Best Picture and Director 2008

What are your choices for Best Picture and Director of 2008?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7
11%
Frost/Nixon
1
2%
Milk
15
23%
The Reader
1
2%
Slumdog Millionaire
9
14%
Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
8
12%
Stephen Daldry - The Reader
1
2%
David Fincher - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
14
21%
Ron Howard - Frost/Nixon
1
2%
Gus Van Sant - Milk
9
14%
 
Total votes: 66

Okri
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Okri »

Ah, the year AMPAS broke.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that this was a weak year. It wasn’t the strongest – certainly not after a really good 2007, but 2008-2010 didn’t strike me as being glaringly weak at all (though 2011-2013 is much much stronger). Which makes this line-up just staggeringly disappointing; it feels like a 1955 with Night of the Hunter, Kiss Me Deadly, Rebel Without a Cause, The Man with the Golden Arm, All that Heaven Allows, East of Eden, The Wages of Fear but we get frickin’ Picnic and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. I’m not sure that 2008’s murderer’s row is on part with that aforementioned group, but it’s certainly a lot stronger than this sorry line-up.

Detouring – this was the second year in a row that AMPAS made choices that led the Board of Governors to change the rules that essentially removed some of the voter’s power over the final set of nominees. After 2007, it was the foreign film category (ignoring 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, The Edge of Heaven, Secret Sunshine, Silent Light and Persepolis and others). Given the AMPAS reaction over previous controversial snubs, it’s an interesting change.

Anyway, I’m glad the writers singled out Happy-Go-Lucky and In Bruges – films far thornier than their reputations (and with really strong performances as well). I’m in the “love” camp with Rachel Getting Married. Few romances were as winning as Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. We had several strong foreign language films (The Class, The Edge of Heaven, In the City of Sylvia, Reprise). And Hunger was terrific.

Wall.E was my favourite English language film of the year and remains the peak of Pixar’s creativity. I’m not quite as floored with these guys as most seem to be, but this was such a singular achievement. As for The Dark Knight? It may not be among the five best films of the year, but it’s better than four of the nominated movies here. It’s muddled and thematically confused, but it’s astonishingly visceral with some sensational moments (and yes, Heath Ledger’s performance is terrific).

Now, onto the nominees.

David Hare is a playwright I really enjoy – Plenty, Skylight, Stuff Happens, etc are masterpieces. But his screenplays tend to be very hit and miss for me, and []The Reader[/i] was very much a miss. While I take a bit of perverse delight in Daldry’s nomination as it made him three-for-three, he clearly didn’t deserve it. On the other hand, I very much don’t care for Peter Morgan’s dramaturgy – it’s so minor. Frost/Nixon had very little going for it outside the performances; the whole thing felt very much like a footnote film – that is so easily cruised to its nominations was hugely disappointing to me.

Continuing in this vein, David Fincher’s Anthony Adverse didn’t do much for me either. Yeah, it was beautiful, but in a coffee-table book way. Beautiful (the score, cinematography, art direction etc... all marvelous), but the whole thing was just a turgid bore.

Milk was quite solid. Yes, it’s all subject matter and performance, but the subject matter is a good one, the performances are very strong, and it’s directed with appealing friskiness by van Sant. Not a great film, but hard to begrudge the nominations.

But it’s Slumdog Millionaire and Boyle that take it for me. I saw it five times in the theatres. It might not be a great movie, but it just crackles with energy. I actually liked how total its domination was – it was a thunderbastard with the guilds, nominations at BAFTA from Frieda Pinto and Dev Patel so absurd to be hilarious – and how AMPAS removed obstacles to its victory haul is right out of the film (removing the other populist favourite; not nominating Bruce Springsteen for best song). An easy vote for me.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by nightwingnova »

The Dark Knight was one of those movies that taught me how to think independently about film art and quality - and even just good moviemaking. Meaning, I saw the movie over and over again and didn't get the level of gushing. Fantastic cinematography, a brilliant Joker from Heath Ledger; but, some blatant and unbelievable contrivance, a little juvenile plotting, and a big glob of sappy, unbelievable melodramatic plot at the end made a lukewarm enterprise less so.

Of what's left, hard to choose a "best."

I enjoyed Benjamin Button enough...but didn't find enough depth to be stirred.

Milk is a safe movie - well-made, except for that over-the-top opera motif added to elevate Harvey Milk's murder. A grounded movie and then that gawdawful slo-mo operatic mourning of the shooting.

Slumdog Millionaire abounds with wonderful drama and colors...but as always, I hate the artifice of cheap plot structure. Framing our protagonist's life around his winning game show answers was an outrageous and unbelievable conceit.
Last edited by nightwingnova on Sun Mar 30, 2014 2:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Mister Tee »

I never really believed The Dark Knight would break into the best picture list. I thought it was clearly more interesting than run-of-the-mill comic book stuff, but not so transcendent as to overcome “this is a guy in a batsuit/how many Batman movies have there been at this point?” resistance.

I did, however – literally up till the moment The Reader was read off last, alphabetically – believe that Wall E would make the cut. Even if the film’s second half was not as completely wonderful as the first, I thought it was the most creative effort on display in the fully lackluster year of 2008; it would have got my best picture vote if nominated.

Other than that, not much to speak of among omittees. I “liked” Rachel Getting Married, which puts me in a small middle camp here, where I seem to recall large groups either adored or despised it. I was also fond of the Scandinavian film Reprise and the French Tell No One – a critical/commercial success that, through pure bureaucracy, was apparently Academy-eligible in no year.

The five-for-five match in picture/director makes this dull slate at least easier to glide through.

The Reader might have been an interesting book (haven‘t read it), but Stephen Daldry as usual drained all the life out of his material and gave us good-taste (with naked bodies thrown in as bait). Though I didn’t empathize with the disappointment of Dark Knight fans, I did understand their outrage that it was this piece of nothingness that got the spot instead. I wonder: had Wall E been named that morning instead, would the best picture expansion have ever happened?

Frost/Nixon is, by Ron Howard standards, a thoroughly decent movie: not much above solid HBO; nothing revelatory -- but intelligently written, well-acted, and an absorbing two hours. I doubt it would have got anywhere near a top five in a better year, but in 2008we took our pleasures where we could.

I was wowed by Danny Boyle back in Trainspotting days, and couldn’t begrudge him finally finding enormous mainstream success. And I like Slumdog Millionaire just fine as an entertainment. But it’s always disappointing when someone who seems a potential artist dips so fully into the commercial pool. I know, many here have that same complaint about David O. Russell, but The Fighter and America Hustle are models of complexity next to Slumdog. I like the early portions of the film well enough -- the once-over-lightly brush with Dickensian horrors – but they soon lead, inexorably, to an ending so happy and outlandish the moguls of the 30s would have balked at it. I understand the movie being a big hit – it offered a hint of the exotic even while peddling this old bunkum. I enjoyed it myself, while I was in the theatre. But 8 Oscars? I don’t see it.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button might have been one of the earliest examples of a movie devoured by the Oscar gossip machine. For some reason, the film got a pre-release reputation of being The One to Beat (why, I don’t know, seeing David Fincher’s Oscar history till then was non-existent)…which meant only that, the moment it was unveiled, certain parties went after it tooth and nail. It was the longest/most boring movie ever made! It was a Forrest Gump rip-off! (apparently because it’s narrator had a Southern drawl) This isn’t to say the movie was a knockout. It had at least one too many framing devices, it did dawdle at certain points. But it also had some very engaging vignettes, numerous fine performances, wonderful set design, and, above all, Fincher’s creative eye, which provided one memorable image after another, even when the story lagged. For me, Fincher is the clear choice for best director, and his film deserved a better fate with posterity than it’s received.

But for best film, I go with Milk, despite the fact that it, too, is far from perfect. As he did with Good Will Hunting, Gus van Sant elevated his material, but he didn’t transcend it: Milk is a biography of a public figure, and it works as a solid example of that genre but nothing particularly more – the story is absorbing throughout, but never resonant. The best thing the film had going for it was Sean Penn’s perhaps finest performance – Penn found a streak of humor he hadn’t called upon since Fast Times at Ridgemont High days, and made Harvey Milk a fully dimensional, charismatic character. And that, in dreary 2008, was enough to get my unenthusiastic but definite best picture vote.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by The Original BJ »

Not my favorite year -- I don't really have a terribly strong favorite of 2008. Of the also-rans, I would have absolutely included WALL-E on the list, and might have even voted for it had it been an option, simply for being the year's most transporting filmgoing experience. I also would march strongly for A Christmas Tale, a wonderfully rich family drama.

On a lower level, I found many elements to admire in Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler, and Revolutionary Road.

As for the much-ballyhooed omission...I didn't think The Dark Knight would be a nominee when I saw it that summer, and didn't predict it in my final predictions the day before the nominations. I was fairly puzzled by the degree to which people pegged it a certain nominee, given the near-complete lack of precedent for such a nomination. I had enjoyed the movie, at least in terms of finding it a darker and smarter than average summer film, but I wouldn't have nominated it in either Picture or Director. Still, a big part of me wishes it HAD been nominated, partly because we almost certainly would have been spared the expanded Best Picture field, and also because we likely would have been spared...

...The Reader, a nomination which just made me groan when I saw it. I didn't loathe it to the extent some did -- I thought Kate Winslet's performance was genuinely impressive, as usual. But I thought it shared a major similarity with the film adaptation of The Cider House Rules: both movies are about IMPORTANT topics, but in both cases I felt like the filmmakers weren't remotely clear about what they were aiming to say about their subjects. It seemed to me that our protagonist here was a lot more concerned that his girlfriend couldn't read than that SHE WAS A NAZI, which is nonsensical at best, totally offensive at worst. And, as always, Stephen Daldry is just a dull-as-dishwater stylist, who has somehow duped a certain branch of Oscar voters into rewarding his vageuly serious brand of aesthetic blandness every time out.

I think Frost/Nixon is probably Ron Howard's best film. He, too, isn't an especially exciting filmmaker -- at his worst, his movies are often attempts at adult drama that seem to be lacking in even the most rudimentary levels of interest or intelligence. But, at his best, he can at least be competent, and I think Frost/Nixon is largely that. It helps that Howard is working with solid script from Peter Morgan, which takes the real-life encounter between Frost & Nixon and treats it with both resonance and wit. And the two leads are very strong, especially Langella, in a performance that's totally different from Hopkins's Nixon but nearly as commanding. On the whole, not special enough to choose in either category, but I found the film a perfectly decent night at the movies.

I wasn’t onboard the Slumdog Millionaire-deserves-every-award-on-the-planet train, but I enjoyed the movie a lot. The screenplay was a bit schematic -- the fact that every Millionaire question ties into Dev Patel's life in the EXACT order in which they happened is one of those movie-movie devices you basically have to go with or turn on the film completely. But many of the vignettes were exciting, and by the time the narrative reached its climax (i.e. as we're breathlessly waiting to see if Frieda Pinto will answer the phone) it was hard not to be fully engaged by the emotional buttons pushed by the movie. And, best of all, Danny Boyle helmed the movie with a ton of rollicking energy -- quick pacing, eye-catching visuals, and a sense of heartfelt joy that I found completely infectious. It doesn't get my vote, but I didn't object to its selection.

My votes come down very closely to the remaining two films, and I'm going to knock Best Director out of the way and choose David Fincher, for what I think is the most visually accomplished movie of this bunch. Technically, Button is a hugely impressive achievement -- most of all in terms of the amazing computer/makeup effects that allowed Pitt to age backwards, but also in the gorgeous photography and design that have always marked Fincher's films as the work of a great talent. I think The Social Network is a stronger movie overall, but Benjamin Button might be my favorite work of direction from Fincher, and the time when I most wanted him to win an Oscar.

I did think, though, that Button had some bumps in its script. I disliked pretty much everything about the Old Blanchett/Katrina framing device -- it seemed like a bizarre way to incorporate a contemporary disaster into a story that didn't require it at all. I also thought that some of the movie's episodes meandered, and there were scenes (like the one leading up to Blanchett's accident) that worked effectively but sometimes felt tonally like they were from a different movie. On the whole, I was a fan of the film -- it was lumpy, but it had a ton of ambition, and it felt like a full meal even though it wasn't perfect. I never understood why it offended some people so violently.

Milk was a more traditional piece of filmmaking, especially in the context of Gus Van Sant's career. It was a work-for-hire project, not a singular vision, but, as with Good Will Hunting, there are clear benefits to hiring a unique voice even for more mainstream narratives. And Van Sant gives the film a cool, 70's-style look, that allows his actors to fill the frame and bounce energy off one another in a way the great ensemble efforts of that area often did. And the cast really is fantastic, from Emile Hirsch's funny and determined activist to James Franco's grounded lover, to Josh Brolin's prejudiced-with-a-smile politician. And, of course, Sean Penn turned in a performance completely unlike any he had given before, full of humor and sensitivity that seemed like they were coming from a completely different performer than the one who had so astonishingly embodied tough guys in Dead Man Walking and Mystic River. I also think Milk pretty clearly has the best script of this batch, with a lot of welcome humor that made the film a cut above your average stodgy biopic. And, it had obvious contemporary relevance without straining for that effect. So, in a close call, I'll split the ticket and give Best Picture to Milk.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Heksagon »

Another year when I feel that there were few good English-language films released, but the Academy did a respectable job of nominating some of the best that were out there. By this I mean specifically Slumdog Millionaire and Milk which are among the best films of a relatively weak year. My preference between them is the same as Academy’s, as my votes go to Slumdog.

(Milk, by the way, is the only film directed by Gus Van Sant that I really liked. However, he was only a hired director, not really the auteur of this film.)

Frost/Nixon is also a surprisingly good film, given Ron Howard’s heavy-handed direction and his decision to force the film into the typical Hollywood story pattern, where the hero gets the girl at the end. The film could have been more original, given its premise, but I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining too much. I’m glad that it got done, because there are not a lot of decent political films out there.

Benjamin Button is a first-rate film in the technical sense, but there is very little going under the surface.

The Reader is one of the worst films ever nominated for Best Picture. Adding insult to injury is the fact that it was nominated over The Dark Knight. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a particular admirer of the The Dark Knight (which didn’t even make my Top 10 this year). But it is a lot better than Reader, and even more frustratingly, it only fueled the Christopher Nolan-fans in their belief how Nolan hasn’t gotten his supposed critical due.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Greg »

FilmFan720 wrote: Alas, the last time that Picture and Director will probably ever line-up completely, in that every Picture nominee has a Director nod too.
So, you're confident that the Academy will keep its 5+ Best Picture slate? I really have no idea how long this will last.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by FilmFan720 »

Now that Oscar season is over, it is time to catch up a little on these films.

Alas, the last time that Picture and Director will probably ever line-up completely, in that every Picture nominee has a Director nod too.

As with I imagine most everyone else here, I place The Reader pretty far down in fifth place here. I can see where a lot of this it might have played very well as a piece of literature, but as a film it is a mess (and the bland direction of Stephen Dahldry doesn't help). The acting is strong, but the allegory is a little obvious, the look of the film very rote and the narrative thrust not very interesting. I won't begrudge Kate Winslet her Oscar here. Although it is probably my second least favorite of her nominated performances, after Iris, I would probably still have nominated her in a weak year overall for Lead Actresses.

Slumdog Millionaire is next on the list for me. I like a lot of Danny Boyle's work, but I think this is one of his least interesting films. There is too much flash, not a lot of substance and although I normally don't gripe about these things, that narrative is just way too convenient. The whole thing plays like a Writing School exercise in narrative neatness, and brings the film down with it.

Like DWS, I am a sucker for anything Nixon-related. The play Frost/Nixon is a very interesting docudrama (albeit not the most insightful Nixon exploration), but the film falls a little flat (as can be expected by having a good, but workman-like, director such as Ron Howard). It works mostly as a way to capture Langella and Sheen's performances. The film is very watchable, but there isn't much depth to it.

Up until Zodiac, I had no time for anything that David Fincher did, but since the mid-2000s he has suddenly become one of the filmmakers whose work I am most intrigued to see every year. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button might not be his greatest work in this period (it pales next to what comes right before and after it), he brings much more intelligence and depth to the film that it probably would have gotten anywhere else. There are a lot of set-pieces I really liked in this film, and it certainly is one of the best blending of real-world and CGI that we have seen. I might consider it and Fincher here.

But I think Milk stands heads above everything else in this line-up. I balked at the thought of every-serious Sean Penn playing Harvey Milk, but his performance turned out to be one of the greatest surprises I have had in years at the movies. His performance is a tour de force, but the film around him matches him in most every way. It follows most every trope of the biopic (and the screenplay is not the strongest asset of the film), but van Sant gives it such an honest look, and brings life out of such a strong supporting cast, that it serves as one of the more engaging biographical portraits of the past few decades. I gladly endorse it for both wins here.

My Top 10:
1. Wall-E
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
3. Rachel Getting Married
4. The Class
5. Encounters at the End of the World
6. Milk
7. Son of Rambow
8. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
9. Iron Man
10. Burn After Reading

BEST DIRECTOR
1. Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married
2. Cristian Mungiu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
3. Gus Van Sant, Milk
4. Garth Jennigns, Son of Rambow
5. Laurence Cantet, The Class
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mlrg
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by mlrg »

One of the weakest line ups in my book.

Voted for Slumdog and Boyle.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Reza »

Voted for Bollywood.

Best Picture
1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. Milk
3. Frost/Nixon
4. Revolutionary Road
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Director
1. Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
2. Gus Van Sant, Milk
3. Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
4. Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road
5. David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Sabin »

For me, the driving narrative of 2008 didn't begin until January of 2009. I went to bed with hopes of nominations that the Academy would embrace The Dark Knight and WALL*E, two popular, critical smashes that seemed within inches of transforming the Academy Awards into an event that most of America could care about. Not that that's the most important thing in the world, but every once in a while it's kind of nice. And I'm not talking about in a The Return of the King takes everything kind of way either. It seems ages ago that the name Christopher Nolan elicited anything beyond annoyance from me. I wouldn't call his about face from principled writer-director to huckster showman on par with Shyamalan, but it's closer to than not. I don't care for Inception, I hate The Dark Knight Rises, and Man of Steel portends a future of Nolan-produced rides that I will avoid like the plague. WALL*E on the other hand remains the wonderful high-water mark of PIXAR and likely their parting shot. Up and (to a much lesser degree) Toy Story 3 have their merits but Obama-era PIXAR has been a slight disappointment machine.

The 5/5 matchup of these films felt especially frustrating. Like, "Nope, the Director's branch sucks too." There is no director I dislike more than Stephen Daldry. More so than Marc Forster, a Stephen Daldry movie is ensures symbolic incoherence, atonal pacing, emotions that make no sense, and a veneer of prestige. I haven't thought about returning to Slumdog Millionaire, a film I don't strongly dislike but felt very little for. It's a feature-length trailer for a film I never saw. It has some merits to it. I seem to be the only person alive who enjoys the end dance number more than the film that preceded it because it's the purest evocation of what everyone is trying to do. Most of the blame falls on Simon Beaufoy's idealess script. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an odd one. Next to Panic Room, it's the David Fincher movie everybody forgets. I can't get past the fact that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a movie "told" by nobody. It's a story read by Cate Blanchett's niece Julia Ormond from Brad Pitt's book in Brad Pitt's voice unless it's remembered by Cate Blanchett. I think it's mildly underrated because it's just packed with beautiful sequences but in the service of a story that has a fundamental barrier keeping me from emotional engagement.

Frost/Nixon has more than a few bullshitty touches and it's no Splash, but it's pretty enjoyable in a sports movie kinda way. When it was heralded as a lock, I couldn't believe it because it's so weightless. And now it almost looks like forebear to Argo and American Hustle. Hip, stylish, talky, and approximating intelligence if not actually intelligence. Maybe throw The Social Network in there too. Just like Stephen Colbert has coined the phrase "Truthiness", these films have "Smartiness." Has there ever been a more lifeless lineup for Best Adapted Screenplay than 2008's?

I must choose Milk and Van Sant. It's more Focus Feature than Gus Van Sant, but the latter had Paranoid Park that same year (although I prefer Milk) and we didn't know that Focus' heyday was actually over.


Top Ten
1. WALL*E (Pixar/Andrew Stanton)
2. Reprise (Joachim von Trier)
3. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
4. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
5. Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani)
6. Milk (Gus Van Sant)
7. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
8. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
9. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
10. Definitely, Maybe (Adam Brooks)

(NOTE: I was incredibly torn between a few movies for no. 10. Paranoid Park, Burn After Reading…but I've seen Definitely Maybe five or six times now and I just love it. If it's not a work of art, it's a Hollywood romantic comedy that achieves something pretty awesome.)
Last edited by Sabin on Tue Feb 11, 2014 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by dws1982 »

Abstain. Benjamin Button is certainly well directed by Fincher, and I never felt like it deserved the scorn it got in auteurist circles. But I like Fincher and his nominated film even better two years down the line. Slumdog Millionaire is enjoyable enough but not something I feel I need to vote for. Frost/Nixon is probably my favorite of the nominees here--I'm a big sucker for anything Nixon-related--but even it is undone somewhat by a certain smugness on the part of certain characters and by the fact that it tries to turn what was, at best, a historical draw, into some kind of victory. Don't care for Milk at all, but I just don't get along with Van Sant very often. And The Reader…well, enough type has been wasted on that one in the past.

Not a great year by any standard. My favorite American film of the year was probably Gran Torino.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by ksrymy »

01. Doubt
02. In Bruges
03. Milk
04. Hunger
05. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
06. The Dark Knight
07. Happy-Go-Lucky
08. Rachel Getting Married
09. Burn After Reading
10. Frost/Nixon

Went with Milk and Fincher.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Big Magilla »

anonymous1980 wrote:I'm gonna continue posting these, okay?
Yes. I have a lot to do during Oscar season on CinemaSight.

You can update the list of winners of copying and posting the one I started if you want. If not, I can keep that up as it doesn't take a lot of time.

Also, if you or someone else wants to take over these polls altogether you can. I only got involved before the originator disappeared. Does anyone know what happened to jowy_jillia ?

I voted for Benjamin Button and Fincher.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Eric »

Top 10
01. WALL·E
02. Rachel Getting Married
03. Martyrs
04. A Christmas Tale
05. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
06. The Secret of the Grain
07. My Winnipeg
08. Otto; or, Up with Dead People
09. Paranoid Park
10. Happy-Go-Lucky

Anti-Top 10
01. The Reader
02. The Happening
03. The Visitor
04. Miracle at St. Anna
05. Gran Torino
06. Mamma Mia!
07. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
08. Doubt
09. Revolutionary Road
10. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Lukewarm (rimshot) votes for Milk and Fincher.
Last edited by Eric on Thu Feb 06, 2014 12:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Picture and Director 2008

Post by Precious Doll »

1. Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
2. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
3. Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino)
4. Morphine (Aleksey Balabanov)
5. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
6. Seraphine (Martin Provost)
7. Milk (Gus van Sant)
8. Let’s Talk About the Rain (Agnes Jaoui)
9. Chris and Don: A Love Story (Tina Mascara & Guido Santi)
10. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
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