Monday, January 31, 2011

TGT10: A Moment of 2010 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2010 awesomeness.
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TGT10: Actor To Actress #4

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As mentioned in this year's introduction to the Pantys, we're celebrating our favorite performances of 2010 a little bit differently. Instead of just telling you who my favorite performances of the year were, I tossed the names of my favorite 10 male performances and my favorite 10 female performances into a hat, pulled out one of each sex at random, and am now going to imagine what the hell the two characters these actors so indelibly portrayed would have to say to one another if they ever met. Because why not? Here's our fourth pair. I give you an imagined moment between...


The Loved Ones' Lola (Robin McLeavy) &
The Social Network's Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg)

Lola: Ya know what?
Mark: What?
Lola: You've sure gotcha self a preetty mouth.
Mark: Uh yeah okay I've never been told that one before okay.
Lola: What's the mattah? You seem kinda nahvous.
Mark: Nervous why would I be nervous I got a sixteen hundred on my SATs and am currently browsing my selection of the final clubs up to and including the Phoenix and where did you go to school anyway B.U heheheh?
Lola: Ya know what?
Mark: ... What?
Lola: I think you should leeck my finger with that preetty mouth. Go on then. Leeck it.
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Previously: Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim & Natalie Portman in Black Swan -- Edgar Ramirez in Carlos & Jackie Weaver in Animal Kingdom -- Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole & Andrew Garfield in Never Let Me Go
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TGT10: A Moment of 2010 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2010 awesomeness.
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I Am Link

I'm trying - and failing, natch - to not spread myself too thin this week, what with The Pantys in full swing right now, but there is other news happening in movie-dom besides my overblown estimations of my opinions so here's some links.


--- First off a pair of posters - That to the left is the poster for Kristen Wiig's lady-centric Apatow-produced comedy Bridemaids (via), and to the right is the official poster for Scream 4 (via).

--- It's Good to be Prime
- Ooh I knew having an Amazon prime account was worthwhile! Rumors are floating that they're going to start offering up a streaming movie service a la Netflix if you have Amazon Prime. Because I don't already have access to more movies than I could ever possibly watch.

--- What the Shoggoth - io9 lists ten amazing things they learned about Guillermo Del Toro and his monsters from a recent piece on him the The New Yorker. His explanation of trying to visualize a Shoggoth for At the Mountains of Madness is captivating.

--- Tappin' Cappy - A couple new looks at Chris Evans in his Captain America costume are over at Slash. We really need this trailer already.

--- Hot Dog - And here are a couple new pics of Brandon Routh in that Dylan Dog movie that will probably never come out here, but he still looks good in.

--- Beastly to Battle and Beyond - If you're curious about the movies coming out soon, Joe's got the info in his latest Preview of Coming Attractions post.

TGT10: Actor to Actress #3

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As mentioned in this year's introduction to the Pantys, we're celebrating our favorite performances of 2010 a little bit differently. Instead of just telling you who my favorite performances of the year were, I tossed the names of my favorite 10 male performances and my favorite 10 female performances into a hat, pulled out one of each sex at random, and will now going to imagine what the hell the two characters these actors so indelibly portrayed would have to say to one another if they ever met. Because why not? Here's our third pair. I give you an imagined moment between...


Scott Pilgrim Versus the World's Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera)
& Black Swan's Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman)
Scott Pilgrim: Hiiii...
Nina Sayers: Hiiii...
Scott Pilgrim: ...
Nina Sayers: ...
Scott Pilgrim: Lesbian...ssss....
[At this point in the conversation,
Nina stabs Scott Pilgrim to death.]
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TGT10: A Special Tattered Trouser

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I'll be posting The Tattered Trousers proper (aka the Worst Movies of 2010) further on in The Pantys, but this award right now is going out to something special - while it's by no means as bad as any of the movies you'll see listed in that future post it's still as far as I'm concerned a failure, and yet it's inexplicably been heaped with praise and embraced by nearly everyone. And it makes me crazy!

In 2008 I gave this dubious prize to Slumdog Millionaire - excuse me Best Picture Winner Slumdog Millionaire! Dear lord! - and in 2007 the recognition went to crap-riddled Korean monster movie The Host. Apparently there wasn't a film in 2009 that made me feel this nuts and confused by its reception, but in 2010 was there ever. This year's award for Overcompensation in the Field of Unwarranted Critical Orgasms goes to:


Usually with a film that makes me this nuts I write up a review, but I guess at the time a momentary barrage of angry tweets was all I could muster for this one. So let me lay down my argument here: this film has nothing new or interesting to say about art, and I don't for a second buy Mr. Brainwash as anything more than a Banksy-constructed straw-man put up in order to knock down the bullshit Banksy's hocking about the industry that's made him a multi-millionaire. So what you're saying is the art world is filled with poseurs, Banksy? That's crazy!

As long as the film kept its eye on the making of street-art - the night-time shenanigans of these kooky punks - I found it all interesting enough. I think Banksy's art can be truly beautiful, and there is a fascinating method behind the madness of what these street artists are doing to art, by making it basically disposable, that truly undermines the corrupt corporatization of what the art world's become (not that it's any different from every aspect of our culture). But this movie takes the easy way out, setting up a shadow puppet just to make the dullest of points and laugh at the stupid hipsters enthusiastic about nonsense. Get back to me Banksy when you train your camera on the billionaires snatching up your paintings at Sothebys for obscene amounts of money and encasing them in their hidden tombs to be buried with. Then I might find something curious about what you're saying.
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TGT10: Actor to Actress #2

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As mentioned in this year's introduction to the Pantys, we're celebrating our favorite performances of 2010 a little bit differently. Instead of just telling you who my favorite performances of the year were, I tossed the names of my favorite 10 male performances and my favorite 10 female performances into a hat, pulled out one of each sex at random, and am now going to imagine what the hell the two characters these actors so indelibly portrayed would have to say to one another if they ever met. Because why not? Here's our second pair. I give you an imagined moment of chatter between...


Carlos' Carlos (Édgar Ramírez)
& Animal Kingdom's Smurf (Jackie Weaver)

Smurf: Come on sweetie, give us a kiss.
Carlos: I just shot someone in the face seven times
but you are kind of creeping me out, tiny lady.
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Previously: Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole & Andrew Garfield in Never Let Me Go
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TGT10: Actor To Actress #1

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As mentioned in this year's introduction to the Pantys, we're celebrating our favorite performances of 2010 a little bit differently. Instead of just telling you who my favorite performances of the year were, I tossed the names of my favorite 10 male performances and my favorite 10 female performances into a hat, pulled out one of each sex at random, and am now going to imagine a snippet of conversation between the two characters these actors so indelibly portrayed. Because why not? Here's our first pair. I give you an imagined moment of chatter between...


... Rabbit Hole's Becca (Nicole Kidman)
& Never Let Me Go's Tommy (Andrew Garfield)

Becca: So you draw then?
Tommy: Mmm.
Becca: I find that so interesting, young people who can draw.
Tommy: Really? Well see I never did it when I was really really young cuz I had all this rage and nobody knew what it was for but I just couldn't focus so then I got older and they started talking about that maybe if you got some artwork into Madame's gallery then they'd give you a deferral - that's where you don't have to become a donor just yet, you can have some more time, if it shows you can love, like anybody else - so then I started drawing, just reams and reams of drawings, lotsa animals and stuff, like giraffes and bugs and rhinoceroses... rhinoceri?... Kathy encouraged it after Ruth told us where we could go to visit Madame, that she'd be able to give us the deferral and then we'd have that time together that would make it all...
Becca: My son is dead.
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TGT10: The 10 Best Films of '10

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And so it begins. Not with a bang but with a... well yeah technically in the tiny enclosed world of these things I guess this is indeed a bang. As I stated in our introduction I decided to start out the 2010 Pantys with my top ten list instead of saving it for last. Gotta keep you people on your toes. But first, here are ten films that just missed out on the top ten. Because my middle name is excess. Jason Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins Excess Adams.

The Fighter -- Rabbit Hole
Toy Story 3 -- Greenberg
The Ghost Writer -- A Prophet
How to Train Your Dragon -- I Am Love
Carlos -- The Loved Ones

And now, drum-roll please...
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Ehhh... good enough, Monkey. Here are
MNPP's 10 Favorite Films of 2010

10 Winnebago Man (dir. Ben Steinbauer) - Before watching this documentary I hadn't seen one-time Winnebago salesman Jack Rebney's infamous meltdown, which was a viral video even before YouTube came around (and once YouTube did come around it only gained traction), so it all played out like a revelation for me. But like Best Worst Movie last year (and these two make perfect companion pieces, now that I think of it) Winnebago Man is more concerned with dissecting the modern cult that's attracted to this sort of dubious and small, specific infamy and how that attention can warp the reality of the odd people who find themselves at the center of it. A fascinating look at a fascinating man in a fascinating situation.

9 Life During Wartime (dir. Todd Solondz) - As the lyrics to the song go, "This ain't no party, this ain't no disco / this ain't no fooling around. / I'd like to kiss you, I'd love you hold you / I ain't got no time for that now." Or as Allison Janney says when her son asks her if she's still wet from her date touching her, "No, I dried myself with a paper towel." (original review)

8 Never Let Me Go (dir. Mark Romanek) - What haunts me from this film is what isn't there. It's a film of absences, of lacks. What should be said, what should be done, simply cannot be. It can't be expressed and it wouldn't matter if it was. A profound sense of unfulfillment hangs across it like a shroud. They don't notice the shroud because they were born there under it, they pretend it isn't there, they make teenage mistakes and they look away, even as they start to know. But slowly it smothers their pretenses. Cathy and Tommy and Ruth are always too young. And then the youth starts being sapped away and their young frames droop and fray. And then it is too late, before they've even begun. (original review)

7 Animal Kingdom (dir. David Michôd) - A good thriller is a hard thing to find. A good thriller that makes the tension bunch up so tight in your neck you feel like a jack-in-the-box curled up inside its claustrophobic box just about to burst, even harder. And one that's seemingly so effortless it can make you feel that way by simply showing a car back down a driveway, well it smothers the efforts of a thousand tepid recent attempts at spine-tingling. This is the real deal - crackerjack film-making popping right off the screen, with another about-face ready for you before you've even spotted the first. (original review)

6 The Social Network (dir. David Fincher) - The rat-a-tat-tat rapid-fire of spittin' verbal venom between Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara sucks you in right there at the start, but it was the straight-outta-Riefenstahl (that's like Compton, only with genocidal intent) rowing sequence where the music and the images swelled together into an opera of slashing strokes - the oars through the water, the buttons on the editing bay, the fingers on a laptop - and Fincher's vision carried me away. In the dog-race between the haves and the have-mores, it's the one who figures out how to rewrite the codes of how we see each other that always wins. (original review)

5 Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold) - What's wowed me with Arnold's two films so far is how unflinching she is towards tremendously complicated matters of sexuality that would scare most folks away. She doesn't just not flinch though - she dives right in and looks at it from every angle. In Red Road the main character's self-destructive streak seeks out the worst form of therapy imaginable, and here we have teenage Mia who has no guidance and no idea what to do with all the pent-up energy and power she's discovering. So off it goes into every direction. How are we supposed to feel about what unspools between Mia and her mother's boyfriend? It's not that Arnold doesn't tell us specifically what to think - she just gives us about five thousand answers to that question, and every single one's got a valid argument behind it. (original review)

4 Blue Valentine (dir. Derek Cianfrance) - How can something so sad be so simultaneously exhilarating? Blue Valentine makes me feel alive even as it picks me apart on the inside. Perhaps because of how deeply it digs. You're watching two people on fire - two actors burning celluloid right up. And a director capturing it in exquisitely disassembled succession. (original review)

3 Scott Pilgrim Versus the World (dir. Edgar Wright) - It is a very good sign if your enthusiasm feels like a large stone gathering speed as it tumbles down the side of a cliff as your eyes glance down the list of actors and characters that are in a film, every name filling you with more and more glee, until your eyes are bright and filled with tears of joy and you're screaming out lines at yourself, and then the lady in the check-out line is staring at you but she doesn't judge you, no, she screams, "Prepare to die, obviously!" back at you, and you both do a little twirl and smile and the day is bright and beautiful and brimming with possibilities. Edgar Wright improved possibilities. That's right - Edgar Wright's movies make living life better. It's a totally undisputed fact. (original review)

2 Dogtooth (dir. Giorgos Lanthimos) - In a way Dogtooth feels like a science-fiction film - we've been dropped into another world here, and these people's customs are not our own. Perhaps it's an alternate dimension, because they're similar enough to ours. But different. And their language isn't our language. Not just that the characters speak Greek - they're actually actively redefining words, for some unknown purpose. Only the more you watch, it seems the less you understand. Definitions roll backwards, away from us - things make less sense the longer you stare at them. The film's like a riddle - an entirely unknowable thing I never want to stop knowing. (original review)


1 Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky) - The only way I've really been able to express to people who've asked me what I thought of Black Swan is to say it sums up why I go to the movies. It enthralls me. It wraps up my wants and needs and loves - The passion! The beauty! The stabbings! - and the things I never knew I needed or wanted until Darren Aronofsky told me I wanted and needed them - A sloshed Winona Ryder spitting the word "cock"! Benjamin Millipied's tights! It's insane and operatic and ridiculous and beautiful. As Thomas keeps reminding Nina, over and over and over again, you can't be a coward. You've got to lose yourself, dance right off the edge. And nobody can fault Aronofsky for cowardice. Black Swan pours gasoline over its head and leaps headfirst into the fiery bowels of hell-flame. And it it glorious. I would so fuck that girl. (original review)


Well there you go. There's that. Now over the course of the next couple of days we'll be moving on to a look at my favorite performances, my favorite horror films, my favorite gratuities... you know the usual junk, spiced up with my usual nonsense. Stay tuned!
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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TGT10: An Introduction

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Welcome friends, welcome lovers, welcome friends of lovers and lovers of friends. It is at last, as promised and threatened, that special time of the year again when we slip off the sweatpants and into our formal Snuggies, polish up our fangs for smiling, and spray some hot sticky love all over the place. I recommend wearing a condom, or two... I'm typing this with one on every finger just to be safe. Because the Pantys are here, and they are downright communicable!

Tastes like celebration!

I mixed things up ever so slightly this year - poppin' fresh! For one we're going to start with the category we usually lead up to, my favorite films of the year. That way we can sit back and relax (and not have giant black boxes sit at the top of my list of favorite horror films like happened last year) and let our luxurious hair down and party the rest of the way through.

Those'll be coming up relatively shortly, so try to contain yourselves. Just try! You will fail. From there I found a different way to take a look at my favorite performances of the year that I hope's as much fun for you as it was for me. But if not hey, at least it got me off. That's what matters.

And that spirit expressed right there, of sharing and of caring, is what I hope you take away from this experience. That, and the herpes. Enjoy!
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