Kinematoscope

My favorite films of 2009. Since they're already semi-covered in detail in my preferred Oscar nominations and since we have best of the decade stuff coming up, let's go with some best-of particulars in lieu of paragraphs about why they're each awesome.


10. In The Loop

Best quote: "..it falls well within my purview!"
-"Within your 'purview'? Where do you think you are, some f**king regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some f**king Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your sh**ter with a lubricated horse c**k!"

Best Quote Safe For Work: None.

Best Post-Script: When you, presuming you're an ignorant American like myself, are informed by Wikipedia that In The Loop is a spinoff of the BBC series "The Thick Of It," which means there is at least nine more hours of Peter Capaldi as Malcom Tucker.


9. Broken Embraces

Best Left Field Soundtrack Selection: "Werewolf" by Cat Power


Best Plot Twist: Most of the plot, for once, seems plausible, which is rare for Almodovar. But late in the film we find out that someone is someone else's father, in a familiar soap-operatic moment that is never adressed again. It made me chuckle.

8. Inglourious Basterds

Best Film Within A Film: There's a German propagande movie in the big premier at the end of IB about a sniper that kills 300+ Allied soldiers, and it seems to be entirely composed of hilarious pratfalls and Wilhelm Screams.

Best Mangled Italian: "A-ree-ver-DARE-chee."

Best Mangled English: the title.


7. Sherlock Holmes

Best Victory Of The Rational: Spoilers: much of Sherlock Holmes points toward a villain that controls the Dark Arts, but the big ending reveals it was all trickery. I nearly clapped: I'm sick of things coming down on the supernatural side anytime there's a question- even if its mostle religous horror films (The Reaping, Stigmata, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) or every episode of "The X-Files" (was Scully's skepticism ever prudent?).

Best Broken Instruments: To give the score more "edges" to be in tune with the mid-Industrial-Revolution period film, Hans Zimmer just up and broke stuff. From an interview: "A lot of the percussion in the movie isn’t percussion...It’s someone totally mistreating their upright bass."

And what became of the out-of-tune piano they used? "...then I thought, rather than use big drums what would a piano sound like if you dropped it down a flight of stairs? ...We rented 20th Century Fox’s underground car park one Sunday and did hideous things to a piano."

6. District 9

Best Pre-Emptive Strike: I think an underrated part of the Best Picture race is the degree to which District 9 stole Avatar's thunder some months beforehand- who would have thought it would only be the second-best sci-fi actioner in which a human betrays his own kind to save an alien race, ultimately becoming one of them? It makes it easier to argue for The Hurt Locker, which is truly one of a kind this year.

Best Dodged Bullet: Does anyone really think that a movie based on the "Halo" video game series, which fell apart and led to District 9 instead, would have been anything but a big-budget disaster? When has a video game movie ever worked? Seriously, try to read the plot summary for "Halo" without your eyes glazing over.


5. Up In The Air

Best Trailer Of The Year: The first teaser was craftily edited to Clooney's motivational speech:


Best Scenes Of Destruction: For me, the most resonant images of our economic times from Up In The Air weren't the real people they worked into the firing scenes, but a few images of ravaged workplaces- our heroes arrive to fire the last few people in a stripped empty cubicle pool, or seeing Kendrick sitting in a room full of unused chairs.

4. Star Trek

Best Flawed Science: Though the time-travel logic in Star Trek is sound, nearly everything else is completely backwards. Among many innaccuracies, there's no way to conceivable drill to a planet's core without the hole collapsing, a black hole made out of a planet would only be the size or a marble, how big Vulcan would be in the sky on Delta Vega, supernovas can't really "threaten the galaxy," and there's no way the warp core explosion would have saved them at the end.

But you know what? It was too awesome for me to care.

Best Terrible Pun: "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?!"


3. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Best All-Purpose Curse Word Substitute: Expressions uttered by claymation animals in this film include "Cuss yeah," "The cuss you are," and "A real cluster-cuss." That's how you keep it PG.

Best Vague Anthropomorphism: The Fox family and friends all walked, talked, and listened to Burl Ives records, but I wasn't clear if they could speak directly with humans- at one point there's a recording of an animal hostage, but there's no dialogue. They do communicate in notes written with cut-out magazine letters, though.

2. The Hurt Locker

Best Abrupt Snap To Reality: One of my favorite lines from The Hurt Locker comes about halfway through- Anothony Mackie's staff seargeant, after a night of dunken bonding with his renegade superior Jeremy Renner, asks him if he thinks he has what it takes "to put on the suit," the protective gear of the OED squad leader.

In a boilerplate sappy war film or Hollywood action movie, he would of course reply: "Someday," or whatever, but instead Renner snorts a derisive "Hell no."

Best Stand-in For Civilian Banality: the grocery isle at the supermarket:





1. The Brothers Bloom

Best Opening Sequence In Rhyming Verse: "What kind of cave? -A Cave..Of Wonder! -Psh! -Shut up, Dave."

Best Card Trick: None of this is CGI:



True story.

Fun fact: this award was originally called "Best Interior Decoration," because movies used to just be shot in rooms in studios and nowhere else.

Also from 1940 to 1956 (and then randomly again in 1959) they gave separate awards to color and black & white films. I feel like a similar division should happen soon for CGI and non-CGI. Seriously, how can we consider Avatar to win an award that's supposed to be for production design and set decoration when it had barely any sets?

1. Avatar- Art Direction: Rick Carter (0 for 1) and Robert Stromberg (0 for 1); Set Decoration: Kim Sinclair (0 for 0)

This seems like the best place to recognize the extent to which James Cameron and his team nerded out making this a complete world. Apparently they put together a 380-page book called "Pandorapedia" with all sorts of information about fake aliens species, and even a Sigourney-Weaver-narrated short Discovery Channel style special about it, which will no doubt be on the DVD.

2. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus- Art Direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; Set Decoration: Caroline Smith (all 0 for 0)

Like I said, the awards that Gilliam's films should always get never seem to materialize. That said, while Parnassus was better than his last few efforts by far, it was still haphazard and disjointed- the fantasia sequences had nothing to do with reality at all.

Compare this to say, Time Bandits, which frames the fantastic with the mundane in a wonderful way.

3. Nine- Art Direction: John Myhre (2 for 4); Set Decoration: Gordon Sim (1 for 1)

Oh, Nine. So many awards were yours to lose a while ago: Best Original Song, costumes, art direction... Maybe even supporting actress for one of the eight thousand big name actresses you seem to have.

Then you had to come out and pretty much blow. Go figure.

4. Sherlock Holmes- Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood (0 for 2); Set Decoration: Katie Spencer (0 for 2)

I'm super proud of myself for remembering that Greenwood and Spencer are the team from all of Joe Wright's films (including Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, with nominations for both), whose work I quite enjoy. If there's a potential spoiler for this award, I say it's Sherlock, which had just as much (relative) sucess late in the year, and is a more traditional period piece to boot.

5. The Young Victoria- Art Direction: Patrice Vermette (0 for 0); Set Decoration: Maggie Gray (0 for 1)

Still haven't seen it, but I'm sure the work was solid. Not solid enough to overcome less than $10 million at the box office though.

Art Direction is a goofy category, sometimes going with the obvious frontrunner (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button last year), and sometimes going for a wildcard that actually merits it (like Sweeney Todd or Pan's Labyrinth).

And the Art Director's Guild is no help at all, since they take the coward's route and have seperate categories for fantasy (Avatar), period (Sherlock Holmes), and contemporary films (The Hurt Locker).

My call is Avatar once again, but with little certainty this time.

Although it had its usual share of hiccups yet again (like disqualifying Where The Wild Things Are), the Score category surprised me with two of my favorites that I thought would be overlooked, and another great inclusion that didn't even occur to me.

1. Avatar- James Horner (2 for 8)

For your consideration: "War"


Funny how the future as depicted in cinema looks better and fancier all the time, but the soundtrack is the same old bombastic thing. Witness the above selection, a pretty standard Greek-chorus type of thing- seems like it could be from a chariot race or gladiator fight, not a huge battle between twin-blade space helicopters, robot-exoskeletons and big alien dinosaurs. If you want to see the future done right, see Clint Mansell's great work on the indie Moon.

Horner is a frequent nominee, but has wins only for Titanic's score and song. If he takes the trophy, it will probably be good news for the film's Best Picture chances.

2. Fantastic Mr. Fox- Alexandre Desplat (0 for 2)

For your consideration: "Kristofferson's Theme"


Desplat had a busy year in 2009- so much that I was sure that he'd get nominated for his work in Coco Before Chanel, A Prophet, Julie and Julia, or even New Moon before his wonderfully vibrant Fox score.

He matches frequent Wes Anderson composer Mark Mothersbaugh's plucky string work with some richer, more emotional compositions which helped make Fantastic Mr. Fox arguably Anderson's most affecting film.

3. The Hurt Locker- Marco Beltrami (0 for 1) and Buck Sanders (0 for 0)

For your consideration: "The Way I Am"


Hey did you know there's super-loud death metal band called "Hurtlocker"? Just a tip if you're looking for score clips on YouTube and have headphones in. I learned the hard away.

Anyway, a wonderful inclusion of a score I forgot about. It seems a lot like the branch trying to make up for certain past omissions, since the score has a lot of similarities to Zimmer and Howard's dark, atonal Dark Knight score- plus one track (from the six IED scene) is even entitled "There Will Be Bombs," an homage to Johnny Greenwood's tragically disqualified score from '07.

4. Sherlock Holmes- Hans Zimmer (1 for 7)

For your consideration: "Not In Blood, But In Bond"


Loved Zimmer's work here, especially the plaintive tack above when it looks like Watson died in an explosion (spoiler- he was fine. I'm sure you're shocked). The whole score had a very broken-piano, ranshackle, steampunk feel to it that was superb.

5. Up- Michael Giacchino (0 for 1)

For your consideration: "Married Life"


Your likely winner, thanks to the unforgettable early montage in Up that made everyone all teary-eyed. Giacchino's score does most of the heavy lifting in that sequence, and the score weaves in and out of the rest of the film nicely.