind (1939)  - MGM
5.  Lawrence of Arabia (1962)  - Columbia
6.  The Wizard of Oz (1939)  - MGM
7.  The Graduate (1967)  - Embassy
8.  On The Waterfront (1954)  - Columbia
9.  Schindler's List (1993)  - Amblin Entertainment/Universal
10.  Singin' In The Rain (1952)  - MGM
11.  It's A Wonderful Life (1946)  - RKO
12.  Sunset Boulevard (1950)  - Paramount
13.  The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)  - Columbia
14.  Some Like It Hot (1959)  - Ashton/Mirisch
15.  Star Wars (1977)  - 20th Century Fox
16.  All About Eve (1950)  - 20th Century Fox
17.  The African Queen (1951)  - United Artists
18.  Psycho (1960)  - Paramount
19.  Chinatown (1974)  - Paramount
20.  One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)  - United Artists
21.  The Grapes of Wrath (1940)  - 20th Century Fox
22.  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)  - MGM
23.  The Maltese Falcon (1941)  - Warner Bros.
24.  Raging Bull (1980)  - United Artists
25.  E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)  - Universal
26.  Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
27.  Bonnie And Clyde (1967)  - Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
28.  Apocalypse Now (1979)  - Zoetrope Studios
29.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)  - Columbia
30.  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)  - Warner Bros.
31.  Annie Hall (1977)  - United Artists
32.  The Godfather, Part II (1974)  - Paramount
33.  High Noon (1952)  - United Artists
34.  To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)  - Universal
35.  It Happened One Night (1934)  - Columbia
36.  Midnight Cowboy (1969)  - United Artists
37.  The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)  - Goldwyn, RKO
38.  Double Indemnity (1944)  - Paramount
39. Doctor Zhivago (1965)  - MGM
40.  North By Northwest (1959)  - MGM
41.  West Side Story (1961)  - United Artists
42.  Rear Window (1954)  - Paramount
43.  King Kong (1933)  - RKO
44.  The Birth Of A Nation (1915)  - Epoch Producing Co.
45.  A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)  - Warner Bros.
46. A Clockwork Orange (1971)  - Warner Bros.
47.  Taxi Driver (1976)  - Columbia
48.  Jaws (1975)  - Universal
49.  Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)  - RKO/Walt Disney
50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)  - 20th Century Fox
51.  The Philadelphia Story (1940)  - MGM
52. From Here to Eternity (1953)  - Columbia
53. Amadeus (1984)  - Orion
54.  All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)  - Universal
55. The Sound of Music (1965)  - 20th Century Fox
56. M*A*S*H (1970)  - Aspen/20th Century Fox
57.  The Third Man (1949)  - Korda/Selznick Releasing Org.
58.  Fantasia (1940)  - Walt Disney-RKO
59.  Rebel Without a Cause (1955)  - Warner Bros.
60. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)  - Paramount
61.  Vertigo (1958)  - Paramount
62. Tootsie (1982)  - Columbia
63.  Stagecoach (1939)  - Walter Wanger/United Artists
64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)  - Columbia
65. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)  - Orion
66. Network (1976)  - MGM/United Artists
67. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)  - United Artists
68.  An American In Paris (1951)  - MGM
69.  Shane (1953)  - Paramount
70. The French Connection (1971)  - 20th Century-Fox
71. Forrest Gump (1994)  - Paramount
72.  Ben-Hur (1959)  - MGM
73.  Wuthering Heights (1939)  - United Artists
74.  The Gold Rush (1925)  - United Artists
75. Dances With Wolves (1990)  - Orion
76.  City Lights (1931)  - Chaplin/United Artists
77. American Graffiti (1973)  - Universal
78. Rocky (1976)  - United Artists
79. The Deer Hunter (1978)  - Warner Bros.
80.  The Wild Bunch (1969)  - Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
81.  Modern Times (1936)  - United Artists
82. Giant (1956)  - Warner Bros.
83. Platoon (1986)  - Orion
84. Fargo (1996)  - Gramercy Pictures/Polygram Filmed Entertainment/Working Title
85.  Duck Soup (1933)  - Paramount
86. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)  - MGM
87. Frankenstein (1931)  - Universal
88.  Easy Rider (1969)  - Columbia
89. Patton (1970)  - 20th Century-Fox
90. The Jazz Singer (1927)  - Warner Bros.
91. My Fair Lady (1964)  - Warner Bros.
92. A Place in the Sun (1951)  - Paramount
93. The Apartment (1960)  - United Artists
94. GoodFellas (1990)  - Warner Bros.
95. Pulp Fiction (1994)  - A Band Apart/Jersey Films/Miramax Films
96.  The Searchers (1956)  - Warner Bros.
97.  Bringing Up Baby (1938)  - RKO
98. Unforgiven (1992)  - Malpaso Productions/Warner Bros.
99. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967)  - Columbia
100.  Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)  - Warner Bros.


Clearly, this list is the Hollywood majors’ attempt to create a canon of  American film from their home video catalogs. There are a lot of great films on this list (and also a lot of overrated ones) . . . there are also a lot of great films that aren’t on the list.

The Guardian lists the 40 greatest living directors

Guardian—The World’s 40 Best Directors

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/page/0,11456,1082823,00.html

1. David Lynch
2. Martin Scorsese
3. Joel and Ethan Coen
4. Steven Soderbergh
5. Terrence Malick
6. Abbas Kiarostami
7. Errol Morris
8. Hayao Miyazaki
9. David Cronenberg
10. Terence Davies
11. Lukas Moodysson
12. Lynne Ramsay
13. Bela Tarr
14. Wong Kar-wai
15. Pedro Almodovar
16. Todd Haynes
17. Quentin Tarantino
18. Tsai Ming-Liang
19. Aki Kaurismaki
20. Michael Winterbottom
21. Paul Thomas Anderson
22. Michael Haneke
23. Walter Salles
24. Alexander Payne
25. Spike Jonze
26. Aleksandr Sokurov
27. Ang Lee
28. Michael Moore
29. Wes Anderson
30. Takeshi Kitano
31. Richard Linklater
32. Gaspar Noé
33. Pavel Pawlikowski
34. David O Russell
35. Larry and Andy Wachowski
36. Samira Makhmalbaf
37. Lars von Trier
38. Takashi Miike
39. David Fincher
40. Gus Van Sant

My thoughts? Let’s start from the bottom.

If I am compiling my own list, Van Sant is a little higher than #40 based in part on the strength of his latest, the Kurt Cobain-inspired Last Days, which is in many ways a continuation of many of the cinematic concerns of his two previous films, Elephant and Gerry.    

David Fincher hasn’t directed a film since 2002’s Panic Room, and he’s on this list, I assume, based largely on two films: Seven and Fight Club. Those are good films, and certainly provocative films, but are they “great?” In my opinion, no.

Lars von Trier is an interesting filmmaker, and an excellent polemicist, yet his movies are so mannered, and to me, too mired in formal concerns to really be totally engaging (Breaking the Waves is perhaps the exception).

Takashi Miike’s output is so prolific and erratic that it’s difficult to assess.

Larry and Andy Wachowski are on this list for one reason only: The Matrix. Can one film make you one of the world’s best director? No.

Paul Thomas Anderson is another interesting case with out a great deal of supporting evidence for inclusion on this list, just an interesting debut—Hard Eight—followed by three impressive films—Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love. That’s basically matches the output (in terms of number of films) of Terrence Malick, who clearly does belong on this list. Also see Quentin Tarantino.

I’m not sure that you can rank non-fiction filmmakers (Michael Moore and Erroll Morris) on the same list with fiction filmmakers. What are the criteria for comparison?

(to be continued)

The Chicago Film Festival

October 6th-20th :

http://www.chicagofilmfestival.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CIFFSite.woa/wa/pages/Home

I wish was able to attend. Of particular interest, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s THE BOYS OF BARAKA, Michael Haneke’s CACHÉ, Stanley Kwan’s EVERLASTING REGRET, Takeshi Miike’s THE GREAT YOKAI WAR, Manoel de Oliveira’s MAGIC MIRROR, and Noah Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE.
    

The 2004 Movies I Saw

The 2004 Movies I Saw, From Best to Worst

Before Sunset
Million Dollar Baby
I Heart Huckabees
Garden State
The Saddest Music in the World
Notre musique
Vera Drake
The Aviator
Undertow
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring
Vozvrashchenie
The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
Coffee and Cigarettes
The Time of the Wolf
Sideways
Young Adam
House of Flying Daggers
A Very Long Engagement
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Collateral
Ju-on: The Grudge
Kill Bill Vol 2
Hero
Dogville
Enduring Love
Closer
Spartan
Facing Windows
Maria Full of Grace
Twilight Samurai
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
The Dreamers
Primer
The Incredibles
The Machinist
Vanity Fair
The Sea Inside
Kinsey
The Merchant of Venice
The Woodsman
Fahrenheit 9/11
Bad Education
Spanglish
Spider-Man 2
When Will I Be Loved
Code 46
The Terminal
Open Water
Ray
Wicker Park
Mean Girls
Saved
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
Criminal
The Butterfly Effect
The Manchurian Candidate
Sean of the Dead
Man on Fire
P.S.
The Village
The Forgotten
I, Robot
The Day After Tomorrow
Ladder 49
Around the Bend
50 First Dates
Anchorman
Meet the Fockers
Saw
Darkness
Stepford Wives
Passion of the Christ
The Exorcist: The Beginning

View my DVD collection here:

My DVD collection at Chasing the Frog