A Golden Ticket

Presenting...the 2012 Golden Steve Awards.

Far and away the most coveted of motion picture accolades, Golden Steves are frequently described as the Oscars without the politics. Impervious to bribery, unreceptive to ballyhoo, disgusted by sentiment and riddled with integrity, this committee of one might legitimately be termed "fair-mindedness incarnate." Nearly 200 of the year's most acclaimed features were screened prior to the compilation of this ballot. First, some caveats:

1) Owing to a lifelong suspicion of prime numbers, each category is comprised of six nominees, not five.

2) This list is in no way connected with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a fact that should be apparent from its acumen. Please look elsewhere for Oscar analysis.

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

Amour

The Deep Blue Sea

Holy Motors

In the Family

The Master

Tabu

Best Director

Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master

Leos Carax, Holy Motors

Terence Davies, The Deep Blue Sea

Miguel Gomes, Tabu

Michael Haneke, Amour

Julia Loktev, The Loneliest Planet

Best Actor

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

John Hawkes, The Sessions

Denis Lavant, Holy Motors

Anders Danielsen Lie, Oslo, August 31st

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Jean-Louis Trintignant, Amour

Best Actress

Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone

Nina Hoss, Barbara

Rachel Mwanza, War Witch

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea

Best Supporting Actor

Jason Clarke, Zero Dark Thirty

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Clarke Peters, Red Hook Summer

Christopher Walken, A Late Quartet

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress

Adriana Asti, Unforgivable

Ann Dowd, Compliance

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Rinko Kikuchi, Norwegian Wood

Brit Marling, Sound of My Voice

Donna Murphy, Dark Horse

Best Screenplay--Adapted

Bernie (Richard Linklater, Skip Hollandsworth)

Chicken with Plums (Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud)

The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies)

Lincoln (Tony Kushner)

Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)

Best Screenplay--Original

Amour (Michael Haneke)

Flight (John Gatins)

Holy Motors (Leos Carax)

In the Family (Patrick Wang)

The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan)

Best Animated Feature

Brave (Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman)

Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan)

From Up on Poppy Hill (Goro Miyazaki)

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (Peter Lord, Jeff Newittt)

The Rabbi's Cat (Antoine Delesvaux, Joann Sfar)

Zarafa (Remi Bezancon, Jean-Christophe Lie)

Best Non-Fiction Film

The Central Park Five (Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon)

5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi)

The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh)

The Invisible War (Kirby Dick)

The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield)

This Is Not a Film (Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Jafar Panahi)

Best Foreign Language Film

Amour (Michael Haneke)

Barbara (Christian Petzold)

Holy Motors (Leos Carax)

Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonca Filho)

Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier)

Tabu (Miguel Gomes)

Best Original Song

"Ancora Qui," Django Unchained

(Ennio Morricone, Elisa Toffoli)

"Big Machine," Safety Not Guaranteed

(Ryan Miller)

"California Solo," California Solo

(Adam Franklin)

"Cosmonaut," Lawless

(Nick Cave, Warren Ellis)

"Skyfall," Skyfall

(Adele, Paul Epworth)

"Who Were We?," Holy Motors

(Leos Carax, Neil Hannon)

Les Steves d'Or

Presenting...the 2011 Golden Steve Awards.

See pontification just above...

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

The Artist

Certified Copy

Margaret

Mysteries of Lisbon

Poetry

The Tree of Life

Best Director

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Abbas Kiarostami, Certified Copy

Chang-dong Lee, Poetry

Kenneth Lonergan, Margaret

Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Raoul Ruiz, Mysteries of Lisbon

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Brendan Gleeson, The Guard

Woody Harrelson, Rampart

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Best Actress

Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy

Khomotso Manyaka, Life, Above All

Brit Marling, Another Earth

Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Anna Paquin, Margaret

Jeong-hie Yun, Poetry

Best Supporting Actor

John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Patton Oswalt, Young Adult

Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

John C. Reilly, Terri

David Wenham, Oranges and Sunshine

Best Supporting Actress

Alice Barnole, House of Tolerance

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

Jeannie Berlin, Margaret

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Screenplay--Adapted

The Hedgehog (Mona Achache)

Moneyball (Aaron Sorkin, Steve Zaillian, Stan Chervin)

Mysteries of Lisbon (Carlos Saboga)

The Princess of Montpensier (Jean Cosmos, Francois-Olivier Rousseau, Bertrand Tavernier)

The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan)

Best Screenplay--Original

The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)

Beginners (Mike Mills)

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)

Poetry (Chang-dong Lee)

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)

Best Animated Feature

The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg)

Arthur Christmas (Sarah Smith, Barry Cook)

A Cat in Paris (Jean-Loup Felicioli, Alain Gagnol)

Chico and Rita (Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal, Fernando Trueba)

Rango (Gore Verbinski)

Winnie the Pooh (Stephen J. Anderson, Don Hall)

Best Non-Fiction Film

The Arbor (Clio Barnard)

Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog)

The Interrupters (Steve James)

Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman)

We Were Here (David Weissman, Bill Weber)

Best Foreign Language Film

House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello)

Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Poetry (Chang-dong Lee)

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)

The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr)

Best Original Song

"Coeur Volant," Hugo

(Elizabeth Cotnoir, Isabelle Geffroy, Howard Shore)

"Lay Your Head Down," Albert Nobbs

(Brian Byrne, Glenn Close)

"Life's a Happy Song," The Muppets

(Bret McKenzie)

"Pictures in My Head," The Muppets

(Jeannie Lurie, Aris Archontis, Chen Neeman)

"Think You Can Wait," Win Win

(The National)

"Walk Lightly on the World," Jane's Journey

(Katie Melua)

It's that time again!

Presenting...the 2010 Golden Steve Awards.

Same pontification as above...

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

Animal Kingdom

The Ghost Writer

Of Gods and Men

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Director

Xavier Beauvois, Of Gods and Men

Sofia Coppola, Somewhere

David Fincher, The Social Network

David Michod, Animal Kingdom

Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Actor

Javier Bardem, Biutiful

Vincent Cassel, Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Paul Giamatti, Barney's Version

Luis Tosar, Cell 211

Best Actress

Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone

Carey Mulligan, Never Let Me Go

Noomi Rapace, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Paprika Steen, Applause

Tilda Swinton, I Am Love

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Fighter

Pierce Brosnan, The Ghost Writer

John Hawkes, Winter's Bone

Michael Lonsdale, Of Gods and Men

Ben Mendelsohn, Animal Kingdom

Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Best Supporting Actress

Anne-Marie Duff, Nowhere Boy

Lesley Manville, Another Year

Rosamund Pike, Barney's Version

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer

Best Screenplay--Adapted

Barney's Version (Michael Konyves)

The Ghost Writer (Robert Harris, Roman Polanski)

The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)

Tamara Drewe (Moira Buffini)

Toy Story 3 (M. Arndt, J. Lasseter, A. Stanton, L. Unkrich)

True Grit (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)

Best Screenplay--Original

Animal Kingdom (David Michod)

Another Year (Mike Leigh)

Buried (Chris Sparling)

Greenberg (Noah Baumbach)

The King's Speech (David Seidler)

Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)

Best Animated Feature

How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders)

The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)

Megamind (Tom McGrath)

My Dog Tulip (Paul Fierlinger, Sandra Fierlinger)

Tangled (Nathan Greno, Byron Howard)

Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

Best Non-Fiction Film

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)

Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (M. Hozer, P. Raymont)

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)

Last Train Home (Lixin Fan)

Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg)

Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed)

Best Foreign Language Film

Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)

Everyone Else (Maren Ade)

I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)

Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)

The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (A. Weerasethakul)

Best Original Song

"Darkness Before the Dawn," Holy Rollers

(M.J. Mynarski, Paul Comaskey)

"If I Rise," 127 Hours

(A.R. Rahman, Dido Armstrong and Rolo Armstrong)

"I See the Light," Tangled

(Alan Menken, Glenn Slater)

"Life During Wartime," Life During Wartime

(Marc Shaiman, Todd Solondz)

"The Only One," Hey Hey It's Esther Blueberger

(Paul Mac, Bertie Blackman)

"Le Refuge," Hideaway

(Louis-Ronan Choisy)

Once more unto the breach!

Presenting...the 2009 Golden Steve Awards.

Scroll up for pontification...

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

An Education

The Hurt Locker

The Secret in Their Eyes

A Serious Man

Up in the Air

The White Ribbon

Best Director

Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Juan Jose Campanella, The Secret in Their Eyes

Ethan and Joel Coen, A Serious Man

Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon

Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are

Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Colin Firth, A Single Man

John Malkovich, Disgrace

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Adam Scott, The Vicious Kind

Toni Servillo, Il Divo

Best Actress

Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank

Hye-ja Kim, Mother

Yolande Moreau, Seraphine

Carey Mulligan, An Education

Gabourey Sidibe, Precious

Tilda Swinton, Julia

Best Supporting Actor

Niels Arestrup, A Prophet

Peter Capaldi, In the Loop

Guillermo Francella, The Secret in Their Eyes

Woody Harrelson, The Messenger

Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles

Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress

Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air

Jessica Haines, Disgrace

Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air

Alice Krige, Skin

Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds

Mo'Nique, Precious

Best Screenplay--Adapted

The Damned United (Peter Morgan)

Disgrace (Anna Maria Monticelli)

An Education (Nick Hornby)

In the Loop (J. Armstrong, S. Blackwell, etc.)

The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella)

Up in the Air (J. Reitman, S. Turner)

Best Screenplay--Original

The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

Mother (Joon-ho Bong, Eun-kyo Park)

A Serious Man (Ethan and Joel Coen)

Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)

Best Animated Feature

Coraline (Henry Selick)

Mary and Max (Adam Elliot)

Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki)

The Secret of Kells (Tomm Moore)

Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley)

Up (Pete Docter)

Best Non-Fiction Film

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi)

The Beaches of Agnes (Agnes Varda)

October Country (Donal Mosher, Michael Palmieri)

Of Time and the City (Terence Davies)

Tyson (James Toback)

The Way We Get By (Aron Gaudet)

Best Foreign Language Film

Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

Mother (Joon-ho Bong)

A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)

The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella)

Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)

Best Original Song

"Ayayayay," The Maid (Pedro Piedra)

"Hideaway," Where the Wild Things Are (Karen O)

"I Can See in Color," Precious (Mary J. Blige)

"Innocent Child," Skin (H. Muddiman, M. Stockley)

"Smoke Without Fire," An Education (Duffy)

"The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart

(R. Bingham, T-Bone Burnett)

Just what civilization needs...

Another weigh-in on the best films of the decade.

(Some temptations can be resisted. Some should be but cannot. Sometimes reticence is regretted. Sometimes resistance is futile.)

Today: 15 runners-up and the 25th [superlative inflection of positive adjective] motion picture of the decade spanning 2000-2009.
Tomorrow through December 31st, daily: Countdown to #1.

***

Honorable mentions, listed alphabetically:

Before Sunset (Richard Linklater); Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron); The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Piui); Gosford Park (Robert Altman); The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow); Little Children (Todd Field); Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch); My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin); Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro); Safe Conduct (Bertrand Tavernier); The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenabar); A Serious Man (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen); The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach); 25th Hour (Spike Lee); United 93 (Paul Greengrass)

***

25. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
24. No Country for Old Men (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
23. Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel)
22. The Fog of War (Errol Morris)
21. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
20. You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
19. Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
18. Zodiac (David Fincher)
17. Kings & Queen (Arnaud Desplechin)
16. Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki)
15. Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
14. Sideways (Alexander Payne)
13. The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand)
12. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
11. Junebug (Phil Morrison)
10. The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana)
9. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
8. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
7. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
6. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
5. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
4. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes)
3. City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
2. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
1. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)

"And when it's done, we'll both be free..."

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo—I’m sure I’ve seen the film 20 times. It inspired the longest, thorniest paper of my academic career. And though I chafe at perfunctory rankings of art, my perennial fascination with the Master’s most self-expressive work assures its place on that desert island for which connoisseurs prepare in itemized fashion.

Outshining its palpable wonderments, in my view, is its capacity to reveal uncharted pockets of genius on each viewing. Sometimes it’s a quick shot, sometimes an extended set piece; regardless, you always come away with newfound reverence for Hitchcock’s twisted virtuosity. I had occasion to watch it recently in a venue that did full justice to its grandeur, and this time my attention was seized by a quiet interlude which before then seemed like little more than connective tissue. (This is where I urge you to stop reading if you’ve never seen Vertigo—and let your artistic compasses know they've failed you.)

I refer to the ten-minute sequence which begins after the inquest into Madeleine’s death, and ends with Scottie’s compulsion to enter Judy’s apartment. The parenthesis comprises the saddest, tenderest, most genuine treatment of grief and refusal to unfasten the shackles of lost love I have ever seen on film. Scottie drifts through days as though trapped in a lucid dream, unresponsive to stimuli except those that fuel his need to believe Madeleine is not really gone from him. He returns to familiar locales—the Elsters’ old residence, the bar at Ernie’s, the gallery where Carlotta’s portrait emblematizes past forfeitures to love—almost as if he believes Madeleine is hiding from him, teasingly and in plain sight. The faintest validation of his faith reengages him with the world, but the sting of each setback pushes him further into withdrawal. How tenaciously he questions the woman who would presume to drive Madeleine’s distinctive green car; how thoroughly he retreats upon learning she is the new owner.

The frenzied nightmare that triggers Scottie's breakdown is vintage Hitchcock—the specters of Gavin and Carlotta, the wary but purposeful march to the empty grave, the crime scene-esque silhouette of Scottie plummeting downward into worse things than death. But the compositions that follow are anomalous in the extreme, especially for a filmmaker often linked with sensation over emotion, with economy before patience. The long, slow pan across San Francisco’s skyline attests that all machinations, even Hitchcock’s, must sometimes cede their urgency, and Bernard Herrmann’s soaring soundscape, marked by a literalization of heartstrings, has the curious effect of rendering the passions on display even more shrouded and internalized.

I don’t mean to give the impression of narrative stasis within these scenes. Hitchcock uses the interval to prepare his canvas for the imminent sublimation of helplessness into tyranny; when the time comes, he has subtly groomed us to be revulsed but not confounded. He also exhibits his deft command of parallelism, as the fateful premonitions of Scottie’s dream remind us of Madeleine’s self-fulfilling prophesy, as dire interrogations prefigure unyielding demands, as Midge’s micromanagement of Scottie’s recovery anticipates the exactitude of Judy’s reinvention. But what registers most pronouncedly is the study of a shattered soul—of bereavement in something close to real time. Many handlings of the predicament hasten us through numbness into primal rage, sensual surrender and release. By lingering on the bargaining stage, Hitchcock reveals himself as the master of a different kind of suspense—the suspended animation of the lovelorn survivor.

Only a poor, corrupt official, but an irreplaceable actor

Indulge me in a thought experiment. We all take for granted (I hope) that a Casablanca remake would be inauspicious, ill-fated and impossible. Right, now let’s break that down. Inauspicious is an opinion, widely supported but indemonstrable. Ill-fated is a projection, backed by enough common sense to overtake the highest hill of beans, but premature until the commodity hits the marketplace. That leaves impossible. Clearly a refashioning of any work, even the most iconic, is not impossible. With legal rights procured, a Casablanca cover would require only labor and equipment. But let’s pay heed to the fourth listed and most pragmatic definition of “impossible”:

Not to be done, endured, etc., with any degree of reason or propriety: an impossible situation.

Now we’re in murky waters, like the ones that brought Rick to Casablanca. This explication implies a vanishing point at which “unreasonable” becomes “unendurable”—whereupon “shouldn’t” becomes “mustn’t.” And here’s the upshot of my tangled hypothetical: It’s beyond reason to expect next-gen Rick to fill Bogart’s shoes, but without Claude Rains as Renault, the whole enterprise is beyond endurance.

Despite his supporting-actor billing, Rains is the film’s least transmutable component. Casablanca’s formation owes to a fabled chronology of happy accidents—unrepeatable at any other time, in any other climate, by any other studio. And I believe Warner Brothers’ grandest coup of all was having Rains under contract and propitiously available when shooting commenced. I will not ask you to picture another actress in the Ilsa role, but perhaps you’ll entertain the notion that other stars operate in the Ingrid Bergman vein. (Consider her daughter, the ethereal Isabella Rossellini.) Yet you can think from now until moonlight and love songs surpass their shelf lives—you’ll never arrive at a Rains surrogate, or a featured player who approximates his function in movies. I concede that my favorite aspect of Alfonso Cuaron’s laudable Children of Men was the way in which the Owen/Caine dynamic recalled the interplay between Bogart and Rains—bruised nobility meets affable decadence, to put it archetypically. But even that pedigreed pairing lacks the enchantment of cinema’s most enduringly beautiful friendship. Gone is the musicality of discourse, the absolute reciprocal understanding and acceptance that views character flaws as colloquial plums—never again have solipsism and hedonism melded so impeccably.

Even the most resolute contrarians who indict the film for objectification and untoward flag-waving, to say nothing of repugnant achromatism, are bound to revel in Rains’ blithe etching of the opportunistic Renault. All his actorly gifts are beheld in bountiful bloom: The cunning delivery of sardonic dialogue, exuding such fulsome delight that one believes it was improvised by a man whose own cleverness could keep him enthralled for hours at a stretch. The sporadic bursts of professionalism, jarring until one notes that when his personal and vocational motives form a right angle, he finds a way to move crosswise to the axis he appears to be tracing. And, of course, the award-worthy calisthenics of his left eyebrow—itself one of the best character actors in Hollywood.

The absence of latter-day Rainses might appear to stem from a gradual diminution of second bananas in the Tinseltown ranks. A valid hypothesis and a woefully accurate observation on the whole, but I daresay even a complete inversion of the structures in place would not solve our problem. The uniqueness of the Rains presence cannot be overstated. Bemused and beguiling, silky and sophisticated, he was the Cheshire cat of cinema. Twentieth-century culture would be unthinkable without his velvet purr.