However, sometimes you read about something and a name catches your eye, but without any reference you don’t pay any attention and quickly forget about it. In our case, that was what happened to the “Wilhelm scream”. Then – about the fourth time the name popped up – we read the story and thought it was worthy of sharing.

The Wilhelm scream is a sound effect that first popped up in 1951. Originally it was just called a “scream”, but in the third movie it was used, the character who was wounded was called Wilhelm and that’s where it got its name from. Ever since, it’s been used as an effect as well as an injoke for movie maniacs and it’s quite remarkable to hear the same scream pop up in various movies. As you can watch and hear in this compilation:

1. WINTER’S BONE
And the winner is… oh yeah, you already know. “Because Jennifer Lawrence, Ree in the movie, has a doe-like quality that [...] wonderfully clashes with the toughness of her character and the film’s setting. They say nature can be relentless… well, so are the people who have to live in the woods. The movie is also excellently shot and almost every scene where the nature settings are present are small tableaus, but one where beneath the soft blowing of the wind danger seems to loom.” Full review: here

2. LE GAMIN AU VÉLO
Ultimately, what at the time seemed a flaw, has won us over. This may not have been the most logical film by the Dardennes, but life isn’t always easy to explain. For no apparent reason whatsoever, a woman takes a boy into her custody. Add some small time crooks and a huge amount of personal problems and you’ve got yourself a movie that is almost poignant as Rosetta, but easier to watch. (Original review here)

3. CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE.
Which movie should become the runner-up, CSL or Gamin? That was the hardest decision of this top 10, but this one finally bowed its head. Because for some reason a lot of movies with Ryan Gosling popped up in 2011? Because this blog shares a nationality with the Dardenne brothers? Possibly and no. Because the period at the end of the title is getting on our nerves? Perhaps… (welcome to the only blog where interpunction may cost you a spot) Fact is that this is one of the very few recent comedies that has no problem standing in the same pantheon as classic screwball comedies. And it would be a couples of bridges too far to rank Emma Stone‘s comment on Gosling’s six-pack (“Seriously, that’s not photoshopped?”) next to “Because I just went gay all of a sudden”, but it is one of the few movies that manages to pull off two climaxes, one of which is a teary-eyed Hollywood cliché book, but one with a nice twist at the end. (Full review)

4. CONFESSIONS
How to take revenge at the school kids who’ve killed your daughter? Well, if you’re a teacher, it’s easy: confess you’ve spiked their milk with HIV-positive blood and enjoy the aftermath. Includes beautiful slow motion scenes and a couple of twists. A burning look at the human condition until the very end. Read more about it here.

5. BLUE VALENTINE
The mid-section of this top 10 is very much the cheeriest thing you’ll have read: if you’re not pleased with mentally torturing the murderers of your child, you may want to watch how a relationship dissolves. Blue Valentine might have ended up higher in the list, but the interweaving of how the relationship ends and the happier times didn’t grip us as much as it should have done. Starring Michelle Williams and a debuting actor called (wait, we’re looking this up) Ryan Gosling.

6. MELANCHOLIA
And what if we could tie the death of a relationship to the end of the world? Step forward Lars von Trier and Kirsten Dunst. There was something about a press conference on this film at some film festival where someone said something that didn’t really go down well with the rest of the world, but we forgot the details. Meanwhile, the mysterious 19th hole (a.k.a. the part where reality doesn’t make sense or ceases to exist) as well as the review itself were the most read and sought after items at the Avenue. We’ve already mentioned that this featured Dunst in great form, but we shouldn’t forget that the slow motion prequel to the movie were extremely beautiful to watch. Not the best film of the year, but the one with the most beautiful shots. (Full review: here)

7. CARNAGE
More relationship joy? Polanski’s play on film ended up on the seventh spot. Why not higher? “Because the film was written by Yasmina Reza and it was based on her play Le Dieu de Carnage. And this film is very much a film version of a play. Is that bad? No, but throughout the film I wanted to see the reactions of the other people while someone was having a dialogue or monologue and here – by definition as it’s a film (unless you count experiments like Timecode by Figgis) – you’re bound to watch what’s happening through the vision of the director.” (Original review)

8. BLACK SWAN
We really should take some happy pills: more psychological destruction, but this time it’s self-inflicted. You all know about this Darren Aronofsky film starring Natalie Portman, so why bother with a lengthy review? Let’s just say this wasn’t as fulfulling as we’d hoped, but while this wasn’t the case, it didn’t disappoint enough to keep it out of the top 10.

9. SIMON WERNER A DISPARU
School outcasts, a mysterious disappearance, the nineties and a soundtrack by Sonic Youth. “Cult fans (especially those who’ve watched a giallo or two) will not be surprised that it isn’t always the most likely suspect who’s responsible for a (possible) crime. If that worries you, Simon Werner says more about you than about the 1990s. There’s lots of gossiping in the film and eccentric or asocial characters are just ready to be served as scapegoats. (Just like Alice seems born for the role of femme fatale.) And that is the true story behind Simon Werner’s disappearance. A simple whodunit, this is not. Good movie, good soundtrack and a fair bit of nostalgia for the previous century. Are we content? Yes, we are.” (Read more here)

10. TOMBOY
After fifteen minutes you find out the couple that has just moved in don’t have a boy and a girl, but two girls. Gender confusion galore as Laure (Zoé Héran) pretends to be Michaël. Things don’t improve when Lisa falls in love with “him” and after a fight Laure’s mother thinks the best option to show everyone Michaël doesn’t exist is by forcing Laure into a dress. The second movie written and directed by Céline Sciamma, whose Naissance des pieuvres (Water Lilies) we still fondly remember.

Ten movies and between four to six to remember. Probably more, but time wasn’t on our hands, so for now, we’ll have to do with just the reputation of Rundskop, Never Let Me Go and The Artist. Maybe next year?

Two movies that didn’t make it into the top 10, but deserve a mention:
Easy A
The Ides of March

And it’s by Debra Granik, whom we’d never heard of. Not that amazing, given that this is only her second feature-length movie. In Winter’s Bone we follow 17-year-old Ree on her trail for her lost dad. Either the man shows up for his parole or Ree’s family may end up evicted. Given that the family exists of Ree, her two younger siblings and her sick mother, that isn’t much of an option. Soon it becomes clear that those who might know where her father is don’t feel like sharing information. Not too bad because Ree is a tough cookie. Bad because the neighbourhood is at least equally tough.

So why did this get Film of the Year? Because Jennifer Lawrence, Ree in the movie, has a doe-like quality that not only works magically with the Dutch language (the Dutch word for “doe” is “ree”) but also wonderfully clashes with the toughness of her character and the film’s setting. They say nature can be relentless… well, so are the people who have to live in the woods. The movie is also excellently shot and almost every scene where the nature settings are present are small tableaus, but one where beneath the soft blowing of the wind danger seems to loom. And this time we’re not talking about bears. Talking just causes witnesses, the tagline explains and that is very much true: the voluntary silence seems to become the actual protagonist of the film and it’s nearly as lethal as a gun. Occasionally unpleasant to watch, but never below good, the best film of 2011 is: Winter’s Bone.

So what’s today’s plan then? Well, nothing less than an exciting remake. You see, these days remakes seem all the rage: while Cronenberg’s The Fly 2 wasn’t exactly received with open arms by Fox, he is planning Eastern Promises 2 and Ridley Scott wants to do something with Blade Runner again. And that’s just the example of two directors.

The Thing also got two remakes recently. There’s that one movie we don’t really feel like discussing here – much like a lot of reviewers didn’t seem to think the 1951 The Thing From Another World was worth mentioning as the actual “original” movie – and then there’s this: The Thing once more, but now starring Pingu:

And, because we’re really into movies, here‘s the Behind the Scenes documentary.

Make no mistake, Carnage is a good film. Roman Polanski is a great director and he shows that here from time to time. Carnage is about a couple who come to say sorry to the parents of a boy: their son knocked out two of the other boy’s teeth. Apologetic as they may try to seem, there’s also a crisis in the real world (the father of the ‘culprit’ is the lawyer of a pharmaceutical firm and news has just leaked out that their medicine isn’t exactly harmless). At one point, another phonecall disrupts the conversation once again and while we watch him (Christoph Waltz) talking in the background, we see the impatient hand of his wife (Kate Winslet) tapping on the sofa in the front of our screen. That is the definition of a great shot, everyone, and Polanski – who briefly cameos as the neighbour – is a great director.

So the director is good, did the story suck? No, not in the least. The parents of the “culprit” have a tough time apologizing as the parents of the “victim” (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster) are not exactly their cup of tea. And it doesn’t take long before the smooth lawyer and the art writer of a book on Darfur (Foster) are driving each other insane. There’s a subtle hint that she’s a former alcoholic, but this isn’t fact-checked in the film. (Again, why should every detail always be explained?) And while this may give you a chance to feel more sympathetic towards Reilly and Winslet, they’ll lose your sympathy before too long as well. Note how this forced conversation plays with etiquette codes (just watch their use of first names, last names and nicknames) and enjoy the film even more.

So the director is good, the screenplay is good and the actors are good… why isn’t this the film of 2011 then? Because the film was written by Yasmina Reza and it was based on her play Le Dieu de Carnage. And this film is very much a film version of a play. Is that bad? No, but throughout the film I wanted to see the reactions of the other people while someone was having a dialogue or monologue and here – by definition as it’s a film (unless you count experiments like Timecode by Figgis) – you’re bound to watch what’s happening through the vision of the director. In a way this is odd, given that it’s been ages since I last saw a play (the last two involved spitting and cutting each other and an overbearing sense of “look at me, I’ve studied art), but I genuinely I felt during the film I’d enjoyed this more in the theatre. Add the same director and actors and you’re watching one of the best plays of the year. Then again, given the sheer amount of pretentious garbage that’s often domineering the theatres, a lot of people wouldn’t have discovered Reza’s play because they were still paying their psychiatris to get over that trauma of the last play where that actor took a dump on another actor’s face (agreed, I made this up, but I’m sure somewhere in the world this will have happened on a stage as an astute metaphor of how we’re dealing with the environment).

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it looks as if the play has already had its fair share of good casts, but Polanski assembled maybe the best version. But most of the credit should go to Yasmina Reza, so we’ll name her again. (However, I found a review that mentioned the film adaptation upstaged the Broadway version, so I thought I’d just mentioned that as well.)

One thing is definitely wrong about the film and that’s the ending. Sure, it may have been tough to find an ending for this piece, but the way Carnage ends seems like Polanski didn’t even care about a finale. (A possible suggestion: what if the film ended with the exact moment, only with a shot where the camera zoomed out and retreated, as if we’d also given up on these four people? Anyway, that’s all for today’s edition of “Let’s play Polanski”.)

And this is the moment where I try to finish the review, but maybe we’ll take Polanski’s lead and end it now.

8/10

Picking a book of 2011 sounds like an odd thing. Alright, several years ago I was studying literature at the university, so it wasn’t that exceptional I managed to read 108 books in 12 months (my record, so far). 2011 was a bit of an abysmal year compared to that: I clocked off on a tenth of that number (didn’t manage to complete that 11th book). Worse even, my book of the year is one I glanced through but didn’t get the time to read in full (yet – yes, 2012, you know what’s in store), but I’ve decided to label this as my Book of the Year 2011 for two reasons: 1) none of the read books jumped out anyway and 2) I’m already looking forward to reading the rest of this book and I know I’ll like it.

In an earlier post (In time) I already mentioned the British satirical magazine Private Eye existed 50 years. One of their writers made a wonderful book about it and the best reason not to have this on your coffee table is that the thing might collapse. The book is far more than some of the other Private Eye book publications, which were sometimes nothing more than a “best of”. This book features a lot of covers and jokes which were published in the magazine as well as give a detailed A to Z of the past 50 years. The book is stylish and informative and even if you haven’t heard of the magazine (or are not a big fan) you’ll like reading the book – unless you’re Piers Moron.

Furthermore, in a year that was so warped, a satirical non-fiction book might be the most deserving of our crown Book of the Year. Especially in the UK, where superinjunctions and the phone-hacking scandals domineered the headlines, 2011 was very much a year of the press anyway.

So Private Eye: the first 50 years – an A-Z by Adam MacQueen is our book of the year and here’s the writer himself on Canadian television to tell you more about it:

Next up: the movies of the year and you’ll read more about those on 10/01.

The credits and the need to do away with them… do we have to blame Christopher Nolan for this? He’s definitely a culprit but at least he had good reasons not to start his movies with credit sequences: Batman Begins is a movie which leads up to the moment the caped crusader becomes Batman. To end your movie with the credits is, given the film’s theme and title, not bad. I’m not sure if Memento is also creditless at first, but that film was told in reverse anyway. Anyway, in such cases we understand the reason to leave out the opening credits. US television series are facing the same problem: the credits sequence seems to have moved to the beginning of the second part, so right after the first commercial break. The commercial suits have become so mortally afraid of someone hopping away to another channel that they seemingly ruined television for all the viewers. Gone are the days of wonderful teasers, a couple of minutes long, followed by the familiar credits and off the show went. Is this why it’s also done in cinemas? We don’t know. Is it done because otherwise moviegoers wouldn’t mind popping in a couple of minutes late and thus missing out on the commercials preceding the film? You can’t channelhop in a cinema after all. But for our entertainment value, unless it’s done for a good reason, a film needs to start with opening credits. As David Cronenberg once said, credits help you leave the real world and go to the world inside the film. Crazy, stupid, love had good credits: the under-table romance shots in a restaurant had told us the marriage of Carell and Stone was over before she asked for a divorce.

Source Code kicks off with credits – erm… yes, it took us 380 words to get to today’s topic – and they aren’t the most mindblowing credits out there, but at least they’re there. The film opens with an aerial shot going towards a train and a split second later Jake Gyllenhaal‘s character wakes up in a train. The cute woman in front of him calls him Sean, even though that isn’t his name. Worse even, the face in the mirror is not his own face. A little while later, the train explodes. Not good.

Turns out there was a good reason why the man didn’t feel like Sean: he isn’t. He is Colter Stevens, a soldier who’s working for a brand new experiment: apparently there are a couple of people whose brains can connect to other people just before a fatal movement, like a train explosion. Sliding between the real world and the unreal world isn’t so unpeculiar for the film’s director, Duncan Jones, who debuted in 2009 with Moon. Familiar territory for him then, but not for us, the viewers, and for Colter: he and we can’t understand why Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), the military woman at the other side of the experiment, reacts so cool. Never mind, viewer, all will be explained later.

Before “later”, Stevens has to return again and again to those eight minutes on the train which led up to the explosion: only when he’s found the bomber will this mission be over. However, because Stevens can walk freely in these eight minutes, the experience will be different every time. Not that we’re complaining: not only is it possible for Stevens to find the terrorist, we can also see more of Sean’s good friend Christina (Michelle Monaghan), the only character on the train that gets some character development.

That may be the best part of the film. The worst part… well, it seems as if Hollywood is now run by 14-year-old girls. Source Code ends in such a sugarsweet fashion we had to watch a Melissa Joan Hart Christmas movie afterwards or we’d faced a cold turkey. Not only is the ending awful, it doesn’t make sense. At one point in the film, the action pauses. Had the film ended there, it would have been a contender for our Top 10 [there is one film in the cinema and one film on dvd we still need to watch before we can give you the list of 2011, so stay tuned...]. Now it won’t be there. Oh, it’s not a bad movie, far from, but the only price this deserves is “tackiest ending of 2011″. If Duncan Jones can send us his details, we’ll send him our Golden Lump.

7/10

First up this scene where the evil minions perform a most dastardly chant. Then the spaceship flies away in terrifyingly realistic special effects and our hero wakes up. Now we learn that Gaultier’s creations for Madonna weren’t that original.

But fear not, for there is more… in scene number two we learn that the spaceship’s driver is also the victim of the same tailor and Flash has to look at a most tyrannic distruction of, erm, some things… we reckon it must have taken the special effects crew a full ten minutes to create these scenes. Provided their coffee break was just in the middle of those ten minutes of course. Enjoy…

As much as we try to avoid them, sometimes we cannot help it but catch a glimpse of trailers. Our cinema card allows us to print our own ticket, so thanks to meticulous planning, it’s possible to work out at which minute you have to enter the theatre to be just in time for the film and too late for the preceding commercials. True, this also means we’ll miss out on cinema trailers, but that isn’t awful for two reasons: you can also catch those at the film sites online and, even more important, they tend to suck anyway. In more cases than one, they are also misleading in order to goad as many whippersnappers to the theatres – (500) days of summer and Crazy, stupid, love being two recent examples. I did catch the trailer of Drive and didn’t really feel lured to go and see the film. Reason one: they actually managed to play the trailer twice in a row, which only adds to the annoyance. Reason two: oh look, it’s Ryan Gosling… again. Now there’s an actor we haven’t seen much of this year. Reason three: it looked quite like a dumb action movie.

Not very impressed then and the synopsis didn’t help much either. Gosling is a driver. He is a stuntman for movies, he works in a garage and he occasionally helps thugs as their getaway driver after another robbery. There is no specific reason as to why he does that, there’s hardly any character development: saying he’s two-dimensional would even be overestimating him. Actually, you can even catch that in the trailer. No, it’s not just a series of action-packed snippets from the film: that’s all there is to his character. There was hardly any reason why we wanted to see this film, was there?

Well, let’s digress. Ever since Stephen Moffat took over the Doctor Who wheel, the series has grown up. In a way, Doctor Who has become the equivalent of Harry Potter: Rowling also wanted the characters to grow up along with the readers, which is why the tone of the later books is allegedly – a term used here in the meaning of: don’t ask us, we haven’t ready any, we’re only quoting Wikipedia – heavier and darker. Even the earlier episodes in the Davies era which were penned by Moffat are our favourites and there’s hardly any character we’re fonder of – and yes, that does include all the Doctor’s companions – than Sally Sparrow of the brilliant episode “Blink”. Portraying her was one Carey Mulligan and guess who’s also starring in Drive…?

Ms Mulligan is Gosling’s next door neighbour and he cannot help but being intrigued by this woman. It turns out she’s a young mother and the wife of a convicted criminal. Not that this would be a surprise: the garageowner Gosling works for also has ties with local mob types. In fact, let’s just leave it at this: the entire city consists of criminals. Anyway, despite the fact that her husband is released from jail soon, Gosling and Mulligan grow towards each other, which doesn’t quite make her guy like Gosling very much. However, when Gosling returns home one day and find him bleeding on the ground with his little boy nearby and in shock, the two become BFFs and Gosling even offers to drive him to his final robbery – the debt the man still needs to pay for being safe in prison and the only way the local thugs wouldn’t harm Carey and their son. Things go wrong – ooh, surprise, surprise – and what follows can best be described as a brutal killing spree.

Which leads us to the biggest problem we had with the film: there’s no flow in the film whatsoever. You could argue that one hyperviolent scene can be followed by a softer scene because that’s how the storyline forces the film to change its pace, but because the characters aren’t developed, there are no reference points. And what’s even worse, sometimes the director inserted a couple of slow motion scenes. Nothing wrong with them, but they have to be used well: Confessions also had a couple of slow motion scenes but they helped to underline the poetry of the film. Drive isn’t poetic and as a result, the scenes feel out of place and only cause the film to appear even more random. Yes, some of the slow motion scenes look nice, but they didn’t help the film to change its pace: it was as if someone has accidently pushed the slo-mo button and noticed this after 20 seconds.

Even the soundtrack has this problem: there’s one recurring track (“A real hero” – see below) underlying the mysterious relationship between Gosling and Mulligan, but it sounds quite different from some of the other tracks, which once again doesn’t help the film find some unity.

The mobsters, the violence, the mysterious protagonist… it felt as if this film wanted to bring the Japanese movie culture into a western movie. As the United States are not Japan, the result simply feels unjust. Another director who is a self-professed fan of Japanese cinema, is our good old friend Ta****ino (a.k.a. The Thief) and Drive is one of those films which was praised as similar to the Thief’s style. Much like Locks, Stocks and we all know how many masterpieces that director made later in his career. In 2011, even the Thief’s star isn’t what it used to be: the internet gave us many of the films he copied and his “unique style” is only still mentioned by those reviewers who stay away from older cult movies as if they were viral.
By comparison, the violent scenes (the bathroom and elevator scenes immediately spring out here) don’t really go together with the rest of the film. True, this is a movie about tough guys, but those scenes don’t underline that, they give you the feeling of a naughty infant shouting “look at what I there”. Don’t you see how edgy I am?

Well, frankly, the answer is no. But as it’s Christmas and we don’t want to spoil the mood completely, the very best scene in the film is an emotional one between Gosling and Mulligan. They stand near each other (as you can see on the still around these words). Nothing much happens, but Mulligan’s breathing reveals the intensity. That is the sort of tension the movie tried to create at the beginning but failed to do so when the story speeds away from the starting blocks. Anyway, that’s the Avenue’s opinion. Apparently the rest of the world claims this is a masterpiece. Even the presence of Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks couldn’t save this film for us, so all we’re left with is a scene with an actress breathing heavily. Still that’s something and one day, when we grow up, we’ll probably like this film – according to a much liked comment on the YouTube page for the song below: “Drive is a grown up film. All you children stop commenting on how boring it was. Grow up and maybe you’ll one day understand this masterpiece of a film.” Please excuse us, it’s now our time to play on the seesaw…

4.5/10

But that is only the introduction. In the Netherlands a composer was asked to make some background music for an anti-piracy campaign for a film festival. The man was nicely paid by the anti-piracy organisation. Case closed. Ermm, no… some time later the man inserted a dvd into his player and, lo and behold, there was the same message… including his tune. As Private Eye would say: shurely shome mishtake?

The composer contacted the organisation. After all, didn’t his contract specify he was the tune’s owner for national and international territories? Plus, he had composed the tune: surely they’d forgotten he was the rightful owner of the track, even if they used a message for a film festival on another medium… ermm no, the Dutch anti-piracy organisation felt it was their message and therefore their plaything.

So the composer looked for a lawyer to take up this curious case. Not only that, a tv network heard about the story and jumped on it as well. A conversation between the lawyer and one of the anti-piracy guys was recorded and included a most memorable moment: this guy claimed that he was known for his pitbull attitude and he would make sure the composer would be paid after all. Of course, sinking your teeth into something costs some money and the man suggested a nice little fee of one third of the money would go to him for his effort and the composer could get the rest. And after all, two thirds of a sum is still better than nothing, eh?

TV networks tend to have the time to broadcast material and the interview was shown on the Dutch telly (discerning enthusiasts could hear the full interview on the network’s site). The anti-piracy movement promptly decided it was best for the man to stay low and removed him from his current job. Several weeks later, the composer got a wonderful offer: he would be paid the royalties for each dvd on which his tune was present as long as these were Dutch dvds (sometimes a dvd is published in several countries with a various display of subtitles – for those dvds the composer couldn’t be paid, of course, even if the music was featured there) and on the condition that he wouldn’t contact the press anymore. The composer did not agree to these conditions. For the record, we would like to point out that the Dutch anti-piracy organisation clearly states that their guy didn’t do anything wrong and that the network took certain words out of context.

Nevertheless, apparently a composer might not get paid for his work for an anti-piracy organisation (and probably not for any international releases). It just seems like a most curious case.

At least they’re not funding terrorism…

(P.S. If you understand Dutch, a short summary of the case can be watched here. It’s part of the year in review episode (16 Dec) as of 11:45 and is featured in several earlier episodes.)