Saturday, February 5, 2011
Captain America poster is out
Check it out online. Not to say it is dope, but it is dope. Tingles in the spine made me want to see the movie. Have to wait to July. Those Bastards. But the rumor that Sam Jackson gets to cameo in all of these movies to recruit the Avengers is true. Hey Paramount, your losing out by not allowing the Avengers to begin. Lets get a move on.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
T.I. – I’m Back
T.I. – I’m Back
he is back. One emcee/mc goes to jail and another takes over. I still would avoid jail at any cost but as one of the comments said he sounds hungry as hell. After having some mexican last night without my maduros(i am still pissed about it) and then going to Queens and getting smacked with a left hook on video games, it is nice to wake up to some aggressive hip hop. Do ya thang.
Btw Mad Decent should sign Brik Mason. no joke. SXSW is coming up. Get ready.
he is back. One emcee/mc goes to jail and another takes over. I still would avoid jail at any cost but as one of the comments said he sounds hungry as hell. After having some mexican last night without my maduros(i am still pissed about it) and then going to Queens and getting smacked with a left hook on video games, it is nice to wake up to some aggressive hip hop. Do ya thang.
Btw Mad Decent should sign Brik Mason. no joke. SXSW is coming up. Get ready.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
What happens after you become famous
Jeff Cohen a.k.a. Chunk from The Goonies
He was Chunk. You know who we mean. For our culturally illiterate readers who grew up on Big Love-style polygamist compounds, we'll just say that in 1985, Richard Donner (of Lethal Weapon fame) directed the greatest adventure movie starring an obese child in the history of cinema. That film was The Goonies and that obese child was Chunk, whose epically humiliating Truffle Shuffle gave an entire generation of husky children a reason to swim with their t-shirts on.
After the Spotlight:
He grew up to be a big-shot Hollywood attorney.
Many child stars ride out their one shtick until they're septum-deep in a bucket of Bolivian Marching Powder, but Cohen avoided child star purgatory. He dropped the acting (and the weight) and attended UC Berkeley, where he rode out his one shtick to campus fame: Cohen ran for Student Body President on the platform "Vote for Chunk" and performed the Truffle Shuffle at Cal football games.
After obtaining his undergrad, Cohen attended UCLA Law and later founded his own media law firm, which is sadly not named Chunk, Sloth & Associates.
In 2008, Cohen was named one of The Hollywood Reporter's Top 35 Executives under 35. We assume Cohen entered law to defend the less fortunate of the world (or at least greater Los Angeles). After all, the Truffle Shuffle basically set fat kids' civil rights back 20 years.
He was Chunk. You know who we mean. For our culturally illiterate readers who grew up on Big Love-style polygamist compounds, we'll just say that in 1985, Richard Donner (of Lethal Weapon fame) directed the greatest adventure movie starring an obese child in the history of cinema. That film was The Goonies and that obese child was Chunk, whose epically humiliating Truffle Shuffle gave an entire generation of husky children a reason to swim with their t-shirts on.
After the Spotlight:
He grew up to be a big-shot Hollywood attorney.
Many child stars ride out their one shtick until they're septum-deep in a bucket of Bolivian Marching Powder, but Cohen avoided child star purgatory. He dropped the acting (and the weight) and attended UC Berkeley, where he rode out his one shtick to campus fame: Cohen ran for Student Body President on the platform "Vote for Chunk" and performed the Truffle Shuffle at Cal football games.
After obtaining his undergrad, Cohen attended UCLA Law and later founded his own media law firm, which is sadly not named Chunk, Sloth & Associates.
In 2008, Cohen was named one of The Hollywood Reporter's Top 35 Executives under 35. We assume Cohen entered law to defend the less fortunate of the world (or at least greater Los Angeles). After all, the Truffle Shuffle basically set fat kids' civil rights back 20 years.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Spend money to make money
o Permalink
o
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: January 3, 2010
A new fee levied on movie and television production companies filming inside some municipally owned buildings in New York City is drawing complaints from the entertainment industry, which argues that the charge of $3,200 accompanying each permit is excessive and could drive productions elsewhere.
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Shows filmed in New York like “Ugly Betty” (from left, Michael Urie, America Ferrera and Becki Newton) could be affected by a new location fee for using some popular city-owned buildings.
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City officials say the fee affects only a small number of locations and is fair compensation for expenses they incur in processing permit requests and providing staff, like electricians. But entertainment industry representatives, citing declining revenues from DVDs and advertising, say the new measure sets a worrisome precedent at a difficult moment. “Our concern is that this could start a domino effect among other city agencies, which could make filming in New York cost-prohibitive,” said Vans Stevenson, senior vice president for state affairs at the Motion Picture Association of America, a trade group financed by the major studios. “What’s to stop the parks and sanitation departments or police stations or hospitals from instituting similar fees? We are living in a time when production costs and budgets are very tight, and these kinds of charges can make a difference in terms of the decision process.”
The fee, which went into effect just before Christmas, applies to 54 buildings operated by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, including courthouses familiar to viewers of television series like “Law & Order.” Mark Daly, a department spokesman, said there were 190 requests to film in those buildings in 2009.
Had the fee been in effect all year long, it would have generated a little more than $600,000 for the city.
Besides the popular “Law & Order” franchise, which has been shooting in New York since 1990, and at the moment consists of three shows, other series that have filmed in department buildings and will be subject to the new fee include, Mr. Daly said, “Gossip Girls,” “Ugly Betty” and “The Good Wife.” The buildings most requested by production companies, he added, are the columned Supreme Court Building at 60 Centre Street in Manhattan, Brooklyn Borough Hall and the Supreme Court building in Jamaica, Queens.
Despite calls for a sliding scale that would allow makers of commercials, videos and television pilot episodes to pay less and would exempt student filmmakers altogether, the fee applies to all productions. That is because “in terms of staff time spent arranging and reviewing permits, the basic administrative costs are the same, regardless of the size of the production,” Mr. Daly said.
John Johnston, executive director of the New York Production Alliance, a trade group that represents local craft unions, production and service companies and soundstages, said: “This one fee is not going to destroy the film business in New York. But it’s an irritant, and it does hurt the independents” who have much smaller budgets than Hollywood studios or television networks. “This is a highly mobile industry,” he added, “and history has shown that when it’s more advantageous to move to adjacent states, that’s what happens.”
Producers are also complaining about the lead time now needed to process permits. The city initially planned to require applications be filed a week in advance, which was reduced to four days after protests. But that is still slower than many California municipalities and is particularly problematic for commercials, which often involve a very short turnaround time.
The new charge in New York City, which producers say is already the most expensive shooting location in the nation, is one that rival cities either do not have at all or that they have chosen to keep at a minimal level. Chicago, for example, where “The Good Wife” is set but not filmed, makes police stations, schools, airports and even City Hall available to production companies without any permit or administrative fee unless the building is no longer in use, in which case there is a $250 opening charge.
“Revenue is tough to come by these days, and our office has also heard from other departments within government that this is an opportunity to create revenue,” said Richard Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office, a city agency. “When you’re dealing with an industry that is not necessarily impoverished, you can see the tendency to want to take advantage of that. But this is such a competitive business, and thus far we’ve been able to maintain a balance that allows us to offer services at low or no cost whenever possible.”
New York officials at the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting appear skeptical of arguments that the new measure will reduce the city’s competitiveness. Julianne Cho, an associate commissioner, said that while New York’s system “is different from the way other cities work, the big picture is that we are the only city offering free police assistance,” in addition to free permit processing and free use of one-of-a-kind exterior locations, which she said could save a large production company up to $19,000 a week compared with Los Angeles shoots.
In a written statement Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of the film office, also noted that New York City offered a 5 percent tax credit to production companies, “the only one of its kind administered by a city in the U.S.” (That is on top of a 30 percent credit from New York State. Tax credits of up to 42 percent are available in other parts of the country but through state governments.) However, the city has recently proposed scaling back that credit by 1 percent a year for television series, meaning that it would expire after five years, a move that Ms. Oliver said was “designed to incentivize new television production.”
That take-it-or-leave-it attitude in part reflects the shifting economics of film and television production. Until recently companies that might bridle at the new charge might have transferred productions to Toronto, which has often doubled for New York, or to Vancouver. But over the last eight years the value of the Canadian dollar has risen from 62 cents to the United States dollar to parity or even above, and that has eroded part of Canada’s cost advantage and attractiveness.
In view of the current economic downturn, entertainment industry representatives say they are not opposed to a charge for the use of municipal buildings. But they question how the city arrived at the $3,200 figure and say that and other aspects of the new fee have unnecessarily complicated a heretofore cordial relationship that, in their estimate, generates about $5 billion a year for the local economy.
“Any fee should be reasonable and more accurately mirror the cost of using a particular space,” Mr. Stevenson said. “Many local jurisdictions and states waive fees altogether, and we believe that $3,200 is an exorbitant rate that will only serve to discourage motion picture and television location production in New York’s public buildings.”
o
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: January 3, 2010
A new fee levied on movie and television production companies filming inside some municipally owned buildings in New York City is drawing complaints from the entertainment industry, which argues that the charge of $3,200 accompanying each permit is excessive and could drive productions elsewhere.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Patrick Harbron/ABC
Shows filmed in New York like “Ugly Betty” (from left, Michael Urie, America Ferrera and Becki Newton) could be affected by a new location fee for using some popular city-owned buildings.
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The Carpetbagger
The
Carpetbagger
Your guide to the news and the nonsense of awards season. Join the discussion.
Go to Awards Season
City officials say the fee affects only a small number of locations and is fair compensation for expenses they incur in processing permit requests and providing staff, like electricians. But entertainment industry representatives, citing declining revenues from DVDs and advertising, say the new measure sets a worrisome precedent at a difficult moment. “Our concern is that this could start a domino effect among other city agencies, which could make filming in New York cost-prohibitive,” said Vans Stevenson, senior vice president for state affairs at the Motion Picture Association of America, a trade group financed by the major studios. “What’s to stop the parks and sanitation departments or police stations or hospitals from instituting similar fees? We are living in a time when production costs and budgets are very tight, and these kinds of charges can make a difference in terms of the decision process.”
The fee, which went into effect just before Christmas, applies to 54 buildings operated by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, including courthouses familiar to viewers of television series like “Law & Order.” Mark Daly, a department spokesman, said there were 190 requests to film in those buildings in 2009.
Had the fee been in effect all year long, it would have generated a little more than $600,000 for the city.
Besides the popular “Law & Order” franchise, which has been shooting in New York since 1990, and at the moment consists of three shows, other series that have filmed in department buildings and will be subject to the new fee include, Mr. Daly said, “Gossip Girls,” “Ugly Betty” and “The Good Wife.” The buildings most requested by production companies, he added, are the columned Supreme Court Building at 60 Centre Street in Manhattan, Brooklyn Borough Hall and the Supreme Court building in Jamaica, Queens.
Despite calls for a sliding scale that would allow makers of commercials, videos and television pilot episodes to pay less and would exempt student filmmakers altogether, the fee applies to all productions. That is because “in terms of staff time spent arranging and reviewing permits, the basic administrative costs are the same, regardless of the size of the production,” Mr. Daly said.
John Johnston, executive director of the New York Production Alliance, a trade group that represents local craft unions, production and service companies and soundstages, said: “This one fee is not going to destroy the film business in New York. But it’s an irritant, and it does hurt the independents” who have much smaller budgets than Hollywood studios or television networks. “This is a highly mobile industry,” he added, “and history has shown that when it’s more advantageous to move to adjacent states, that’s what happens.”
Producers are also complaining about the lead time now needed to process permits. The city initially planned to require applications be filed a week in advance, which was reduced to four days after protests. But that is still slower than many California municipalities and is particularly problematic for commercials, which often involve a very short turnaround time.
The new charge in New York City, which producers say is already the most expensive shooting location in the nation, is one that rival cities either do not have at all or that they have chosen to keep at a minimal level. Chicago, for example, where “The Good Wife” is set but not filmed, makes police stations, schools, airports and even City Hall available to production companies without any permit or administrative fee unless the building is no longer in use, in which case there is a $250 opening charge.
“Revenue is tough to come by these days, and our office has also heard from other departments within government that this is an opportunity to create revenue,” said Richard Moskal, director of the Chicago Film Office, a city agency. “When you’re dealing with an industry that is not necessarily impoverished, you can see the tendency to want to take advantage of that. But this is such a competitive business, and thus far we’ve been able to maintain a balance that allows us to offer services at low or no cost whenever possible.”
New York officials at the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting appear skeptical of arguments that the new measure will reduce the city’s competitiveness. Julianne Cho, an associate commissioner, said that while New York’s system “is different from the way other cities work, the big picture is that we are the only city offering free police assistance,” in addition to free permit processing and free use of one-of-a-kind exterior locations, which she said could save a large production company up to $19,000 a week compared with Los Angeles shoots.
In a written statement Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of the film office, also noted that New York City offered a 5 percent tax credit to production companies, “the only one of its kind administered by a city in the U.S.” (That is on top of a 30 percent credit from New York State. Tax credits of up to 42 percent are available in other parts of the country but through state governments.) However, the city has recently proposed scaling back that credit by 1 percent a year for television series, meaning that it would expire after five years, a move that Ms. Oliver said was “designed to incentivize new television production.”
That take-it-or-leave-it attitude in part reflects the shifting economics of film and television production. Until recently companies that might bridle at the new charge might have transferred productions to Toronto, which has often doubled for New York, or to Vancouver. But over the last eight years the value of the Canadian dollar has risen from 62 cents to the United States dollar to parity or even above, and that has eroded part of Canada’s cost advantage and attractiveness.
In view of the current economic downturn, entertainment industry representatives say they are not opposed to a charge for the use of municipal buildings. But they question how the city arrived at the $3,200 figure and say that and other aspects of the new fee have unnecessarily complicated a heretofore cordial relationship that, in their estimate, generates about $5 billion a year for the local economy.
“Any fee should be reasonable and more accurately mirror the cost of using a particular space,” Mr. Stevenson said. “Many local jurisdictions and states waive fees altogether, and we believe that $3,200 is an exorbitant rate that will only serve to discourage motion picture and television location production in New York’s public buildings.”
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Sunday, December 20, 2009
I love the Hurt Locker
IT was, readers of The New York Times recently learned, a very good year for Paramount Pictures. Two of the year’s biggest hits, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” have helped the studio climb out of its financial hole with a combined domestic take of more than $500 million. Both movies are deeply stupid, often incoherent and hinged on the principle that the spectacle of violence is its own pleasurable end. “Transformers” is also casually racist. But hey, that’s entertainment.
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Sergey Dvortsevoy’s “Tulpan,” (starring Askhat Kuchinchirekov) another strong independent film. More Photos »
Or, more specifically, that’s Hollywood entertainment in the conglomerate age. The major studios have long been in the business of serving sludge to the world, but now the reek often spreads around the globe simultaneously with massive coordinated openings. “Revenge of the Fallen,” for instance, opened the same day on more than 4,000 screens in the United States — about a 10th of all the screens in the country — and soon about 10,000 more abroad. “Angels & Demons,” the sequel to “The Da Vinci Code,” opened on some 3,500 screens domestically and ate up more than 10,000 internationally. The French film “Summer Hours,” meanwhile, the best-reviewed release in The Times that weekend, opened on two screens.
The question of consumer choice becomes all but moot when the Top 5 box office movies are playing on more than one-quarter of all the screens in America, as was the case during the first weekend of May, when “Star Trek” opened. That weekend 10 movies dominated 67 percent of the country’s screens. Three of those titles were released by Paramount. Warner Brothers and Disney had two movies each; 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and the independent company Summit Entertainment each had one. (It’s worth noting that National Amusements, the company that has a controlling stake in Viacom, the entertainment conglomerate that in turn runs Paramount, owns more than 1,500 screens around the world.)
The problem isn’t blockbusters per se or certain kinds of genre movies or inflated budgets: “Star Trek,” wittily directed by J. J. Abrams, is an entertaining rethink of a defining science-fiction brand, and the even pricier “Avatar,” from James Cameron, is in a class by itself. But these remain exceptions to the flashier, noisier, dumber rule of much of today’s mega-budget entertainment. Movies have always been segmented among different audiences, but the disparity between the work that earns most of the critical love at release — and awards — time and much of what fills the multiplex on a weekly basis seems greater than ever. Paramount sells the audience “G. I. Joe” and sells Oscar voters (and critics) “Up in the Air.”
That divide between the studios’ bulk product and their prestige items has become even more conspicuous because so many specialty units have been closed, absorbed or downsized in the last two years, leaving executives with fewer reasons to go to the Oscars. (Just two years ago Paramount Vantage, the specialty unit of Paramount, released “There Will Be Blood,” one of the finest American movies of the past 50 years. Vantage has since been folded into big Paramount.) A few specialty units remain, however, including Fox Searchlight, which might be why 20th Century Fox feels free to release so many stinkers, including franchise leftovers (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) and female-minstrelsy shows (“Bride Wars”). The same holds true over at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which would have been largely an aesthetic wasteland this year without Sony Pictures Classics.
Big Sony did women wrong with “The Ugly Truth,” but it did everyone right by giving us Meryl Streep as Julia Child in “Julie & Julia.” (It can keep Julie.) Warner Brothers gave us one of the worst of the year (“Watchmen”) and one of the best (“Where the Wild Things Are”). Disney tried to rectify decades of racism by giving an Obama-led America its first black princess (“The Princess and the Frog”). Universal had its ups (“Public Enemies”), nice tries (“Duplicity”) and some solid genre diversions (“A Perfect Getaway”) along with the usual multiplex fodder (“Land of the Lost” and “Fast & Furious”). It also has a coming film with Ms. Streep (“It’s Complicated”), something every studio should.
Despite the bad news, Hollywood’s habit of absorbing new talent does offer some hope. In 1993, when Disney bought Miramax Films, the studio ushered in a new era in American cinema.
By the time Warner joined this new specialty business 10 years later, with Warner Independent Pictures, all the studios were in the indie business. Films like Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Ones Are” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Informant!,” both released by Warner, might represent the end of that era. Even so, I like to believe that the industry’s central irrationality (its human factor) will remain and that there will always be one madman willing to give an artist like Wes Anderson millions to make a puppet movie about a family of foxes.
Yet while the studios seem to be in retreat from challenging adult films, at least for now, and while nonstudio companies, particularly those in foreign-film distribution, continue to have a rough time (New Yorker Films shut down this year, a tremendous loss), there are some promising signs. Companies like the newly revitalized Cinema Guild (which this year distributed celebrated features from Agnès Varda, Claire Denis and Jia Zhang-ke) and larger ones like IFC Films continue to release tremendous work. Other companies have reconfigured to fit the lean times, as evident by the recent merger of Kino International and Lorber HT Digital, which joined forces to become Kino Lorber. Long may they brighten our screens.
Despite the shake-ups and bad economic times there are now more choices for dedicated movie lovers than at any time in history, though only if you live in a major film market like New York, have access to a cable outfit like the Independent Film Channel, which shows some of the best movies around, or own a region-free DVD player on which you can play international discs. (DVDs only play on machines manufactured for specific zones, a barrier you can bypass by buying or hacking a region-free machine. In March, President Obama gave the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, 25 American DVDs that Mr. Brown couldn’t watch at home apparently because he didn’t own a region-free machine. You should.)
And even with all the seismic industry shifts there were movies to love, even from Hollywood, and moments to remember, including the dust that clings to Anthony Mackie’s eyelashes in “The Hurt Locker,” as he waits in the Iraqi desert, gun at the ready, for enemy fire. And Colin Firth’s face crumbling like pulverized stone as he receives the awful news of his lover’s death in “A Single Man.” Some of the greatest filmmaking of the year was represented by the story of a happy marriage, which was represented with breathtaking narrative economy and a great depth of feeling in four sublime minutes in “Up.” The rest of the movie left me fairly indifferent, but those four minutes will play on a loop in my head for years.
Other images, other memories: the bodies of two teenagers being transported by a backhoe operated by a mobster in the Italian film “Gomorrah,” a backhoe first glimpsed in a scene in which the boys exult over the crime that will lead to their demise. The phosphorescent flowers fluttering like sea creatures on the surface of the alien world in “Avatar.” A restless camera tracing lines of love among grieving family members in “Summer Hours,” a French film poignantly true to everyday life and emotions and almost impossible to imagine being made in America if only because of its insistence on ambivalence as a condition of human relations. A young camel riding in a motorcycle sidecar amid an extraordinarily choreographed whirl of human and animal motion in “Tulpan.”
Here then are a baker’s dozen of my favorite films of the year, in order of their domestic release: “Gomorrah” (Matteo Garrone, Italy); “Tulpan”( Sergey Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan); “Summer Hours” (Olivier Assayas, France); “The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow, United States); “The Beaches of Agnès” (Agnès Varda, France); “Public Enemies” (Michael Mann, United States); “Beeswax” (Andrew Bujalski, United States); “Ponyo” (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan); “The Informant!” (Steven Soderbergh, United States); “Where the Wild Things Are” (Spike Jonze, United States); “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Wes Anderson, United States); “The Sun” (Alexander Sokurov, Russia); and “Avatar” (James Cameron, United States).
Other favorites: “Of Time and the City”; “Frontier of Dawn”; “Tokyo Sonata”; “Sugar”; “Léon Morin: Priest”; “Julia” (the Erick Zonca with Tilda Swinton); “Star Trek”; “Anaglyph Tom”; “Séraphine”; “The English Surgeon”; “You, the Living”; “In the Loop”; “Import, Export”; “Lorna’s Silence”; “A Perfect Getaway”; “The Baader Meinhof Complex”; “Big Fan”; “Unmade Beds”; “Crude”; “A Serious Man”; “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”; “The Messenger”; “Big River Man”; “ 35 Shots of Rum”; “Up in the Air”; “A Single Man”; “Invictus”; “Police, Adjective.” Many of these titles are either already available on DVD or will be.
Skip to next paragraph
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Manohla Dargis's Top Movies of 2009Slide Show
Manohla Dargis's Top Movies of 2009
Related
Film: Homes Are Where You Find Them (December 20, 2009)
Long Shadows of an Economy and a War (December 20, 2009)
Blogs
The Carpetbagger
The
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Your guide to the news and the nonsense of awards season. Join the discussion.
Go to Awards Season
Enlarge This Image
Zeitgeist Films
Sergey Dvortsevoy’s “Tulpan,” (starring Askhat Kuchinchirekov) another strong independent film. More Photos »
Or, more specifically, that’s Hollywood entertainment in the conglomerate age. The major studios have long been in the business of serving sludge to the world, but now the reek often spreads around the globe simultaneously with massive coordinated openings. “Revenge of the Fallen,” for instance, opened the same day on more than 4,000 screens in the United States — about a 10th of all the screens in the country — and soon about 10,000 more abroad. “Angels & Demons,” the sequel to “The Da Vinci Code,” opened on some 3,500 screens domestically and ate up more than 10,000 internationally. The French film “Summer Hours,” meanwhile, the best-reviewed release in The Times that weekend, opened on two screens.
The question of consumer choice becomes all but moot when the Top 5 box office movies are playing on more than one-quarter of all the screens in America, as was the case during the first weekend of May, when “Star Trek” opened. That weekend 10 movies dominated 67 percent of the country’s screens. Three of those titles were released by Paramount. Warner Brothers and Disney had two movies each; 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and the independent company Summit Entertainment each had one. (It’s worth noting that National Amusements, the company that has a controlling stake in Viacom, the entertainment conglomerate that in turn runs Paramount, owns more than 1,500 screens around the world.)
The problem isn’t blockbusters per se or certain kinds of genre movies or inflated budgets: “Star Trek,” wittily directed by J. J. Abrams, is an entertaining rethink of a defining science-fiction brand, and the even pricier “Avatar,” from James Cameron, is in a class by itself. But these remain exceptions to the flashier, noisier, dumber rule of much of today’s mega-budget entertainment. Movies have always been segmented among different audiences, but the disparity between the work that earns most of the critical love at release — and awards — time and much of what fills the multiplex on a weekly basis seems greater than ever. Paramount sells the audience “G. I. Joe” and sells Oscar voters (and critics) “Up in the Air.”
That divide between the studios’ bulk product and their prestige items has become even more conspicuous because so many specialty units have been closed, absorbed or downsized in the last two years, leaving executives with fewer reasons to go to the Oscars. (Just two years ago Paramount Vantage, the specialty unit of Paramount, released “There Will Be Blood,” one of the finest American movies of the past 50 years. Vantage has since been folded into big Paramount.) A few specialty units remain, however, including Fox Searchlight, which might be why 20th Century Fox feels free to release so many stinkers, including franchise leftovers (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) and female-minstrelsy shows (“Bride Wars”). The same holds true over at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which would have been largely an aesthetic wasteland this year without Sony Pictures Classics.
Big Sony did women wrong with “The Ugly Truth,” but it did everyone right by giving us Meryl Streep as Julia Child in “Julie & Julia.” (It can keep Julie.) Warner Brothers gave us one of the worst of the year (“Watchmen”) and one of the best (“Where the Wild Things Are”). Disney tried to rectify decades of racism by giving an Obama-led America its first black princess (“The Princess and the Frog”). Universal had its ups (“Public Enemies”), nice tries (“Duplicity”) and some solid genre diversions (“A Perfect Getaway”) along with the usual multiplex fodder (“Land of the Lost” and “Fast & Furious”). It also has a coming film with Ms. Streep (“It’s Complicated”), something every studio should.
Despite the bad news, Hollywood’s habit of absorbing new talent does offer some hope. In 1993, when Disney bought Miramax Films, the studio ushered in a new era in American cinema.
By the time Warner joined this new specialty business 10 years later, with Warner Independent Pictures, all the studios were in the indie business. Films like Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Ones Are” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Informant!,” both released by Warner, might represent the end of that era. Even so, I like to believe that the industry’s central irrationality (its human factor) will remain and that there will always be one madman willing to give an artist like Wes Anderson millions to make a puppet movie about a family of foxes.
Yet while the studios seem to be in retreat from challenging adult films, at least for now, and while nonstudio companies, particularly those in foreign-film distribution, continue to have a rough time (New Yorker Films shut down this year, a tremendous loss), there are some promising signs. Companies like the newly revitalized Cinema Guild (which this year distributed celebrated features from Agnès Varda, Claire Denis and Jia Zhang-ke) and larger ones like IFC Films continue to release tremendous work. Other companies have reconfigured to fit the lean times, as evident by the recent merger of Kino International and Lorber HT Digital, which joined forces to become Kino Lorber. Long may they brighten our screens.
Despite the shake-ups and bad economic times there are now more choices for dedicated movie lovers than at any time in history, though only if you live in a major film market like New York, have access to a cable outfit like the Independent Film Channel, which shows some of the best movies around, or own a region-free DVD player on which you can play international discs. (DVDs only play on machines manufactured for specific zones, a barrier you can bypass by buying or hacking a region-free machine. In March, President Obama gave the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, 25 American DVDs that Mr. Brown couldn’t watch at home apparently because he didn’t own a region-free machine. You should.)
And even with all the seismic industry shifts there were movies to love, even from Hollywood, and moments to remember, including the dust that clings to Anthony Mackie’s eyelashes in “The Hurt Locker,” as he waits in the Iraqi desert, gun at the ready, for enemy fire. And Colin Firth’s face crumbling like pulverized stone as he receives the awful news of his lover’s death in “A Single Man.” Some of the greatest filmmaking of the year was represented by the story of a happy marriage, which was represented with breathtaking narrative economy and a great depth of feeling in four sublime minutes in “Up.” The rest of the movie left me fairly indifferent, but those four minutes will play on a loop in my head for years.
Other images, other memories: the bodies of two teenagers being transported by a backhoe operated by a mobster in the Italian film “Gomorrah,” a backhoe first glimpsed in a scene in which the boys exult over the crime that will lead to their demise. The phosphorescent flowers fluttering like sea creatures on the surface of the alien world in “Avatar.” A restless camera tracing lines of love among grieving family members in “Summer Hours,” a French film poignantly true to everyday life and emotions and almost impossible to imagine being made in America if only because of its insistence on ambivalence as a condition of human relations. A young camel riding in a motorcycle sidecar amid an extraordinarily choreographed whirl of human and animal motion in “Tulpan.”
Here then are a baker’s dozen of my favorite films of the year, in order of their domestic release: “Gomorrah” (Matteo Garrone, Italy); “Tulpan”( Sergey Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan); “Summer Hours” (Olivier Assayas, France); “The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow, United States); “The Beaches of Agnès” (Agnès Varda, France); “Public Enemies” (Michael Mann, United States); “Beeswax” (Andrew Bujalski, United States); “Ponyo” (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan); “The Informant!” (Steven Soderbergh, United States); “Where the Wild Things Are” (Spike Jonze, United States); “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (Wes Anderson, United States); “The Sun” (Alexander Sokurov, Russia); and “Avatar” (James Cameron, United States).
Other favorites: “Of Time and the City”; “Frontier of Dawn”; “Tokyo Sonata”; “Sugar”; “Léon Morin: Priest”; “Julia” (the Erick Zonca with Tilda Swinton); “Star Trek”; “Anaglyph Tom”; “Séraphine”; “The English Surgeon”; “You, the Living”; “In the Loop”; “Import, Export”; “Lorna’s Silence”; “A Perfect Getaway”; “The Baader Meinhof Complex”; “Big Fan”; “Unmade Beds”; “Crude”; “A Serious Man”; “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”; “The Messenger”; “Big River Man”; “ 35 Shots of Rum”; “Up in the Air”; “A Single Man”; “Invictus”; “Police, Adjective.” Many of these titles are either already available on DVD or will be.
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