Listmania ‘09! Miscellaneous Movie Observations: Part Two
I technically started writing these lists months ago, when I began compiling a list of all of the movies we had seen in 2009 that had been released that year. In my head I was trying to assess where everything was going to go before the year ended, so I could save myself the problem I had in 2008 when writing these posts took forever despite their lack of actual content. And yet here I am, over a week into 2010, and I’m still going. At least this miscellaneous bunch of observations represents the last of it. And most of it is pictures, so it will only take about three minutes to read. Go crazy, dear reader…
Scene of the Year: Lt. Archie Hicox makes the mistake of holding a meeting in a basement bar (Inglourious Basterds)
Honorable Mentions:
Carl and Ellie Frederickson share a wonderful life (Up)
Det. Terrence McDonagh is visited by a couple of Iguanas (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans)
Jake Sully tames an Ikran and flies it around the Hallelujah Mountains (Avatar)
Mark Bellison reveals his “Ten Commandments” (The Invention of Lying)
The Demon haunting Katie finally gets a little handsy (Paranormal Activity)
Action Scene of the Year: Space Dragons + Space Tigers + Space Rhinos + Blue Giants vs. Rapacious Capitalism (Avatar)
Honorable Mentions:
Clive Owen vs. assassins in the Guggenheim (The International)
Sniper vs. sniper in the desert (The Hurt Locker)
Optimus Prime vs. three Decepticons in a forest (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)
Christian Bale raids Johnny Depp’s forest hiding place (Public Enemies)
Wikus Van Der Merwe dons a “Prawn” Battlesuit (District 9)
Most Satisfying Ending: Inglourious Basterds
Honourable Mentions:
A Prophet
District 9
Public Enemies
Enter The Void
G-Force
Least Satisfying Ending: Terminator Salvation
Dishonorable Mentions:
All About Steve
The Boat That Rocked
The Brothers Bloom
The Box
Twilight: New Moon
Best Hero of the Year: Carl Fredericksen (Ed Asner - Up)
Honorable Mentions:
Neytiri (Zoe Saldana - Avatar)
Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine – Star Trek)
Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington – Terminator Salvation)
Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson – Zombieland)
Sam Sparks (Anna Faris – Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs)
Best Villain of the Year: Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds)
Honorable Mentions:
César Luciani (Niels Arestrup – A Prophet)
Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang – Avatar)
Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer – Up)
Tae-ju (Ok-bin Kim - Thirst)
Linton Barwick (David Rasche – In The Loop)
Worst Hero of the Year: Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk – Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li)
Dishonorable Mentions:
Goku (Justin Chatwin – Dragonball Evolution)
Duke (Channing Tatum – G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra)
Jimmy (Mathew Horne – Lesbian Vampire Killers)
Wolverine (Hugh Jackman – X-Men Origins: Wolverine)
Roger (Vincent Gallo – Metropia)
Worst Villain of the Year: Bison (Neal McDonough – Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li)
Dishonorable Mentions:
Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh - The Boat That Rocked)
Sabertooth (Liev Shreiber – X-Men Origins: Wolverine)
Piccolo (James Marsters – Dragonball Evolution)
Ryder (John Travolta – The Taking of Pelham 123)
Nero (Eric Bana – Star Trek)
Best Ambiguous Hero/Villain of the Year: Mia (Katie Jarvis – Fish Tank)
Most Passive Character of the Year: Bella Swan (Kristin Stewart – Twilight: New Moon)
Gupta of the Year: Fletch (James Corden – Lesbian Vampire Killers)
Dishonourable Mentions:
Sean (“S.J.”) Tuohy, Jr. (Jae Head – The Blind Side)
Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper – The Hangover)
Mary (Beth Grant – Extract)
Eric Powell (Chris Messina – Julie and Julia)
Micah (Micah Sloat – Paranormal Activity)
Highest Concentration of Guptas of the Year: Away We Go
Only Maya Rudolph’s Verona de Tessant survives the film as a likable protagonist, coming to terms with her familial strife without histrionics, just noble acceptance. Everyone else in the film is a dreadful caricature, and that’s on Sam Mendes, Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida more than on the talented actors, who are forced to do some terrible things. I still wake up in the middle of the night after terrifying nightmares about how Allison “Wonderful” Janney was made to play a squawking redneck shrew. Horrible.
Badass of the Year: Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White – Black Dynamite)
Honorable Mention: One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen – Valhalla Rising)
Honorary Happy-Go-Lucky Award For Services To Unbearable Characters Whose Optimism Is Actually A Kind Of Mental Illness: Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock – All About Steve)
“What Was Your Name Again? Oh Well, Doesn’t Matter. He’s Only Along As A Chauffeur And Potential Husband” Character of the Year: Gordon Silberman (Thomas McCarthy – 2012)
Best Talking Animal of the Year: Dug the Dog (Bob Peterson – Up)
Honorable Mention: Steve the Monkey (Neil Patrick Harris – Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs)
Worst Talking Animal of the Year: Mr. Fox (George Clooney – Fantastic Mr. Fox) (He’s a really selfish dick, if we’re being honest here.)
Dishonorable Mention: The Chaos Reigns Fox (Antichrist)
Best Non-Talking Animal of the Year: Kevin the bird (Up)
Honorable Mention: The various ratbirds plaguing Swallowfalls (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs)
Worst Non-Talking Animal of the Year: The yappy dog in 2012 that gets saved in a moment robbed from all of Roland Emmerich’s other movies.
Best Lizard Cameo: Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans
Best Alligator Cameo: Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans
Best Crack Pipe: Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans
Best Couple of the Year: Julia and Paul Child (Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci – Julie and Julia)
Honorable Mention: Brian Clough and Peter Taylor (Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall – The Damned United)
Worst Couple of the Year: Julie and Eric Powell (Amy Adams and Chris Messina – Julie and Julia)
Dishonorable Mention: Sara and Brian Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric – My Sister’s Keeper)
Most Doomed Couple of the Year: He and She (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg – Antichrist)
Honorable Mention: Micah and Katie (Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston – Paranormal Activity)
Least Convincing Couple of the Year: Leonard Kraditor and Michelle Rausch (Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow – Two Lovers)
Dishonorable Mention: Leonard Kraditor and Sandra Cohen (Joaquin Phoenix and Vinessa Shaw – Two Lovers)
“I Hope These Guys Make It” Couple of the Year: James Brennan and Emily Lewin (Jesse Eisenberg and Kristin Stewart – Adventureland)
Honorable Mention: Columbus and Wichita (Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone – Zombieland)
“God, Just Split Up, Will You?” Couple of the Year: Derek and Sharon Charles (Idris Elba and Beyonce Knowles – Obsessed)
Dishonorable Mention: Mathieu Liévin and Maya (Yvan Attal and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi – Les regrets)
Most Tedious Love Triangle of the Year: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black (Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner - Twilight: New Moon)
Dishonorable Mention: Kate Curtis, Jackson Curtis, and thingy. You know, the guy. The one who flew all those planes. With the glasses. (Amanda Peet, John Cusack and Thomas McCarthy – 2012)
Best Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the Year of All Time: Ellie Frederiksen (Elie Docter – Up)
Worst Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the Year: Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel – (500) Days of Summer) (ETA: With caveats. See comments for further discussion.)
Funniest Apparition of the Year: Wayne Mead (Michael Douglas – Ghosts of Girlfriends Past)
Least Funny Apparition of the Year: Whatever the hell was haunting Katie (Door-Opening Grip #3 - Paranormal Activity)
Sort of Funny, Sort of Horrifying Apparition of the Year: The Chaos Reigns Fox (Antichrist)
Most Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, Fish Tank)
Honorable Mention: Anna Friel (Land of the Lost)
Least Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Megan Fox (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)
Runner-Up: Gerard Butler (The Ugly Truth)
Most Pallid Lust Object of the Year: Robert Pattinson - Twilight: New Moon
Worst Wig of the Year: Taylor Lautner - Twilight: New Moon
Most Improved Hair of the Year: Amy Adams’ pixie-cut – Julie and Julia
Scourge Of Cinema in 2009 – Sandra Bullock
Best Insult of the Year: In The Loop (comes at 0:36)
Running Joke of the Year: Det. Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) mentioning the name “G” (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans)
Honorable Mention: “Steve!” (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs)
And that, my friends, is that. Thank you for all the comments and discussions. The blog will be taking a bit of a break, becoming more sporadic in 2010 while I deal with other things, though I’m sure once the Oscar nominations are announced I’ll be back to complain about the inevitable nods for Precious and Up In The Air. So at least there’s that to look forward to, eh?
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Shades of Caruso Mini-Blog- Listmania ’11! The Best Movies Of The Year December 31, 2011
Kinda have to take issue with the nomination of Summer for Worst Manic Pixie Dream Girl, I’m afraid. I thought the whole point of her character was that she isn’t a DG, MP or otherwise, but Tom has seen too many movies that do feature MPDGs who Change The Hero’s Life [TM] and makes the mistake of trying to slot her into that role.
Otherwise, no complaints. There really was no competition as to who would wind up with Best Villain, was there? If Waltz doesn’t get that Best Supporting Actor nomination come Oscar time, I shall be very much saddened.
Summer should have known her place and made Tom’s life better! Doesn’t she know that’s the role of women in male-written rom-coms these days?
You make a very good point. Perhaps I should have given her a Worst At Being A Manic Pixie Dream Girl award, or a Best Deconstruction Of The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Phenomenon, rather than just Worst. I could argue she does what an MPDG does (she has all of the cutesy hallmarks of one and does inspire Tom to better his life), but that would be cheating. You’re right: she’s the Alpha and Omega of MPDGs, without actually being one herself.
I think I put her there partly because I wanted to at least mention her, considering my incredibly visceral reaction to her. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say I once knew a Summer Finn, and I didn’t recover as quickly as Tom. Watching (500) Days of Summer was an incredibly uncomfortable experience, though one I’m glad I endured.
I couldn’t give her a Gupta award as I don’t think she qualifies, and she’s not a villain. We see her from Tom’s point-of-view, after all, and he’s not about to recognise the times where she tries to pull away from him, which is why her sudden departure from his life is so sudden and unpleasant. She’s not a hero either, though. Her enforced obliviousness to his feelings made me want to tear the cinema down.
As a result, she gets that spot, but with these caveats. I’ll leave the post as is, but I hope other readers scroll down and see your point, because I think you’ve hit on something interesting about her, and about that film in general. For the record, I expected to hate it, and certainly got annoyed with the tricksiness at times, but the final half an hour was a home-run.
And yes, Landa! Already one of the great screen villains and only a few months old. I’ve seen people talk about him on the Internet as if he is a real person: he’s already taken up room in our headspace.
i just thought that Kristine Kreuk is too pretty to be Chun Li in the movie Legend Of Chun Li `