Alas, we only have one of these to hand out, and the winner will be drawn at random from among the correct entries.
A COPPOLA FAMILY QUIZ
1. How many Lisbon sisters are there in The Virgin Suicides? FIVE2. Which actress did Sofia Coppola replace in The Godfather Part III? WINONA RYDER
3. What was the name of the magazine Francis Ford Coppola started in the 1970s?
CITY (though whether he started it or hijacked it is I guess open to debate)
4. Which of the following actors is NOT a member of Sofia Coppola's family: Nicolas Cage, Alicia Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, or Talia Shire?
ALICIA COPPOLA
5. How many Oscars do Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola have between them?
6 (five for Francis, one for Sofia)
6. What did Sofia Coppola use as a stage name in the 1980s?
DOMINO
7. Which of her father's films did Sofia Coppola co-write with him?
"LIFE WITHOUT ZOE," from New York Stories
8. Six degrees of separation: connect Stephen Dorff to Sofia Coppola pretending that Somewhere doesn't exist.
I loved reading this answer. Most of you used Stephen Dorff in World Trade Center to Nicolas Cage (Sofia's cousin as well as her Peggy Sue Got Married co-star). My personal answer to this was Stephen Dorff to Giovanni Ribisi (in Public Enemies), narrator of Sofia's The Virgin Suicides.
9. What is the pseudonym Anna Faris's character uses to check in with in Lost in Translation?
EVELYN WAUGH. (Everyone got this--I thought it'd be harder since it's not part of the film's Wikipedia entry.)
10. Sofia Coppola played a resident of what planet in Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace?
NABOO
Congratulations DANIEL NUNEZ of WORCESTER, MA. Your prize-pack is on the way. Daniel, for what it's worth, had the most esoteric answer to #8: Stephen Dorff to Stan Tracy (!) in I Shot Andy Warhol. (Veteran extra Tracy earlier drifted through Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club.)
My thanks to Focus Features for sponsoring this contest. In the meantime, carry on as you have been--intrigued to see something of a backlash forming against cult darling Scott Pilgrim. Lots of good stuff coming up, by the by, including our own Top 10 lists for the year. Any guesses?
14 comments:
So I looked up the star rating on each review linked on Slant's Top 25. Here's the stats:
Four Stars: 4% (1)
Three and a half: 20% (5)
Three: 48% (12)
Two and a half: 4% (1)
Two: 20% (5)
My point? This place is like Cahiers Du Cinema in reverse. You aren't allowed to review a film unless you feel lukewarm about it.
They seem very reluctant to ever really go out on a limb for anything. The site is so terrified of appearing undersophisticated or naive that they have to find a naysayer, or at least a partial naysayer, to proactively protect them when a film experiences any backlash.
The low position on the list of The Social Network, against The Ghost Writer of all fucking things; a film that will be forgotten among everybody but Polanski completists within the next thirty years, strikes me as a transparent attempt to compensate for the fact that the writer who covered it awarded it three-and-a-half stars.
Man, Schager's great, and I like Gonzalez as well. The rest of the writers stall I could generally give or take.
Happy to see Dogtooth #1, though.
Man, Schager's great, and I like Gonzalez as well. The rest of the writers stall I could generally give or take.
Seconded.
intrigued to see something of a backlash forming against cult darling Scott Pilgrim
I wouldn't read too much into it - it's just not a good film. It's like Eat Pray Love but instead of being a fantasy for dim lonely middle aged women it's a fantasy for dim, lonely, awkward, unattractive, uncharismatic, unemployable, unintelligent 'geek' assholes. A vacuous, hollow celebration of anti-intellectual narcissism wrapped in 8-bit video game flashiness as to avoid any trace actual human emotion or real interaction.
My guesses for FFC's top10: First let's get the obvious out of the way: Black Swan, True Grit, Social Network.
Not sure if Valhalla Rising counts as 2010, but if so, I fully expect it to be Top5 material, at least in Walter's list. Maybe Enter the void, which I'm still hoping will get a proper review here. Then there's this unhealthy obsession with that Potter-thingy, which I'm still unable to grasp. Oh, and The Crazies should really get more love; at least it was a runner-up in Gonzalez' list.
And a little Slant defense: Their top10 is a typical committee result, a consensus. Their staff has grown so much that it is difficult to still hear the unique voices over there (I know, that sounds like 'get off my lawn'-style bitching, but still...). The individual top10s are much more interesting.
Not-so-pressing question: Now that The Good, The Bad, The Weird now has a legitimate national release (most fun I had in theatres this year, probably) will it even be considered in the running? Or does its presence in Chaw's best of decade redux prevent that?
Re Slant: I was extremely disappointed that they did the Top 10 by committee. Would have much preferred an emphasis on individuals'.
Jackson's insinuations are "undersophisticated and naive", even more so than Scott Pilgrim. The individual lists are very interesting, I dig the shout-outs to Amer, The Crazies, Human Centipede, and several of this year's awesome documentaries. Also, kudos for really going out on a limb for the likes of Oceans and Vengeance.
Please don't tell me Kick Ass will appear on any lists this year. It strikes me as this year's District 9. I also hope Toy Story 3 doesn't break any top tens. Personally, I'd like to see some love for Wild Grass, which I haven't read anything about around these parts. I also hope the remaining writers follow Jackson' lead and ignore the solid but weirdly overrated Winter's Bone.
Gosh end of the year already. And so many films I haven't seen are popping up on lists. Even stranger, I probably won't ever see many of them. That wouldn't have happened a few years ago.
Guesses for the FFC lists:
Kick Ass, Toy Story, Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit, Let Me In, Animal Kingdom, Valhalla Rising, Greenberg
Wildcards: Restrepo, Carlos, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Mother, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done
In the critical community, Walter seems to be out in the wilderness on Kick Ass. And he's so, so right. My Son seems destined to be a forgotten Herzog film, but it's weirdness is achingly beautiful. I guess it's technically from 2009, but it just kind of trickled out onto DVD in September.
Jackson's insinuations are "undersophisticated and naive", even more so than Scott Pilgrim. The individual lists are very interesting, I dig the shout-outs to Amer, The Crazies, Human Centipede, and several of this year's awesome documentaries.
Considering the context in which I originally used it your recycling of "undersophisticated and naive" doesn't really make much sense.
Now granted, The Crazies and The Human Centipede both got raves and those are controversial films to give raves to from the get-go.
The Crazies is a glossy Hollywood re-make of a bad George Romero film from the seventies by a director who everybody except Armond White had already written off as a hack (Breck Eisner, the man behind Sahara). But it is a very good film and the fact that Slant recognized it as such proves that they are more of capable of good taste and open-mindedness.
And The Human Centipede is, well, The Human Centipede. It's praised for doing what it says it's going to do and for being "self-aware without being overbearing". I concede both points.
It's also praised for not having any political subtext and that's where I part ways with the reviewer. I mean, I'm not exactly looking for didactism, but I tend to think that art shouldn't necessarily exist purely for its own sake. That, you know, it's supposed to reflect and contextualize the human condition and at it's best get us to ask hard questions of ourselves.
And as far as "art for it's own sake" goes, The Human Centipede really isn't in the same league as The Crazies is it? (Now that I think of it, the fact that I didn't see The Crazies as being much more than a well-made genre film may be why I didn't like it quite as much as Slant's Sam Abrams or our own Walter Chaw).
But anyway, that's a controversial but reasonable take that can easily generate actual discussion and the review justifies the praise and shows that they aren't including it on their best-of list just to be cute.
But they got Ed Gonzalez to cover Amer and he gave it a two star review. And again, three out of four of the reviews linked on that Top 25 are three stars or less. So more often than not, the full-length reviews of their "best of" films are not raves.
But yeah, maybe if their staff is really this diverse in their insights a consensus list really isn't the way to go.
The Ghost Writer is listed as the second best film of the year. Ed Gonzalez wrote the review and he gives it three stars, but he puts it on his list at the number three spot kinda sorta suggesting that he liked it better than any of the other writers. Apparently it's there on the consensus list because even though nobody really felt incredibly passionate about it, everybody liked it and nobody really disliked it.
Glad to hear somebody else call Winter's Bone overrated though. I was getting just a little worried.
Prior to Everyone Else, the last time I can remember Slant going all-the-way on a new film was when Schager gave There Will Be Blood 4-stars. That same day, though, EG posted an (unprecendented?) second review. He gave it two stars. To even it out, I guess.
I saw the director's cut of Enter the Void in NYC, and the first half was Top 10 material, but the second half was very flat and overly repetitive. Even though the first half was free of character development and actual substance (Tibetan Book of the Dead? Whatever), it just felt so fresh and alive. And while I admire Valhalla Rising, man, I must be ADD to the point of no return, the pacing was killing me.
Really digging Valhalla Rising and all the praise it's been getting. So I definitely expect to see it on a couple of top tens.
Speaking of Refn, just got through with Bronson. Goddamn, what a movie.
Dear Caption, Boy:
On behalf of Penelope Cruz, I'm not always a fan. But the Somewhere image is so good...
Damn.
PS - Still waiting on that Fight Club DVD review...
"Kick-Ass" is one of the year's best films and so is "True Grit". Consistently, I swear by Walter Chaw...so it was all the more disappointing that I found "Somewhere" to be film school 101 and the LEAST impressive thing Coppola has done. Sorry, WC...99% of the time we are on the same page!
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