The Best Films of 2012 (in my view)

Yes, it has been a long time since we last blogged, and we have broken many promises. But, Feb. 15th is the traditional date in which we list our 20 favorite films that were released in America from the previous year.

I should point out that this year I am going with films that were released in our market area as opposed to films that came to New York.

There are, as always, many films we have not seen, including the three Ls: "Lincoln," "Life of Pi" and "Les Misreables." 

This year, I am pleased to add that Bilge Ebiri, a fellow Turkish-American who is a New York-based film critic who voted in the "Film Comment" best films of the year survey, and I agree that the Turkish film "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan was the best film of the year. The "Film Comment" survey chose the French film "Holy Motors" as the best film of the year; "The Master" came in second and it was the highest-ranking American film on the list.

Speaking of lists, here is ours:

*-Films that were released after Jan. 1, 2012, in our market.

#-Films which have been nominated for Best Picture Oscar

%-Films ranked in the top 20 of the "Film Comment" survey

1. "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" (Turkey, see second image) %

2. "We Need to Talk About Kevin"*

3. "Jiro:Dreams of Sushi" (documentary; third image)

4. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (first image)

5. "Silver Linings Playbook"#%

6. "Zero Dark Thirty"#%

7. "Argo" #

8. "A Separation" (Iran)*

9. "Django Unchained" #

10. "The Kid with a Bike" (France) %

11. Pina (documentary) *

12. "Beasts of the Southern Wild" #%

13. "The Dark Knight Returns"

14. "Damsels in Distress"

15. "Robot and Frank"

16. "Skyfall"

17. "Arbitrage"

18. "Moonrise Kingdom"%

19. "The Master" %

20. "Haywire"


 http://www.filmlinc.org

Pre-Election Day Tweets_ Rallying the Troops

Perhaps, in a more perfect world, an independent voter in Blacksburg, Va., a college town  with Virginia Tech which happens to be in Montgomery County, one of the most politically split jurisdictions in America according to today's "Roanoke Times." could order "Red Dawn" (1984) and the Michael Moore documentary "Sicko," about the decline of the American health care system from Netflix and invite uber-partisan liberals and conservatives for a wine and cheese party.

That's not likely to happen, but one thing all sides might agree on is how expensive political races are becoming. "Indy Week" announced in its current issue that Chad Barefoot, a 29-year-old Republican, has spent $916,754 to face incumbent state senator Doug Berger, a Democrat, for a Wake County (Raleigh) state senate seat. Reportedly, most state senators in North Carolina make circa $40,000.

These are insane times indeed, and perhaps that is reflected in these tweets we collected from last night:

1) @PaulFeig (Creator of the cult tv show "Freaks and Geeks"): "Whichever candidate you support, make sure to take down the sign in front of your house immediately, if they win. Nobody likes a gloater."

2) @PaulBegala (Paul Begala, a center-left tv commentator): "Okay @CNNOpinion, here's final predictions: POTUS wins with 297 electoral votes; Romney 241.

3) @TeaPartyCat (Top Conservative Cat, actually a liberal political satirist): "Chris Christie: 'I'm still very satisfied with Obama and FEMA. And, oh, thanks Mitt for saving New Jersey with $5,000 of canned goods."

4) @AnnaMarieCox (Anna Marie Cox is a liberal pundit in Minnesota, a swing state): "Just today, a reporter asked me: 'Do you know how they're getting all these people to Romney rallies? Answer: By force?"

5) @tbtduluth (Trampled by Turtles, a popular band from Minnesota): "Remember when your politics, religion, and income were nobody else's goddamn business? That was nice."

6) @NRO ("National Review," a conservative magazine): "Romney's Bucks County, PA, rally matches President Bush's in '04 just 5 days before he defeated John Kerry." (Of course, we should point out that these tweets do not necessarily reflect the views of our managing editor Tilly Gokbudak, who happens to be moi).

7) @MMFlint (Michael Moore, pictured bottom with glove; the liberal icon is ironically from Michigan, Romney's state of birth, also a swing state): "Plus, a few dozen Repubs need 2 be removed from the House if Obama is 2 get anything done. Every swing state has a Repub or 2 who need 2 go."

8) @BilgeEbiri (Bilge Ebiri is a movie critic for "New York" magazine): "I think the strangest irony of this election might actually be that Scott Brown appears poised about losing his senate seat."

http://www.michaelmoore.com

http://www.nationalreview.com

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.indyweek.com

http://www.netflix.com

Quote of the Day/Week- Roman Polanski

For the second week in a row, we are quoting famous film directors with controversial personal lives. Last week, we quoted Woody Allen. But, the reason for this is not because we live controversy (ok,so we did say we would run to Costa Rica if Mitt Romney was elected president a few entries back), but because Roman Polanski, the subject of this week's quote, like Allen, is an Oscar-winning filmmaker. We are quoting Academy Award-winning film directors this month even though our personal favorite movie director Stanley Kubrick never won one! (Yes, not even for "2001:A Space Odyssey").

Currently, in some small-market art houses, Polanski's latest film "Carnage" with three Oscar winners (Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz) and John C. Reilly is now screening. The film has already been screened in large markets.

The film director was born in Poland, and now resides in France.

Polanski won an Oscar for his film "The Pianist" (2002).

Here is Polanski's quote (the above image is of him acting in his own film "Chinatown" (1974)):

"Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater."

SIDEBAR: The Film Forum in New York will be screening a very interesting film (well, we haven't seen it for ourselves) from Iranian director Jafar Panahi entitled "This Is Not a Film" starting on Feb. 29.

The film, co-directed with Mojtaba Miratahmasb, was entirely shot on a cell phone and a DV camera. Sine Panafi is under house arrest for his politics and not allowed to make films in Iran, he had the film hidden in a cake and sent to France for festival screenings. It became a huge sensation at the Cannes Film Festival.

Panafi is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in Iran; his credits include "The White Balloon" (1995), "The Circle" (2000) and "Offside" (2006). His current film is an autobiographical documentary about isolation.

My friend Bilge Ebiri, a New York-based film critic proclaimed "Offside" to be the best film that was released in the United States in 2007. That film was about two girls in their late teens/early twenties try to sneak inside to see a soccer game. In Iran, women are forbidden to go to soccer games. Though we believe Irish women were allowed to see their national team play a game in Iran several years ago.

The Last 10 Films I've Seen- It's a Strange List

We are using the image above as something that could go with "Rango" that the other 112, 316 bloggers who've mentioned the animated western with the voice of Johnny Depp haven't used. We had to insert the words "Big Green Lizard Costa Rica" in Google to come up with this!

I wasn't too keen on seeing "Rango" until a tweet from film director Sofia Coppola said that it was not only a good film, but it was like 'a kiddie version of Chinatown.'

The very last movie I've seen is the 2000 Iranian film "The Circle" by Jafar Panahi, whose later film "Offside" was championed by my good friend Bilge Ebiri. The late Susan Sontag was among those who praised "The Circle," an amazing, highly-political film about the plight of women in Iran.

The Iranian film brought to mind some of the controversial films made by the late Turkish actor/director Yilmaz Guney in the late '70s and early '80s. Although, I have the subjective opinion, which I think even people who aren't of Turkish heritage like myself would agree with, that Turkey is a far better place politically than Iran. Well, we certainly hope that is the case!

The most disappointing of the ten films listed was unquestionably "Bronson," a 2008 English film which is essentially a Stanley Kubrick rip-off orchestrated for the shock porn generation.....hmm....I am starting to sound too much like Jonathan Rosenbaum, forgive the film geek humor!

We must profess that we got this idea from the great magazine "Film Comment," which has an amazing article on the gradual death of film projection in the current issue.

Here is the the list, my rating (out of four stars) comes after each film:

1. "The Circle" (Iran, 2000) ****

2. "Rango" (2011) ***1/2

3. "The Lucky Ones" (2008) ***

4. "The Tall T" (1957) ***1/2

5. "The Devil-Doll" (1936) **1/2

6. "24 City" (China, 2008) ****

7. "Treeless Mountain" (So. Korea, 2008) ***1/2

8. "Bronson" (2008) **

9. "The Adjustment Bureau" (2011) **

10. "Youth in Revolt" (2009) **

Dead or Alive- Kemal Sunal (12 of 12)

We close out our long-running and perhaps slightly off-putting series with a profile of Turkish comic actor Kemal Sunal, considered by many to be 'The Turkish Charlie Chaplin.' In fact, one of his films bears a close resemblance in plot to Chaplin's "City Lights."

Sunal was born in the eastern Turkish city of Malatya in 1944. Like many Turkish comic actors including the duo of Zeki Alasya and Metin Akpinar, Sunal transfered from the theatrical stage to cinema. His first play was entitled "The Unwilling Doctor."

He got his first big cinematic break with the smash comedy hit "Hababam Sinifi" (The Outrageous Class), released in 1975 the film has a huge cult following both in Turkey and among the Turkish diaspora living in Europe. It was followed by many sequels. In the orginal film, Sunal pulls several hilarious antics including building a tunnel to escape from the school grounds and secretly smoking in the school's attic.

Sunal usually played poor/working class stiffs and the films he appeared in addressed the social issues of the 1970s and 1980s, a turbulent time in Turkish history in which the country's far-right and far-left took up violence to spread their political aims.

The unique aspect of Sunal's comedy was that it was highly political, yet also mainstream. The films, for the most part, were liberal enough to examine the plight of the working class in Turkey yet centrist enough not to offend authorities who were jailing more radical cinematic figures like the controversial actor/director Yilmaz Guney,best known for his Cannes award-winning film "Yol" (1982) who was frequently in prison during the '70s.

Turkish cinema during this period reflected by right and left sentiments as the action star Cuneyt Arkin, aka "The Turkish Chuck Norris," appeared in over-the-top films like "Once Vatan/My Country First" (1974) in which his character, a Turkish agent, goes to Cyprus to basically kick Greek ass (the film was made while Turkey was in a brief war with Greece over Cyprus and issues from 1974 are still mostly unreolved regarding the matter).

I profiled Sunal's 1980 comedy "Gol Krali/The Golden Boot" for a thesis I wrote on Turkish cinema while a graudate student at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., in 2005. The film which revolves around an average, everyday man who finds that he has superlative soccer skills and he is thus able to somehow play for Istanbul powerhouse GalataSaray in their game against rival Istanbul team Fenerbahce. SPOILERR ALERT: Well, this is a fairly predictable one as Sunal is able to score several goals and lead the team to victory.

Some of Sunal's other significant films include the cult classic "Tosun Pasha"
(1975), "Kapicilar Krali/King of the Doormen" (1976) and "Devlet Kushu" (The State Bird) (1980).

My friend Bilge Ebiri wrote an excellent article about Turkish cinema which appears in the web site www.cinema-scope.com

Though the article focuses on current Turkish cinema and does not mention Sunal's works, Ebiri does touch upon on how the social upheveal of Turkey during the '70s was reflected in the cinema of the time, and the trend continues though Turkish films have become slightly less political in recent years as has American cinema.

SIDEBAR: We were saddened to learn that '80s teenage star Corey Haim died of an apparent drug overdose in Los Angeles. He will likely be best remembered for his role in "The Lost Boys" (1987).

SIDEBAR TWO: Today is the 70th birthday of our own right-wing action movie star Chuck Norris. I actually watched Norris' mid-80s film "Invasion USA" and Michael Moore's left-wing comedy "Canadian Bacon," which came out a few years later (Moore's only feature film as director to date) on dvd in the same weekend. It was very amusing.

SIDEBAR THREE: We should mention that the subject of our last entry in this series Topol is indeed alive and well though he does not act in films very often these days.