Longtime readers know that every year, once I reach the point when I have seen 50 commercial releases in the U.S. market, I post a feature called
The Fifties, where I celebrate the best achievements in typical film-awards categories from these early months of the year. Most of these movies and performances are destined to be forgotten at year's end, either because no one can remember past Halloween or because the kinds of films that get released in winter, spring, and summer rarely translate into critics' prizes or Oscar fodder.
In recent years, my buddy Joe Reid—who gives great
Twitter and who writes for
Tribeca and
The AV Club and his
own blog and just about everywhere else—has
appropriated the tradition of The Fifties, and this turns out to be an especially beautiful thing. Partly because he tends to hit the 50 threshold around the same time I do; this year, without trying, we even hit it on the same
day. Partly because we love movies and gushing about movies in many of the same ways, but we don't always see the same movies. Our overlap at this point is almost exactly 50%. In terms of our departures, Joe saw lots of new Sundance and Tribeca titles, does a better job keeping up with what The Kids Are Watching, and has access to press screenings that enable him to peek further than I can into what's coming in the months ahead. I saw some 2013 micro-releases at last year's Chicago and Toronto festivals, am more of an early-year bloodhound for Cannes, Berlin, and Venice hits that are finally bowing in U.S. cinemas, and I see a lot of short-run arthouse stuff that Joe also likes but sometimes can't fit into the crowded schedule of films and TV he already has to cover. He makes sure I catch up with
Chronicle and
21 Jump Street and keep an eye out for
Short Term 12 and
What Richard Did. I natter at him about
Paradise: Love and
The Turin Horse and let him know that
Lovelace isn't all that. But we both struggle with
Upstream Color and
Place Beyond the Pines, we both show up at Tyler Perry joints, and we both agree that
The Heat is the best mall-purchased present anybody gave us this summer.
We also only agree about half the time about movies we do share in common, and we can't find many patterns in when we do or don't, or why.
So for this year's Fifties, Joe and I will
both name our picks in each category and then have a back-and-forth about our selections, our conspicuous omissions, our differences of opinion, and what we're looking forward to in the coming months. We have enough overlap that our choices are worth collating, but we also diverge enough in our habits that you're essentially getting a supersized sense of what's been out there so far. We'll start with Best Supporting Actress, a category I had atypical trouble filling out; in fact, I already wish I'd recast somehow in the troubling fifth spot.
Read more »Labels: Awards 2013, Best Supporting Actress, Blog Buddies, Festivals, Fifties, International, Scarlett Johansson
Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog
