One of my favorite posters OAT.

Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932) - 93

Capture My Heart

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) - 99

Post-WonderCon Thoughts

- The latest updates on Looper from WonderCon and the images below of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's altered Bruce Willisesque face have moved it up my MAMOTYs list to number 3.  And the latest trailer for Prometheus and news on it, which sort of confirms that Noomi Rapace is the film's Ripley and Michael Fassbender is its droid, has moved it up to number 4.  A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, which we haven't seen anything from yet aside from a few photos, is down to fifth.



- I also failed to put Beasts of the Southern Wild on my MAMOTYs list.  It was the big winner at Sundance this year and is by those accounts a magic realist work, which immediately pricked up my ears.

- I also am interested in the Lockout.  This five minute peek has me curious.  It and Beast of the Southern Wild both appear toward the bottom of my list. 

I'm not an idiot.

Sydney (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1996)

Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005) - 91

I think this is probably the first instance in which the visual energy of a Jane Austen adaptation has come anywhere close to its verbal energy.  Joe Wright's signature is long tracking shots, but the ones that really get me in Pride & Prejudice are close-ups of Darcy confusedly flexing his hand at the odd sensation after helping Elizabeth into a carriage, a passing shot of Mrs. Bennett admiring the virile organs of a large pig while she contemplates marrying off her daughters, and Elizabeth losing herself in the curves of the sculptures and unacceptable longing at Pemberley.   And that's just a small selection of the new visual ideas that Wright adds to his source text.

Pride & Prejudice is also the film where Joe Wright fell in love with Keira Knightley (they're currently on their third collaboration).  She's probably not all what Austen imagined as she wrote Elizabeth, but she's a perfect fit for Wright's version.  She does just as much with the broad range of facial expressions in her repertoire, often using a variety of them in quick succession, as she does with the brilliant comebacks and observations supplied by Austen.

We all know how P&P ends, but the climax in this version has a transcendent power that isn't matched in the much-loved (and very good) BBC version.  And by transcendent I do mean "transcending the universe, time, above all possible modes of the infinite, beyond direct apprehension".  It really got to me.

It's Unlikely There Will Be Two Better Movie Posters This Year