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Did you notice the swell looking graphic at the top of today’s post?
Intrigued?
In a story published on Anne Thompson’s IndieWire blog, Vancouver emerged in fourth place worldwide as the place where filmmakers might choose to shoot their film. Locations one through ten? Here they are …
1. Los Angeles, California
2. New York, New York
3. New Jersey
4. Vancouver, B.C.
5. Toronto
6. Montréal
7. Texas
8. Chicago, Illinois
9. New Mexico
10. Australia
Want to see the same thing graphically, and with much more detail? All you have to do is click here. Thrilling, huh? (ok, maybe not quite so much).
Those who call VanRamblings friend (they number but a few) know we ‘live for lists’. And the lists to which we most look forward each year are the lists of best films of the year, which commence with the announcement of the New York Film Critics Circle, followed shortly thereafter by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Oh, but the wait til mid-December is excruciating.
You, dear and constant reader, might imagine our joy, then, when we learned of the decision of the New York Film Critics Circle to move the announcement of their choices for top film and top film performances of 2011 to the first-out-of-the-gate date of November 28th. Colour us thrilled. Thank you, oh thank you, august New York Film Critics Circle members.
Why is the announcement by New York film critics so important? The reasons are many. We’ll offer two reasons, one relatively important in the greater scheme of things, the other perhaps not quite so much …
- Film critics situated in the cultural centre of the universe often choose films and performances that are barely even on the radar of most filmgoers. With the upcoming November 28th announcement, previously seemingly obscure films will become the hot ticket item at the box office, generating the kind of revenue that will encourage studios to continue to make prestige pictures, the sort of films cinéastes across the globe flock to, but regular filmgoers tend to yawn about, if they have any reaction at all. Bottom line: more ‘better’ films, films which encourage a change in who we are, and how we see ourselves and interpret our experience in the maelstrom that is our daily life.
- The New York Film Critics Circle awards kick off the official Oscar season. Everything that comes before is just so much masturbatory bloggety-blog prediction-making, with little basis in fact outside of the years long work taken on by Oscar bloggers like Jeffrey Wells, Sasha Stone, Kris Tapley, Anne Thompson, Tom O’Neill, Pete Hammond, Scott Feinberg and the whole crew of trendsetting bloggers who serve to provide instruction to the 5600 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The ‘Oscar season’ is part of the cultural zeitgeist, and for anyone who has the slightest interest in popular culture, the announcement of the first critics’ awards have profound effect on entertainment coverage, online, in our newspapers and magazines and in the myriad pop cult entertainment programmes that litter our airwaves. Oscar season is fun, politically inconsequential, and offers a harmless break from the tribulations and demands of our lives that can sometimes weigh us down. Oscar season provides, then, a needed diversion at year’s end, and early into the new hopeful year.
So now you know. New York Film Critics Circle Awards. November 28th.
Was VanRamblings talking of ‘best of’ film lists, and why lists proferred by the New York and Los Angeles film critics associations are consequential?
Yes, oh yes, we were. And then you know what? The fine folks behind the annual Gotham Independent Film Awards released their list of best ‘indie’ film / performance contenders for 2011. A New York version of the left coast Independent Spirit Awards, founded in 1984, both the Gotham and Indie Spirit film associations recognize the best in independently-financed, often shoestring budget consequential films released in the past 12 months.
The Gotham nominees for ‘breakthrough’ independent 2011-released films:
Best Feature
Beginners
The Descendants
Meek’s Cutoff
Take Shelter
The Tree of Life
Breakthrough Director
Mike Cahill, Another Earth
Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Vera Farmiga, Higher Ground
Evan Glodell, Bellflower
Dee Rees, Pariah
Breakthrough Actor
Felicity Jones, Like Crazy
Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Harmony Santana, Gun Hill Road
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
Jacob Wysocki, Terri
Best Ensemble Performance
Beginners
The Descendants
Margin Call
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Take Shelter
Best Documentary
Better This World
Bill Cunningham New York
Hell and Back Again
The Interrupters
The Woodmans
Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You
Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
Green
The Redemption of General Butt Naked
Scenes of a Crime
Without
And wouldn’t you know it, the folks behind the Gotham Awards have set November 28th to hand out the winners’ hardware, the same day the New York Film Critics Circle make their announcement for the Best Films & Best Film Performances of 2011. VanRamblings finds ourself ecstatic and in list and film awards recognition heaven. And, yes constant reader, not to worry: we are seeking therapy for our quite obvious, but harmless, malady.
Blogger Wells Sponsors LA screenings of Tyrannosaur
A couple of days back, blogger Jeffrey Wells set about to provide assistance to one of his favourite films of the year, Tyrannosaur, by raising monies to enable screenings of the film in Los Angeles for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (seems that the film’s distributor, Strand Releasing, doesn’t have the money in their pr budget to afford such). Good on Jeffrey Wells for championing Paddy Considine’s tough directorial début. Thus far, Wells has arranged three Tyrannosaur ‘tastemaker’ screenings.
More Lists: Top 10 début performances of all time
By way of recognizing Elizabeth Olsen’s outstanding début performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene, In Contention’s Kris Tapley has published a list (oh yes, another list … we love that!), this time laying out the Top 10 début acting performances over the course of the past 40 years. If you can stand another list, here are Tapley’s favourite début acting performances.
