Pic of the Day: “Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime.” (40th Anniversary)
Precursors: The Quickening
More precursors!
Not really gonna waste time here. Oscars are in like two weeks and this is the last of the major things we were waiting to see come in. Past this, it’s all just guilds confirming what we probably already know.
Let’s get into it. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Are you questioning me?” “Getting acquainted. I’d like to make one friend in this barracks.” “Well, don’t bother, Sefton. I don’t like you, I never did, and I never will.” “A lot of people say that, and the first thing you know it, they get married, and live happily ever after.” (70th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “It was as hard for Frankie to smile when the tumor was malignant as it was for my dad to cry after. But they both managed it. I’m going to switch this off now. It’s not the way I want to see Frankie any more. Do you still have a picture of me in your head? Well, that’s like the picture I want to have of Frankie. One that you can keep in your head forever. So when you go back to reality, I’ll ask Frankie to please, please let me go.” (20th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “You are the worst wedding singer in the world, buddy!” “Sir, one more outburst, I will strangle you with my microphone wire. You understand me?” (25th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: What’s the matter? Is something wrong out here?” “We’re fighting a war, Sam.” “A war, against who?” (60th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “He’s better at this than I’ve ever been at anything in my life. He’s better at this than you’ll ever be, at anything. My son has a gift. He has a gift, and when you acknowledge that, then maybe we will have something to talk about.” (30th Anniversary)
Precursors 2: Electric Boogaloo
Hey look, we’ve got some winners.
I considered just not talking about these at all until Oscar ballot time, but BAFTAs were today and it seemed worthwhile. I’ll probably wait until the end of the month to update again, just because everything going forward, save maybe SAG, is just ‘here’s what won’ and there’s really not much to talk about. But hey, it’s something, right? (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Please let me stay just a little longer. To feel the joy and happiness of living on this earth.” (10th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: ♫ “Pick your left foot up when your right foot’s down / Come on legs keep movin’, don’t you lose no ground / You just keep on keepin’ on the road that you choose / Don’t you give up walkin’, ’cause you gave up shoes, no / Come on and ease on down, ease on down the road / Come on and ease on down, ease on down the road / Don’t you carry nothing that might be a load / Come on, ease on down, ease on down, down the road.” ♫ (45th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Hold on, you gave her wings?” “And blasters.” “Wings and blasters. So I take it you didn’t have that tech available for me.” “No, I did.” (5th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “There’s three times in a man’s life when he has a right to yell at the moon: when he marries, when his children come, and… and when he finishes a job he had to be crazy to start.” (75th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Don’t you swear at me, you little shit! Don’t you ever raise your voice at me! I am your mother! You understand? All I do is worry and slave and defend you, and all I get back is that fucking face on your face! So full of disdain and resentment and always so annoyed! Well, now your sister is dead! And I know you miss her and I know it was an accident and I know you’re in pain and I wish could take that away for you. I wish I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but you’re sister is dead! She’s gone forever! And what a waste… if it could’ve maybe brought us together, or something, if you could’ve just said ‘I’m sorry’ or faced up to what happened, maybe then we could do something with this, but you can’t take responsibility for anything! So, now I can’t accept. And I can’t forgive. Because… because NOBODY admits anything they’ve done!” (5th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Are you a vampire?” “I live off blood… Yes.” “Are you… dead?” “No. Can’t you tell?” “But… Are you old?” “I’m twelve. But I’ve been twelve for a long time.” (15th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “You’re 5 foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’, and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for 2 years. And you’re gonna walk outta here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don’t have to prove nothin’ to nobody but yourself. And after what you’ve gone through, if you haven’t done that by now, it ain’t gonna never happen. Now go on back.” (30th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Thorin, we’ll never make it.” “Some of us might. Lead him to the forges. We kill the dragon. If this is to end in fire, then we will all burn together!” (10th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “Dear, sweet, Littlefoot, do you remember the way to the Great Valley?” “I guess so. But why do I have to know if you’re going to be with me?” “I’ll be with you. Even if you can’t see me.” (35th Anniversary)
Pic of the Day: “We’ll find him. Where ever he is, if he’s alive, we’ll find your dog.” (5th Anniversary)
Mike’s Top Ten of 2022
2022 was a strange year. Not so much for the film landscape (though that is undergoing a sea change in terms of increasingly limited theatrical windows, an altered viewing experience brought about from the still-ongoing pandemic and an evolving definition of box office success, the consequences of which we won’t know for some years), but for me personally. I underwent a few major life changes and had stuff going on consistently all year (at least that’s what it felt like). As such, my film viewing was all out of whack. I watched the same number of movies I typically watch, but they came in bunches, often months after the films got released. Because of that, I never really got a sense of the film year as a whole. But it did mean I got to see all the films on my own terms, removed from knowing (for the most part) how the public at large felt about them. This is something I strive for, and this is about as close as I’ve ever gotten to having a pure opinion about nearly everything that came out in a year.
Then again, it’s really not much different from how the past two years have been. Most of us haven’t really gone back to theaters in any meaningful way and, if we have watched any quantity of films, it was often done via streaming, usually way after the films came out, if at all. And what I’m noticing, with films becoming more like TV or streaming… they just become part of that mound of content and it becomes harder to have them stand out unless they’re one of the ‘major’ ones. For every Avatar and Top Gun, there’s a dozen other films that so many people might not ever know exist because they’re buried under a mound of other options on that same service they’re on. And, unless you’re someone on the lookout for things, you just see a name and a picture in a little box, and you don’t know what that is. It makes me feel doing this list is even more imperative than other years, since at least I have somewhat of an ability to introduce people (at least like, four of you) to cool stuff that’s out there.
One trend I did see this year, though, is that it feels like a year of self-reflection and self-indulgence. A lot of films feel like personal projects from their filmmakers, who either wanted to tell their own stories or tell the stories they’ve always wanted to tell (likely accelerated by all that down time that first year of the pandemic), often in such a way that you almost can’t believe they were even allowed to do it. That, to me, feels like the overarching ‘theme’ of 2022, and even though a lot of these films were divisive among audiences now, I do think they will end up being looked at as the most interesting things to come out this year. (more…)
Pic of the Day: “Hey, how’d it look?” “How do you think it looked? It looked like shit going into other shit – in focus.” “What an artist. That was Kurosawa’s motto I think, ‘Shit going into other shit’.” (15th Anniversary)
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