The Reel Society of Film Critics Awards Ceremony 2011

[Geezer]

Damn that Jeremy Renner is fantastic!

[silversurfer19]

Looks very impressive, I liked Gone Baby Gone despite a few flaws, look forward to seeing this eventually.

Back to the awards:

Best Foreign Language Picture

The nominees are:

A Prophet
Dogtooth
I Am Love
Mother
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

And the winner is....

[silversurfer19]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo


I just recently got the chance to see this, and it was very deserving of it's accolades. I voted for Mother first and foremost, but this was a very capable second choice.

[silversurfer19]

And now an award to recognise the best cumulative performances of a movie, with:

Best Cast

The nominees are:

Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Social Network
True Grit

And the winner is...

[silversurfer19]

Inception


It was extremely tight in the end, with all five movies within two votes of each other! Can't complain though, it was a terrific ensemble cast which Nolan directed well.

[silversurfer19]

Now onto the only Best Picture nominee which was an animated movie. It's already won the Best Animated Picture award, as well as Best Villain, so it's looking in good form for the award. Shrykespeare presents:

Toy Story 3

It's a rare thing when a sequel is as good as its predecessor. It's even rarer when the third part of a trilogy is the best of the three (and no, I don't count climaxes of pre-determined trilogies like The Return of the King... everyone knew that was coming before the first Lord of the Rings film hit theaters). I'm not sure if any done-for-the-heck-of-it third chapter in any trilogy has ever been nominated for Best Picture, but if one was ever going to be, you had to know that it would be something created by the geniuses at Pixar. The studio that has cranked out hit after hit, amazing story after amazing story, shattered pretty much every record for what an animated film could achieve with Toy Story 3. Not only was it the highest-grossing film of 2010 (by far), but it was also one of the very best-reviewed, two qualities that almost no movie in HISTORY has shared. (For the record, it's also the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time behind Shrek 2 and is as well as the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time.)

Whereas the original Toy Story asked the question, "What do toys do when no one is around?", Toy Story 3 asked the much more poignant question, "What do toys do when their owners grow up and no longer need them anymore?" For this is the case: young Andy has matured into a teenager now heading off to college, and his days of playing make-believe with his best friends Woody, Buzz and the gang are long past. The gang is resigned to the notion of being relegated to the attic to await the possibility of being companions for any of Andy's future progeny, but an unfortunate mishap ends up with them being donated to the nearby Sunnyside Daycare Center, where they are welcomed with open arms by the center's toy's leader, the strawberry-scented Lots-o-Huggin' Bear. However, it takes very little time for the new arrivals to realize that Sunnyside harbors a very dark secret. Therefore, it becomes the mission of Woody and his friends - Great Escape style - to find a way out of Sunnyside and back to Andy before it's too late.

After fifteen years, the characters of Buzz, Woody, Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead, Jesse, Rex, Slinkydog, Hamm and the rest of the group have become very familiar characters to us, so much so that even though they are technically inanimate objects, they feel like real people to us. We have become invested in their safety and their well-being. But there comes a point in this film where the group faces real and imminent danger; in that moment, you are almost overwhelmed with emotion at how strong the bond of friendship is between them, and just how much you really do care about them. It had me moved to actual tears, as did the ending, which, I have to say, could not have been more perfectly written for this series of amazing, timeless films. For that's what the Toy Story films are all about: friendship, and acceptance. That we, as viewers, need a bunch of animated playthings to teach us how much these things matter to US is a testament to the quality of the people at Pixar and the sheer, unbridled power of the influence of film.

[silversurfer19]

What a fantastic picture. That trailer may have inspired me to watch it again tonight on DVD.

Anyway, into the business end of the award show now, with the four major awards to come. First up...

Best Actress In A Leading Role

The nominees are:

Julianne Moore, The Kids Are Alright
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Noomi Rapace, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Emma Stone, Easy A

And the winner is...

[silversurfer19]

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

And by a freaking huge margin. Was there ever a more obvious choice for an award, Portman completely blew me away with an intense performance.

[silversurfer19]

To finish up the acting categories, we have the next award, and one which was much more fiercely contested:

Best Actor In A Leading Role

The nominees are:

Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King's Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours
Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter

And the winner is...

[mateostarr]

My only qualms so far are Chloe Moretz and Dragon Tattoo but I will assume not enough people saw A Prophet or Dogtooth. Like most of the winners though.

[silversurfer19]

James Franco, 127 Hours

127 Hours' first award of the night, and I was so delighted to see the award go this way. It was neck and neck between Eisenberg, Franco and Bridges. A truly phenomenol performance from Franco which blew me away, so much more than I expected.

[mateostarr]

If only the Academy pulled off a shocker like this on Sunday I would be much too pleased. Very happy to see it was between Franco and Eisenberg.

Firth should have won last year.

[silversurfer19]

My only qualms so far are Chloe Moretz and Dragon Tattoo but I will assume not enough people saw A Prophet or Dogtooth. Like most of the winners though.

Both of those awards were very, very tight. The Supporting actress could have gone either way between four actresses, with only 2 votes separating them all, while Dragon Tattoo won by a slender vote to A Prophet and Mother.

[W]

Go James Franco!

[silversurfer19]

Now the final Featurette, with six presenting:

True Grit

They said over 30 years ago that the Western is dead. Well it seems no one told Joel and Ethan Coen, the greatest directing team in modern Hollywood. Not only did they make a Western, but they made a remake of a quintessential Western, 1969’s True Grit starring quintessential cowboy John Wayne. Returning to the source novel by Henry Hathaway, the Coens portray a grim, cut-throat world of thieves, killers, and savages. Yet they throw on their unique brand of dark humour to create such an entertaining film. Their sizzling script is brought to life by the great Jeff Bridges, replacing John Wayne’s nobility with gruffness and grime. But the real surprise is newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, plucked from obscurity to play the rigid and determined minor Mattie Ross, who is bent of avenging her father’s murder.

Trust the Coens to prove that sometimes a remake can trump the original.