10 Off My Head: Siri Says 2013

So I got a new cell phone this weekend and the set-up was creepily easy -- I just had to hold the new phone in proximity to the old one and... shit like transferred right over? Through the air? Technology truly baffles me, but sure, why not, just let it happen even if it makes me skin crawl. (I was reading up on the things my new phone can do and I found out about the "Facetime Attention Correction" which was the creepiest -- you're basically deep-faking your own eyeballs? Ugh!) 

That said it wasn't until this very moment now when I sat down to do this week's entry in our "Siri Says" series -- where I ask Siri to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then tell you people my favorite films from the year that corresponds -- that I suddenly became worried for the sentient being called Siri that lives inside my telephone. Was she transferred over along with my information? Is this some other lady giving me numbers now? Some imposter? If I can't trust my Siri who can I trust? This is like the start of every 90s Erotic-Thriller, I tell ya.

Anyway I asked this "Siri" for my number today and just like last week "she" gave me a usable number on the very first try -- at this point, having done so many of these posts, getting an unused number on the very first try is an outlier. So my point is whether this is "my" Siri or not "she" is doing a good job so whatever -- cut to the "Siri" on my old phone getting bricked, consciousness trapped forever in some nowhere-world, an episode of Black Mirror if ever there was a really boring episode of Black Mirror. (Or perhaps this has all been Performance Art for Spike Jonze's Her, included below.)

Point being the lady inside my phone, whomever she might be now, told me "13" so we're choosing from the Movies of 2013. 2013 was the year that MNPP's annual awards tradition of The Pantys went a little wonky, because I fell down and broke my arm around the time I was meant to post them, and posting anything became difficult for a few months. I only got around to posting a list of My 15 Favorite Films of 2013 in... March of 2014, lol. And looking back today my list is a little different. Our foundations are quaking, y'all. 

My 10 Favorite Movies of 2013

Frances Ha

(dir. Greta Gerwig)

-- released on May 17th 2013 --

The Bling Ring

(dir. Sofia Coppola)

-- released on June 21st 2013 --

Short Term 12 

(dir. Dustin Daniel Cretton)

-- released on August 23rd 2013 --

You're Next 

(dir. Adam Wingard)

-- released on August 23rd 2013 --

12 Years a Slave

(dir. Steve McQueen)

-- released on November 8th 2013 --

Inside Llewyn Davis

(dir. Coens)

-- released on December 6th 2013 --

Stoker

(dir. Park Chan-wook)

-- released on March 1st 2013 --

The Great Beauty

(dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

-- released on November 15th 2013 --

Her

(dir. Spike Jonze)

-- released on December 18th 2013 --

Stranger By the Lake 

(dir. Alain Guiraudie)

-- released on 2013 --

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Runners-up: Only God Forgives (dir. Refn), The Heat (dir. Paul Feig), Pacific Rim (dir. Guillermo Del Toro) Enough Said (dir. Nicole Holofcener), About Time (dir. Richard Curtis), A Field in England (dir. Ben Wheatley), Nymphomaniac (dir. Lars Von Trier), Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon-ho), Tom at the Farm (dir. Dolan), The Past (dir. Asghar Farhadi)...

... The Counselor (dir. Ridley Scott), Captain Phillips (dir. Paul Greengrass), Gravity (dir. Alfonso Cuaron), The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer), Byzantium (dir. Neil Jordan), I'm So Excited (dir. Pedro Almodovar), Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler), Oblivion (dir. Joseph Kosinski), The Place Beyond the Pines (dir. Cianfrance), Filth (dir. Jon S. Baird) 

Never seen: The Grandmaster (dir. Wong Kar-wai), What Maisie Knew (dir. Scott McGehee), The English Teacher (dir. Craig Lisk), Ida (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski), Grace of Monaco (dir. Olivier Dahan), Bastards (dir. Claire Denis), Black Nativity (dir. Kasi Lemmons), The Fifth Estate (dir. Bill Condon)

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What are your favorite movies of 2013?

MNPP's 15 Favorite Movies of 2013

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A blessed few of you noticed this and nagged at me last year about the great big bottomless pit that MNPP's annual awards The Golden Trousers (aka The Pantys) fell down - they actually literally fell down, since I fell on some ice and broke my arm in the spring right around the time I'd usually do them making extensive blogging next to impossible for about a month, and then time marched on and yadda yadda I never posted my awards for The Movies of 2013 at all. What a disaster.

Well now we're already behind on doing The Movies of 2014 and I'm afraid this problem's going to exacerbate itself into a gigantic weight on my face, and not the good kind, not the "Chris Evans sitting on me" kind. Just the smothering kind. So I'm just going to post my Top 12 Movies of 2013 right now and finally put 2013 behind me... just in time for mid-2015. I'm so timely! Okay let's do this. I'll even give you three runners-up, bringing us up to my Top 15: Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said, Adam Wingard's You're Next, and Asghar Farhadi's The Past.

And now our Top 12!

12. STOKER 

(Park Chan-wook)

11. CRYSTAL FAIRY AND THE MAGICAL CACTUS 

(Sebastián Silva)

10. STORIES WE TELL 

(Sarah Polley)

9. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR 

(Abdellatif Kechiche) original review

8. THE BLING RING 

(Sofia Coppola) original review

7. THE ACT OF KILLING 

(Joshua Oppenheimer)

6. THE GREAT BEAUTY 

(Paolo Sorrentino) original review

5. HER 

(Spike Jonze) original review

4. 12 YEARS A SLAVE 

(Steve McQueen) original review

3. SHORT TERM 12 

(Destin Daniel Cretton) original review

2. STRANGER BY THE LAKE 

(Alain Guiraudie) original review

1. FRANCES HA 

(Noah Baumbach) original review

I haven't changed this list at all since I first wrote it up last year; I opened up the document today, scanned through it, and said to myself Yup, that looks right. It was a pretty much a given the moment I saw Frances way way way back the the New York Film Festival in the fall of 2012 that it would be my favorite movie of the year, so head-over-fucking-heels was I from first sight, and honestly my affection for it has probably quadrupled since then. A couple of these movies I should revisit (I would sit down and re-watch The Great Beauty right this second if I could)  but I stand by all of them. Anyway... that's done! Now let's try to get our 2014 Pantys done before 2017 then.

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I Am Link

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--- Fifty Fab - Yesterday was the 50th birthday of my favorite actress Juliette Binoche and I missed it, boo on me. Thankfully Nathaniel caught it over at The Film Experience and took a look at what she's got coming up - we all know and dread that shot of her crying in the trailer for Godzilla - and is asking what our favorite performance of hers is, go check out all the great answers in the comments. Really when it comes to Juli there are no bad answers - she is always good. Always.

--- Big Bads - Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb talked a bunch about the whole "multiple versus too many villians" thing over here with regards to the upcoming sequel, and sure enough it seems I was right when I predicted that some of the villains are there for mini-battles that will be scattered throughout the movie. I suppose his actual quote is spoilery so I won't get into it; just know I know things, you should listen to me.

--- Scot Spot - Hey look it's the clearest picture we've gotten so far of Michael Fassbender on the set of the new MacBeth movie (via). Shocking no one, he makes for the MacBeth we all most want to sit on. In related news I found this interesting - his Lady is being played by Marion Cotillard and here she is talking about how they're keeping her French accent for it, which ought to prove new since the play's so specifically Scottish.

--- Chainsaw Lover - I still can't believe a Heathers musical is a real thing, but sure enough it opens in just a few days here in New York and here's the fun croquet-themed poster for the show right here. I haven't bought tickets yet since all my focus is on my trip to Italy in a couple of weeks so I really hope the show sticks around long enough for me to catch it. (That means y'all need to go.)

--- Wasted Away - The latest asshole I mean actor who's decided that skinnying down will give him respect (while destroying all the attraction we the people had for him) and possibly an Oscar (which just got underlined and circled and stamped approved by the Academey this year twice over, is Mark Wahlberg, who's lost sixty some pounds for the remake of The Gambler that he's making, you can see pictures of him on set over here. He actually looks a little bit better than some of these guys have (oh Jake) though. I guess what he had to lose was ridiculous cartoon muscle mass.

--- Post Wreck -  I don't recall what sort of reviews that this movie got out of Sundance but Slash has the word that Adam Wingard's follow-up to the terrific slasher You're Next, called The Guest and starring a drastically different looking Matthew from Downton Abbey, has been picked up for release sometime this Fall. I liked You're Next enough that I'll see whatever he does, even if Dan Stevens isn't my favorite person to look at.

--- On The Captain - AICN has posted a couple of reports from the set of the Captain America 2 set, neither of which I've read but hey look it's a picture of Chris Evans from behind in his uniform that I haven't seen before so who gives a fuck about anything else. The trailer for this movie that I saw this weekend on an IMAX screen before the 300 sequel (hopefully I'll get to that later) was the first time I felt anything positive towards it - I've been strangely indifferent til now.

--- And finally, I missed this last week, shame on me, but here's what our pal Glenn Dunks thought of 2013 in the movies, from best movie on down. Some wonderful choices up in there - good love for You're Next and Stoker and Xavier Dolan, oh my. And now back to talking about me some more (phew I was not talking about myself for so long, that was exhausting) - I've been meaning to tell you guys, The 2013 Pantys are going to be delayed until next month. Things might actually be quiet up in here in general for the next two weeks as I prep for my Italy trip, and then, well, then I'll be in Italy, and so our awards for last year are going to have to wait until after all of that, I just don't have time to work on them right now. My apologies for the delay; hurting my arm last month really screwed with my timing. But now April will be awesome, right? RIGHT?

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Somebody's Finally Working On Something

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Our yearly awards are still at least a few weeks away, but hey look I made this year's logo! That's something. It's my favorite one, too - the bulge definitely takes it home. And I suppose now's the time to yell at me about any movies from 2013 that I might have missed that you want me to make sure I see before it's too too late.

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It Gets Stranger

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I haven't decided yet if I'm going to count Alain Guiraudie's film Stranger By the Lake as a 2013 film or a 2014 film - technically it only came out today in the US, but I saw it in the Fall at the New York Film Festival and it came out in France last June. Any opinions? Anyway which ever way I decide, that's where the film will place on our Golden Trousers awards because I loved it very very much and if I do hold it off for next year's awards then the next twelve months (excuse me, eleven) will have to be mind-blowing for it to drop out of my top ten. So since it is out here in New York today - and Guiraudie is doing Q&As at both IFC Center and Lincoln Center, if you're here in town (Lincoln Center's doing a whole retrospective on the director, actually) - I figured I should link back up to my brief review of the movie from back in October, and remind y'all that you should see this movie, it is really very very good. Peak perv.

What's The Best Movie...

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... that you've seen so far this year?

I'm curious where we're all standing, here
on the precipice of the "Important" Movies of Fall,
and if there's anything I maybe missed I should seek out.

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A Very Frances Thanksgiving

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I doubt this will surprise anybody who's heard me rave about the film over the past year but I'll just state it outright, even if it might end up spoiling my eventual Great Movies of 2013 list - at this point, Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha is my favorite movie of the year. Hell if I'd gone ahead and put it on my list for 2012 (I saw it at NYFF last Fall the first time) it would have topped last year's list too. All the lists! It wins all the lists! Seriously though I've seen it four times now and my love only keeps deepening. So the news that it will be hitting DVD (via no less than Criterion, too) in November meets these ears as happy, happy music. It streets (see how hip I am? I said "streets," as a verb and everything) on November 12th. I trust you all have seen it now and totally, completely agree with me. I wouldn't want to have to show up on your door-step and go all Clockwork Orange on you til we're fully simpatico. Anyway, that's good timing, Oscar-wise, right? Everybody in the Academy will have it sitting beside their DVD players for a couple of months, plenty of time to soak it in and appreciate Greta's magic.

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