Tuesday, February 02, 2010

The Golden Trousers '09: You Belong To Me

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Starting last year I started choosing four people who went from a low-hum (or no hum at all) to full-throttle obsession, as far as my affections are concerned in the prior 12 months. This year I've decided to call this award "The Gylleto" - pronounced sorta like the Italian ice cream and in honor of two of my most esteemed lifelong obsessions...


Pretty, pretty, infinity. Looking at that picture... my entire body starts to quake. That and the fact that it's terrible are the two reasons I've never been able to make it through Highway in one sitting.


Anyway! Last year's women kept their luster better than the men: I am still completely enamored with Ari Graynor and Samantha Morton, although it was their two big movies in 2009, Whip It! and The Messenger, that I mentioned as not having seen yet in my Introduction... shame on me. Still I've watched Synecdoche and Nick & Norah enough times through the year to remember why I adore them both.

The men I took ownership of last year, Diego Luna and Mathieu Almaric, well they've mostly been off my radar completely for the year. I caught Almaric at the very start of '09 in A Christmas Tale, a film I liked very much. I also caught 2005's La Moustache, based on the phenomenally disquieting story by Emmanuel Carrère (and you should read the story, it's better than the film). I didn't see Luna in anything (save a few dirty dreams). I skipped his reunion with kissing-partner Gael Garcia Luna in Rudi y Corsi because sports, boring.

But let's move on to this year's foursome!



Welcome to the club, folks!

Melanie Lynskey - I've loved Melanie ever since Heavenly Creatures and I've avidly followed her too-infrequent-for-my-liking career and it's brought me extreme pleasure to see the world (the world in casting agents, that is) finally catch up and put her in everything. I guess it takes a little longer when you don't look like Kate Winslet to gain the same traction that equally promising performances in the same film ought to have brought to both stars. Harumph! (Nothing against my beloved Kate, of course.) Anyway she delighted me a full three times over this year, in The Informant!, Away We Go, and Up in the Air, and then several times since then since she's an avid Twitterer, too. All hail Lynskey forever!

James Franco - I've been a Franco fan for several years now, but it was 2009 where he really came into his weird-ass own. Falling asleep in class! Super gay all the time, everywhere! Sexy younger brother! A stint on General Hospital! Who knew he had all this delightful absurdity in him? And if the start of this year's any indication - pretentious spiel on Howl! Japanese body pillows! - then this is a love affair with no end in sight.

Greta Gerwig - Because her every scene in The House of the Devil is a complete delight, until it's a shuddering horror. And because she was every inch as delightful in Baghead earlier in the year. She needs one more, a Terror Train, and she's total Scream Queen material, but in a hipstery way we've never had before (and no, "hipster" is not a dirty word to me, so eff off with that noise). I don't know that we'll get her Terror Train though because The Big Time appears to have taken notice and she's the only thing making me want to see Greenberg, the new Noah Baumbach movie with Ben Stiller (and Dave Franco, holy cow, it's all coming together). But she is totally enough on her own to make me see it (I'm not a big fan of Baumbach's previous films).

Michael Fassbender - Shocking absolutely no one who's visited MNPP over the past few months. This boy has eaten my brain, he has. And I imagine when the 2010 Trousers roll around his performance in Fish Tank will garner some affection, it will. At the very least of the gratuitous sort. But in Hunger - a film I wasn't completely nuts over save his performance - and in Basterds... well I've gone on about it enough. He's win.
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3 comments:

ant said...

Have I already said you should watch Hex? You should watch Hex. The first season in particular is great.

Jason Adams said...

I have not watched Hex, I could've sworn that I'd heard it was awful. But I'm willing to be persuaded that it is not, or even that it's just okay, in order to have the chance for more Fassbender. So tell me, how much Fassbender is there? Is it enough*?

* trick question - any Fassbender is enough

ant said...

Mmm, Hex season 2 kind of sucks, but I thought season 1 was really fun. But maybe it is awful, in which case, my apologies in advance. All that said, there's definitely enough Fassbender. Though I tend toward any is enough also.