The Washington Area Film Critics Awards 2012

Posted on December 10, 2012 at 8:29 am

This morning, the Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) announced their winners for 2012, honoring a wide sweep of films, from musicals to science fiction. And while only three films garnered more than one award, it was clear that historical/political dramas resonated most with the critics from the nation’s capital.

“Zero Dark Thirty,” the account of U.S. intelligence specialists’ and Army special forces’ pursuit and elimination of terrorist Osama bin Laden, won Best Film. In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to ever win the WAFCA prize for Best Director for her Iraq War film, “The Hurt Locker.” Just three years later, Bigelow has won the same award again for “Zero Dark Thirty.”

“In a year full of strong films,” said WAFCA President, Tim Gordon, “director Kathryn Bigelow’s bold and audacious vision, represented in our Best Picture winner, is the perfect political story for our members in the District of Columbia. This story, told with steely, cold effectiveness, is a worthy entry into WAFCA’s Best Picture canon and a cinematic achievement that we are proud to honor.”

“Zero Dark Thirty” also netted Jessica Chastain her first Best Actress award. Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for his riveting portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln in the year’s other outstanding historical drama, “Lincoln.” Best Supporting Actor went to Philip Seymour Hoffman for “The Master” and Best Supporting Actress went to Anne Hathaway for “Les Misérables,” which also scooped the Best Acting Ensemble.

The screenplay awards covered two very different films: Best Adapted Screenplay went to David O. Russell for his story of love and shared neuroses in “Silver Linings Playbook,” and Rian Johnson won Best Original Screenplay for his time travel mind-bender, “Looper.”

Best Animated Feature was won by “ParaNorman,” Best Documentary by “Bully,” and Best Foreign Language Film by Michael Haneke’s “Amour.” Best Art Direction went to “Cloud Atlas,” while Claudio Miranda won Best Cinematography for “Life of Pi,” and Jonny Greenwood took Best Score for “The Master.”

New this year, WAFCA proudly instituted The Joe Barber Award for Best Youth Performance, named in honor of beloved D.C. film critic and WTOP’s longtime arts editor, Joe Barber, who passed away just over a year ago. The award, which highlights the best performance from an actor or actress under 20, went to Quvenzhané Wallis for “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

“It’s a shame Joe was not able to see Quvenzhané’s fierce and compassionate performance in this gem of a film,” said Gordon. “It’s exactly the sort of role Joe would have loved, and we are so thankful to be able to remember him going forward with this very special award.”

The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association is comprised of nearly 50 DC-VA-MD-based film critics from television, radio, print and the Internet. Voting was conducted from December 7-9, 2012.

Best Film:
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Director:
Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)

Best Actor:
Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)

Best Actress:
Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)

Best Supporting Actor:
Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)

Best Supporting Actress:
Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables)

Best Acting Ensemble:
Les Misérables

Best Adapted Screenplay:
David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)

Best Original Screenplay:
Rian Johnson (Looper)

Best Animated Feature:
ParaNorman

Best Documentary:
Bully

Best Foreign Language Film:
Amour

Best Art Direction:
Uli Hanisch, Hugh Bateup – Production Designers; Peter Walpole, Rebecca Alleway – Set Decorators (Cloud Atlas)

Best Cinematography:
Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi)

Best Score:
Jonny Greenwood (The Master)

The Joe Barber Award for Best Youth Performance:
Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild)

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Awards

ParaNorman

Posted on August 16, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for scary action and images, thematic elements, some rude humor, and language
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language ("boobs"), reference to "the f-word"
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Brief joke about steroid use
Violence/ Scariness:	Cheerfully gruesome storyline about zombies and ghosts with some comic but disturbing images, characters in peril, character dies of natural causes, discussion of the historic abuse and killing of people thought to be witches, bullies
Diversity Issues:	Tolerance a theme of the movie, diverse characters include a gay character, some making fun of people who are not intelligent
Date Released to Theaters:	August 20, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	November 26, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAII62

While digital animators create algorithms that replicate real life textures and weights and movements so perfectly they can seem real-er than reality, the small but preposterously dedicated stop-motion animators create their own three-dimensional world and invite us inside. Like its predecessor at LAIKA, “Coraline,” “ParaNorman” is a spookily gothic-tinged tale, and, like “Coraline,” everything you see on screen was really built and really moved, a fraction of a fraction of a millimeter at a time. The touch, and touchability of everything we see adds to the magic, and each setting, prop, and character is so lovingly detailed that it rewards repeated viewings.

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) loves to watch old zombie movies with his grandmother as she knits on the living room sofa. Until his parents remind him that his grandmother is dead.

Yes. Norman sees dead people. Perhaps that is why his hair is constantly standing on end. He is fine with it, but it bothers everyone around him. His parents (Jeff Garlin and Leslie Mann) worry about him, his teenage sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick) is annoyed by him, and at school everyone either ignores or bullies him.

When a creepy ghost (John Goodman) appears in the boys’ bathroom at school to warn him that the town will be attacked by zombies, he explains that only Norman can stop them. Before sunset, he must read aloud from an ancient tome at the grave of the witch whose curse turned seven local citizens into zombies centuries before. The lore of the witch’s curse is so central to the town’s identity that there is a statue of a witch in the town square, several local businesses have witchy names, and Norman’s school pageant is a re-telling of the story. Three hundred years ago, when the local citizens condemned a witch to death, she used her powers to condemn them to spending eternity as zombies. But the secret of the book helps Norman discover that the zombies and the witch are not what he thought.

With references to “Scooby-Doo” and “The Goonies,” “ParaNorman” expertly balances scary and funny elements of the story, with a surprisingly heartwarming conclusion. “It’s all right to be scared,” Norman’s grandmother explains, “as long as it doesn’t change who you are.” Norman, Courtney, his friend Neil, Neil’s dim brother Mitch (Casey Affleck), and school bully Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) have to work together to try to save the town.

The voice performances are excellent and the visuals are dazzling. Every item from the houses to the cars to the lockers in the schools is just a little off-kilter and every detail from Norman’s alarm clock to the zombie’s sagging skin is designed with endless wit and skill. The score by Jon Brion keeps things nicely spooky and the resolution is satisfying. It is too bad that the thoughtful points it makes about bullying are undercut by making fun of not one but two characters who are not bright. The message of reconciliation, kindness, and appreciating differences is a good one, and it should extend to all of the movie’s characters.

Parents should know that this movie’s themes concern zombies and ghosts, and each child will react differently. Some will be enjoyably scared and some will find it funny but even with a reassuring conclusion to the story, some may find the images or storyline upsetting. The film has comic but gruesome images, characters in peril, reference to historic abuse and execution of those claimed to be witches — reassuringly and often humorously presented but some elements of the story and images may be disturbing to children. There is also brief potty humor, a joke about steroids, and a refreshingly positive portrayal of a gay character (a teenage boy briefly mentions his boyfriend).

Family discussion: Who was right about Norman, his mother or his father, and why? Why did Neil want to be friends with Norman? How did Norman help the witch?

If you like this, try: “Monster House,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “The Corpse Bride,” and “Coraline”

Interview: Writer-Directors of “ParaNorman”

Posted on August 16, 2012 at 8:00 am

I loved seeing the “ParaNorman” panel at Comic-Con, so I was especially excited to get a chance for an interview with writer-director Chris Butler and co-director Sam Fell, and I had a blast talking to them about why kids and grownups like scary movies and the challenges of stop-action animation.

You really pretty much made a list of everything that is impossible to do in stop-motion and did it. I mean, tossing toilet paper around?

Chris: I know, that was certainly…

Sam: It was a real trick, there, and I remember when I first wrote that scene I thought, “What would work so well in stop-mo would be toilet paper kind of sculpting forms of zombies…” and then when it came to do it, it was like the most difficult thing you could ever do.

Chris: It was long-time that Brian worked on that toilet paper, it was his specialty, and he was doing it for like a year. He’d come up with these, almost like these platters of toilet paper styles and techniques…

Sam: And we’d go to see it, and he’d say, “Look at this,” and you’ll hold up to the light and you’d say, yeah, I can’t see the wires…And you’d go, oh, that’s pretty good…and you’d make his day because you’d like his toilet paper.

What were some of the other big challenges? At Comic-Con you said no one had ever done stop motion characters with thick necks before.

Chris: Normally with a puppet you want a separate head and then a neck between the two and you can articulate them all around and especially with our technique where we change the faces so there’s a natural line under here, so you can change the faces…but with a fat neck character, it’s very hard to articulate and…

Sam: It does not move the way skin does…

Chris: And there are horrible bulges, and it’s very hard to know how to separate the face from the neck, and this is one shape, so…

Sam: Technically a nightmare. We all knew it was very dangerous territory. We sat around and discussed, “Should we change the design of this character?” And it was like, no, no, because that’s him, and so let’s find a solution to make it work. That’s the approach at Leika and it was the approach on “Coralline.” We took it even further on this. It’s easy to see stop-motion as this little bit of nostalgic history, it’s this cute charming thing from old TV shows. And it’s a beautiful hand-made thing and we loved that aspect of it, but that’s no reason to not take into the future with all the innovations that we have at our disposal.

Chris: We have a visions effects department now integrated into the studio, you know? And it’s all just on desktops, now, so it’s relatively cheap and it’s not like having to go to some big, expensive post-house any more. They’re there, so when you’re designing your shot, you can be, “Hey, come on down,” and they tell us how things should be done or how many passes we need or make suggestions.

Sam: So you can plan a shot around them is what you’re saying, as much as anything.

Chris: It’s very efficient.

If you could take home one of the props for the movie and live with it in your house, what would it be? I know I’d pick the alarm clock!

Sam: Everyone says the alarm clock or the tooth brush.

Chris: I like the van, I guess, or the station wagon. I love those vehicles.

Sam: It’s actually not a prop, but I think it’s a thing of beauty: the dead judge’s cape is so beautiful, it’s a work of art because it’s not just a cape that’s been designed correctly, it’s a cape that’s been designed correctly and then has the asymmetry of the design style, plus it’s animatable, plus it’s got all the rottenness of being in the grave for 300 years. It’s an amazing thing.

Chris: A lot of construction to it.

You tread a very fine line there between scary and reassuring and funny and I love narratively the way you resolve that, but visually, how do you calibrate that and what do you look at?

Chris: The zombies were possibly the scariest thing, they have to play both ways. One thing we knew is that they’ve been in the ground a long time, so we weren’t going to do gore, but I think it was just going through that whole ensemble of zombies and figuring out how they were rotten in the different ways, and that gave us goofy and scary.

Sam: And I think that’s the benefit of telling a story like this in animation—is that you’re already one step removed from reality, so the very process of charactering in the first place is a safe distance, I think, for kids to be, you know…

Chris: To be dealing with a rotting body!

Sam: Yeah, if we’d done this in live-action, it would’ve been more gratuitously gruesome, more grotesque, and I think doing it this way you can design those zombies so that they are cool images…

Chris: and you can have the idea, as well, like we figured out how his face fell off, you know? So his jaw is still flapping, he’s got that flapping bit? But because it’s stylized, it’s sort of art…

Sam: It’s taking advantage of cartooning, if you like, that aspect of animation, whereas I wouldn’t say this movie is a cartoon, because there are real things at stake; you think of the characters as real people, but certainly it’s useful to be able to stylize in that way…

Caricature.

Sam: Yeah, exactly.

(more…)

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ParaNorman: Anna Kendrick

Posted on August 14, 2012 at 9:00 am

Anna Kendrick (“Camp,” “Up in the Air”) plays Norman’s teenage sister in “ParaNorman.” She ends up going along with him on a wild zombie-hunting adventure. At Comic-Con, she talked about making the film, and when asked about her favorite prop, she pulled out her cell phone to show us a picture of it. Norman’s friend Neil is mourning the loss of his dog, and in his locker there is a memorial note with a paw print. It says, “Bub is great, understands me, barks at bullies.” She says it still makes her tear up to look at it.

She visited the set after the movie was completed and was amazed by “All the details you don’t really see in the movie,” how meticulous and careful every part of every scene was designed to be. She loved playing the exasperated teenager. “I can tap into my inner obnoxious person and it is so fun to play somebody so annoying and do that voice. I liked all the vocalization and exasperated sighs.” Like Kodi, she enjoyed the chance to be very exaggeratedly physical in the voice recording sessions without worrying about how she looked. “It was really freeing to not be worried about how idiotic you look.” She and Casey Affleck were together on what was the first voice acting experience for both of them. She appreciated the chance to learn with him, “and by the end of the day we were in a competition to see who could make a greater fool of themselves.” But she joked that working with Kodi “made me feel worse about being Courtney” because it was harder to be mean to him.

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Opening This Week: ParaNorman, Odd Life of Timothy Green, Expendables 2, and Sparkle

Posted on August 13, 2012 at 4:08 pm

We don’t get many PG movies, so it is really unusual to see two in the same week, especially welcome as they are directed at the audience most overlooked by Hollywood, 8-14 year olds and their families. “ParaNorman” is from”Coraline’s’ LAIKA studios, and they have mastered the art and craft of stop-motion animation, perfectly suited to this story of a little boy who can talk to ghosts. That talent may make him an outcast at home and school but it comes in handy when zombies attack the town. “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” is a fable about a couple who cannot have children and so bury a list of the qualities and talents they would wish for in a child in their garden as a way of saying goodbye to their hope of being parents. A 10 year old who seems to have grown out of the garden shows up bearing an uncanny resemblance to the child they wished for, but he has some unexpected extras, including green leaves growing from his ankles.

Also this week we have Whitney Houston’s last film, the remake of the Irene Cara musical “Sparkle.” And the 80’s and 90’s action heroes are back in “The Expendables 2.” Stallone, Willis, Lundgren, Couture, Li, Schwarzenegger, Statham, and Norris — and a lot of explosives. That one is not screening for critics, but I plan to buy a ticket when it opens so I can tell you all about it. Stay tuned!

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Opening This Week