The WORKING TITLE Awards 2008

WINNERS TO BE ANNOUNCED SPORADICALLY BEFORE NEW YEAR. KEEP CHECKING BACK

all results to be displayed in order of preference: (2) signifies second place and so on.

Actor In A Lead Role:

Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood - WINNER
Just.. just watch it, okay?

Colin Farrell - In Bruges (2)

Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (3)
Robert Downey Jr. - Iron Man (4)
John Malkovich - Burn After Reading (5)

Actor In A Supporting Role:

Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight - WINNER
Who else could we possibly have picked?

Gary Oldman - The Dark Knight (2)
Javier Bardem - No Country For Old Men (3)
George Clooney - Burn After Reading (4)
Robert Downer Jr. - Tropic Thunder (5)

Actress In A Lead Role:

Ellen Page - Juno - WINNER
The Cautionary Whale is one of Page's best roles yet. Fun yet believable.

Mila Kunis - Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Angelina Jolie - The Changeling
Thandie Newton - RocknRolla
Selma Blair - Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Actress In A Supporting Role:

Téa Leoni - Ghost Town - WINNER
Peculiar choice, we know. But it's our choice

Olga Kurylenko - Quantum Of Solace (2)
Lizzy Caplan - Cloverfield (3)
Tilda Swinton - Burn After Reading (4)
Elizabeth Banks - W. (5)

Best Soundtrack:

In Bruges - WINNER
Dark, ominous and foreboding. Fits perfectly with the tone of the film and tugs at the heartstrings.

Wall-E (2)
The Dark Knight (3)
Sweeney Todd (4)
Twilight (5)

Best Animated Film:

Wall-E - WINNER
The little robot binman with the huge heart bags the big one

Waltz With Bashir (2)
Persepolis (3)
Horton Hears a Who! (4)
Bolt (5)

Best Summer Blockbuster:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - WINNER
Too much bad press for what was a worthy inclusion to the franchise. CGI monkeys aside, a brilliant film by objective standards.
[this award not to be confused with Best Film]

Iron Man
The Dark Knight
Pineapple Express
Tropic Thunder
Speed Racer
Sex and the City
The Incredible Hulk
The Happening
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
nb. No criteria was used for shortlist, so even low-rated films were included for this category

The Buried Treasure Award (small budget, small release films):

Slumdog Millionaire - WINNER
Tense, tragic and beautiful. Your preconceptions of this film only scratch the surface of what waits in this masterpiece.

Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (2)
The Signal (3)
Funny Games (4)
Eden Lake (5)


Best Hero:

One Two (RocknRolla) - WINNER
Gerard Butler's One-Two is the hardest and most fun Hero we think we've seen this year.

Iron Man (Iron Man) (2)
Batman (The Dark Knight) (3)
Horton (Horton Hears a Who!) (4)
Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) (5)

Best Villain:

The Joker (The Dark Knight) - WINNER
terrifying, hilarious, awe inspiring villain.

Harry Waters (In Bruges) (2)
Batman's Voice (The Dark Knight) (3)
Trees (The Happening) (4)
Apathy (Wall-E) (5)

Best Moment:

"I am Iron Man" (Iron Man) - WINNER
Still makes me smile every time I see it. The perfect ending.

Mark Wahlberg begs a plastic plant for mercy (The Happening) (2)
A Bottle! (In Bruges) (3)
Can't Smile Without You (Hellboy II: The Golden Army) (4)

The birth of the batpod (The Dark Knight) (5)


Most Pleasantly Surprising Film:

Step Brothers - WINNER
the title says it all. Bravo!

RocknRolla (2)
Wanted (3)*
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (3)*
The Incredible Hulk (5)


Most Disappointing Film:

The Spirit - WINNER
:(

The Happening (2)
Jumper (3)
Righteous Kill (4)
The Tracey Fragments (5)

Worst Film (To be decided on votes):

The Happening - 17 - WINNER
Shyamalan sh**s a shocker of a film. And not in a good way

Sex and the City: The Movie - 13
10,000 BC - 7

Jumper - 6
88 Minutes - 3

Best Film:

In Bruges - WINNER
A perfectly formed, dialogue driven, black-as-the-night comedy with all the right undertones of tragedy. A masterpiece.

The Dark Knight (2)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (3)
RocknRolla (4)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (5)
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Review: Four Christmases

Yuck. Look, even the title looks wrong! "Christmases" is just one of those words that should not be. It's unnatural to type or even to look at. A certain irony can be found in this, as that is exactly how I felt about watching this film. Right from the off our leading Duo Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughan summon exactly nought charisma as Vaughan, the awkward, intellectual nice guy approaches an icy Witherspoon in a horrible, crowded nightclub. He tries a few lines on her, which she rebounds back at him. Classic stuff really, and that's what grates. These two admittedly entertaining actors appear to just be going through the motions in this unremarkable seasonal comedy. There's no spark, no will to make this film anything more than a yuletide moneymaker for all those involved. Sad, really.

It turns out, by the way, the beginning scene with Vince and Reese talking in the club was all an act. They've been dating for three years and like to pretend to be other people on nights out. An effort, it can be assumed to portray our characters as edgy and cool, when really it comes off as a bit disturbing. If this couple of 3 years can't go out to dinner without making up fake personas and fornicating in the bathrooms (that's what happens eventually), I wouldn't call that edgy. I'd call it sad.

And so, the film reluctantly plods along. We see Thing 1 and Thing 2 as they arrive at the airport, to find their annual Christmas getaway is impossible. To make matters worse, an intrusive reporter barges her way in to the front of the check-in line and interviews them. In a bizarre occurrence, all four of their parents happening to be watching the news at precisely that time on four different houses and begin flooding our bewildered protagonists with offers and ultimatums regarding a Christmas visit. Not content with devising a hasty excuse and waiting it out, they decide it's best to go to all four Christmas parties, then fly out for their holiday the next day.

As I previously mentioned, this story grates. Even this most unusual of set-ups seems far too formulaic. It's way too obvious no-one in this film was trying. No-one. and it's SUCH a shame. Because I wanted to like this film. Vince Vaughan, entertaining as he might be is trying my patience with his more high-profile roles. (See Dodgeball **, The Break Up ** and Fred Clause *). And Reese Witherspoon, well, look at her, she's so damn small and feisty! I wanted to like this film for them. But I couldn't. A Jarring and frankly bizarre script and mismatch cast ruined the illusion of a family film. Throwing cheap laughs at the wall and a boring, conventional message at the end is just lazy, and irritating.

Four Christmases. It will not go down in history as one of the all-time worst films. It's so unremarkable, so normal, bland and unsatisfying I don't think it will go down in anything. A turkey pun just crossed my mind, and I considered putting it in. I can't believe it.

Rating: **

Thanks for reading all, I shall be reviewing the Tim Burton Classic "The Nightmare Before Christmas" on Christmas day, so look out for it.

Happy holidays, folks. Tom.
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A little something that caught my eye...

The Hollywood blacklist is out (all the good scripts that haven't been made yet) you can see the full list here

It's long, but the real surprise for me came in the form of the first item on the list. A Charming film called "The Beaver":

THE BEAVER by Kyle Killen

“A depressed man finds hope in a beaver puppet that he wears on his hand.”

AGENT William Morris Agency –Cliff Roberts

MANAGER Anonymous Content –Keith Redmon

AVAILABLE. Anonymous Content producing.

Now, really, that sounds wonderful. If this film doesn't get mae then I will make it. I promise.

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Review: The Day The Earth Stood Still

This review will either be amazing or terrible because I’m in an awful mood. I felt that in a state of high emotions I’d hopefully be able to write something meaningful and insightful about this decidedly average film.

Remakes are dangerous territory. In fact, I myself can’t think of a single remade film I truly love. The first trailer that came with The Day The Earth Stood Still made me think, in my increasingly bitter and cynical way “meh, another average winter film made for the sole reason to make the studio some pocket money”. This belief was firmly held until a recent article in a generic monthly film magazine about The Day The Earth Stood Still. From that point on, I sat up and started following the story more closely.

What intrigued me most about the plot of the original film (They describe it in the article, I have never seen it) was the ambiguity with which it was made and laid out. The audience was never indulged with such luxuries as discovering the true nature or appearance of alien visitor Klaatu’s kind, or indeed his exact motives. Or indeed, a real solution to the film. A concise version of the original, really, is that Klaatu comes to Earth with a warning, that if the human race continues with its destructive and careless nature, the rest of his kind will come and pretty much kill us all. He then flies off in a spaceship (followed by an 8-foot robot named Gort) and the film ends. Cheery

This new version doesn’t bog itself down in ambiguity or interpretation, though. Parallels drawn between Christ and Klaatu in the original are nullified by a slap-in-the-face side story which features small numbers of every species on earth (excluding us pesky homo sapiens) being rescued in cool-looking CGI domes. The military, trigger happy as always (hey, it’s a Hollywood film) look on as they realise it’s an ark! “Oh!” Cries the gormless demographic, “like what Noah did!”. Come ON, you crazy yank filmmakers, I LIKE subtlety. This film would have earned one more star had it been able to keep a lid on its biblical undertones and allow us to decide for ourselves what the real message was. Bleurgh.

I suppose I’ve ranted enough now, eh? Well, I’ve had enough of writing in prose so here’s a few short sentences on how the film played out for me in my head.

First 30 minutes or so: “Brilliant. Creepy, tense, emotional, this is almost perfect. The new 30ft. Gort design looks terrific.”
After Keanu escapes: “After that bit with the policeman and the two cars I can’t get Signs out of my head. Oh look, John Cleese, an ultimatum and a solution. Right there. I can basically predict what’s going to happen in this final act because he just said, now it’s basically a race against time.
And the rest: “Cool CGI swarm. Wait, what? That was the ending?”

“Meh.”

Rating: ***
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Review: Wanted

I thought I'd end tonight's streak with a relatively big'un

On seeing the trailer for Wanted in the summer, I, like most others had the impression it was going to be an enjoyable shoot-‘em-up without consequence or surprises. Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie and newcomer Hollywood golden boy James McAvoy, surely they’d never go for anything more out-there than that. Right?

Wrong.

Forget any notions you had of this film before you press play. It’ll serve you well. Wanted follows the story of wimpy, neurotic everyman Wesley Gibson. An all-too-familiar character who kills time at his dead-end accounting job “Googling” his own name (yielding no results) and putting up with a proverbial onslaught of obnoxious co-workers. After a series of confusing, slow-motion events, climaxing in Wesley’s departure from his job (not before smashing a keyboard into his best-friends face. Watch as the various “parts” flying off thoughtfully spell “fuck you”) and joins a secret community of assassins. I don’t want to spoil anything (I really don’t, just wait for the scene with the giant loom) but here is where the plot loses any plausibility or chance of academic redemption.
Wanted is the most curiously bizarre of films. Despite its laughable storyline and, quite frankly annoying protagonist, it’s still able to be pretty damn good. The ropey dialogue is no match for the awe-inspiring train sequence, wherein Wesley and his nemesis duel, their bullets colliding at least thrice before blood is shed. The action is simply astounding, and speaking as a filmgoer who has always been quite unenthusiastic on all-action movies, even I must concede that “Wanted” is one of the coolest, most engaging films of 2008.

Rating: ****
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Review: Hard Candy

Ellen Page at her finest. This is not a big film by anyone's standards, but still manages to be my favourite film of hers ever. Slade directs this creepy, wordy thriller which, despite being rated 18+ shows almost no gore at all. This only goes to show, however just how unsettling and claustrophobic the film gets as it progresses. With little over 2 characters in the entire film (and almost no music) you can only marvel at the strength of two performances literally carrying this 90-minute treat from beginning to end.

Perfect.

Rating: *****
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Review: Mean Girls

What? The Tom appreciates good screenwriting, regardless of demographic.

Sharp, insightful but a little off-base, this highly enjoyable film delivers for the first hour then gets mired in morality. Still bloody good fun, though. One-liners aplenty, this film gets better with age.

Rating: ****
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Review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Underrated by many, Depp steals the show here opposite a disastrously boring Charlie. What struck me most about this annoyingly American-friendly family film was how dark the dialogue could be. The sets are nothing short of amazing. A worthy re-imagining by anyone's standards, but we still love Gene Wilder's version more.

Rating: ***
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Review: Ed Wood

Easily the best film Burton and Depp have ever attempted together. Charming, heartfelt and surreal is no new ground for the duo, but this film pulls it off in such a way you can only be astounded.

Watch this film

Rating: *****
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So... much... work...

I'm so sorry I have let things slip.
I am now about to attempt what I can only assume is a record for the most number of film reviews in one nihgt. They'll be short and sweet, but I mean every word.

Tom

Oh and, FYI, I have discontinued the DVD corner. It's getting too long to read.
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