Latest Contrarian Week News:
In his New York Observer year-end wrap-up (and ten-best list), Andrew Sarris attempts to steal the thunder of one of his New York "alternative weekly" rivals.
Sarris writes:
Fortunately, modern technology makes it almost impossible for a good movie to get “lost” because of end-of-the-year mental exhaustion. So, with the proviso that I still have a great deal of catching up to do, here are my considered choices for the various 10-best categories, and one of my patented 10-worst lists under the provocative heading of “Movies Other People Liked and I Didn’t.” I am not at all deterred in dishing out my annual supply of negativity by the correspondent who informed me last year that he preferred all the films on my 10-worst list to all the films on my 10-best list. I have long ago become resigned to my fate as a reviled revisionist ever since my first column in The Village Voice in 1960 hailed Alfred Hitchcock as a major artist for "Psycho," and inspired more hate mail than any Voice column had received up to that time. That clinched my job at the ever-contrarian Voice, and I have simply gone on from there.So, how contrarian is the "reviled revisionist" 46 years later? Let's see:
"The Departed" as best film of the year. (Only in New York!)
"Blood Diamond" as #5.
Best Supporting Actresses:
1) Jennifer Connelly, "Blood Diamond"
2) Gong Li, "Miami Vice"
3) Maggie Gyllenhaal, "World Trade Center"
And then there's this:
Other striking male performances were provided by: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Alec Baldwin and Anthony Anderson in The Departed; Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber and Toby Jones in The Painted Veil; Wim Willaert in When the Sea Rises; Leslie Phillips and Richard Griffiths in Venus; Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Inside Man; Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase and Shido Nakamura in Letters from Iwo Jima; Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin and Paul Dano in Little Miss Sunshine; Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell in The Illusionist; Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Noah Emmerich, Gregg Edelman and Ty Simpkins in Little Children; Keanu Reeves, Christopher Plummer and Dylan Walsh in The Lake House; Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena and Stephen Dorff in World Trade Center; Tim Blake Nelson, Pat Corley, Jeffrey Donovan, Stacy Keach and Scott Wilson in Come Early Morning; Ryan Gosling and Anthony Mackie in Half Nelson; Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, and Danny Huston in Marie Antoinette; Matt Damon, Michael Gambon, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro, Keir Dullea, Timothy Hutton, Eddie Redmayne, Mark Ivanir and Joe Pesci in The Good Shepherd; Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones and Ben Foster in X-Men: The Last Stand; Mads Mikkelsen, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini, Simon Abkarian, Sebastien Foucan, Jesper Christensen and Tobias Menzies in Casino Royale; Ebru Ceylan and Mehmet Eryilmaz in Climates; Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck and Bob Hoskins in Hollywoodland; Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover, Keith Robinson and Hinton Battle in Dreamgirls; Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Trevor Fehrman, Kevin Smith and Jason Lee in Clerks II; Justin Kirk and Jamie Harrold in Flannel Pajamas; Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker and Adrian Grenier in The Devil Wears Prada; Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Hulce in Stranger Than Fiction; Samuel L. Jackson, Curtis Jackson, Chad Michael Murray, Sam Jones III and Brian Presley in Home of the Brave; Harris Yulin, Ty Burrell and Boris McGiver in Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Max Minghella, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Matt Keeslar, Ethan Suplee, Joel David Moore and Nick Swardson in Art School Confidential; Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes and Alec Baldwin in Running with Scissors; Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Ciarán Hinds, Justin Theroux, Barry Shabaka Henley, Luis Tosar and John Ortiz in Miami Vice; Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Alex Jennings, Roger Allam and Tim McMullan in The Queen; Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Eldard, William Forsythe, Anthony Mackie, Marlon Sherman and Clarke Peters in Freedomland; Vin Diesel, Peter Dinklage, Linus Roache, Alex Rocco, Ron Silver and Raul Esparza in Find Me Guilty; Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci, Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley in Lucky Number Slevin; Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Chris Klein, Shohreh Aghdashloo, John Cho, Tony Yalda, Sam Golzari and Willem Dafoe in American Dreamz; Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Rory Cochrane in A Scanner Darkly; Adam Beach, Ryan A. Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, John Benjamin Hickey, Jon Slattery, Barry Pepper, Jamie Bell, Paul Walker and Robert Patrick in Flags of Our Fathers; Chow Yun-Fat in Curse of the Golden Flower; Sergi López, Doug Jones, Álex Angulo and Federico Luppi in Pan’s Labyrinth; Bill Nighy in Notes on a Scandal.Take that, A----- W----!
That's hilarious.
You could call him the double-contrarian, or the contrarian's contrary. Or something like that. Regardless of where you stand, however, [i]Blood Diamond[/i] is a p---- of s---.
Jim, who are you to put down "The Departed"? This is coming from the guy who wrote one of the worst movies of all time,("It's Pat"), and put one of the worst films of recent years ("Perfume") at #2 on his 10 best list. On the other hand, "The Departed" is an absurdly enjoyable gangster flick, Martin Scorsese's return to form. The class wars, the racial thuggery, the Southie striving: local kid William Monahan's screenplay captured everything up to and including the appropriate Boston slur to be used against an opposing teammate ("homo!"). "Departed" is a monster movie, and a brilliantly nasty one: Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello is a creature of operatic vileness (much more interesting, really, than the man who inspired him), and the two kids, Damon and DiCaprio, are mirror mutations of shifting good and evil. Not a perfect film -- that final shot is a groaner -- but mighty, mighty close.
Dave -- I really like your take on "The Departed" as a monster movie. I have my problems with it (as I've written about in detail), but there's much to enjoy. But it's not about me.
I wasn't taking a shot at "The Departed" (though maybe a bit at New York Scorsese cult-worship). Just throwing it out there (playfully) and asking: A contrarian choice? Or not-so-contrarian?
If you want to read a really nasty demolition of "The Departed" (and latter-day Scorsese) check out the review in the latest issue of cinema scope.
I'm with you on "The Departed," Jim. I didn't dislike it at all, but since the response to the film has been overwhelmingly positive, any expression of my reservations regarding the film are usually interpreted as a negative review of the film. I actually enjoyed it in spite of my problems with it, the major one being that it felt too calculated. It was structured too conveniently, I think, which is why I found it so hard to dig into these characters' minds. Though I did find DiCaprio's character very interesting. When it comes down to it, I wouldn't be surprised if the film wins Best Picture, if only for the reason that it felt too much like a screenwriter's concoction, enjoyable as it was.
On another note, I made my own contribution to "Contrarian Week," taking the discussion in a different direction.
This is coming from the guy who wrote one of the worst movies of all time,("It's Pat")
You could say the same thing for Roger Ebert -- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls isn't even good soft-core porn. But luckily you don't have to be an engineer to know that when a bridge collapses, someone screwed up.