The 85th Annual Academy Awards go live tonight, putting a nice button on 2012′s mainstream filmmaking (the Saturn, Nebula, and Bram Stoker Awards are still to come to wrap up the year in horror, sci-fi, and fantasy). I will be…
Aside from a bunch of big budget blockbuster animated features, 2012 had a surprising amount of voice over performances in film. It seems like voice overs are back in a big way. This does not mean that films are lazily…
If I like a song, I’m going to listen to it a lot. It’s part of how my brain works. I like deconstructing music and figuring out how it ticks. The best songs hold up under such deconstruction. I can’t…
These are the one or two scene wonders or ensemble performers who really stand out. The films wouldn’t be the same without them, but they sadly do not have a lot to do. They’re the could-be heroes and villains of…
2012 was a really interesting year for music videos. A lot of great videos came out from independent and international artists that became far more popular than anything put out by the major labels in the US. Many times, these…
Not to be confused with Best Use of Music in Film, Best Film Songs is about those little musical diversions that actually take center stage in a film and leave an impression. The origin doesn’t matter. A cover song used…
Forget about original or adapted. I’m once again condensing categories for 2012. A good screenplay is a good screenplay regardless of the source material. The only use in considering the source material when looking at the film is either for…
Instead of trying to parse out original scores from musical scores (thanks for that distinction, Academy) from adapted song-scores, I’m just going to look at the best overall use of music in film. 2012 had a wide variety of approaches…
2012 saw a number of big budget blockbusters produced with high production values and strong directors at the helm. It also saw really innovative low budget features gain rave reviews with specific mentions of strong direction. With so many strong…
The Oscar nominations are out and, shocker of shocks, they line up with very few of my acting choices. Helen Hunt, Bradley Cooper (one of my honorable mentions), Christoph Waltz (honorable mention, wrong category) and Jennifer Lawrence (right actress, wrong…
I keep reading that 2012 was a weak year for supporting actresses. This is based on the critics groups and precursors rallying around the same six or seven performances en masse. It’s also a gross misrepresentation of the year in…
Yesterday, we looked at the leading ladies who made 2012 a great year for film. Today, it’s all about the men. It’s almost harder to judge male actors because Hollywood has really developed a rigid structure of what men can…
We’re keeping the 12 wide field but narrowing down the descriptions to the top six from here out. So here are my top Leading Actresses of 2012. An asterisk indicates VOD/home video release. Honorable Mentions: Emma Fitzpatrick, The Collection Greta…
2012 was a great year for films. Sure, there were plenty of bad ones. There always are. But the good so outweighed the bad that I decided the struggle to pare the list down to 10 wasn’t worth it. Choosing…