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Two somewhat curious acting awards have happened today. First the Boston Society of Film Critics give their Best Supporting Actress award to Juliette Lewis, and now the Los Angeles Film Critics Association has given its Best Supporting Actor to Niels Arestrup, the scowling, white-haired, chain-smoking prison boss in Jacques Audiard‘s A Prophet.

Niels Arestrup, winner of LAFCA’s Best Supporting Actor award for his work in A Prophet, is the snarly old buzzard on the right; A Prophet costar Tahar Rahim is on the left.

Again — nobody in my realm pre-approved this in any way, shape or form. Secondly, Arestrup is quite effective in the film, but his performance is not what anyone would call “oh, wow!” stupendous. He plays a French criminal-class guy in typical French-criminal-class fashion. He’s gruff and blustery — an aging barking dog who’s trying to hide the fact that he’s terrified of losing his hold on power. And always with the cigarettes, the cigarettes, the fucking cigarettes. It’s a very oddball call.

What happened to Christian Bale in The Fighter? What happened to one of the Social Network guys, Andrew Garfield or Justin Timberlake? What happened to Bill Murray in Get Low? The King’s Speech costar Geoffrey Rush was the runner-up.

Niels Arestrup?

HE approves of Animal Kingdom‘s Jacki Weaver winning for Best Supporting Actress, and would have also high-fived the runner-up, Ghost Writer costar Olivia Williams, if she had prevailed. LAFCA’s Best Screenplay award went to Aaron Sorkin for “The Social Network. The Best Documentary Award went to Last Train Home, which I never even saw. The Best Doc runner-up, Exit Through the Gift Shop, should have taken it.

The Best Cinematography award went to Black Swan‘s Matthew (i.e., “Matty” if you’re talking to HitFix‘s Drew McWeeny) Libatique, with True Grit‘s Roger Deakins coming in second.

The Best Music Score award was split between Ghost Writer‘s Alexandre Desplat and The Social Network‘s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The Best Production Design award went to Inception‘s Guy Hendrix Dyas with Eve Stewart coming in second for her work on The King’s Speech.

Typepad log-in problems have blocked would-be commenters over the last two or three days, but I think things are okay now. It had something to do (idiotically) with the server clock being off due to the time change. In any case, Film Society of Lincoln Center associate program director Scott Foundas tried to respond two days ago to blogger reactions to the LAFCA voting, but was blocked by the malfunction. Here’s what he wrote:

“[LAFCA Best Supporting Actor winner] Niels Arestrup did not ‘exhaust’ his Oscar eligibility last year. In fact, he was never — and never will be — eligible for an Oscar because of the current Academy rule (much revised over the years) stating that any film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film can not be nominated in a subsequent year in any other categories, regardless of when it actually opens in the U.S. Had A Prophet been released for a qualifying run in 2009, then Arestrup would have been eligible at the 2010 Oscars. Had the film not been nominated for Foreign Film at the 2010 Oscars, then Arestrup would have a shot in the spring.

“This is the sort of thing one would assume would be common knowledge amongst such an august group of awards-season ‘experts,’ but then we all know the old adage about making assumptions…

“As for the suggestion that neither Arestrup nor Kim Hye-Ja will surface again during the remaining awards season, ‘just as it was the first and last we heard of LAFCA’s 2009 best actress Yolande Moreau,’ I suppose that was true of Moreau if one discounts Moreau’s similar wins at the National Society of Film Critics, the Cesar Awards [French Oscars], and even that hotbed of obscurantist cinephilia, the Newport Beach Film Festival.

“At the very least, you can expect to see Arestrup (who also already won a Cesar for his performance) and Kim’s names in the mix in the annual nationwide polls of film critics conducted by The Village Voice, Film Comment and Indiewire. Look back to the reviews these films received at the time of their release, and you will find that the performances in question — and the movies that contain them — were among the best received of the year.

“Sorry that the companies responsible for releasing the films in question didn’t paper the pages of Variety with ‘For Your Consideration’ ads or organize any cocktail soirees to parade their talent before the Oscar-blogging cognoscenti, thereby instantly ruling them out as contenders in the minds of some. (Hey, they’re no Frankie and Alice.) The job of film critics, however, remains to review movies, and not just the hype surrounding them.”

Typepad log-in problems have blocked would-be commenters over the last two or three days, but I think things are okay now. It had something to do (idiotically) with the server clock being off due to the time change. In any case, Film Society of Lincoln Center associate program director Scott Foundas tried to respond two days ago to blogger reactions to the LAFCA voting, but was blocked by the malfunction. Here’s what he wrote:

“[LAFCA Best Supporting Actor winner] Niels Arestrup did not ‘exhaust’ his Oscar eligibility last year. In fact, he was never — and never will be — eligible for an Oscar because of the current Academy rule (much revised over the years) stating that any film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film can not be nominated in a subsequent year in any other categories, regardless of when it actually opens in the U.S. Had A Prophet been released for a qualifying run in 2009, then Arestrup would have been eligible at the 2010 Oscars. Had the film not been nominated for Foreign Film at the 2010 Oscars, then Arestrup would have a shot in the spring.

“This is the sort of thing one would assume would be common knowledge amongst such an august group of awards-season ‘experts,’ but then we all know the old adage about making assumptions…

“As for the suggestion that neither Arestrup nor Kim Hye-Ja will surface again during the remaining awards season, ‘just as it was the first and last we heard of LAFCA’s 2009 best actress Yolande Moreau,’ I suppose that was true of Moreau if one discounts Moreau’s similar wins at the National Society of Film Critics, the Cesar Awards [French Oscars], and even that hotbed of obscurantist cinephilia, the Newport Beach Film Festival.

“At the very least, you can expect to see Arestrup (who also already won a Cesar for his performance) and Kim’s names in the mix in the annual nationwide polls of film critics conducted by The Village Voice, Film Comment and Indiewire. Look back to the reviews these films received at the time of their release, and you will find that the performances in question — and the movies that contain them — were among the best received of the year.

“Sorry that the companies responsible for releasing the films in question didn’t paper the pages of Variety with ‘For Your Consideration’ ads or organize any cocktail soirees to parade their talent before the Oscar-blogging cognoscenti, thereby instantly ruling them out as contenders in the minds of some. (Hey, they’re no Frankie and Alice.) The job of film critics, however, remains to review movies, and not just the hype surrounding them.”

Typepad log-in problems have blocked would-be commenters over the last two or three days, but I think things are okay now. It had something to do (idiotically) with the server clock being off due to the time change. In any case, Film Society of Lincoln Center associate program director Scott Foundas tried to respond two days ago to blogger reactions to the LAFCA voting, but was blocked by the malfunction. Here’s what he wrote:

“[LAFCA Best Supporting Actor winner] Niels Arestrup did not ‘exhaust’ his Oscar eligibility last year. In fact, he was never — and never will be — eligible for an Oscar because of the current Academy rule (much revised over the years) stating that any film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film can not be nominated in a subsequent year in any other categories, regardless of when it actually opens in the U.S. Had A Prophet been released for a qualifying run in 2009, then Arestrup would have been eligible at the 2010 Oscars. Had the film not been nominated for Foreign Film at the 2010 Oscars, then Arestrup would have a shot in the spring.

“This is the sort of thing one would assume would be common knowledge amongst such an august group of awards-season ‘experts,’ but then we all know the old adage about making assumptions…

“As for the suggestion that neither Arestrup nor Kim Hye-Ja will surface again during the remaining awards season, ‘just as it was the first and last we heard of LAFCA’s 2009 best actress Yolande Moreau,’ I suppose that was true of Moreau if one discounts Moreau’s similar wins at the National Society of Film Critics, the Cesar Awards [French Oscars], and even that hotbed of obscurantist cinephilia, the Newport Beach Film Festival.

“At the very least, you can expect to see Arestrup (who also already won a Cesar for his performance) and Kim’s names in the mix in the annual nationwide polls of film critics conducted by The Village Voice, Film Comment and Indiewire. Look back to the reviews these films received at the time of their release, and you will find that the performances in question — and the movies that contain them — were among the best received of the year.

“Sorry that the companies responsible for releasing the films in question didn’t paper the pages of Variety with ‘For Your Consideration’ ads or organize any cocktail soirees to parade their talent before the Oscar-blogging cognoscenti, thereby instantly ruling them out as contenders in the minds of some. (Hey, they’re no Frankie and Alice.) The job of film critics, however, remains to review movies, and not just the hype surrounding them.”

Typepad log-in problems have blocked would-be commenters over the last two or three days, but I think things are okay now. It had something to do (idiotically) with the server clock being off due to the time change. In any case, Film Society of Lincoln Center associate program director Scott Foundas tried to respond two days ago to blogger reactions to the LAFCA voting, but was blocked by the malfunction. Here’s what he wrote:

“[LAFCA Best Supporting Actor winner] Niels Arestrup did not ‘exhaust’ his Oscar eligibility last year. In fact, he was never — and never will be — eligible for an Oscar because of the current Academy rule (much revised over the years) stating that any film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film can not be nominated in a subsequent year in any other categories, regardless of when it actually opens in the U.S. Had A Prophet been released for a qualifying run in 2009, then Arestrup would have been eligible at the 2010 Oscars. Had the film not been nominated for Foreign Film at the 2010 Oscars, then Arestrup would have a shot in the spring.

“This is the sort of thing one would assume would be common knowledge amongst such an august group of awards-season ‘experts,’ but then we all know the old adage about making assumptions…

“As for the suggestion that neither Arestrup nor Kim Hye-Ja will surface again during the remaining awards season, ‘just as it was the first and last we heard of LAFCA’s 2009 best actress Yolande Moreau,’ I suppose that was true of Moreau if one discounts Moreau’s similar wins at the National Society of Film Critics, the Cesar Awards [French Oscars], and even that hotbed of obscurantist cinephilia, the Newport Beach Film Festival.

“At the very least, you can expect to see Arestrup (who also already won a Cesar for his performance) and Kim’s names in the mix in the annual nationwide polls of film critics conducted by The Village Voice, Film Comment and Indiewire. Look back to the reviews these films received at the time of their release, and you will find that the performances in question — and the movies that contain them — were among the best received of the year.

“Sorry that the companies responsible for releasing the films in question didn’t paper the pages of Variety with ‘For Your Consideration’ ads or organize any cocktail soirees to parade their talent before the Oscar-blogging cognoscenti, thereby instantly ruling them out as contenders in the minds of some. (Hey, they’re no Frankie and Alice.) The job of film critics, however, remains to review movies, and not just the hype surrounding them.”

Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck‘s The Tourist earned a piddly $17 million domestic this weekend. To project a semi-healthy appearance it would have had to bring in at least $20 if not $25 million. But that was impossible, I guess, given what most ticket buyers were smelling. If it manages to triple that figure by the end of the run…but why even consider this as a hypothetical? It’s not going to happen. The guess is that most HE readers took a pass, but if there are any reactions (to the content, I mean), please share.

I was discussing The Social Network this morning with a very bright, plugged-in, boomer-aged lady. Good job, motivated, sharp, no simpleton. And until I pointed it out, she didn’t get what Jesse Eisenberg‘s Mark Zuckerberg was doing at the very end of the film — i.e., refreshing Erica Albright’s Facebook page in hopes of discovering that she’d accepted his friend request. TSN‘s finale is merely one component, of course, but it follows that if my smart friend didn’t quite get it (i.e., she’s new to Facebook) there are probably dozens if not hundreds of Academy and guild members who also didn’t understand at first. These guys may even resent TSN on some level, ironically, for having made them feel a little bit out of it. People are funny that way.

It’s always tragic when a person of any age decides to pull the plug, for whatever reason. Lord knows poor Mark Madoff, who took his life yesterday, coped with terrible goblins swirling over, under and around for the last two years. I could only begin to imagine what it must have felt like to be seen as a pariah by everyone on the planet earth, if only because of the sins of the father and the adage about “the acorn never falls from the tree.” My sympathies to all concerned. I understand about coming to a point when you’re “tired of yourself and all of your creations,” but — here it comes — if you’re going to fold your hand shouldn’t it be because of your own cards (i.e., character, history, prospects)?

Whatever the actual financial realities, you have to hand it to Janice Min ‘s Hollywood Reporter for at least projecting a feistier, more enterprising image than poor, beleagured Variety. If you have any sporting blood, I mean. Variety has lost so many good people in recent months (critic Todd McCarthy, reporters Michael Fleming. Dana Harris and Pamela McLintock) that further downward spiraling seems inevitable. Who would have projected two years ago that THR would soon emerge as a healthier, more forward-moving enterprise than Variety? Avis has finally overtaken Hertz.

Oscar Poker took a hiatus last weekend due to the all-but-nonexistent wifi at the Palace Es Saadi, but we’re back on today. The plan is to wait until the recipients of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards are announced, or until 1 pm Pacific/4 pm Eastern. The edited program will most likely be up later tonight. Breaking: Sasha Stone has finally seen The Fighter.

French Street, Fairfield, Connecticut — Sunday, 12.12, 9:25 am.

I’m typing this from the home of an old friend in Fairfield, Connecticut. Sunday morning rainstorm outside — cold, soaked, mushy, etc. Warm and toasty inside (as you might expect), two 3G bars, strong black coffee.

I tasted this experience from time to time in the ’90s. Online column-ing and Hollywood Elsewhere saved my life.

I’ve now seen almost every worthwhile 2010 film except Country Strong. (That was a joke.) So here’s my pure and un-politicized distillation of the finest 2010 films, without regard to any notions of any of them winning anything. Just quality and enjoyment and the stuff that plucks my deep-down chord…however you want to put it.

My favorite film of the year, hands down, is David Fincher‘s The Social Network, in part because it’s so perfectly made and clearly focused, and so primal in its portrayal and understanding of human nature, and partly because it isn’t the least bit interested in trying to emotionally touch the viewer. It’s far too good for that.

Except I was touched by Jesse Eisenberg‘s Mark Zuckerberg. He’s a brave little shit with a genius intellect — duplicitous, disloyal, covert, under-handed. Not so hot with the humanity friendo stuff. Genius is as genius does. And yet you can feel the emotion churning under Eisenberg’s steel-rivet glare in each and every scene. The sadness and solitude that fills him at the finale is a dramatic construct (i.e., the real Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend since Harvard), but it’s one of the best endings ever, not just on the level of Citizen Kane‘s sled-in-the-furnace finale but Some Like It Hot‘s.

I can’t riff on the others (mainly because I have a train to catch) but Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan is #2 and David O. Russell‘s The Fighter is third. And then comes Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg (#4), Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer (#5), Matt Reeves‘ Let Me In (#6), John Cameron Mitchell‘s Rabbit Hole (#7), Chris Nolan‘s Inception (#8), Lee Unkrich‘s Toy Story 3 (#9), and Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech (#10).

Followed by Derek Cianfrance‘s Blue Valentine (#11), Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours (#12), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful (#13), Jean-Francois Richet‘s Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (#14), Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos (#15), Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right (#16) Mike Leigh‘s Another Year (#17), Doug Liman‘s Fair Game (#18), Aaron Schneider ‘s Get Low (#19), Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere (#20), Roger Michell‘s Morning Glory (#21); and Anton Corbijn‘s The American (#22).

True Grit gets an A for execution and a D-minus for content and theme, and that’s as far as I’m willing to go

I’ll finish this (including the best docs) when I get on the 11:06 pm train to Connecticut. I have to shut down and run.