2009 Calvins: David Mumpower's Ballots
March 2, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
For similar reasons, I picked Jon Favreau as the best director of the year. Not only did he return my favorite film of 2008, he also somehow managed to make one of the dumbest sounding comic book characters (a guy in armor only matters in medieval history or Dungeons and Dragons) remarkably fully formed. I felt like I immediately knew all about Tony Stark's world and what he was about. The news clippings at the start of the film were a great idea but the line that really sold me on the movie was when a scientist noted toward the end, "I'm not Tony Stark." The idea that a man's genius could be so profound that he could build something in a cave that some of the finest minds in the world could not recreate in perfect lab settings is exactly the sort of storytelling I seek in a film.
Of course, I still didn't name Robert Downey Jr. as the best actor of the year, which kind of hurts me a bit. I had thought him likely to win the category right up until I finally caught Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon. At that moment, I realized nothing was going to beat his performance as Richard Nixon. I consider it to be the best lead acting work since Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, which is pretty high praise from me given the fact that I've said here that I thought Murray's work there is the best acting I have ever seen. For Langella to approach that speaks volumes about what a tour de force performance he offers, somehow managing to make Richard Nixon monstrous, sympathetic and socially awkward, that last one being stunning for a man publically elected to our country's highest office.
I thought that the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories this year were brutal. You may not have even heard of two of the films whose actresses I lauded. So, I am damning Anne Hathaway with faint praise when I say that she was the best I saw for the year. If it helps, she would have won either of the last two years as well. Her role as a Lindsay Lohan type was relatable in a warts and all, root-for-her-still sort of way. Similarly, I cannot believe that nothing ever beat Kristen Bell in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but all of the vaunted end-of-year awards contenders left me cold save for Cruz's Academy Award winning work in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. What separated Bell was the fact that her character was supposed to be one note comedy relief. Bell somehow managed to make the titular Sarah Marshall engaging, tortured, funny and more than a little bit justified. Her willingness to poke fun at herself over the atrocity that was Pulse was a serendipitous bonus. I thought Forgetting Sarah Marshall was much better than it had any reason to be, and the key to it was the presence of Bell and co-star Mila Kunis, who also makes the top three. I feel rather confident that my Best Supporting Actress top ten is unlike any other ballot you saw this past year.
Meanwhile, I was quite conventional with my top two votes in the Best Supporting Actor category. Heath Ledger made me forget about Jack Nicholson, which is not something I would have thought possible at any point over the past 20 years. Robert Downey Jr. might be the strongest silver medalist I've ever had. He rightfully deserved to win for his work in Tropic Thunder, but it was the wrong year to be a supporting actor. Russell Brand is probably a psycho, but I bought him as a well-intended, vapid rock star. As for James Franco, that's a weird vote for him, because I actively disliked Pineapple Express as a whole yet I found him quite winning as a harmless burnout with good intentions and a constant desire to be liked.
As I said on my Big Board for 2008, I thought Rachel Getting Married was the best screenplay of the year. Jenny Lumet shows the wisdom of a grizzled veteran with her moments of subtlety that provide the backstory about Anne Hathaway's character without beating it over the audience's head. "I saw you on Cops" is so much tighter than filming a couple of minutes of humiliation that distract from her weekend with the family. Had it not won, In Bruges would have, as it's almost as marvelous. The hitmen dramedy surprised me, it engaged me, and it made me root for genuinely awful people. I'm not someone who likes rooting for the bad guy per se, so that's an impressive feat. The fact that Colin Farrell's character not only knew he was doomed but felt it was completely justified is exactly the sort of moral ambiguity that wins me over. The only script I want to champion here is Andrews (not a typo) Jenkins for How to Rob a Bank. The writer/director is a complete unknown and this film will do little to raise his profile, but I was deeply impressed by the way he made his argument about the malevolent infrastructure of the corporate banking system. In hindsight, it feels all the more timely. If you watch the film, its low budget production values may prove off-putting, but you will also grow aware of how obscene most banking fees are. I like the critical thinking Andrews displays in his screenplay. A lot.
Given the above, an understandable guess would have been Forgetting Sarah Marshall for Best Cast and believe me, I considered it. The magnificence of Langella's performance combined with exceptional support from Michael Sheen and Sam Rockwell made Frost/Nixon the slight nod. Meanwhile, four of my 40 votes in the acting categories went to the In Bruges cast, so its presence in second place is self-explanatory. My only regret here is that something had to give and that meant pushing down worthy selections like The Dark Knight and Slumdog Millionaire. For that matter, Milk would have won if not for the performance of Diego Luna, which was woefully out of place. It's hard to put a film in the top five for Best Cast while simultaneously naming one of its actors in the Worst Performances category.
Best Scene is probably my favorite Calvins category year in and year out. I love the uniqueness of it, and the selection process forces me to examine films in a modular fashion I might not otherwise. This year was particularly brutal because several films such as Bolt, The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Rachel Getting Married and Cloverfield offered multiple scenes worthy of selection. In the end, I went off the board and selected the magnificent finale to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, partially because it's hilarious and partially because of my Angel-established vampire puppet fetish. To this day, I remain stunned that my second place selection, The Bank Heist, did not win the Calvin for best Scene. I am convinced that's the YouTube clip that made this film a $530 million blockbuster.
One of the most difficult categories for me to evaluate this past year was Best Use of Music. I had trouble deciding what to do with the concert films I saw last year, particularly Shine a Light, the Rolling Stones documentary by Martin Scorsese. Should a concern film be evaluated in the same light as a regular movie? Eventually, I decided no, and that made The Wackness the clear cut choice for best musical accompaniment of the year. Its celebration of 1990s hip-hop, R&B and other urban sounds perfectly punctuated the movie's tales of a teen angst among pushers. I'm convinced I wouldn't have liked this movie if not for its soundtrack, which is pretty much what this category's vote is for.
Best Overlooked Film is always a function of the Best Picture race for me as I simply look at my Big Board and determine which films have yet to earn $25 million. The top two films here, Frost/Nixon and In Bruges, are unsurprising. The presence of Meet Bill is probably the shocker. I recognize that most reviewers dismissed the film as pointless frivolity, but I thought it did an admirable job of telling a simple story well.
The Breakthrough performance category is always one that is somewhat arbitrary to determine. Jason Segel is not new to the industry and I have been aware of him since Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. While some now know him from How I Met Your Mother, it is his presence in Forgetting Sarah Marshall that has made him a recognizable face in the industry. Being the lead actor in a very funny film made Seth Rogen and Michael Cera and I think that another good movie could work similarly for Segel. You're tired of hearing about Dev Patel by now, so the other name I'd like to discuss is Rebecca Hall. She went from virtual unknown to the focus of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and a key figure in Frost/Nixon. That's two of the most accredited films of the year wherein she played a major role. A romantic comedy and a gritty indie film are all that is left before she is a star.
I am never a huge fan of the Worst categories. Going against the grain of the Internet, I never enjoy slamming something just to slam it. Keeping that in mind, The Love Guru and The Happening deserve every nasty thing said about them.
Refocusing on the positive, Burn Notice Season One is the DVD I have enjoyed the most over the past calendar year. I've watched every episode several times. As for Best Album, I'm officially too old to have any sort of valued opinion in the category, but O.A.R.'s Shattered and Karmina's The Kiss were far and away my favorite two singles of the year. This news bothers Les Winan and Calvin Trager to an epic degree. For Best Videogame, my choice would have been Halo 3 had it qualified. This long after the game's release, I still have a group of friends who join me for Halo matches almost every weekend. Since I can't vote for it, I instead chose the game that I loved so long ago, Chrono Trigger. I am so thrilled that Square continues to reinvent their game library on the Nintendo DS. Chrono Trigger is one of my favorite games ever and its added content is...well, I promised myself I wouldn't cry.
The most brutal category this year by far was Best TV Show. Whereas I struggled to name ten things in some other categories, my initial list of worthy selections here was 18 shows long. Particularly brutal for me was having to cut My Boys, which I instantly regretted when the latest season of Lost started by being boring yet again. Picking out the top five was also rough. Top Chef is far and away my favorite reality show these days, but I still couldn't put it ahead of my beloved Simpsons. Leverage hadn't even had a full season when the balloting came due, but I was already head over heels in love with it by then. Is my favorite character Hardison or Parker? It's just so hard to pick. While I have loved Battlestar Galactica since the mini-series, I thought it struggled a bit with the episodes aired in 2008, relative to past episodes anyway. Mediocre BSG episodes are still night and day better than almost anything else on television. Still, I couldn't pick it over Burn Notice, which had what I consider to be a perfect first season that has carried over magnificently in season two. I see the duo clashing again for my choice next year as well. BSG appears to be delivering a best case scenario finish to its four seasons of greatness.