Art Directors Guild Awards

CONTEMPORARY FILM: Black Swan- Therese DePrez

FANTASY FILM: Inception- Guy Hendrix Dyas

PERIOD FILM: The King's Speech- Eve Stewart

Very fine choices, both Black Swan and Inception had such great, complex fixtures; it's a real shame DePrez's work was snubbed by the Academy.

Austin Film Critics

BEST PICTURE

Black Swan

Top Ten of 2010:

1. Black Swan
2. The Social Network
3. Inception
4. Toy Story 3
5. The King's Speech
6. True Grit
7. The Fighter
8. A Prophet
9. Winter's Bone
10. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

DIRECTOR: Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
ACTOR: Colin Firth, The King's Speech
ACTRESS: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale, The Fighter
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Black Swan
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Social Network
FOREIGN FILM: A Prophet
ANIMATED FEATURE: Toy Story 3
DOCUMENTARY: Exit Through the Gift Shop
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Black Swan
ORIGINAL SCORE: TRON: Legacy- Daft Punk
FIRST FILM: Monsters
BEST AUSTIN FILM: Winnebago Man

ROBERT R. McCURDY MEMORIAL BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST AWARD:
Chloe Grace Moretz, Let Me In; Kick-Ass

For those keeping score, this is only the second critics group not to give their top prize to The Social Network (San Diego bestowed there's to Winter's Bone!)

The Swan Went Wide

Over the weekend, Darren Aronofsky's mad and crazy Black Swan went wide across the country, and the results were good, not great, not bad...okay pretty good, yes, sure, let's go with that.  Playing on 959 screens, with a screen average of $8,600, the film earned $8.3 million over the weekend.  It might appear to be a mixed bag, considering the bang-up numbers the film posted in limited release, but a #7 ranking for a Red Shoes on acid trip is quite amazing; this isn't a happy, little crowd-pleaser, but a rattling, tense melding of genre style chills with mad auteur-ish flourishing.

What surprises me however, is the consistence dominance of Black Swan in the awards derby, especially considering some of the more polarizing notices the non-subtle film has attracted.  The dominance of Natalie Portman's awardage is the film easiest get, but that the film has merited so much behind her performance is fairly spectacular-- the 11 nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the 4 Golden Globe nominations, 3 Screen Actors Guild nominations, and technical achievements from various critics societies.  It's shocking that this crazy directorial fantasia has thus far achieved such mainstream plaudits.  The fact that surprises such as Mila Kunis' role earned Globe and SAG nominations proves the film was seen and admired in more areas than expected.

In an effort from Fox Searchlight Pictures, they've struck while the movie was hot, and it's certainly hot, especially while breaking limited release records in it's first two weeks.  Now, here's the biggest test-- the critical elite have had they're say (and some of what they've said is less than stellar), the cool coastal cinephilles have spoken up (this film was always going to be a hit with hip, young, art-house crowd), now a real challenge-- the populist.  While the cynic in me predicts a cold, sad couple of months ahead for the brainy, nervy ballet freak out, but I'm hopeful it will branch out and hook those who might not be the target audience for this.  It's still lost in my dreams.

Black Swan is #1

Well, technically it's number 13 on this weeks box office chart, but it's staggering $1.3 million take on it's first weekend, playing on only 18 screens is pretty incredible.  Managing a bountiful $77,000 per screen average, Black Swan mounted on the record book as distributor Fox Searchlight's best per screen average ever.  It's also the second highest screen average of any film in 2010, closely behind The King's Speech, which last weekend had a $87,000 screen average.  I feel such a sense of odd, and highly inappropriate, accomplishment when thing I love flourish...

14 Days Until Black Swan

Here's a nifty new one-sheet to my current cinematic obsession-- Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.  Love the awesome glamor shot of Natalie Portman, in full diva stance, while the creepy black feathers blow around her.  On a pure marketing level, including the teaser poster and the hot button trailer which, to my delight, set the YouTube nerds a-flutter, this film is top notch, and I detest blatant marketing plans, not matter how important they are.  Lately, however, what's been on my mind, aside from the great high the film gave my on round one (it lingers and haunts; on first viewing, I even had a few nightmares) is the crazy notion that this trippy, art house wonder might actually get the awards attention it deserves, or maybe not...

On first thought, the idea of a crazy, mind-bendy tale of a destructive ballet dancer on the verge of a nervous breakdown seems on odd fit with the respectable, middle of the road bait films that usually conquer Oscar.  Plus this one has some freaky lesbian sex, that even without nudity, might make even the most liberal, adventurous film-goer a bit uncomfortable.  Bloggers report the success of the certain screenings-- namely the AFI gala premiere last week that included all the important industry types and online awards buzz-keepers, yet I still feel hesitant to really proclaim something like this a sure thing with the Academy.  I have many reasons to worry-- first off, my favorites of the year generally miss the big prize; my taste being far from the middle of the road typically.  Secondly, and this one's a bit trickier-- it's easy to think of personal favorites of any given year, but to put to ones mind in the mindset of an Academy voter is a different thing altogether.  The Academy has a large contingent of older members, one's with often finicky tastes, one reason why so many might champion a royal period piece like this years The King's Speech, which fits nicely into the Academy wheelhouse-- respectable, critically applauded, non-offensive.  Not dissing the film, I haven't seen it yet, but likely no one's going to come out outraged, which may happen with Black Swan-- it's an intense, often very genre-oriented film, and again it has some freaky girl-on-girl sex.

Natalie Portman's bravura performance seems to be the easiest to recognize, for she's  a) very famous and attractive.  b) wonderful in the film, but more importantly, she dances and there's plenty of showy effort put into the film.  c) giving a demanding, quite deeply felt performance, one of which suggest a range and magnitude she's never quite delivered on screen before.  d) got the advantage of a great media hook.  e) very famous and attractive; bears repeating.

However director Darren Aronofsky may be seen as a sort of an outsider to certain parts of the Academy.  Perhaps because none of the films (even though they are master works in their own right) have ever being Academy-approved outside of it's actors, and there's more than a few caveats to those nominations:

• Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream (2000)- it's a great performance, but more importantly what probably secured the nomination was that Burstyn is acting royalty, and that level of respect may have transcended the fact that Requiem, while amazing, is a ballsy, daring piece of filmmaking that otherwise the Academy likely wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pole; note the film received no other nominations.

• Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (2008)- again great performance, but Rourke had the advantage of the great media hook of bad boy comeback story, which never was as reflective of Aronofsky's skill as a filmmaker, even though it should have.  Despite the massive critical reception of The Wrestler, and the fact that it's by far the most emotionally accessible of Aronofsky's work to date (including Black Swan), the film only received acting nominations.

• Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler (2008)- yet again a wonderful performance, that Aronofsky is a great one with his actors, yet has never been formally acknowledged.  I have a feeling Tomei got in riding the waves of Mickey Rourke, and had the media hook of all her onscreen nudity.

In a perfect just filmmaking work, Black Swan should be able to coast through with a truckload of nominations, and it just might, but it require a far more adventurous spirit from the Academy than we're used to, and for that I worry.

35 Days Until Black Swan

It's been six days since I've seen Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's latest, and I can honestly write that it's been burning in my mind ever since; the succinct boldness of the film feels unrivaled in recent cinema, just as its hard to categorize.  A strange genre tale of a young woman's unsettling sense of reality, or intense work-about story of the surrendering power one must push themselves to for the sake of art, or bold and twisty tale of horrors.  Whatever Black Swan ends up being described or pitched as, the fundamental factor that plays to it's artistic success is that it's very much it's own thing, a singular and dangerous film of abundant complexity and stunning bravado, it asserts what many have assumed for years-- that Aronofsky is one of the consummate artists of our times, whose films intensely consume the senses; just as with Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, and The Wrestler (which serves as an odd, evil-step-cousin companion piece to Black Swan), the masterful auteur has created an experience, often unsettling, that's bold, audacious, strangely beautiful, that powerfully has the all consuming power to take hold and latch on to our minds, haunting and seductive.  Black Swan is perhaps the purest cinematic experience I've had in a movie theater in quite some time-- it lulled and soothed me, just as it terrified me, but the aching power hasn't let go.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a beautiful young woman, a ballet dancer with the utmost technical precision.  She's tightly wound, filled with insecurities, who lives a highly regimented life with her mother (Barbara Hershey) in Manhattan's Upper West Side, geographically, and cinematically very close to Rosemary's dwelling "The Dakota" in Rosemary's Baby.  Nina's continued ambition is the center of the film and the first half of the film shows the drive she's using for said ambition.  She's in the company of the Lincoln Center ballet, under the tutelage of Thomas (Vincent Cassel), whose tough-minded, seductive approach to dance seems to frighten, seduce and madden Nina.  The new show, an edgy and revisionist production of "Swan Lake" is all Nina wants; and the drive and flurry of perfection is starting to unleash all kinds of mental damage in Nina's distorted and central thinking mindset.

Thomas is hard with Nina, making it known that if all he was looking for was the "White Swan", all pure, she'd be perfect; but it's the "Black Swan", seductive and dangerous, that escapes Nina.  Aronofsky endlessly shows a barrage of rehearsals and dancers trainings, the repetition is important to enter Nina's mind, as well as gasp at the ingenuity of the directors talents.  Almost fetishizing in the same degree he did in The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke's training, we follow Nina, we see her bloody toes and watch every plie, beautifully staged by Aronofsky and his master director of photography, Matthew Libatique, whose hand-held, yet steady work effectively studies Nina's.  The look of the film feels incredibly naturalistic, with it's muted, unsaturated colors matching the flashy, but controlled shots; it looks real, but heightened to a degree to suggest something eerie.

Everything starts to change for Nina, as well as with the film, by the entrance of Lily (Mila Kunis), an upshot dancer just joining the company.  She challenges Nina for the lead in "Swan Lake," not by her dancerly precision and grace, but with her edge and Thomas-approved unabashed sensuality.  Lily tries hard to make with friend with Nina, who appears uninterested to the point of irritated.  That's where the fun of Black Swan starts to really take off, and drift into it's unsettling territory-- it's to the credit of Kunis' performance that we never really quite know whether Lily's actions are true or not; she walks the murky path just enough to where we believe Lily is a real viable threat, out to All About Eve her way to the lead role, or just a down to earth naughty girl.  Either the toll of Nina's already fractured psyche is palpable and just getting worse.  With Lily getting closer, Thomas' showing creepy advances, as well as the endless rehearsal time, we follow Nina down the rabbit hole headed to her balletic abyss.  Not to mention the creepiness of ex-leading company member Beth (vividly and chillingly played by Winona Ryder, in a glorified cameo), now a disembodied mess in intensive care, thanks to her "self-afflicted" accident.

It's really difficult to describe Black Swan in a tangible way because most of the film is a bit abstract, similar contextually to perhaps other fractured psyche films like Persona and Mulholland Drive, with much indebted structurally by The Red Shoes, the Michael Powell directed tour-de-force, also a fairy tale about ballet dancers.  But its also an incredible, deeply felt mood film.  The mirrors that Nina is constantly surrounded by help add a creepily, almost self aware quality for the film, we see, but also achingly feel the pressures of Nina's severeness.  And yet, what makes the film it's own, is its chief quality, which is the character study of Nina Sayers, in a role of unmatched, and honestly unforeseen bravura by Natalie Portman.

She dances the part, both literally and not, and under the tutelage of Aronofsky (perhaps like Nina with Thomas) gives her most potent, powerful, dangerous and sexy performance.  With her soft, child-like voice, which complements, in an utterly freaked out way her very child-like existence at home, Portman creates an unforgettable and utterly captivating portrait of young woman whose almost imprisoned by her mother (her relationship with Hershey is significantly eerie, and almost felt as a tease; a whole other film could be made here), severely lacking in basic social skills, sexually inexperienced, to a point of maladjustment; but whose light at the end of the tunnel is her art.  As Nina goes down the rabbit hole, Portman compellingly loses herself on screen, underplaying it all the way, while simultaneously going for broke.  It's the darkest, most intensely challenging performance she's ever given, and it's unease will provoke the cinematic universe, I would assume for quite some time.  In a strange, perhaps even perverse way, Black Swan feels like the toughest, most stinging character study since Daniel Day-Lewis' portrait in There Will Be Blood; I want to importantly note that I'm not comparing both films, just stating a comment about how a role is individually felt by myself.

Portman taking her hold over her audience.

The point of the film I suppose is the very power of art, on it's audience (of which I suspect many will likely not care for Black Swan, it's Aronofsky's headiest since The Fountain), to it's participants.  And how the pursuit of one's art is all consuming, the point of danger, or perhaps it should be if you're any good at it, or care for it.  And Aronofsky obviously does care, and ridiculously good at it.  Whatever happens with the cultural outcome of Black Swan, I honestly feel that every shot, every line of dialogue (written by first-timers Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz) was absolutely the way it's intended to be, and the thrilling horror and suspense already feels to me, six days after viewing, as a thing of classic beauty to be discussed and challenged for years and years to come.  It's all consuming, and as lulled by it's dreaminess of first sight as I was, I haven't shaken it since, and never really want to either.  A

39 Days Until Black Swan

Through a lovely piece of happenstance, I saw Black Swan today.  Sometimes persistence and luck pay off in a beautiful way.  I'm going to tease a bit before I really fully start writing about it.  I don't trust my immediate reaction; or maybe I just need time to recuperate-- gathering my thoughts; they're all aflutter.

Here's a fleeting, yet beautiful image to the sublime photography.

A website, finely and obsessively, entering ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) messed up head-space has emerged, I JUST WANT TO BE PERFECT.

42 Days Until Black Swan

Current Rotten Tomatoes rating: 94% (18 reviews)

Congrats to your Gotham Award nomination for Best Feature!  I'm obsessing, and I'm sure just setting myself up for disappointment, but I want this movie so badly.  Ms. Portman freaks me out in this still; I'm scared and titillated.  December 3rd.

46 Days Till Black Swan

Since I'm not special enough to have seen the film yet, easily my most anticipated film to come out this year, all I have to drool at the beautiful, newly unveiled European poster work.  I salivate:

Why are European poster work always superior to American art?  Our images are typically so bland, full of the freaky floating heads and the likes.

Black Swan

I'm falling into movie geek heaven as this lovely looking trailer plays.  The anticipation and expectation is palpable!!!!!

The Many Faces of Natalie

I really don't have much to write about this other than I think it's an awesome image, being one of the first stills to be released from what is hopefully Darren Aronofsky's latest awesome film, Black Swan.  The film's cinematographer is Matthew Libatique, whose photographed all of Aronofsky's works, with the except of The Wrestler.  He's also the preferred lenser of Spike Lee and John Favreau.  While Oscar hasn't paid attention to his particular gifts just yet, he did receive an Independent Spirit Award for Requiem For a Dream.

Black Swan to Open Venice Film Festival

While the full line-up of the 67th Annual Venice Film Festival has yet to be unveiled, their website is confirming that Darren Aronofsky's latest, Black Swan, will be the opening night attraction, and be in competition.  Described as a psychological drama set in the New York Ballet, focusing on the rivalry between two ballerinas, played by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.  The supporting cast includes Barbara Hershey, Vincent Cassel, and Winona Ryder.  I'm sooo looking forward to this, so I wish I was in the film elite and that I could fly to Venice on a whim for this.  The movie is being released later this year by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Aronofsky's latest triumph, The Wrestler won the top award at the Venice Film Festival in 2008, where it debuted and assuredly awed.  As an avid fan of Mr. Aronofsky's work (even the the much reviled The Fountain is such an incoherently interesting feature, it's hard to completely loathe, I'd say-- I think it flawed, but hypnotic), I'm anxious and nervous about this one, but since he's proven such an assured, often brilliant filmmaker, I think it's safe to say, that at the very least, there's a nugget of something here.  Just as so, I'm always curious about the major film festival, and the big ones (Venice and Toronto) are just over a month away.  Venice starts September 1 to September 11.

While other titles haven't been made official yet, speculation is that Julian Schnabel's latest, Miral, his follow-up to 2007's The Diving Bell & the Butterfly starring Frieda Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) will debut as well, as well as Sofia Coppola's latest, Somewhere, starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning (remember Lost in Translation made it's big splash in 2003 at Venice for a sense of history), as well as Tom Hopper's (HBO's John Adams), The King's Speech starring Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter.  The big question however is if Terrence Malick's latest, The Tree of Life, might make it's premiere at Venice, after missing on Cannes.  I have a feeling I may never see it!