The Artist Wins Best Film, Scorsese Best Director in DC

The WAFCA (Washing DC area film critics) has announced their winners — and The Artist continues its run as winner – meanwhile, Martin Scorsese picks up Best Director.  The Artist and Hugo are kind of companion pieces, I think.  And something tells me watching Martin Scorsese and Michel Hanazavicius for a Q&A on movies would be something spectacular. They both pay homage to cinema, in every way, including how magical they both are to watch.  A must-read is a piece by Bill Desowitz, who writes the blog Immersed in movies, called: It’s About Time: The Artist and Hugo:

The Artist and Hugo are truly miraculous bookends that should be studied in introductory film courses: Michel Hanazavicius pays tribute to Hollywood silents and the classical golden age in a very old school approach, and Martin Scorsese delves into the magical world of Georges Méliès while soaking up the experimental French sound films of the same period, only pushing 3-D to new depths of dynamic immersion with the latest digital tools.

But it’s not about technology or technique: it’s about the primacy and poetry of visual storytelling — pure and simple. Both directors and their crews return to square one to rediscover the past and reclaim the present. Their films are about loneliness and the search for identity, artistic expression, and the longing to lose oneself in the cinematic dream world of the movies to escape the harsh realities of life. They are also about the importance of dealing with change, which is timeless and timely, given the precariousness of our global situation. The Artist and Hugo are not unique but they are sustaining.

THE 2011 WAFCA AWARD WINNERS: