Toronto Screen Shots » Awards

2011 CAST Awards Announcement

James McNally — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:52:26 +0000

Update: Check out the CASTcast podcast organized by the Mamo.ca guys! It’s hosted by our friends over at Row Three. Hear me and six other loudmouths debate the results for an hour! Special thanks to Matt Brown for organizing this.

I’m very pleased to announce the results of the 2nd edition of the CAST Awards. I “cast” an even wider net this year, and received 40 completed ballots from film lovers in the Greater Toronto Area. Here are the CAST Top 25 voted on from a predetermined list of just over 100 films which had the most preliminary support. Voters ranked up to 25 films on their ballot from top to bottom, with first choices receiving 25 points, second choices 24, etc. The Points column lists the total score for each film, the Mentions column indicates the number of ballots it appeared on, and the Seen column indicates the total number of voters who have seen the film, even if they didn’t include it on their ballot. I’m proud of the group of critics we’ve gathered, even though I’ve described us elsewhere as “a ragtag group of semi-professional film bloggers, tweeters and Lightbox lobby loiterers.” Of the 112 films on the ballot, more than half our voting group saw at least 40, and five saw more than 70!

FILM TITLE	POINTS	MENTIONS	SEEN
1. Drive	548	31	36
2.The Artist	479	26	29
3. The Tree of Life	460	24	27
4. Attack the Block	386	25	36
5. Take Shelter	376	20	21
6. Midnight in Paris	330	24	31
7. Melancholia	306	19	26
8. Shame	284	19	28
9. Beginners	281	19	24
10. Martha Marcy May Marlene	279	20	24
11. Hanna	235	18	28
12. Café de Flore	207	9	13
13.The Raid	205	12	15
14. Blue Valentine	192	11	30
15. Bridesmaids	185	18	31
16.The Muppets	179	14	25
17. The Illusionist	174	11	22
18. The Descendants	172	11	16
19. Super 8	167	16	31
20. Contagion	167	14	22
21. The Interrupters	167	10	12
22. Tabloid	165	12	20
23. Hugo	162	10	23
24. The Trip	159	14	24
25. Meek’s Cutoff	159	10	18

Participants:

Here is a PDF with each person’s ballot and the collated results, with a few more interesting stats included. Voters could opt out of having their ballot included, so you may notice some omissions, but rest assured that each submitted ballot contributed to the overall results.

And for those still reading, here is my final CAST ballot, ranking 25 films from the list of eligible films. In a future blog post, I’ll come up with my own 2011 list(s), similar to what I did last year and in 2009 and 2008.

My CAST Ballot

The Tree of Life (review)
The Artist (review)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (review)
The Interrupters
Take Shelter
This is Not a Film (review)
The Descendants
Win Win
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Drive
Attack the Block
Beginners
Hanna
Rango
ALPS (review)
Super 8
Goodbye First Love (review)
The Guard
Contagion
Midnight in Paris
Bridesmaids
Shame (review)
Miss Bala (review)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
The Ides of March

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

2011 CAST Awards Announcement

The Precinct

James McNally — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 03:15:21 +0000

The Precinct (Director: Ilgar Safat): A few weeks ago, I received an email from a Hollywood-based publicist. I get lots of these sorts of emails, but this one was a bit different. How would I like to review Azerbaijan’s submission to the Best Foreign Film category for this year’s Academy Awards? That’s just the sort of unusual pitch to which I’m likely to respond, so I said sure.

Garib is a photographer of erotic nudes working in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. His fiancée Sabina is getting a bit tired of waiting for Garib to finally settle down and marry her. During an excursion to the picturesque cliffs of Gobustan, he informs her he’ll be leaving again for several months to work in Africa. They argue during the car ride back and Garib loses control of the car. Fortunately, two police officers come by and pull them from the burning wreck. Instead of of taking them to hospital, though, the policemen bring them back to their isolated precinct, where their very creepy superior submits Garib to some very probing questions about his past.

Suddenly the film flashes back to Garib’s youth. We learn how he discovers a love for photography but also how that interest is used against him by local gangsters. When a box of old negatives washes up on shore, some local thugs force Garib to print them at the studio of his beloved photography teacher. When the images turn out to be pornographic, Garib is forced to keep printing them while the thugs sell the prints. After this racket is discovered and broken up by the local Communist authorities, the thugs force Garib to take pornographic photos of Alina, a local girl who’s been turning tricks to support her young brother. Since Garib has been secretly in love with Alina, this drives him to attempt suicide. But when he tries to hang himself, the rope breaks and he’s rescued by two policemen. Curiously, they are the same two policemen we have seen earlier in the film.

When the film snaps back to the present, Garib seems to understand what the precinct is. When the officers throw him into a burning cell, he realizes he’s in a sort of purgatory. Suddenly, he comes to in the burning car with the sound of the approaching police car in his ears.

It’s a fairly ambitious structure, although I found the framing story, for all its Kafkaesque atmosphere, pretty easy to figure out. The combination of spiritual/psychological menace is clearly meant to force Garib to confront something from his past, hence the flashback. The middle section of the film is the strongest, keeping to a naturalistic tone and shedding light on the history of photography and cinema in Azerbaijan. Although the exposition is sometimes a little clumsy, I nevertheless found it quite interesting. Visually this section is strongest as well, for we travel with young Garib all over his childhood village and are not confined to the dark precinct.

Performances are good, although there’s not really much in terms of character development. Garib learns his lesson but it’s only clear from the flashback and flashforward. Within the precinct, the performances are pitched a little high, to match the eeriness of the situation. Overall, the film was entertaining without being exceptional. This is the first Azeri film I’ve ever seen, and I was impressed with the production values for the most part. But I think would have been happier to see a film based entirely on Garib’s childhood rather than trying to graft that coming-of-age story onto a more genre-based psychological/horror story.

(6/10)

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

The Precinct

2010 CAST Awards Announcement

James McNally — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:08:19 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce the results of the inaugural CAST Awards. If you’ll pardon the pun, I “cast” a fairly wide net among my cinephile friends and am pleased with the level of participation. I received 31 completed ballots from film lovers in the Greater Toronto Area. Here are the CAST Top 25 voted on from a predetermined list of just over 100 films which had the most preliminary support. Voters ranked up to 25 films on their ballot from top to bottom, with first choices receiving 25 points, second choices 24, etc. The Points column lists the total score for each film, and the Mentions column indicates the number of ballots it appeared on.

FILM TITLE	POINTS	MENTIONS
1. Inception	411	22
2. Toy Story 3	311	20
3. Black Swan	307	16
4. Shutter Island	297	19
5. The Social Network	261	17
6. Scott Pilgrim	254	17
7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	231	16
8. Winter’s Bone	180	11
9. I Am Love	165	9
10.The King’s Speech	149	11
11. Rubber	149	9
12. Never Let Me Go	147	11
13. Trigger	140	9
14. Fish Tank	134	9
15. Buried	134	9
16. The White Ribbon	130	7
17. True Grit	127	9
18. Chloe	124	8
19. Easy A	121	10
20. Marwencol	117	7
21. 127 Hours	115	9
22. A Prophet	114	8
23. Rabbit Hole	112	7
24. Blue Valentine	110	8
25. Heartbeats	110	7

Participants:

Here is a PDF with each person’s ballot and the collated results, with a few more interesting stats included.

And for those still reading, here is my final CAST ballot, ranking 25 films from the list of eligible films. In a future blog post, I’ll come up with my own 2010 list(s), similar to what I did last year.

My CAST Ballot

NY Export: Opus Jazz (review)
Incendies
Marwencol (review)
Never Let Me Go
Black Swan
Balada Triste (review)
Carlos (review)
Rubber
Trigger
Blue Valentine
Inception
Waste Land (review)
Toy Story 3
Submarine (review)
The Social Network
Exit Through The Gift Shop
Shutter Island
Meek’s Cutoff
Fish Tank
Inside Job (review)
The King’s Speech
Greenberg (review)
True Grit
Poetry
The Misfortunates

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

2010 CAST Awards Announcement

The CAST Awards: An Introduction

James McNally — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 02:34:20 +0000

A few years back, I began meeting up with a couple of local film bloggers for monthly drinks. We talked about the films we were seeing and at the end of the year, we’d debate our year-end lists, comparing them with the list of the Toronto Film Critics Association, among other critics’ groups. Wouldn’t it be great if our little group could come up with our own list, I thought. But there were just a few of us, and we couldn’t possibly see as many films as the “pros.”

Fast forward just a few years, and our little group has grown to more than two dozen. And although none of us yet earn our daily bread from film writing, most of us have access to many more films due to festival accreditations and DVD screeners. So I thought it was time we came up with a list of our own.

Though our group doesn’t have a name, we invented one for the purpose of the awards. Say hello to the Cinema Appreciation Society of Toronto. No, there are no membership requirements or secret handshakes. It encompasses everyone in my email address book who sees a lot of films and who lives in Toronto or reasonably close by. We didn’t pick the name for its reference to broken bones (as in the above photo), but more for its association with the cast of a film, or with the act of “casting” a vote.

To keep things simple the first year, there is only one category on the official ballot. I asked approximately 40 people to list up to 25 films they saw this year in order of preference. These preliminary ballots were tabulated and then the top 100 vote-getting films were added to a final ballot. These ballots went out on December 3rd to the same group, who were asked to come up with another Top 25 based on this final ballot. In addition, any film released theatrically in Toronto during the month of December was eligible.

The deadline to receive completed ballots is midnight tonight, and I’ve already been busy tabulating results. Look for the inaugural CAST Top 25 sometime tomorrow!

Special thanks to Johan Karlborg, for making the photo of his cast available under a Creative Commons licence. I hope your wrist has finally healed!

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

The CAST Awards: An Introduction

Hot Docs 2009 Awards

James McNally — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:25:43 +0000

Last night, Hot Docs presented their awards for the 2009 festival. Congratulations to all the winnners:

Best Canadian Feature Documentary
INVISIBLE CITY
Director: Hubert Davis
Producers: Mehernaz Lentin, Gerry Flahive
Executive Producer: Silva Basmajian (NFB)
Sponsored by the Documentary Organization of Canada and the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation
$15,000 prize courtesy of the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation

Special Jury Prize — Canadian Feature
WATERLIFE
Director: Kevin McMahon
Producers: Michael McMahon, Kristina McLaughlin, Gerry Flahive
Executive Producers: Mark Achbar, Betsy Carson, Michael McMahon, Silva Basmajian (NFB)
Sponsored by the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation
$10,000 prize courtesy of the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation

Best International Feature Documentary
THE ONE MAN VILLAGE
Director/Producer: Simon El Habre
Producers: Jad Abi-Khalil, Irit Neidhardt
Sponsored by A&E
$10,000 prize courtesy of Hot Docs

Special Jury Prize — International Feature
COOKING HISTORY
Director/Producer: Peter Kerekes
Producers: Georg Misch, Pavel Strnad
Executive Producer: Ralph Wieser
Sponsored by the OMDC

Best Mid-Length Documentary
RABBIT À LA BERLIN
Director: Bartek Konopka
Producer: Anna Wydra
Sponsored by Canada Council for the Arts

Best Short Documentary
THE DELIAN MODE
Director/Producer: Kara Blake
Producer: Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre
Sponsored by Playback

documentary’s Don Haig Award
Brett Gaylor
Tracey Deer
Awarded by the Don Haig Award Committee — $20,000 cash prize generously sponsored by documentary

The Lindalee Tracey Award
Laura Bari
Will Inrig
$6,000 cash prize and film stock donated by Kodak Canada and valued at $3,000

HBO Documentary Films Emerging Artist Award
Chung-ryoul Lee
OLD PARTNER
Sponsored by HBO Documentary Films

Hot Docs Outstanding Achievement Award
Presented to Alanis Obomsawin by the Hot Docs Board of Directors

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

Hot Docs 2009 Awards