 Much like Kris Tapley over at In Contention does his list of the 10 best shots of each year, I like to do something similar as well here at The Awards Circuit. The wrinkle for me is that I go with the best/most memorable scenes of the year. It’s also kind of a tie in/companion piece with my article on what films from 2011 will stand the test of time. I couldn’t limit it to just 10, so I included 5 of the 15 runners-up and came up with 15 different scenes that were my personal favorites. 8 of my 10 favorite films of 2011 are on the final cut of the list (all wound up in the piece though when you factor in the honorable mentions), but overall I think these are going to be widely considered some of the best scenes of the year. Of course, I’m eager to read what you all have to say/view as the best of the year as well, so we’ll get to that at the end. For now, let’s get on with it and talk about the best scenes from 2011!
Read more on Which Scenes from 2011 will you remember?…
Categories: Article Tags: Another Earth, Bellflower, Best of the year, Bridesmaids, Crazy Stupid Love, Drive, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Hugo, Like Crazy, lists, Margaret, Midnight in Paris, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Moneyball, random, Red State, Shame, Super 8, the artist, The Beaver, The Descendants, the girl with the dragon tattoo, The Ides of March, The Muppets, The Tree of Life, Warrior, We Bought a Zoo
- This was a big week here at the Awards Circuit! The power of votes for the Awards Season 2011 shifted to the hands of our beloved readers. The Awards Circuit Community Awards launched and gave the readers a chance to cast their votes for the best of 2011. Remember, voting is still in process until January 15th, so if you have not already voted, what are you waiting for?!
Read more on Circuit Round-Up (Week Ending 01/08)…
Categories: Circuit Round-Up Tags: American Horror Story, anna belickis, awards circuit readers, Bellflower, charlie day, Circuit Round-Up, clayton davis, Joey Magidson, John H. Foote, Joseph Braverman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Ward, Pina, Robert Hamer, The Awards Circuit readers, The Darkest Hour, We Bought a Zoo
 As the year stands behind us and we gear up for the upcoming award shows including the Critics Choice Awards which will be broadcast on VH1, Thursday, January 12th @ 8pm ET. Make sure you tune in.
As for our own critics here at the Awards Circuit, I am pleased to present the Staff Writers choices for the Top 10 Best Films of 2011. Having a hand in hiring most of these writers that are on board, I am also eager to see the eclectic tastes as we try to form a non-consensus here at the site. We fully embrace how we are all different and look at film in a different way from our next critic or reader. We respect and we view with curiosity. I sincerely hope the readership of the Awards Circuit will share your Top Ten films in the comment section because I’m eager to hear what you guys and gals loved in 2011 as well.
Read more on Awards Circuit Staff Top Ten of 2011…
Categories: Community, Editor, Staff Tags: Beginners, Bellflower, Best of the year, Bridesmaids, Certified Copy, Crazy Stupid Love, Drive, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Horrible Bosses, Hugo, Insidious, Melancholia, Midnight in Paris, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Moneyball, Of Gods And Men, Project Nim, Rango, Red State, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Shame, The Adventures Of Tintin, the artist, The Beaver, The Descendants, The Help, The Ides of March, The Interrupters, The Muppets, The Tree of Life, Top Tens, war horse, Warrior, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Weekend, Win Win, Young Adult
 For Your Consideration – Best Original Screenplay – Evan Glodell
Film: Bellflower
Director: Evan Glodell
Screenplay: Evan Glodell
Realistic Nominations: None
Oscar Scene: The fuel tank experiment
No matter what you may think of ‘Bellflower’ (and there are both ardent lovers like myself and huge detractors like our fearless leader Clayton), it’s hard to deny the originality of the project, and the credit goes almost fully to Evan Glodell. The writer, director, producer, editor, star of the film, and inventor of most of the props in the flick (including the camera used to shoot the movie), Glodell does yeoman’s work in getting this movie made, and the end result for my money was something rather extraordinary. A commentary on masculinity and the male broken heart unlike anything I’ve seen before (the publicity material aptly called it a mix between ‘Mad Max’ and John Hughes), it would please me immensely to see either ACCA or The Academy reward Glodell and the film for his vision. In my humble opinion, the best way to do it would be with a Best Original Screenplay nomination.
Read more on Circuit Consideration: Evan Glodell for Bellflower…
Read more on Circuit Round-Up (Week Ending 11/20)…
Categories: Circuit Round-Up Tags: Bellflower, Best Adapted Screenplay, Circuit Round-Up, dancing with the stars, demian bichir, Immortals, London Boulevard, marilyn monroe, Midnight in Paris, Shame, The Descendants, The Muppets, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, Woody Allen
- Editor Clayton Davis provided his own brief takes on The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, Winnie the Pooh and Bellflower.
Read more on Circuit Round-Up (Week Ending 11/06)…
Categories: Circuit Round-Up Tags: Amanda Seyfried, beavis and butthead, Bellflower, Best Supporting Actress, Circuit Round-Up, Crazy Stupid Love, dancing with the stars, George Clooney, Halloween, In Time, Like Crazy, Mel Gibson, Norman, Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, the x factor, Tower Heist, war horse, Winnie the Pooh
 The Tree of Life (***)
Director Terrence Malick achieves some of the best cinematic and touching images seen on film in years with The Tree of Life. Starring Academy Award Winners Brad Pitt and Sean Penn along with Jessica Chastain and newcomer Hunter McCracken, the film is a terrific ensemble that gets some of the best work of its actors. As the overbearing father, Pitt is ferocious and innovative delivering one of the finest performances yet. As the mother, Mrs. O’Brien, Chastain is absolutely gorgeous and mesmerizing. One of the best Oscar-caliber wonders of the year. Hunter McCracken shows one the best debuts by a young actor in years. Holding his own and nearly carrying the film on his shoulders, McCracken touches the deepest parts of the cinematic soul. Penn is the briefest of the performers but bookends a wondrous tale with a fully capable performance. Malick’s direction is brilliant though at times disengaging especially in the second act. Alexandre Desplat’s score composes the best work of his career hands down. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is the single best technical work by any person in 2011. He continues to raise the bar considerably for all camerawork by any man or woman. Though the narrative is at times overkill, the appreciation is present entirely throughout and should be applauded for such a distinct and unique piece of cinema.
Read more on Editor Snippet Film Reviews…
 Bellflower’ is easily the most unique film that I’ve seen in 2011 to date. It’s also one of the very best of the year so far, a micro-budgeted independent feature with a story that will both shock you and also break your heart. It’s, along with ‘The Beaver’, the only film this year to get 4 stars out of me, and stands alongside the aforementioned feature, Kevin Smith’s upcoming genre-bender ‘Red State’, and Woody Allen’s delightful ‘Midnight in Paris’ as the cream of the 2011 crop so far. This flick definitely isn’t for everyone, and likely will turn a decent number of people completely off, but for those who are willing to go down the rabbit hole with it, you’re in for a treat. If you crossed ‘Fight Club’ with ‘(500) Days of Summer’ and a pinch of ‘The Road Warrior’, then filtered it through the mind of John Hughes but then warped it and put it into a Mumblecore blender, that would be just the beginnings of what ‘Bellflower’ has in store for you. Writer/director/producer/editor/star Evan Glodell has cooked up something unlike anything I’ve seen before…
Read more on Bellflower (****)…
The Big Boys
By Robert Hamer
And so the summer flies by, and we Oscar prognosticators can steel ourselves for the “real” contenders to roll out over the fall and winter months. But as we look forward to how this season shapes up, what can we take from this year’s summer slate? What interesting events happened the last three months as far as the big, massive blockbusters go?
One trend that is not unusual or noteworthy is the number of sequels and remakes that hit us in that time. It does amaze me how seemingly every August some pundit will declare “The Summer of Sequels” or some such nonsense as if franchise pictures haven’t plagued the multiplexes at this time every year for the past decade. True, seven of the ten highest-grossing films of the year domestically were part of franchises (nine of you count The Avengers preludes), but that’s commonplace in this era of shareholder cinema. Read more on Sayonara, Summer!…
Categories: Article Tags: Another Earth, Attack The Block, Beautiful Boy, Beginners, Bellflower, Bridesmaids, Captain America: The First Avenger, Cars 2, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, collaborative article, Crazy Stupid Love, Everything Must Go, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, Hesher, Independent Spirit Awards, Mel Gibson, Midnight in Paris, Oscar hopefuls, Passion Play, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Project Nim, Sarah's Key, Senna, Submarine, Super 8, Sympathy for Delicious, Terri, The Beaver, The Future, The Guard, The Help, The Tree of Life, Thor, Transformers: Dark of the Moon
What will the summer bring?
Ah, summer. The season when school is out, sun tan is in, and cinephiles like us can look forward to massive studio-produced blockbusters that rake in the big bucks. These movies don’t usually have a strong presence during the awards season, but that’s slowly changing with the recent expansion of the Best Picture nominees to ten (spurred in part by the snubbing of a big-budget superhero film, I might add) and more ambitious treatments of what we used to call “summer flicks.” So what major releases for the months of May to August could be seen again at the Oscars, or *gasp* might actually be great movies?
In previous years, the easy answer to that question was almost always Pixar. They have earned by far more Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature than any other studio, and since the expansion to ten have produced two consecutive Best Picture nominees. So you would think that once again they’re a sure bet to dominate – both financially and critically – the summer slate of family entertainment…unless of course we’re talking about a sequel to their worst film yet. For reasons unknown to me, the illustrious studio has decided that their upcoming films should include a sequel to Cars and, for 2013, a prequel to Monsters, Inc., despite neither film being that good in the first place. But maybe I’m being presumptuous. After all, both of the Toy Story sequels were outstanding and I don’t even know what Cars 2 is about. Let’s check the official synopsis… Read more on The Summer and the Oscars…
Categories: Article Tags: Another Earth, Beginners, Bellflower, Bridesmaids, Captain America: The First Avenger, Cars 2, Conan the Barbarian, Cowboys and Aliens, Green Lantern, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, Higher Ground, One Day, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Project Nim, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Super 8, Tabloid, The Beaver, The Future, The Guard, The Hangover: Part II, The Tree of Life, Thor, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, upcoming films, Winnie the Pooh, X-Men: First Class
Just one more month in the summer movie season before the Oscar heavies start rolling out; could any film in that time redeem the (mostly uninspiring) past three months?
 First up in wide release is The Change-Up, directed by David Dobkin and starring Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds. Two friends with very different lives – one a hardworking lawyer and father, the other a quasi-employed ladies’ man – end up switching bodies…sort of like a “bro” version of Freaky Friday. Critics agree that the two stars do a fun job playing against-type, but they say the gross-out humor is so forced and the perfunctory “lesson” at the end is so trite that the film barely registers. While Bateman, Reynolds, and the R-rated comedy have had their fair share of successes this summer, audiences might feel fatigued at yet another raunchy comedy. I’m betting against this one – pegging it at $12-17 million.
The other wide release is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the prequel to a franchise that has already had, like, three prequels…or is this one a reboot? Not sure. Okay, so the story is obviously not the most original Hollywood has ever produced, but we all know the REAL selling-point of this movie: the amazing visual effects from Weta Digital that may very well win an Oscar come next February (For whatever reason, none of us on the staff put the film down in our own early predictions for Best Visual Effects. If you want to know why, I’m afraid I have no idea). The exquisitely-rendered apes are so convincing, in fact, that many critics find them – especially the widely acclaimed performance of Andy Serkis as Caesar – more than enough to make up for the uninspired story and flat human characters. It’s going to be hard to sell this film to general audiences. This Planet of the Apes installment does not have Tim Burton’s name as a selling point and James Franco is unproven as a box office draw. Still, online activity gives it some hope, and the film’s marketing campaign has been put into overdrive these last few days, so I’ll give it a $33-38 million opening. Read more on Weekend Openings (August 5-7)…
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Much like Kris Tapley over at In Contention does his list of the 10 best shots of each year, I like to do something similar as well here at The Awards Circuit. The wrinkle for me is that I go with the best/most memorable scenes of the year. It’s also kind of a tie in/companion piece with my article on what films from 2011 will stand the test of time. I couldn’t limit it to just 10, so I included 5 of the 15 runners-up and came up with 15 different scenes that were my personal favorites. 8 of my 10 favorite films of 2011 are on the final cut of the list (all wound up in the piece though when you factor in the honorable mentions), but overall I think these are going to be widely considered some of the best scenes of the year. Of course, I’m eager to read what you all have to say/view as the best of the year as well, so we’ll get to that at the end. For now, let’s get on with it and talk about the best scenes from 2011!
