Voyager: The Films of Peter Weir opens today at the Walter Reade Theater in New York and runs through the weekend. In the Voice, Nicolas Rapold surveys the oeuvre: "Weir's sense of foreboding, stroked by languidly offbeat editing, bloomed with his 1975 critical breakout, Picnic at Hanging Rock. The filmmaker's precarious mix of irony and dippiness reaches a sweet spot of the sort often missed in the vague follow-throughs that plague his work. Fortunately, mood is all there is in Weir's hothouse fusion of Victorian ghost story and outback omen, as he renders the tale of white-clad schoolgirls who vanish while clambering up a magnetic mountain. Synth whooshes, distorted earthquake samples, and pan flute swirl around the serene and shrill femininity on display (vistas by DP Russell Boyd)." Update, 1/8: Terrence Rafferty talks with Weir for the New York Times.
LISTS AND AWARDS
Mark Asch: "Last month the L's senior film writers, myself included, unveiled their year-end Top 10 lists; now, in an attempt to define, beyond our (sometimes profoundly) individual tastes, the sensibility of the L's film section... we present our second annual poll of our regular contributors." Topping the list of 25 films is Maren Ade's Everyone Else.
"Things in movies that made me feel as if my head would explode, in joy or disgust or both, during 2010." Jim Emerson's "Exploding Head Awards 2010."
"How I Despised Excellence in 2010": the title of Alejandro Adams's list this year is explained in part by the list that precedes it, 21 films he downright hated. As for what he loved, the #1 spot's shared by Bong Joon-ho's Mother and Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine, which "is the film A Serious Man wanted to be — though it ends with something like Christian uplift instead of Jewish downpush. These films feature two of the best roles for women anywhere, ever. I wept."
"Among the Austin Chronicle's three film critics, Black Swan earned a spot somewhere within each writer's top three picks for the best film of 2010, thus making the movie a shoo-in for selection as our overall No. 1 film of the year," writes Marjorie Baumgarten. The individual lists: Marjorie Baumgarten, Kimberley Jones and Marc Savlov.
Critics for the Philadelphia City Paper select their "Top 21 Movies of 2010." The Social Network tops Drew Taylor's ten at the Playlist. And the New York Press runs Armond White's annual provocation, the "Better-Than List 2010."
"The Scripter Awards, a juried award created by USC Libraries to honor film adaptations of literary works, has announced their annual nominees," reports Peter Knegt at indieWIRE, where Anne Thompson adds that the "Cinema Audio Society nominees for sound in motion pictures in 2010 are Black Swan, Inception, Shutter Island, The Social Network and True Grit."
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