Oscar voters have today to mail their ballots. Tomorrow is a holiday. Then they have the 2nd and the 3rd and that was all she wrote. It feels crushingly early, way too early, way too soon to shove so many objects into that tiny hole. Most of them, in fact, have long since been turned in. But here are ten anythings from me. Hannibal did it to amuse himself.
1. The score in Cloud Atlas – Moving, brilliant beyond words.
2. James Spader huffing and puffing, sweaty and spent, in Lincoln.
3. Jessica Chastain saying “I’m not that girl who fucks” in Zero Dark Thirty.
4. The unusually beautiful costumes in Anna Karenina
5. Life of Pi’s use of 3-D just to remind us about the simple beauty of rain.
6. Gollum coming to vivid life in The Hobbit.
7. Samuel L. Jackson laughing at everything Leonardo DiCaprio says in Django Unchained.
8. Hans Zimmer, once again, out of the park in The Dark Knight Rises
9. Jack Fisk and David Crank bringing the era of familiar photographs of a time gone by in The Master
10. The natural light of Janusz Kaminski’s frame in Lincoln.
I could go on, and on, and on and on. But 2012 has been one of the best years for film I’ve seen in a while. 2010 is a close second. Here’s to hoping this year’s winner, whatever it may be, might just really be the best film of the year.
Happy New Year dear readers. Thanks for hanging in with Ryan and me through another hard core season replete with too many ads, server shut-downs, commenter wars, and every other crazy piece of our Oscar puzzle. May 2013 be grand and full of, you know, that thing with feathers.
What are your ten anythings?
