Finishing Up the 2010 Diva Cup Awards

As you may have noticed, 2010 has been over for nearly eight months, yet I'm still rolling out my Diva Cup Awards honoring the best in film from that year. I'm not one for deadlines, especially when it comes to this, but it's time to finish this up. The problem is, I don't really have the time or the energy to do a long write-up defending my choices at the moment. So, what I'll do is give you my nominees for Best Actor & Actress and my Top 10 Films of the year with the promise that I will write about these more in the future. I realize only a few people will actually care about that but it would be more for myself than anyone. Without further ado, here are the final awards:

Best Actor

Aaron Eckhart, Rabbit Hole

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

Édgar Ramirez, Carlos

Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter

And the Diva Cup Award Goes to: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Best Actress

Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank

Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole

Lesley Manville, Another Year

Emma Stone, Easy A

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

And the Diva Cup Goes to: Emma Stone, Easy A

Top 10 Films of 2010

10. Catfish (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman)

09. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg)

08. The Last Exorcism (Daniel Stamm)

07. The Fighter (David O. Russell)

06. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)

05. Everyone Else (Maren Ade)

04. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)

03. Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)

02. The Social Network (David Fincher)

01. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)

"Say Hi to Your Mother For Me"

I have no idea why this is so funny, but I crack up everytime I watch it. Congrats Andy Samberg, that accent is dead on!

Random Top 10: The Worst Films of 2007

I try to avoid "bad" movies at all costs. I skip most movies made between January and April and nearly every summer blockbuster in order to do this, but it's inevitable that a few stinkers are going to sneak in. Of the 60 or so films I saw in 2007, here are the worst of the worst.

*Pssst. The 2007 Diva Cup Awards are coming soon. Think of this and an upcoming post highlighting the worst performances of the year as the warm ups.

10. Disturbia (D.J. Caruso)
Critics over the summer wildly overpraised this film, claiming this update of Rear Window for the MySpace generation was worthy of attention. I don't know what film they were watching, because all I saw was a third-rate Hitchcock imitation with one of the most ridiculous plots of the year. And no matter how hard he tries, I still don't see Shia LaBeouf as a badass of any sorts; he's still just the dorky little kid from Even Stevens.


9. Music and Lyrics (Marc Lawrence)
The opening song, "Pop! Goes My Heart," is one of the best songs of the year and the 80's nostalgia is fun, but the film quickly turns to shit afterwards, becoming yet another terribly cliched and overly done rom-com.


8. High School Musical 2 (Kenny Ortega)
From my original post about the wonderful Ashley Tisdale in this film: "The first one was crappy as it is, but had a teensy bit of charm to make up for it. For the second one, it seems no one gave a shit anymore and decided to ride this cash cow for all it was worth. The choreography was stiff, the sound quality of the songs were dreadful (there was no attempt at all to make the voices sound like they weren't done in a studio), most of the songs could have been interchanged with ones from the original (I didn't like "We're All in This Together" the first time, why would I want to hear it reincarnated as "All For One"?) and the story was so contradictory and contrived it's not even funny (Zac Efron's Troy literally says at one point "I don't care about my future, I only care about what my friends think"...what kind of message is this for the tweens watching this?)"


7. Becoming Jane (Julian Jarrold)
It's not a terrible film per se, but there is so little passion behind the directing and the script that it's little more than your average episode of Masterpiece Theater. I love my Anne Hathaway, but she was a terrible bore here and that accent was so pronounced that you could tell it was fake. And if I really wanted a literal repeat of Pride & Prejudice, couldn't I just watch any of the 8 other versions of that story instead of this pile of crap?


6. Hannibal Rising (Peter Webber)
I'm not going to fault Gaspard Ulliel with this monstrous mess of a film because he tries as well as any actor can to fill the shoes of Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. No, the fault lies with the writers who, against all odds, humanize Lecter to the point that we feel bad for the guy and, in the most simplistic way possible, make us understand why he became a cannibal. Couldn't we just let him be a bad guy we can root for and leave it at that?

5. Lucky You (Curtis Hanson)
Lucky you if you missed this stinker. Not particularly bad or anything, just incredibly dull and ridiculous. Before any scene starts, you know exactly one of four things are going to happen: Eric Bana will lose at something, Bana will beg for money, his father (Robert Duvall) will get the best of him or Drew Barrymore will be pissed at him.

4. Eagle vs. Shark (Taika Waititi)
Eagle vs. Shark is the perfect example of how one performance can ruin an entire film. Jermaine Clement is such a douche throughout the entire film, whether it's to the sweet and endearing Lily (Loren Horsley) or his entire nice family, that I couldn't stand it. If I hadn't been working for my school's Film Society, I definitely would have walked out of this pile of shit.

3. Shooter (Antoine Fuqua)
Even if they are incredibly stupid, action films are supposed to keep one awake, right? Well, why then did I fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon during this one? It seems that someone wasn't doing their job and keeping the audience entertained. And Mark Wahlberg, fresh off his Oscar-nominated triumph in The Departed, seems to have forgotten his trademark smart-ass edge which is sorely missing here.

2. Reign Over Me (Mike Binder)
No film in 2007 actually pissed me off more than Mike Binder's attempt at a 9/11 drama. Don Cheadle and Jada Pinkett Smith do their damnedest to try and make it work, but Adam Sandler's atrociously goofball performance ruins the whole thing. In the confines of this serious drama, Sandler merely reprises his Waterboy character (excepts makes him more retarded) and expects it to work. The result, needless to say, is a full on disaster.

1. Wild Hogs (Walt Becker)
On the day Wild Hogs was released on DVD, I was at work and during our evening huddle the guy in electronics said the words I never thought I'd hear in my life: "You better get your copy of Wild Hogs now because we're close to selling out." I thought I would pass out on the spot. Now, granted, I had not seen the film at this point, but I figured I would hate it. When I saw it a couple of weeks later, I had just gotten my wisdom teeth pulled out and I was hopped up on Vicodin. Guess what? The film still sucked. Not only was there not a single funny moment in the entire film, but the great William H. Macy is forced to play second fiddle to two former sitcom stars and a hammier-than-ever John Travolta. I think it really says something about our country when a film this shitty does so well at the box office when a film like Zodiac, released at roughly the same time, couldn't catch a break.

2006 Diva Cup Awards: Best Supporting Actor

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

2006 Diva Cup Awards: Best Diva

And the nominees are...

Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette in Marie Antoinette

In this environment of scrumptous food, fabulous gowns and to-die-for shoes, there's no doubt that Marie Antoinette would have been a major diva bitch and Kiki Dunst fits that mold perfectly.

Jennifer Hudson as Effie White in Dreamgirls

My girl Effie is a diva after my own heart (before she's even famous, she turns down a paying gig becuase she "don't do 'oohs' and 'aahs'.") and that MLK line will never get old.

Frances McDormand as Jane in Friends With Money

McDormand's Jane feels like a lot of the divas I personally know (my mother, my friend Christi's mother and grammy) when she grumbles about the awful service in that restaurant.

Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada

She scares to shit out of everyone and will stop at nothing to get what she wants. I wanted to sign up for the "Miranda Priestly School of Bitchiness" the minute she first evily glared at Anne Hathaway's Andy.

Mark Wahlberg as Sgt. Dignam in The Departed

He steals scenes better than anyone I've ever seen and the way he is such an asshole to everyone (love that "Don't you know any fucking Shakespeare?" line to DiCaprio in the beginning) is a lesson for every diva in training.

Runners Up: Annette Bening brought her whole diva aura to Running With Scissors and made it a much better film than it should have...Fiona Shaw was so over-the-top in The Black Dahlia and, consequently, so hilarious, that she almost made Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford seem subtle...Julianne Moore made a real diva entrance like the true pro that she is in Children of Men.

BRONZE
Mark Wahlberg
SILVER
Jennifer Hudson
GOLD
Meryl Streep

2006 Diva Cup Awards: Best Quote/Line Reading

And the nominees are...

"Here I am!" ~Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal

Blanchett's battle cry to the vicious vultures surrounding her during a major personal crisis is one of the most hilarious camp moments since Faye Dunaway uttered "Tina, bring me the axe!" in Mommie Dearest and is the perfect way to end such a high-strung scene.

"Is she a sphinx, or simply stupid?" ~Dame Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal

I'm not sure why I love this quote so much, but Dame Judi's early size-up of Blanchett's Sheba is one of the quotes I immediately think about when I think about this movie.

"It's about fairness, Curtis. It's about people paying their dues. Isn't that what you keep telling me? ‘Get in line, Effie. Wait your turn.’ So why am I sitting here without so much as a B side on a 45 when an amateur like Martin Luther King Jr. gets his own album? I mean, can he even sing?" ~Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls

Diva-riffic to the extreme and the precise moment when I fell in love with J. Hud's Effie White. It takes a real diva to complain about MLK like that.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself." ~Mark Wahlberg in The Departed

Wahlberg's effective scene-stealing in The Departed doesn't get any better than this foul-mouthed quip.

"That is it! I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" ~Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane

I was shaking in anticipation of this line and, when it finally came, I laughed and applauded like I had never done before. Samuel L. Jackson’s delivery lived up to the hype and makes it an instant classic.

Runners Up: I loved Matt Damon's assholian response of "Qui gives a shit" to Alec Baldwin's "Qui bono" in The Departed so much that I wish I could say it more often...Annette Bening's "I need high ceilings" in Running With Scissors is one of this beautiful disaster's shining moments...Just the way Frances McDormand coughed out "Asshole" to that douchebag driver in the farmer's market in Friends With Money had me laughing for like two minutes straight. Brilliant.

BRONZE

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself."

SILVER

"Here I am!"

GOLD

"That is it! I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!"

Rants on "The Departed"

I quickly rented The Departed the day it was released on DVD and watched it on February 14th (the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, I know). It’s taken me a couple of days to sort everything out and come up with a way to explain how much I loved it.

The whole movie is just so fucking badass and normally that’s not something that gets me this pumped (Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane excluded). Maybe I need some more of that in my life right now, who knows? All I know is that most everyone in The Departed can kill without hesitation and/or breaking a sweat and that makes my day.

And talk about those performances…whoa. Everyone in the cast is in top-notch form. Leonardo DiCaprio proves once again how well he works with Scorsese (FYI, the first time I realized DiCaprio could act was in Scorsese’s The Aviator back in 2004) as volcanic emotions roll under his anxious and paranoid exterior. His nervous twitches and violent outbursts give the film part of its suspense (I especially love the scene where he out of nowhere smashes the guy in the bar on the head with a glass after making fun of him for ordering cranberry juice…all I could think was Damn that came out of nowhere). Matt Damon is also amazing as the weasely cop walking the fine line between good cop and bad cop (mostly teetering on bad cop, though). I also never thought much of him as an actor, but now I am totally convinced.

Don’t even get me started about all of the fantastic supporting performances in The Departed. Jack Nicholson is so over-the-top as the ultra-violent, semi-crazed Mob leader that his performance almost descends in to Baby Jane camp heaven and definitely deserved an Oscar nomination. But Mark Wahlberg also deserves his for his scene-stealing performance in which he turns ever line into a memorable one. Few small performances like his leave this much of an impression on me. Plus, we have Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin fantastic in smaller roles (even smaller than Wahlberg’s) and the fabulous Vera Farmiga as the precinct psychiatrist who fucks both Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. She is so amazing in this underwritten role that I wished that we could have seen more of her (maybe kicking some ass as well?).

I know this might be strange coming from me but I think that The Departed was even better than Dreamgirls (I know!). I guess I am just in love with huge ensembles with actors all at the top of their games and stories about conflicts between men (The Departed) and women (Dreamgirls) and their struggles to one up each other. C’est la vie.

My Rating: *****