Wow, is this already the sixth annual year-end writers poll at the Notebook? Sure enough. Once again, contributors have been asked to dream up a double feature (or two or three or more), pairing a new film with another older one also seen in 2013. I’ve got one in there, but you’ll want to see this collection for double features dreamed up by the likes of Adrian Martin, the Ferroni Brigade, Christoph Hochhäusler and many more.
Dana Stevens has called Slate‘s Movie Club to order. Her guests this year are Mark Harris, Wesley Morris, and Stephanie Zacharek. Naturally, the film generating the most discussion so far is The Wolf of Wall Street.
Also discussing the films of 2013—and anticipating the films of 2014—are Andrew O’Hehir and John Powers in a conversation moderated by Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn.
So far, Movie City News has tabulated over 150 top tens of 2013.
Writers at Movie Mezzanine have written up their top 50. #1: Before Midnight.
At Sundance Now, Nick Pinkerton looks back over 2013 and offers “a string of I-don’t-know-how-many Movies That I Would Watch Again and Will Probably Think About in 2014.”
J.J. Murphy‘s #1: Spring Breakers.
AWARDS
The Directors Guild of America has announced its five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries for 2013: Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, Joshua Oppenheimer‘s The Act of Killing, Sarah Polley‘s Stories We Tell, and Lucy Walker‘s The Crash Reel.
The American Cinema Editors have put forward their nominations in ten categories. Sticking to film:
- Best Edited Feature Film (Dramatic): Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger (Gravity), Mark Livolsi (Saving Mr. Banks), Chris Rouse (Captain Phillips), Joe Walker (12 Years a Slave), and Eric Zumbrunnen and Jeff Buchanan (Her).
- Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy or Musical): Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten (American Hustle), Roderick Jaynes (Inside Llewyn Davis), Stephen Mirrione (August: Osage County), Thelma Schoonmaker (The Wolf of Wall Street), and Kevin Tent (Nebraska).
- Best Animated Feature Film: Jeff Draheim (Frozen), Gregory Perler (Despicable Me 2), and Greg Snyder (Monsters University).
- Best Edited Documentary (Feature): Douglas Blush, Kevin Klauber and Jason Zeldes (20 Feet from Stardom), Eli Despres (Blackfish), and Patrick Sheffield (Tim’s Vermeer).
“Wong Kar-wai‘s The Grandmaster has been named Best Film by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society, while its female star Zhang Ziyi was voted Best Actress,” reports James Marsh. “Johnnie To‘s Drug War won the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards, and Nick Cheung was named Best Actor for Dante Lam‘s Unbeatable.” And he’s got the full list of winners at Twitch.
Guy Lodge at In Contention: “The Georgia Film Critics Association, who had one of the more interesting nomination lists of the circuit so far, have named Spike Jonze’s Her the best film of the year.”
The North Carolina Film Critics Association and the Iowa Film Critics Association both really like 12 Years a Slave.
The NAACP has announced the nominees for its 45th annual Image Awards and Variety‘s Tim Gray breaks down the numbers—by distributor.
And the International Cinephile Society has posted its nominations.
“Film Independent has awarded Ain’t Them Bodies Saints producers Toby Halbrooks and James M. Johnston its Piaget Producers Award.” Variety‘s Dave McNary reports.
One last bit of news here, somewhat related to awards season, though, of course, it is also more than just that. “This morning,” began Entertainment Weekly‘s Owen Gleiberman yesterday, “the members of the New York Film Critics Circle, including me, voted to expel Armond White, the former critic of the now-defunct New York Press (and currently the editor and movie critic of CityArts), from the group. To me, it was a sad moment—pathetic, really, though Armond brought it on himself. A week ago, at the Circle’s annual awards dinner, White made a rude and bellicose spectacle of himself, as he did the year before, by heckling one of the winners—in this case, Steve McQueen, the director of 12 Years a Slave… I truly do believe that Armond White comes to the vast majority of his opinions honestly. He’s a gay African-American fundamentalist-Christian aesthete, and if that doesn’t make him an individual, I don’t know what would. But it seems to me that Armond, over the years, has become so invested in the idea of how different his gaze is from everyone else’s that he has turned individuality into a species of megalomania.”
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