The technical awards - 2011
Every year there are a handful of distinctions that don’t really have any place on my Best Films of the Year list, but oughta be mentioned for shits and giggles. In 2011, they were:
Best Jessica Chastain performance: Take Shelter
Best Tom Hiddleston performance: Thor
Best Michael Fassbender performance: Shame
Best gasp-generator: Michael Fassbender’s penis. Who knew Ewan McGregor had such direct competition?
Best adult performance: Michael Shannon in Take Shelter. Kneel before Zod!
Best child performance: It’s clearly Zoe Heran in Tomboy, but 2011 was littered with great kids onscreen, from Gabriel del Castillo Mullaly in Amy George and Asa Butterfield in Hugo, to the entire cast of Super 8 (but especially Elle Fanning’s teeth).
Best dinosaur performance: The plesiosaur in Tree of Life, who inadvertently says in a single shot as much as the film says in total
Best pretzel-logic performance: Helena Bonham Carter playing Emma Watson playing Hermione Granger playing Bellatrix LeStrange
Best movie in which Saorsie Ronan shoots people: Violet + Daisy
Best original score: X-Men: First Class
Best unoriginal score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ admirable job of pressing CMD-C on their Social Network score for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Best Werner Herzog impression: Hugo Weaving in Captain America
Best line: “Now gimme the damn veggies,” Fast Five
Best merkin: Rooney Mara’s
Best use of 3-D: Hugo
Worst use of 3-D: Pirates of the Caribbean 4
Best lack of 3-D: Mission Impossible 4 / The Dark Knight Rises prologue
Best movie in which our puny human foibles are rendered mute next to the vast uncaring inevitability of the cosmos: Melancholia
Best movie featuring a cast of 15,000 or more: Siddiq Bale: Warriors of the Rainbow
Best performance by an actor under 4 feet tall: Warwick Davis as Griphook in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Speaking of which, best Johnny Depp performance in better than half a decade: The second episode of Life’s Too Short
Best film about old people pissing each other off: Another Year
Best first kiss: Sons of Norway
Best shit-disturbance: the Star Wars blu-ray fracas
Best blu-ray: The Social Network
Best blu-ray I really had no reason to buy on account of how I owned everything on it already: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (extended)
Best scrappy bastards: Oscilloscope Labs
Best film festival: ActionFest
Best bet for 2012: The road goes ever on and on….
