There's lots of action on the Muriel Awards front to report on from the weekend, so let's get crackin'.
Muriels voters check in on years past as well as the one
that just got away, and right now you can see what got nods for Best Film of 2002
honors. Third place went to Spike Jonze’s Adaptation
(adapted, of course, from Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay); second place was
snagged by Spike Lee’s 25th Hour; and my own vote went to Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale. Steve Carlson checks in with some passion the movie that Muriel voters crowned as 2002's finest.
Then we travel back even further, 25 years ago to the dark
days of 1987, where Joel and Ethan Coen’s Raising
Arizona bagged the third-place slot and Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop ranked as second best—my own
vote went to John Boorman’s Hope and
Glory. Scott von Doviak reveals the Muriels’ top choice and makes love, not
war with the winner.
Three of us in the Muriels clan (including me) cast votes
for both writer-director Stephen Chbosky (The
Perks of Being a Wallflower) and director Bart Layton (The Imposter) as having the most impressive cinematic breakthrough
of 2012, and two of us (including me) thought writer-director Nicholas McCarthy
(The Pact) deserved honors in this
category. But those votes weren’t enough to merit more than a mention in the shadow
of Matthew McConaughey (Killer Joe, Magic
Mike, Bernie, The Paperboy) and Scoot McNairy (Killing Them Softly, Argo), tied for third place, second-place finisher
Channing Tatum (Magic Mike, 21 Jump
Street, Haywire, The Vow, Ten Year), or the eventual winner, whom Sam
Juliano profiles at the Muriels site.
One of the aforementioned Cinematic Breakthrough contenders fared
much better in the Muriel Award category recognizing 2012’s Best Body of Work,
besting Steven Soderbergh (Haywire, Magic
Mike, and even 2nd unit director on The Hunger Games) and the ubiquitous Joseph Gordon Levitt (Looper, The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush,
Lincoln). You already know who it is, but click away anyway to read Andrew
Dignan’s excellent assessment of this individual’s eye-opening achievements in 2012, all of which were finger-lickin’ good.
And finally, the Muriels check in on the year’s best
achievements in film editing with nods to third-place finisher The Master (Leslie Jones and Peter
McNulty), Cloud Atlas (Alexander
Berner; film pictured above), and Glenn Heath’s unambiguous admiration for the winner.
It’s been a real pleasure to participate in the Muriels this
year and keep up with the awards as they are revealed, especially since, as one
friend has already observed, the Muriels seem to be the one voting body this
year that have some serious love for Cloud Atlas. I’m looking forward to seeing if that love continues
to be extended toward this thorny, ambitious soaring movie. And my own writing assignments
for this year’s awards have finally been issued—I’ve got two this year, one
that will not be unexpected and the other a cheeky rebuke to what I saw as a
dearth of worthy nominees (at least among the films I actually had a chance to
see by the voting deadline) in a certain
high-profile category. Oh, boy! Stay tuned!
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I'd actually planned to have a piece in the miscellany category on the three-pronged directors of Cloud Atlas. But the voter I thought would be perfect for it is wrapping up a 1000-mile move today. Oh well....
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