Ricky D’s 50 Favourite Films of 2012 (Part One) - How many have you seen?

2012 wasn’t a bad year for movies. It was actually a great year. The problem is, the movies we were most anticipating, specifically the Hollywood blockbusters like Prometheus and The Hobbit, didn’t live up to our expectations. With that said I still managed to make a list of 50 films I loved. Maybe I just have bad taste or maybe I just love movies but the most time consuming factor when making this list was sitting down and deciding what makes the cut and what doesn’t. Even with 50 films listed below, I found it hard to not include movies like Frankenweenie, The Loneliest Planet, Compliance, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, and Searching For Sugar Man. Come to think of it, every film featured on our list of best documentaries could have easily snuck into this list. I haven’t seen everything of course. Below is a brief list of oversights – but there were a few films that received critical acclaim that I just didn’t like including Alps and Cosmopolis. As with all lists, this is personal and order isn’t too important until you get to my top 10. I could easily rearrange the ordering for any film featured on this list as I enjoy them all.

Note: I am only including movies that were theatrically released. That means I am not including many of the gems I watched at film festivals nor is Zero Dark Thirty eligible.

A few oversights:

The Hunt, Barbara, Attenberg, Almayer’s Folly, The Comedy, Girl Walk / All Day, The Day He Arrives and Neighbouring Sounds.

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Director’s Cut – 3 Essential Recuts (And 3 Worthless Ones)

Ever since the birth of the concept in the early eighties, the prospect of a ‘Director’s Cut’ has become one of the most mouth watering morsels for film fanatics, a chance to glimpse an expanded version or in some cases a radically altered vision to their favorite movies. Whether it be the lengthening of an already acclaimed feature (Apocalypse Now Redux), or a total overhaul on the original (Superman II: The Donner Cut), the opportunity to claim even more entertainment, and insight, from a released film is too good to pass up.

However, for every second look that breathes new life or realizes unfulfilled potential for a film, there is the ill-judged revisit of pointless, self indulgent or apparently maliciously motivated proportions. Sometimes, a feature film pleads to be seen in its full light. Other times, it’s better left well alone.

Here is a look at six notable re-cuts, three that dramatically improve the material, a further three which bafflingly fail.

Blade Runner

Kicking us off is cinema’s most famous such second run, or more accurately it’s most famous fix job. While Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is now celebrated as a classic of both sci-fi and neo-noir, its 1982 release was an underwhelming one, not helped by the studio enforced amendments which clouded its quality with needless audience pandering and dilution of its vision. The film’s reputation, and standing, improved dramatically when it was significantly re-cut in the early nineties.

Most notably, Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut (it has been re-cut three times since its release, most recently with the tidying and fixing Final Cut) wiped out the ill-judged and poorly orchestrated narration track, added late into the original shoot’s production due to fears of viewer confusion, and restored the ambiguous ending to comprehensively wipe out the illogical and sappy theatrical ending, which infamously utilized outtakes from The Shining and swapped the permanent raining nighttime with sweeping bright countryside.

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Tony Scott – Love ‘im or hate ‘im, it’ll be a long time before anyone forgets him

In the late 1970s and 1980s, composer Giorgio Moroder was often accused of trying to replace the orchestral movie soundtrack with high-energy, synthesizer-heavy disco pop laid on with a trowel in movies like Thank God It’s Friday (1978), Flashdance (1983), Scarface (1983), and Top Gun (1986). I remember a magazine story on Moroder which quoted one of his many critics as saying, “The day the music died, Giorgio Moroder was brought in for questioning.”

I think some people had the same opinion about movies and Tony Scott. Full disclosure: I’m one of them. But it would be greatly unfair to Scott, who apparently committed suicide Sunday after being diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, not to admit that, for good or for ill, his 1980s feature work had an enormous impact on commercial filmmaking.

The younger brother of Ridley Scott by seven years, he was gifted – like his brother – with an outrageously good eye; a taste for the visual strong enough to earn him his master’s degree from London’s Royal College of Art (which he’d attended on scholarship no less). But painting didn’t pay well, so he joined with his brother in Ridley Scott Associates where, from the 1970s into the 1980s, he applied that eye to moving pictures, directing thousands of commercials, some of them still-talked-about all-time classics in the U.K.

His first feature was the visually sumptuous, dramatically wispy attempt at erotic vampirica, The Hunger (1983), and it was such a lambasted flop it’s a surprise Scott’s feature career didn’t end right there. But three years later, producer Jerry Bruckheimer tapped him to direct Top Gun and movies would never be the same.

It was a perfect marriage of sensibilities (along with Michael Bay, Scott would remain one of Bruckheimer’s go-to directors). Bruckheimer, whose youthful interest in photography had led him to his own career in commercials before turning to movies, had the same affinity for striking imagery as Scott.

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2012′s Great Movie Moments: June

At the end of each month, the Sound On Sight staff will band together to write an article about their favourite scenes in films released. Here are our favourite scenes from the month of May.

Warning: Of course, spoilers are in full effect here!

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Killer Joe – KFC Rape

Killer Joe marks an unshakeable return for William Friedkin, the legendary director of The French Connection, To Live And Die In L.A. and The Exorcist. This vigorous mix of sex, violence and family values gone wrong is a roller-coaster ride, designed for those who like their Southern neo-noir thrillers sprinkled with a heavy dose of black humour and an irresistibly bold dose of crazy. Take for instance the most shocking scene: Killer Joe’s KFC-flavored rape.

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2012: The Best Movies of June

2012 promises to be a fantastic year in cinema ,(although halfway through the year it has been somewhat of a letdown). Not too long ago, we posted a list of thirty of our most anticipated films of 2012, and so I decided I would keep track of my favourite films released each month. Here are my favorite films released in June.

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Prometheus

Directed by Ridley Scott

Screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof

2012, USA

Ridley Scott’s ambitious quasi-prequel to Alien may not answer all of its big questions (or any for that matter), but it’s redeemed by its sheer visual spectacle, technical wizardry and emphasis on tone and atmosphere. Prometheus is not without problems – just ask the fine folk over at Red Letter Media – but director Ridley Scott takes chances and while some of his choices don’t always work, Prometheus is at least never boring. While weighing heavily on familiar science fiction conceits, Scott still injects enough horrific elements to label this sci-fi horror. After-all, stripped to its visceral essentials, the franchise began with a horror film meant simply to frighten us and gross us out. Unlike any of the sequels between this and the original, Prometheus is a horror movie first and foremost; a haunting visual grandeur eating away at subconscious terrors. But if there is any reason to see Prometheus, it is simply for the compelling performance by Michael Fassbender as a fastidious android named David. Fassbender plays David with a mixture of curiosity, detachment, and arrogance, an android who models his appearance intentionally like that of Peter O’Toole’s iconic Lawrence of Arabia – a performance so good it might help launch Prometheus into the cult stratosphere.

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Tim Anderson created these beautiful posters for some our favorite classic sci-fi films.

Tim graduated from Art Center College of Design in 2009 with a BFA in Illustration and has worked on various entertainment design projects for Paramount Pictures, video games and a few independent films. He is currently working as a concept designer for Electronic Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Via postercollective.com

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