So far we've run through the top movies, interviews, blockbusters, trailer, posters and breakthrough stars of 2011. But what of all the other note-worthy big-screen moments? Surely we have to address those somewhere, right? Well you've come to the right place. This handy-dandy list of randomness is our look at what we like to call 'the best of the rest': a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tribute to the other highs, lows and everything in between.
From scene-stealers to soundtracks to strategic f-bomb usages, we've covering a wide gamut of creative subjects to wrap up our look back of the best of the year. Take a look at the stand-outs below then be sure to comment and let us know which moments stood out for you on-screen in 2011!
The Wind Beneath My Wings Award: Rose Byrne
The Australia beauty has been making movies for almost two decades and while she is mostly known for dramas and thrillers (
Wicker Park, Sunshine, 28 Days Later), she showed an affinity for comedy with her work in last year’s
Get Him to the Greek but really came into her own as the icy Queen of Cool Helen in
Bridesmaids. As the interloping, best-friend-in-waiting, she added new meaning to the idea of killing with kindness and always chose the most cutting bon mot to simultaneously insult and back-hand-compliment
Kristen Wiig’s inept Annie. It’s never been more fun to watch someone so seemingly perfect have it all crumble in the 11th hour.
Scene-Stealer of the Year: Michael Sheen
Woody Allen loves to humiliate and rib the pseudo-intellectuals that often appear in his films, and
Michael Sheen's bearded braggadocio-prone know-it-all Paul serves as the perfect foil to
Owen Wilson’s insecure, wannabe writer Gil in
Midnight in Paris. Sheen commands every scene he’s in and imbues Paul with an unearned arrogance that includes correcting the museum guide (a gorge
Carla Bruni) and continually spouting facts and figures to assert his supposed intelligence. His character is played for big laughs and Sheen’s timing and delivery are impeccable.
The Soundtrack You Wanted to Download Before You Left the Theatre: Drive
I have yet to meet someone who left their seats after experiencing
Nicolas Winding Refn’s brutal neo-noir and didn’t immediately jump on Google to find out who put together the pulsating beats, ‘80s-soaked synths and dramatic, beautiful tracks that made up the
Drive soundtrack. A few clicks later and we all knew the name
Cliff Martinez, the film’s music composer, and the song Real Hero by
College Featuring
Electric Youth. A must-listen that added to the film’s power and narrative in a compelling way.
Best Movies You Didn’t See: Take Shelter, Beginners
Michael Shannon makes use of his bug-eyed appearance to play Curtis, a father and husband struggling to make sense of apocalyptic visions haunting him, while spending his family’s savings and skipping work, all while trying to build a bomb shelter strong enough to save his family from the biblical storm he believes is on the way.
Take Shelter is powerful, nervy, doesn’t let the audience off the hook for even a second and is bravely unlike any other movie that came out in 2011.
Beginners stings, delights, taunts and tickles and most of that can be chalked up to
Christopher Plummer’s pitch-perfect performance as Hal, a recent widow who comes out of the closet and starts the living the life he was never able to. His taciturn son Oliver (
Ewan McGregor) takes up with a free-spirited French actress (
Melanie Laurent) and tries to live by the new example his father is setting, just as he learns his dad is dying of cancer. Heavy stuff, yes, but
Beginners is buoyed by
Mike Mills’ quiet direction and exceptional, honest performances by all.
The Jude Law Award for Ubiquity: Ryan Gosling
Yes, The Gosling was arguably EVERYWHERE this year but we aren’t complaining. From his ab-tastic turn in
Crazy Stupid Love to a million memes (Hey Girl...) and then Time Magazine bestowing upon him the title Coolest Person of the Year (for whatever it’s worth), Gosling’s movie choices elevated his profile by a zillion percent and scored him major critical acclaim along the way in the form of two Golden Globe nominations (for
The Ides of March and
Crazy Stupid Love). While we enjoyed him most as the quiet anti-hero prone to bouts of ultra-violence in
Drive, more Gosling is always a good thing.
Honourable mention:
Michael Fassbender. Points for being the most, ahem, exposed (
Shame) but also for starring in a big franchise prequel (
X-Men: First Class) a sexy classic (
Jane Eyre) and another movie about, well, sex (
A Dangerous Method) during the past 12 months.
Best Euphemistic Use of Feathers: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
The baby-makin’ scene that was the stuff of Twi-hard fantasies involved pleading, a broken bed, bruises and, most of all, a storm of feathers, all standing in for the deed that produced Edward and Bella’s half-human, half-vamp spawn. Early marketing teased what was to come with feathers, strategically placed on pillows, floating near Bella and Edward’s almost-touching faces, all hinting toward their marital copulation that was not so much shown as alluded to, thanks to an explosion of baby soft white feathers.
Best Use of Sarcasm or Deadpan Delivery - Adam Scott
Be it on the the big screen or small, no one delivers a line of dry wit quite like Mr. Scott. Though not yet a well-known name for the majority of movie fans (though many may know him as the fantastically slimy Derek in
Step Brothers), indie flick and television aficionados who have seen his star turns in
The Vicious Kind,
Passenger Side, "Parks and Recreation" and "Party Down" know what I'm talking about. It came as no surprise to those of us in the know then that Adam Scott, master of the craft of deadpan befuddlement and sarcastic frustration, stole the show from comedy heavyweights like
Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks and
Steve Coogan in August's
Our Idiot Brother.
Through his insanely spot-on line readings and well-timed eyebrow raises, the lighthearted flick got a well-needed shot of that little something extra. No mean feat there. Look for his star to rise even further this year as he takes centre stage in the romantic comedy
Friends With Kids, co-starring
Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph and
Chris O'Dowd, due in theatres in the spring.
Most Ironic Celebrity Hashtag - #winning
Love him or hate him,
Charlie Sheen was everywhere in 2011. From his controversial exit from his television show "Two and a Half Men" to his critically lambasted one-man show, it was hard to turn on the TV or open a paper without seeing a Sheen-related headline. Through-out it all, the troubled actor's main mode of communication to fans and critics alike was his Twitter feed. His thoughts came fast and furious, some intelligible, some not so much. But through it all there was one constant...his hashtag #winning. While most observers would probably argue Sheen's year has been anything but flawless victory, you can't say that Sheen isn't one hundred percent convinced his year has been anything else.
Best Use of a Curse Word in a Swear-free Franchise - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Not surprisingly, given its target audience, the wildly popular Potter series has been completely void of less than savory language thus far - that is if you don't count some of the wizarding world's more insulting usages ('mudblood', for example). All of that changed in a climactic scene in this summer's explosive finale when Mrs. Weasley let loose at big bad Bellatrix Lestrange. Channeling Ripley from Ridley Scott's
Alien, the matriarch of
J.K. Rowling's most famous red-headed family slid into protective mothering magic mode and took down the evil witch as she did in the novel - by casting a couple of well-placed spells and by dropping one well-placed b-bomb. "Get away from my daughter, you b***h" indeed.
Honourable mention:
X-Men: First Class. To keep the film's PG-rating in tact, the filmmakers behind one of the year's most successful comic films had to be very strategic with their use of language. Despite multiple scenes of violence and tragedy, they managed to keep the dialogue of the main comic characters swear-free, which meant they could save the film's sole f-bomb for a certain hirsute hero's brief cameo.
Hugh Jackman's fan-favourite Wolverine has only one line and for fans of the franchise and of the character, it couldn't have been more perfect. For this hilarious big-screen moment, Jackman also earns our
Best Cameo of the Year Award too.
The We Didn't Know We Missed You Award - Wilson Phillips
Bridesmaids was one of this year's very best films. It made us laugh, it made us tear up, it made us sit up and take notice of a cast of amazing actors and it even made us rediscover our love of '90s pop trio
Wilson Phillips. To be honest, we'd pretty much forgotten about them completely until the opening strains of Hold On came blasting at us via the theatre sound-system. Turns out we can still sing along with Carnie, Wendy and Chynna as we still remember all the words, though we're sadly lacking the impressive dance moves of
Maya Rudolph and
Kristen Wiig. We're working on them though!
http://www.cineplex.com/News/The-2011-Hit-List-The-Best-of-the-Rest.aspx
By Leah Rozen | Posted on Friday,
December 30th, 2011
As the year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to take a look at which British movie stars make the Top Five Winners and Losers List for 2011. No one actually takes these lists seriously (and no one should), but they are fun to devise and offer yet another way to sum up the twelve months just gone by.
Our criteria? Most of it is subjective, but the key questions that decide who belongs on which list boil down to: Who scored with audiences and critics? And who stunk up the megaplex? Artistic merit has little to do with the decisions; greater weight is given to whether a star’s movie scored at the box office because, in Hollywood, that’s all that really matters. We’re not saying it’s right, it’s just the way it is.
There’s an argument to be made for putting Colin Firth on this year’s list of winners – heck, we’d put him on every year if we could – for earning an Oscar for his performance in The King’s Speech last February, but the movie opened in 2010 so it doesn’t qualify. If you object, holler away in the comments section.
Now that we have that out of the way, here’s the list:
WINNERS
• Daniel Radcliffe and his Harry Potter mates. The eighth and final film of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, was the No. 1 movie for 2011, grossing $1.3 billion worldwide (which buys a lot of wands).
The 22-year-old actor also proved a potent draw on Broadway, where he has been singing and dancing up a storm since late in February in the lead role in a successful revival of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Up next: He stars in The Woman in Black, a ghost story opening Feb. 3.
• Michael Fassbender. The handsome Irish-German actor – he studied drama in and lives in London – was the year’s biggest breakout star, with leading roles in four major movies: Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, A Dangerous Method and Shame. From major action roles to demanding indie anti-heroes, he showed that he could do it all. Up next: he plays a suave professional assassin in Haywire, a crime thriller by director Steven Soderbergh which opens Jan. 20.
• Kate Winslet. The Oscar-winning star proved her versatility by triumphing in a five-part HBO miniseries version of Mildred Pierce. Winslet brilliantly played the title role of a self-sacrificing single mother and waitress, a part that had earned Joan Crawford a Best Actress Oscar for the 1945 movie version. Earlier this month, Winslet received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance, as well as one for her comic turn in the new movie Carnage. Additionally, the busy Winslet played a physician investigating a pandemic in Contagion, director Steven Soderbergh’s ensemble drama that opened in last fall and has so far grossed $135 million worldwide. Next up: An appearance in Movie 43, an all-star comedy featuring multiple short films.
• Kenneth Branagh. The British director-actor-writer came roaring back into the limelight in 2011 with both directing and acting accomplishments. He directed Thor, one of the summer’s comic book films (it grossed an impressive $450 million worldwide), successfully launching the franchise. More recently, he offered a knowing turn as Laurence Olivier in the British movie, My Week With Marilyn, for which he has received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actor. Next up: a third season of Wallander, his BBC TV series – it airs stateside on PBS – about a Swedish cop.
• Henry Cavill. The studly star of The Tudors (now airing on BBC America) won the much sought-after role of Superman (aka Clark Kent when out of spandex) in a reboot of the Man of Steel franchise. That movie, currently filming, isn’t due until 2013, but Cavill showed off his steely pecs and abs this year while dressed in a toga and swinging a sword in Immortals, a silly, 3-D action epic set in ancient Greece. Up next: The Cold Light of Day, a thriller costarring Bruce Willis that’s due April 6.
And now, the list on which no one wants to appear…
LOSERS
• Daniel Craig. No reflection of his acting talents, but the James Bond star couldn’t get a break at the box office this year. His high-concept, big summer western, Cowboys & Aliens, tanked embarrassingly, taking in $175 million worldwide, which was only a few million more than it cost to make. His psychological horror thriller, Dream House, barely opened, and his big holiday season film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is already considered to be underperforming from expectations. He’s also in another Christmas-time release, The Adventures of Tin Tin, which has done fine overseas but is showing scant drawing power with American audiences. Still, it was a good year for Craig: he wed fellow British movie star Rachel Weisz in June. Up next: He’s busy filming his third 007 movie, Skyfall, due later this year.
• Russell Brand. The worst of it came today, on the penultimate day of the year, with the news that Brand is filing for divorce from his pop star wife Katy Perry. This was the year that the British comic was supposed to cross over as a full-fledged American movie star. Didn’t happen. The vehicle that was supposed to make him into a leading man: a remake of Arthur, the comedy about a sozzled millionaire. It opened last spring to jeers from critics and giant yawns from moviegoers, managing to attract only $45 million worldwide. Up next: He costars with Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages, a musical due June 1.
• Rowan Atkinson. Mr. Bean got beaned by U.S. audiences for Johnny English Reborn, a sequel to his earlier 2003 spy spoof, Johnny English. The film eked out a dismal $8.3 million at American movie theaters, a pitiful showing compared with the $150 million it grossed overseas. Up next: Johnny English Reborn comes out on DVD on Feb. 28.
• David Tennant. Love him. The former Doctor Who star was scathingly funny as a liquor-guzzling, narcissistic, Las Vegas magician in the 3-D remake of the vampire film Fright Night (a role played in the 1985 original by Roddy McDowall). The problem? The movie failed to sink its fangs into viewers, grossing only $37 million worldwide, barely more than its production costs. Up next: The Decoy Bride, a comedy set in Scotland that has yet to announce an opening date.
• William Shakespeare. Okay, so he’s not a movie star. But hundreds of movies have been made based on his plays, or using him as a character. The latest, a period thriller called Anonymous, dissed him horribly. It posited that the Bard of Avon hadn’t really written any of his plays and portrayed him (as played by Rafe Spall) as a vain buffoon and an illiterate. To add insult to injury, the movie then proceeded to collapse at the box office, attracting only $14.8 million worldwide, less than half of what it cost to make. As the ghost in Hamlet says, “O, horrible, O, horrible, most horrible!”
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Who would you put on the Best or Worst List?
http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2011/12/the-anglophenia-movie-star-list-2011s-biggest-winners-losers/
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