2012 Muriels: Best Cinematic Moment

I know every year I talk about how this is my favorite category, but it really is. The variety of responses never fails to fascinate me - something about this category allows our voters to loosen up and throw a little love at films that they otherwise have no reason to vote for. I don't just mean expected stuff, either; there were solo votes for scenes from That's My Boy and Dredd in this category. I almost voted for one of the two cited scenes from the latter myself - this one:

(SPOILERS for Dredd on this, by the way. Though this doesn't exactly have the kind of story that can be spoiled.)



Anyway, the point is that any kind of impulse that encourages this inclusiveness is fine by me. Here's some other slices of cinema that made our members happy this year:



The Cabin in the Woods - System purge



Magic Mike - "Pony"

This Is Not a Film - describing a film/"If we could tell a film..." (click through, turn on subtitles, let it run to 30:58)



This Must Be the Place - David Byrne performs the title track



sk10 from Daniel Gemko on Vimeo.

Skyfall - Shanghai skyscraper battle



Take This Waltz - "Video Killed the Radio Star"



Beyond the Black Rainbow - 1966 flashback



The Deep Blue Sea - "Molly Malone"



The Avengers - Hulk meets Loki

Also, for my usual Why Didn't All Y'all Vote for This Goddammit Scene, I still can't believe that only myself and one other voter singled out this, which makes me want to hide under the couch every damn time I see it:

It's Such a Beautiful Day - "The pipe is leaking..." (click through to view)

All this video goodness, and we still haven't gotten to the top three! So, without further ado...

Third place:



Prometheus - emergency C-section [142.5 points / 15 votes]

Second place:



The Master - Freddie's first processing [215 points / 19 votes]

And your winner...




Holy Motors - entr'acte [263 points / 22 votes]

"In a film where narrative interconnectedness proves an elusive animal, the accordion entr’acte of Leos Carax’s Holy Motors goes one step further with its context-free performance of legendary musician R.L. Burnside’s “Let My Baby Ride.” Star Denis Lavant leads a horde of accordion players, backed by a few assorted instrumentalists and percussionists, through the winding walkways of a French cathedral while blasting out an inspired rendition of the blues classic, punctuated by the appropriately nonsensical mid-song countdown of “Trois, douze, merde” (Three, twelve, shit). Carax soups up the traditional entr’acte here, fusing his two acts with a blistering energy and anarchist spirit, complementing both his central character and the trajectory of his film. The dichotomic implications of this scene, featuring a band of ragtag musicians irreverently rocking out along the hallways of a holy place, fit nicely within Carax’s own point of view -- the fusion of the reverential and subversive. Carax intersperses his freeform approach to Holy Motors with various nods to cinema’s roots and an appreciation of the medium’s craft , finding art in the unlikeliest of places -- even in the sewers." - Luke Gorham

See the full results.