As if rising with the temperature, the second quarter of the movie season is shaping up pretty nicely.
After months of stagnation, the Esquire and Mariemont theaters have finally mixed up their bookings in recent weeks, bringing in such worthwhile (if often little-seen) fare as Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The Class, Examined Life, Is Anybody There?, Paris 36, Sin Nombre, Sunshine Cleaning, Sugar, 12 and Tyson.
The dire situation has more acute at the multiplex.
Peter Biskind — a former Premiere magazine editor and longtime journalist who wrote the fascinating, endlessly entertaining book about the 1970s American movie scene, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls — recently published a biography called Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America.
I’ve yet to read the book, which, among other things, apparently tells us that Beatty might have slept with more than 12,775 woman — a number that doesn’t include “daytime quickies, drive-by blowjobs, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on.”
There's no denying that the Guild had a tough job in narrowing the field — it was another stellar year for the ever-evolving genre — but only two of the final five would have made my list: Inside Job (read my interview with Ferguson here) and Client 9, both of which appeared on my top 10 list of 2010 films.
What's up with David Fincher? After giving us only one film (2002's Panic Room) in the eight years following 1999's gleefully subversive, zeitgeist-capturing Fight Club, the notoriously meticulous filmmaker is back with The Social Network, his third effort in four years following 2007's excellent Zodiac and 2008's out-of-character — it's essentially a straight-up love story — The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And he's not done yet: Fincher's American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is currently in production and will be out by the end of 2011.
By now I typically unveil my favorite movies from the first half of the year. Yet looking back on the first six months of 2010, only two films —Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3 and Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop —have discerned themselves as unqualified contenders to make my year-end list.
The Cincinnati Art Museum has announced its fall film series, the first under its own aegis since ending its relationship with Cincinnati World Cinema earlier this year.
While we here at CityBeat World Headquarters are putting the final touches on our annual Year in Film in Music issue, I thought I’d check in to let you know that IndieWIRE’s annual Critic’s Poll has now been posted to the interwebs.
No surprise here: David Fincher’s The Social Network was the dominating winner, adding yet another piece of critical hardware to its already robust trophy case. The question now becomes: Can anything stop the Facebook origin story from stomping the competition come Oscar time?