2015 Muriels Hall of Fame Postmortem: A Letter From the Management

Hey everybody. Now that we’ve finished with this year’s inductions, I thought I’d chime in with some thoughts of my own, outside of my capacity of Muriels administrator, on the films we’ve honored so far. In the three years we’ve been doing this, we’ve inducted a good mix of movies, ranging from the 1920s to the 1960s and encompassing damn near every major genre world cinema has had to offer. We have thusfar honored films from eleven nations spanning three continents, with countries ranging from Mexico to India to Denmark. Heck, we’ve even included a female director, which considering how limited opportunities were for women filmmakers throughout the world fifty-plus years ago is pretty good for us.

In short, our goal has always been to cast a wide net, and we’ve done a pretty decent job of that so far. Now let’s keep it up.

If you look at the films we’ve inducted to date, we’ve inducted many of the obvious canonical classics (at least, those that have been eligible). I hope that this will compel us to embrace some less obvious choices in the future alongside the as-yet-unrecognized classics. There are a number of important (or at least interest) national cinemas we have yet to recognize. To cite one example, the sixties were a prime time for cinema in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and Czechoslovakia. It’s hard to imagine recognizing the greatness of film during this period without honoring important filmmakers like Andrzej Wajda, Milos Forman, and a young tyro named Roman Polanski- to say nothing of seminal works like THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT and CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS, all of which will become eligible in the next few years.

Granted, availability can be a factor when it comes to some national cinemas. Good luck trying to get your hands on key titles from Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement or pretty much anything from Africa from the period (though BLACK GIRL, now streaming on Netflix, becomes eligible as of the ’16 Muriels). Still, there’s plenty of good stuff out there if you know where to look. Quite a few golden age Chinese titles can be found on Fandor (though, sadly, not THE GODDESS), and Indian popular cinema is pretty well-represented on DVD if you have a Netflix account. Because while I realize we’ve already inducted an Indian film, their national cinema tradition is so strong that there’s plenty of room for more Indian films in the Hall of Fame.

Additionally, despite the relatively low number of eligible female-directed titles, there are several worthy films from female filmmakers to join Agnes Varda in the Hall of Fame. The most obvious example would be Maya Deren’s MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, a major example of avant-garde cinema that has appeared on the final Hall of Fame ballot more than once. Another title I included on my initial ballot thisyear is Furough Farrokhzad’s lovely THE HOUSE IS BLACK, which would also allow us to recognize a key work of Iranian cinema, which would become so formidable in later decades. Then there are other female-directed greats like DAISIES, WANDA, A NEW LEAF, and particularly JEANNE DIELMAN, which will all become eligible within the next ten years.

That’s not to say we should discount the established classics altogether. After all, there are plenty of old favorites still to be inducted (Godard, anybody?). But if you’re like me, you probably came of age as a filmgoer at a time when most college courses and critical texts concentrated primarily on the USA, Western Europe, Russia and Japan, and though there are plenty of good films to honor from those regions, perhaps it’s time the Muriels Hall of Fame starts thinking more globally the films it honors. After all, cinema has long been an international medium, and it’s only right that we reflect that reality as well.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Acknowledgements and Final Results List

Thanks to everyone who’s been following the Muriels Hall of Fame this year. In particular, I would like to thank all who participated in this year’s voting and contributed write-ups in conjunction with the announcements. This year’s voters were:

Josh Bell

Andrew Bemis

Christianne Benedict

Scott W. Black

Danny Bowes

Donald G. Carder

Kevin Cecil

Paul Clark

Dennis Cozzalio

Philip Dyess-Nugent

Jim Emerson

James Frazier

Luke Gorham

Jaime Grijalba

Glenn Heath Jr.

Sam Juliano

Peter Labuza

Adam Lemke

Michael Lieberman

Craig D. Lindsey

Matt Lynch

Sam C. Mac

Jeff McMahon

Patrick Miller

Matt Noller

Cole Roulain

Andreas Stoehr

Scott von Doviak

Clayton Walter

Patrick Williamson

George Wu

In addition, here is a tally of the final results of voting:

+ = 2015 Muriels HOF Inductees

9 votes:

+ City Lights (1931, Chaplin)

+ Trouble in Paradise (1932, Lubitsch)

+ Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)

+ The Searchers (1956, Ford)

8 votes:

+ Duck soup (1933, McCarey)

+ The Red Shoes (1948, Powell/Pressburger)

+ Touch of Evil (1958, Welles)

7 votes:

+ L’Atalante (1934, Vigo)

+ Bride of Frankenstein (1935, Whale)

+ His Girl Friday (1940, Hawks)

+ Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)

+ Duck Amuck (1953, Jones)

+ Pather Panchali (1955, S. Ray)

+ Rio Bravo (1959, Hawks)

+ Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962, Varda)

+ The Exterminating Angel (1962, Buñuel)

6 votes:

The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)

Only Angels Have Wings (1939, Hawks)

All That Heaven Allows (1955, Sirk)

Wild Strawberries (1957, Bergman)

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959, Resnais)

Breathless (1960, Godard)

Last Year at Marienbad (1962, Resnais)

5 votes:

Bringing Up Baby (1938, Hawks)

The Maltese Falcon (1941, Huston)

Children of Paradise (1945, Carné)

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Capra)

A Star Is Born (1954, Cukor)

Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Mackendrick)

Contempt (1963, Godard)

Woman in the Dunes (1964, Teshigahara)

4 votes:

Nosferatu (1922, Murnau)

Seven Chances (1925, Keaton)

I Was Born, But… (1932, Ozu)

Grand Illusion (1937, Renoir)

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Welles)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, Huston)

M. Hulot’s Holiday (1953, Tati)

Nights of Cabiria (1957, Fellini)

Paths of Glory (1957, Kubrick)

La Dolce Vita (1960, Fellini)

3 votes:

Freaks (1932, Browning)

Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, Hand)

Stagecoach (1939, Ford)

The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)

Beauty and the Beast (1939, Cocteau)

Daisy Kenyon (1947, Preminger)

Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948, Ophuls)

Late Spring (1949, Ozu)

Orpheus (1949, Cocteau)

The Diary of a Country Priest (1950, Bresson)

Ordet (1955, Dreyer)

The Killing (1956, Kubrick)

L’Avventura (1960, Antonioni)

2 votes:

The Grapes of Wrath (1940, Ford)

Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Chaplin)

Bicycle Thieves (1948, De Sica)

All About Eve (1950, Mankiewicz)

Rashomon (1950, Kurosawa)

The Steel Helmet (1951, Fuller)

On the Waterfront (1954, Kazan)

The Red Balloon (1955, Lamorisse)

Jules and Jim (1961, Truffaut)

Lolita (1962, Kubrick)

1 vote:

Awaara (1951, Kapoor)

The Court Jester (1955, Panama/Frank)

A Face in the Crowd (1957, Kazan)

See everyone after the New Year for the 2015 Muriel Awards!

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962, Agnes Varda)

"The great Agnes Varda's roots as a photojournalist and documentarian allow her to layer this story into a backdrop of quotidian beauty. Cleo's journey through the streets of Paris is a stream of jump cuts and micro-vignettes: faces outside a cafe, street performers, a simple cab ride, with the occasional intrusion of the news from the Algerian front or of some local politics. The outside world penetrating our own insular one, shocking Cleo, and us, into empathy." ~ Matt Lynch

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Bunuel)

"Hilarious, bizarre, and with an air of almost ethereal grace, The Exterminating Angel remains a one-of-kind experience in the history of cinema. A more than worthy addition to this year's Hall of Fame inductees, it embodies an anarchist spirit sorely underrepresented in the pantheon of World Cinema." ~ Adam Lemke

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)

"This is what made Hawks unique to cinema. You could label it as realism or classicism or whatever you like, but Hawks understood that rhythm was the most important element of cinema... Plot and character are everything to Hawks, but it’s rarely emphasized in the way other Hollywood films often do." ~ Peter Labuza

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)

"I now live in a cinephile world in which the 1998 version is the only version that people watch today and is considered a masterpiece of noir and one of the highest achievements in Orson Welles’s career, ranked alongside his first two films. And while some out there might say that their favorite Welles picture is one of his post-Hollywood works, to me Welles never made a more quintessentially American film than this one about the border between the United States and Mexico. It is legendary and at the same time a final eulogy for film noir, a sign of the changing times." ~ Jaime Grijalba

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: The Searchers (1956, John Ford)

"My favorite piece on the film is Jonathan Lethem's essay 'Defending The Searchers,' where the author wrestles from a very personal perspective about the impact the film has had on him and his impulse to defend it against those who find it offensive or simply boring and dated, even as his own relationship to the movie changes and grows more complex over repeated viewings. It's a movie that has similarly nested in the minds of countless filmmakers who have clearly been inspired, for better or worse by Ford and John Wayne's depiction of a tortured, obsessed 'hero.'" ~ Andrew Bemis

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)

"There’s something about Pather Panchali that transcends Neo-Realism. Ray was a first-time director working with a first-time cinematographer and you can sometimes catch them groping their way through film grammar and arriving at their own imagining of what cinema is. That something is uniquely their own." ~ Christianne Benedict

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Duck Amuck (1953, Chuck Jones)

"By treating the very elements of moviemaking as a joke, Jones does what Orson Welles could do straight: make the viewer aware of the mechanics of his art in a way that makes creativity look like fun, the kind of fun that the viewer might want to get in on. Duck Amuck, like Citizen Kane, is the kind of movie that makes people want to make movies." ~ Phil Dyess-Nugent

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Singin' in the Rain (1952, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen)

"On the commentary track for A Clockwork Orange Malcolm McDowell explains that they chose to use the song 'Singin’ in the Rain' in Kubrick’s sadistic satire because they wanted to clearly express the sociopathic joy Alex felt and, 'Gene Kelly stomping on that street, in that water, rain coming down, the umbrella and dancing - that is euphoria! That is the happiest a human has ever been.' Of course he isn’t speaking about Gene Kelly, who was reportedly sick with an 103° temperature during the filming of the sequence. McDowell is speaking about Don Lockwood. Watching him so deeply in love that he jumps in puddles like a child and sings that he’s 'happy again,' makes audiences feel like we are truly watching the happiest human that has ever been,and that feeling is infectious." ~ Kevin Cecil

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)

"As self-aware and jaded as Sunset Boulevard is about the movie business, it's also a celebration of cinematic grandeur, both the operatic silent films that made Norma a star and the dialogue-driven contemporary films that Joe (and Wilder himself) carefully craft. Norma famously laments that in her era, the stars 'had faces,' and Swanson's face is easily the movie's top attraction, her expressive eyebrows doing more acting than some performers manage with their entire bodies." ~ Josh Bell

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

“Standing between the two halves [of the film] is the segment that assures the film’s standing as an all-time classic of the cinema, the 'Dance of The Red Shoes.' Being at once stylistically opposite to the rest of the film’s mostly down-to-earth dramatics and a reflection of what makes the rest of the film so great, the dance is truly enchanting, bringing ballet to life on the screen in way that emphasizes the artistic equality of the dance as it relates to the music, but does so on almost every cinematic level. From Jack Cardiff's stunning and perfectly lit Technicolor photography to the expressionistic set design and costuming, all levels of the film collaborate in the vivid act of storytelling that transcends language." ~ Patrick Miller

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)

"God help the poor uninitiated soul who, in turning on Turner Classic Movies and encountering Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940) for the first time, knows not enough about this dizzying reshuffle of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page to at least take a few deep breaths before jumping in. It’s hard to imagine a faster, more breathless and whip-quick movie, from any genre, that all at once feels so fleet, dense and confident, without betraying even the slightest whiff of desperation, as this one." ~ Dennis Cozzalio

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale)

"Bride of Frankenstein might have been the first ever sequel to follow a masterpiece that actually improved upon its predecessor. James Whale's second Frankenstein film is very much the same type of creature feature as the first, with striking design work and a campy plot providing plenty of chills and thrills. But it's also a lot more, one of the first science fiction movies to demonstrate that movies don't need to be about people in order to explore what makes us human." ~ James Frazier

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)

"Jean Vigo was 28 when he started filming L'Atalante, and, by most accounts, was fully aware that his time on this earth was almost over. With this film he gave us a deeply humane insight into the ways in which we learn to communicate not only with words, but with pictures that can pierce the heart, and enlighten the soul. ~ Donald G. Carder

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)

"Together the Marx Brothers made 13 features, ranging from classics like Monkey Business to shrugs like The Big Store. What is it that separates Duck Soup from their other films and elevates it into the comedy pantheon?" ~ Jeff McMahon

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)

"It’s not every day an old, black-and-white comedy from the 1930s gets me all aroused. But that’s what happens every time I watch Trouble in Paradise, one of the funniest – and sexiest – farces I’ve encountered in my movie-viewing lifetime." ~ Craig D. Lindsey

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: City Lights (1931, Charlie Chaplin)

"[City Lights] encompasses everything we dream about when we go to the movies. Yes, the... final shot is one I would quickly identify as the most iconic of all-time, the one above all that moves us to the core of our being. What elevates it even further is the extraordinary lyrical and swelling score that Chaplin wrote himself for the film." ~ Sam Juliano

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, Stanley Kubrick)

"The comic elements of Strangelove walk a tightrope above a bottomless abyss, as reinforced by its production design and cinematography. From the expressionistic 'war room'/cathedral, to the dials and switches of a B-52 bomber, to the military base where a deranged general attempts to bypass protocol and invoke world war, the film portrays an admittedly heightened reality, but undeniably a recognizable one." ~ Patrick Williamson

Click here for the full essay.

Muriels Hall of Fame, Class of 2015: An Introduction

We will begin unveiling this year’s Muriels Hall of Fame inductees tomorrow, announcing them a day at a time (as is our wont) until we’ve finished. However, before that begins, I thought it best to warn you that this year’s class is rather, well, larger than last year’s. There’s a reason for that. Although we’ve never set an exact number of films to honor annually, generally I’ve tried to make ten the goal. And it looked like we’d have roughly that many again this year when I first began tabulating the results.

However, when I took a look at this year’s top vote-getters, I noticed that not a single one of them was in a language other than English. Seeing as how the goal of the Muriels HOF (and the Muriels proper, for that matter) has been to cast a wide net, this simply wouldn’t do. So I looked at the next highest vote-getters in the bunch and noticed a number of foreign-language films there.

This left me with a decision. I could either:

a. Stick with the eight top vote-getters, English or no, just for the sake of having a more manageable number,
b. Find some arbitrary way to only select the foreign-language films from the next-highest group of vote getters, or
c. Take all of the next-highest group, even though it would cause the number of inductees to balloon.

I wasn’t about to choose option (a), and while I wrestled with the possibility of option (b), I felt that if we were truly going to be about choosing the best films from around the world, we shouldn’t make a distinction between Anglophone cinema and foreign-language cinema just in order to meet some diversity quota. Therefore, I decided to pick option (c).

Because of this, the 2015 crop of inductees numbers a whopping seventeen (including the already-chosen Dr. Strangelove, which got in by winning the 50th Anniversary Award in February). And while that sounds like a lot, I hope you’ll agree that the larger group created a good mix of films- not just foreign films from numerous countries, but also a number of genres and great filmmakers we haven’t honored previously, as well as a number of interesting milestones for the group.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this year’s nominees, which as always will be presented alongside essays written by our Hall of Fame voters. Enjoy!

2014 Muriel Awards Postmortem

"Well... that certainly was visual."

After two-plus weeks of awards leading to today's marathon Best Picture countdown, the Muriels have finally wrapped up for another year. As always, I'd like to thank all of our readers and followers, and particularly this year's voters:

Jason Alley
Danny Baldwin
Josh Bell
Andrew Bemis
Christianne Benedict
Scott Black
Danny Bowes
Sean Burns
Donald G. Carder
Kevin Cecil
Paul Clark
Dennis Cozzalio
Andrew Dignan
Kevin Dufresne
Philip Dyess-Nugent
Jim Emerson
Alex Engquist
James Frazier
Kenji Fujishima
Daniel Getahun
Luke Gorham
Jaime Grijalba
Russell Hainline
Glenn Heath Jr.
Darren Hughes
Daniel C. Johnson
Sam Juliano
Peter Labuza
Adam Lemke
Michael Lieberman
Craig Lindsey
Matt Lynch
Sam C. Mac
Jeff McMahon
Patrick Miller
Matt Noller
Mark Pfeiffer
Cole Roulain
Jason Shawhan
Melissa Starker
Catherine Stebbins
Andreas Stoehr
Vern
Scott von Doviak
Clayton Walter
Patrick Williamson
Bryce Wilson
George Wu

Of course, there's plenty still to be done. I'll be working on the Web site over the next month or two so that everyone can view the ballots (I'll work on 2013 as well, I promise). Then after that there's the Hall of Fame elections this summer, and the ongoing search for new voters for next year. If anybody knows of any good candidates to join us (particularly female ones) feel free to let me know.

But that's all in the future. For now, I'm fried, and I'm going to go crash. See you soon!

And the 2014 Golden Muriel Award for Best Picture goes to...

"The neck and neck Oscar contenders for Best Picture, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood have both been heavily criticized for gimmickry - Birdman for its long, uninterrupted takes and Boyhood for being shot over the course of 12 years – but the criticism is extremely reductive to these very vital films. Both have individually driven techniques, not gimmicks, to how they approach storytelling, and both are crammed with visionary gusto. But while I was happy that Birdman took home the gold Oscar night, it’s Boyhood that will always resonate with me deeper, the way art that imitates (and nails) life, for me will always win over surrealism.

"Linklater’s premise of capturing the span of childhood to young adulthood, via filming a young actor (Ellar Coltrane) and his co-stars a little bit each year from 2002-2014 works wonderfully largely because it feels like you’re watching real life naturally unfold, albeit in scattered, sketchy fragments at times.

"It’s principally the journey of Coltrane’s Mason, but we got a lot of glimpses of what’s happening in the lives of his family members on the side – his mother (Patricia Arquette, who deservedly won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award), his flighty father (Ethan Hawke), and his sister (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter).

"No titles tell us what year it is, or what age our protagonist is, but every scene has clues whether in the technology of the times, what Harry Potter book is being released, or whose names adorn campaign signs. We get so caught up in the flow, that suddenly we notice everybody is aging, and what would be throwaway, mundane moments in other films are elevated to great meaning. An original title for the film was 'Always Now,' which is telling in what the film’s ultimate theme in its treatise on time is: the ongoing desire to live as completely in the moment as possible.

"The website Screen Junkies echoed a lot of the film’s detractors with its installment of the Honest Trailers web series devoted to Boyhood, which stated: 'It’s a beautiful film, but honestly, if you took the same script and shot it over a few months it would suck.'

"This asinine argument irritates me greatly. The screenplay and the film, despite having acknowledged planned arcs, were developed year by year for well over a decade with the actors contributions to their roles affecting what was written and shot – an ongoing process that the result of which could never have been written and executed in the course of one year. And the film about which that the Screen Junkies speculate, shot over a few months, with what I presume would be different actors playing characters at different ages would indeed suck as it wouldn’t at all be a convincing approximation of real life.

"That’s the very point of what makes Boyhood so special, and why the ‘but if they had done it this other way, it wouldn’t be so great' stance is so stupid. On the other hand, the Honest Trailers’ line about Arquette’s character, set to the tune of what could be considered the film’s theme song, Family of the Year’s 'Hero': 'And there she goes, dating a string of drunk a-holes, should’ve saved a lot of trouble, by choosing her ex - he wasn’t that bad,' is pretty funny and actually accurate.

"Boyhood is, of course, Linklater’s most ambitious piece of work, but it wouldn’t have the emotional effect it has without the sincerity and heart given to its subjects on display. In the writer/director’s first film Slacker, he pieced together a single day in Austin, Texas through the scrambled random yet connected narratives of over a dozen different characters, in the Before series, he’s taking us through the ongoing relationship of a couple of star-crossed lovers who we catch up with every nine years, but with Boyhood, he makes his most profound statement yet. And it’s a simple one too – that everybody, young and old, is just winging it through time." ~ Daniel Cook Johnson

"The versatility and talent of Richard Linklater never ceases to amaze me. I’m sure that no one reading this needs to be reminded of his filmography, but I am continually astonished that the same filmmaker directed Slacker, Dazed and Confused, suburbia, the Before… trilogy, Tape, Waking Life, School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, and Bernie (not to mention several others). There is an astounding amount of difference among those films, from filmmaking styles to genres to overall tones. Some through-lines do emerge, though.

"With a few exceptions, Linklater’s films tend to be about searching, inquisitive people trying to make sense out of the many mysteries of existence, and more than anything they like to talk about it. The aimless wanderers of Slacker, the philosophical stoners of Dazed, the angry dead-end teens of suburbia (when is that movie getting a DVD release, anyway?), Jesse and Celine from the Before… trilogy, Wiley Wiggins’s otherworldly companions from Waking Life, etc… they talk and talk, in dialogue that sounds both musically precise and loosely off-the-cuff, about everything under the sun (and beyond it), usually not professing to have all the answers but just wanting to ask questions and make one another think, in the process encouraging the audience to think as well.

"Obviously, one of Linklater’s most intense fascinations is with the passage of time, and how it changes and shapes us as human beings. I had thought that the two-decade-spanning Before… trilogy, and its ingenious exploration of how time affects a love affair, was probably his definitive statement on the subject, but then came Boyhood. To say that Boyhood is a great film is actually selling it short. It’s the rare movie that is actually, really not like any other ever made. I would argue that it re-shapes the medium of narrative film altogether, all the while never seeming even the slightest bit pompous or pretentious. It was simply a great idea, executed wonderfully, and no one else ever did it before.

"No, style and technological ingenuity alone would not be reason enough to proclaim it my favorite film of 2014. Boyhood, though, has it all. The performances are uniformly excellent, including Ellar Coltrane as Mason, who, especially in his earlier years, had a thrillingly genuine and unaffected screen presence. He was passed over for awards nominations and most critics’ praise in favor of established stars Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke (who are both outstanding), but the truth is that he’s just as good in perhaps the most demanding role of all. Additionally, Lorelai Linklater is a delight as the wry, sarcastic older sister (the awkward 'sex talk' scene in the bowling alley is one of my many favorite, stand-out moments). The screenplay is great (even aside from the monumental audaciousness of its central idea), and it’s got real, honest-to-goodness heart.

"What stands out to me the most, though, and gives the film its cumulative impact, are the most understated moments. When we notice that a character’s priorities have changed from when we knew them earlier. When we notice that the actors are physically changed by time, watching wrinkles appear and fashions change. The recognition that someone is gradually fundamentally changing who they once were ('You’re not turning into one of those ‘God people,’ are you Dad?') It begins to remind us of our own lives, and how no one is unchanged by time, not the people we know and certainly not ourselves (despite how much we might like to think so sometimes).

"It may not be 100% 'flawless,' (it has a few perhaps-unavoidable rough edges, all of which only serve to make the entire project that much more fascinating to me) but for a filmmaker and a cast to undertake the difficulties inherent in an idea this bold, adventurous, original, and difficult, and for it to wind up not just coherent but great, that’s real art. And in my book, it’s far and away the best film of 2014." ~ Jason Alley

Click here for full results.

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #2

Note: this piece is edited from a version originally posted at Cinema Enthusiast on May 2, 2014. Used by permission of the author.

"The covert and beguiling Under the Skin rattled me to my core. The film is, first and foremost, image-centric storytelling, with roots in experimental cinema, that distances itself from mankind. Birth to death, human as alien, alien as human. Firmly divided into two parts, routine and the failing quest for basic human pleasures, with the key transitional scene being the Laura’s (nobody has any names, including Laura, but she’s billed as such so it’s just easier for me to follow suit) (Scarlett Johansson) encounter with a man with neurofibromatosis. Before that, she goes about her business, luring and leading men into an abstract and oily black digestive space. There’s no connection between her and her body, her victims, or feelings. But gradually the loneliness starts to sink in, and with it the isolation that humans may experience. She begins to seek out basic human pleasures like eating, sex, and companionship, inquisitive and nervous like a child. She knows she needs something, but is unsure how to go about it.

"When Under the Skin ended, I felt like I’d been scooped out from the inside. It’s one of the saddest and loneliest films I’ve ever seen. Scarlett Johansson is mainly a presence for the first half, removed and captivating. And then in the second half she is heartbreaking; confused, yearning and unfulfilled. The final minutes, in which she is pursued by a man in the musky never-ending forest, is so palpable; you can feel her fear. Predator to prey. The second she desires the human instinct she loses so much agency. She becomes vulnerable and susceptible, her lair further and further away, unable to reconcile that yearning. We sense the irreparable loss of that center, her time dwindling. My boyfriend found something peaceful about the one-with-the-snow ending, but I didn’t. I just can’t; it’s not in my nature.

"The formalism contributes to a new withdrawn perspective of ourselves, as something Other and incomprehensible. The thick Scottish accents further that distance, as does Mica Levi’s slinky and exotic high-pitched string score, and the sound design where much is compressed and blanketed over. Take for instance, as an example of said withdrawn perspective, the way Glazer shoots the scene on the beach, in which attempted rescue causes a chain reaction of familial death, a wailing abandoned baby as sole survivor. Laura, and thus we, take all of it in at once and for what it is (death) with unfeeling coldness. The discrepancy between what is happening, and how we see it, is very disturbing. And then Laura murders a man with a rock, and it’s the opposite of how murder is usually depicted in film. There is no close-up, no sound effect, and no clear view because Laura is crouching with her back to us. The impact of the scene is that there is no impact, and that lack of impact in turn translates to its own unique impact for the audience.

"The film does not pass judgment on Laura. As she observes us, we observe her, and ourselves through her. Another layer to this is gradually added when Laura begins to observe herself, in a successive set of mirror scenes as she considers her new form. This observation becomes out-of-body in the end. No mirror is needed in her last moments.

"Generally, I think more filmmakers and producers need to put their trust in the communicative power of the image (and in viewers), especially since it’s what the medium inherently is to begin with. Under the Skin hypnotically uses impressionistic imagery and Scarlett Johansson’s face as narrative (there is very little dialogue overall) for a final product about existential isolation and irreconcilable cognizance that I still haven’t been able to shake." ~ Catherine Stebbins

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #3

"Inherent Vice was pretty close to my favorite movie last year, but this is the first time I've tried to write about it. I walked out knowing it was so dense I'd regret trying to decode it without a second viewing. But the feeling of it stuck with me. It's hazy and meandering, unfolding mostly like a normal private detective mystery, but introducing so many characters and motivations that I eventually had to concede that I'd lost track of what the hell was going on. Fortunately that didn't seem to matter that much. 'What the hell is going on' might be beside the point.

"Our hippie P.I. protagonist Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) has an almost Looney Tunes­-esque rivalry with the closeted macho police detective Bigfoot Bjornsen (man­out­of­time Josh Brolin), but I'm not sure which one is Bugs Bunny and which is Elmer Fudd. Bigfoot harasses Doc not only by making weird phone calls, taking him in for questioning and kicking his door down, but by having a SAG card and haunting him through crappy local TV ads. Both actors fully inhabit these weird characters and find ways to deftly slide into physical comedy and broad goofiness. Phoenix elicitly tip­toes around a residencelike he's in a Scooby­Doo episode, rolls himself into a ball to avoid police brutality (but gets picked up like a piece of luggage), stares in comical horror for an entire long take of Brolin fellating a frozen banana.

"You could argue that Doc is a lazy person ­ he lives a laidback lifestyle with little regard for sideburn or foot maintenance ­ but his adventures are exhausting. He gets bludgeoned with a baseball bat, kidnapped, set up separately for murder and for heroin smuggling. Yet, unlike mine, his drug­addled brain is able to keep straight a tangle of mysteries involving missing persons, an insane asylum, a brothel, black militants, white supremacists, international drug smugglers, a cult, a dopehead dentist, a real estate developer (Eric Roberts!) and surely other factions that I'm forgetting.

"The only obvious cinematic comparison is The Big Lebowski, another witty, tangent­filled post­modern California noir story that affectionately parodies hippieculture through its alternately clever and slow­witted stoner kind­of­detective hero. But Paul Thomas Anderson steeps his in the bad vibes of early '70s period detail. Inherent Vice is deeply funny, but with a creepy fever dream undercurrent. You don't so much watch this movie as you ride it out. But in a good way." ~ Vern

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #4

"The Grand Budapest Hotel somewhat defies classification, beyond its resemblance to a layered Mendl’s confection, and is perhaps best exemplified by the hotel’s famed concierge, Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), a man of his own invention. Like M. Gustave, the film is impeccably presented, and perfumed heavily in an air of panache.

"The elegant fictional setting becomes the stage for a nostalgic return to a bygone era of civilized behavior -- in fact, an era that may have never existed. The marvelous script undermines Gustave’s meticulous style (with implied olfactory pleasures) and shows it to be a façade that allows him to pass among the rich and elderly, and prey upon them for tips, sexual trysts, and occasionally, priceless riches. You see, darling, for all the fineries and poetry M. Gustave enjoys, his vulgar tongue and questionable origin suggest that he can never rise above working class.

"However, for all his flaws, he is respectful and mutually respected among his well-dressed colleagues. In one of Grand Budapest’s most glorious sequences, a group of resourceful concierges dubbed The Society of the Crossed Keys, conduct an orchestrated telephone chain to pull strings and provide Gustave a swift (albeit third-class) escape from the law. Indeed, his kindness wins a devoted confidant in young protege Zero Moustafa (depicted in different life stages by Tony Revolori and F. Murray Abraham). Though only a lowly lobby boy,Zero quickly earns Gustave’s respect and eternal devotion, even during funeral art heists and mountaintop toboggan chases.

"Their continued friendship remains the heart of writer-director Wes Anderson’s picture, told through the adult Zero’s perspective. In different hands, Zero’s sad narrative about an old friend from better days may have been merely melancholic, but Anderson deftly sidesteps it with wit, lively set pieces, and whipsmart direction. Grand Budapest is a truly fun ride, as well as a compassionate one, crafted with invention and light, and wrapped in a precious pink box." ~ Patrick Williamson

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #5

"In many ways, Only Lovers Left Alive is the film to which Jim Jarmusch has been building for his entire career. Since he broke through with Stranger Than Paradise three decades ago, Jarmusch has trained his camera time and again on society's outsiders- inept pimps, down-and-out deejays, cab drivers of all stripes, accountants in the Old West, and self-styled samurai assassins. Here, he focuses on a pair of centuries-old vampires, social rejects out of necessity. Eve (the otherworldly Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) still drink blood- albeit largely obtained through medical sources, an unethical but decidedly less murderous and certainly cleaner alternative to traditional means.

"But what to do in between meals? Like many Jarmusch heroes, they immerse themselves in culture, primarily the culture of the past- though to be fair, they're old enough that it still counts as their past. Eve partakes from a seemingly endless supply of books written in countless languages, caressing the pages softly as she reads each one in the flick of an eye, when she's not paying visits to her old-in-multiple-senses friend, Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (a memorably cadaverous John Hurt). Adam, by contrast, devotes most of his time to his career as a reclusive recording artist, laying down one fashionably funereal track after another in his makeshift studio. When he's not creating, he's amassing an enviable collection of vintage guitars or grooving on his collection of classic vinyl, or just driving around post-industrial Detroit.

"If nothing else, the way Jarmusch depicts Adam's adopted hometown makes it easily the best Motor City movie since RoboCop. The city Adam surveys on his nightly drives is little more than a hollowed-out husk of its former glory, but it has lost none of the shoot-from-the-hip industrial sensibility of the town that gave the world Motown and MC5, Eminem and Jack White (it's the Rust Belt-dwelling spiritual cousin to Jarmusch's Memphis-set Mystery Train). It's a nighttime city that belongs to the outcasts- in addition to Adam, we mostly see young rocker dudes who are seemingly unaware that the heyday of rock is behind them, along with a hepcat doctor played by Jeffrey Wright who gets the film's best line when he looks at Adam and mutters, "that cat's gotta be from Cleveland."

"Only Lovers Left Alive is full of pleasures both large and small, but those pleasures rarely dove with the traditional vampire-film formula. Adam and Eve aren't the suave throwbacks of the classic Dracula stories, nor the desperate characters of the vampire-junkie indie films of the mid-1990s, and they certainly wouldn't be caught dead at a Cullen family get-together. Jarmusch is less concerned with paying tribute to vampire legends of yore than he is in forging his own path with his material, and indeed, just when the film is about to provide the expected vampire-movie payoff, he rolls credits.

"While both the storytelling and the filmmaking on display in Only Lovers Left Alive are first-rate in a no-sweat sort of way, its true greatness lies in the way that, more than any film I've seen in years, it feels like a great hangout movie, creating a world and filling it with people I'd like to revisit again and again. To put it another way - I'd love to live in Only Lovers Left Alive, but for the sad fact that I'd eventually wind up on the menu." ~ Paul Clark

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #6

"I'm just going to assume people who have money bore the hell out of the Dardenne brothers.

"The Belgian siblings have based their whole careers making movies about people who struggle, internally and externally, often making questionable decisions in order to get by just one more day. The heroes and heroines of their films are usually systemically oppressed, male and female cogs in a consistently stuck machine where the only way they can move slightly is if they get themselves a little dirty. Much like Norm's wife Vera on Cheers, the upper class is nonexistent in Dardenne films, but their looming presence is always hinted at.

"Even when the Dardennes don't completely venture into dark and uneasy territory, like they do with their acclaimed latest, Two Days, One Night, the struggle is always real. Once again shot in their trademark, neo-realist style, Jean-Pierre and Luc follow around Sandra (Marion Cotillard, who got a well-deserved, Best Actress Oscar nomination for this) as she spends the titular amount of time trying to convince co-workers to be on her side as she fights to keep her solar-panel factory job. The fragile Sandra is hardly a fighter; a vague, offscreen accident led to a nervous breakdown she still has yet to fully recover from. Still, with her ever-supportive husband (Fabrizio Rongione, who didnât get a well-deserved, Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for this) pushing her to move forward, she keeps the crying jags to a minimum and sets out to corral supporters.

"The movie is a continuously riveting journey through the Belgian working class. As Sandra knocks on the doors of her various co-workers, we see some are more financially stable than others. Just like they've done in their previous films, the Dardennes never cast a judgmental eye on these folk. Even though they've been forced by superiors to consider kicking one of their own to the curb, they're still all in the same oppressed boat. Their jobs and livelihoods hang in the balance just as much as Sandra's, and she knows this.

"Even though this movie is set in an industrial town in Belgium, this movie speaks more to our stateside working class than any American film I've seen in years. I dare anyone who's had to scrape and scuffle to keep their nine-to-five not to sympathize with Sandra or any of the poor bastards who populate this flick. In its own weird way, this film, which definitely isn't as grimy or fatalistic as the Dardennes' previous work (cinematographer Alain Marcoen keeps everything sunny even though a dark, dismal cloud constantly hangs over this thing), is practically their most optimistic. Not to give anything away, the movie ends with Sandra having a reassuring phone call with her husband, virtually walking into the future with a strong smile on her face. I don't know how these bleak sons-a-bitches did it, but they made me happy for a character who I knew was going to be all right no matter what." ~ Craig D. Lindsey

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #7

"The Academy Awards' compass is so fucked at this point that even substantive period dramas can go unnoticed entirely, a reality Oscar pro Harvey Weinstein surely accounted for when he decided to damn James Gray's latest to limited distribution hell. This manoeuvre is a shame not because The Immigrant needed the ever diminishing distinction of awards' season recognition, but because it's a film that simply should've found a bigger audience; the kind that too commonly gets 'arthouse' foisted upon it because that's the only place it's allowed to play, but that bares closer resemblance to a classic Hollywood filmmaking that the oblivious Academy voters continue to insist doesn't exist anymore. In particular, Gray, whose grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Russia, draws from a studio era rich with filmmakers exerting European sensibilities onto a still-young nation's art form. His heroes are directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese not because his filmography broadly occupies the same genre and geographic territory as their breakthroughs but because cultural heritage informs their characters' experiences in a country that gradually tries to subsume them into its own identity.

"These themes have never been reflected more sharply in Gray’s own work than they are in The Immigrant, the director’s sumptuous mirror box of American hopes and disillusionments. Set in 1920s New York, it's the story of Ewa (Marion Cotillard), an unmarried Polish refugee of the Great War who's pulled out of line at Ellis Island after her sister shows symptoms of a possible lung disease. Another immigrant, Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), uses his influence to save Ewa from a fate of deportation, but the price is a series of painful compromises in pursuit of that ever-elusive American dream: to be happy. Also introduced is a suave magician (Jeremy Renner), who likewise courts Ewa, challenging the lies on offer of his cousin Bruno with his own promises of a better life. But Gray elevates the stuff of a standard love-triangle melodrama to something momentous: a rich tapestry of American iconography stripped of its majesty (Ewa plays Lady Liberty in Bruno's burlesque show) as characters begin to resemble less the weight of their own moral convictions and failings than those of an entire nation. Crucially, Gray is as much concerned with the intimate implications of this parable as he is the broad ones. More than anything, The Immigrant is about gestures of forgiveness, understanding and affirming individual self-worth—a stirring rebuke to America's tradition of human commodity. Harvey and Oscar never did deserve it." ~ Sam C. Mac

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #8

"How sad that Selma will likely be remembered for the emotional debates about its historical accuracy and its Oscar-worthiness, because above all else it is an inspiring portrait of courage under fire and the power of nonviolent protest, and a landmark achievement in the history of cinematic depictions of Martin Luther King, Jr. The decision by director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Paul Webb to root the story in a distinct place and time (the course of about 6 months) is critical to its success. A conventional MLK biopic would have suffered under the weight of flashbacks, obligatory scenes to mark the years, too many characters and settings, and no identifiable soul.

"On the contrary, Selma immerses you in its environment and intimately reveals King’s personality and character by examining one of his crowning achievements. The film is a riveting lesson in rhetoric by a man whose legacy has been defined by his oratory, but it also illustrates King's effectiveness in communicating during smaller, quieter moments. And it underscores the brilliance of his strategy: building coalitions, leading by example, and most importantly, using the power of traditional media at a time when it was much more centralized and influential than it is today.

"DuVernay patiently allows the events in Selma to breathe, which both informs viewers unfamiliar with the movement’s history and also builds emotional momentum to a soaring climax. Like Paul Greengrass’ grittier Bloody Sunday, Selma’s narrow focus ironically reveals a much bigger picture about the zeitgeist of societal change in the 1960s. Like Gus van Sant’s Milk, Selma humanizes a heroic figure by exposing his conflicted thoughts, fears, and self-doubts. DuVernay occasionally sentimentalizes King's nature but doesn't canonize him as a flawless man. When I wrote a piece in 2008 spitballing potential casting choices for a MLK biopic, I never could have anticipated the revelation that is the British actor David Oyelowo, whose ability to balance King’s gentleness with his fiery passion and provocative wit is a sight to behold.

"Artistic decisions about U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's support of the voting rights movement, among other details, have led to questions about Selma’s historical accuracy. As disappointing as the accusations are considering the countless terrible historical dramas that have been offered by much more high-profile directors (not coincidentally all white men), it’s perhaps expected considering the politicization of pretty much everything in 2015, fueled in large part by a polarized national and social media. Either way, the specific charges miss the bigger picture: DuVernay deserves as much artistic license as a director of any other historical drama, including other high-profile Oscar nominees The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, Foxcatcher, and American Sniper. Why should Selma be held to a different standard?

"In any case, the film’s strongest scenes are those around which there is no controversy, such as the “Bloody Sunday” first march attempt - one of the most arresting scenes in any film this year. Dashed with unnerving sounds and images that evoke the black experience in America from slavery to Ferguson, and held in rhythm by a pounding gospel hymn, it is a stunning composition. In this scene, and in almost every frame of Selma, the gorgeous cinematography of Bradford Young also adds a crackling vibrancy. DuVernay’s artistry is no less impressive in Selma’s more introspective scenes, again aided by Webb's thoughtful screenplay and an extraordinarily talented cast.

"Barely two generations removed from the film’s events, DuVernay has revived the spirit of a national hero whose message and methods still deeply resonate on issues as diverse as same-sex marriage, police-community relations, minimum wage, and even, still, basic voting rights. In thrilling artistic fashion, and with thoughtful regard for its place in history, Selma reminds us that the philosophy of King’s movement is timeless, even if the man himself is not here to carry it out." ~ Daniel Getahun

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #9

Note: this piece is edited from a version originally posted at The Film Stage on May 21, 2014. Used by permission of the author.

"A symphonic release. The violins swirl up the chords. The text tells us, 'When imagination has failed, one must take refuge in reality.' So must we. But what has come of reality? The world of nature, but what about the manufacturing of war? Cinema: the images were the murderer of ideas in the 20th century. A reclamation of reality is in order. A reclamation of freedom.

"Jean Arthur stares out at Cary Grant. She takes a chance on the unknown. So must we.

"Yes, this is Godard. This is Late Godard. Beyond Late Godard. Histoire(s) investigated the past. Socialisme: the present. And now: the future. It is Cinema 3.0 — 3D.0. We’ve passed the movement-image, the time-image, and into the image-image: the Frankenstein of the 21st century.

"The film is called Adieu au langage. Goodbye to Language. Why language? The goodbye is to cinematic language. The idea of cinema as a translator, as communication. Instead, the images are removed from their language. They are reality. 3D reality. A book; a table; a tree; a phone. They pop — the colors bleed into saturation. The new cinema. Representation disappears. The iPhone cinema. Arnheim and Bazin stood at polar opposites. Godard has found a way to wield them together. Total cinema as pure reality — the wind in the trees, but nothing to limit them as simply the staging of reality. Not a manifestation of reality. Reality as reality." ~ Peter Labuza

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #10

"Movie critics spend a lot of time bitching about huge, special-effects-heavy spectacles that showcase the latest technological advances in filmmaking without engaging the viewers’ brains and hearts. The complaint itself has become a cliché, but most critics would probably be happy to have fewer occasions to rely on it. In terms of the resources the director had at hand and what she was able to make out of them, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is the anti-Jupiter Ascending. Kent’s little, low-budget horror movie is actually about something, and it carries a wallop that leaves your nerves and imagination shaken for days afterward.

"It’s a misuse of one talented filmmaker to use her achievement as a cudgel on another, but it’s a comparison worth stating: the Wachowskis, who have made good movies in the past and may do so again, created the shell of a richly layered fantasy world and made it move onscreen, but they failed in the deceptively simple-looking task of making the audience care about the fate of an endangered young woman and her love for a dashing hunk. Kent, working with whatevermoney and materials she could get her hands on over the course of years of planning, draws viewers into the sympathetically imagined mindset of a woman slipping into madness, whose terror is that she knows she’s capable of killing her child.

"Kent set a daunting task for herself by putting a potential Susan Smith at the center of her movie, and she used everything she had to get to the bulls-eye: the editing, camerawork, music, and performances (including the child-actor performance of the year) all work together to create a total experience that belies the fact that, for much of the film, all you have to watch are two people trapped inside a house together. And Kent made it at the right time in her development: if you look at Monster, the 2005 short film that served as the blueprint for the feature, you can see how far she’d come before embarking on her debut feature. The DIY spirit lives." ~ Philip Dyess-Nugent

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #11

"The distressing creep of stasis has permeated large scale, genre filmmaking. A level of gutless, 'corporate-think' that requires slim works to be carved up and stretched out into endless, climax-delaying installments. A fear of finality that will negate the sacrifice of a beloved character with a post-credit cookie or a TV show spin-off. No such fear exists in Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer which begins with the last remnants of humanity clinging to a joyless existence and only becomes more apocalyptic as it goes.

"Liberated from expectations of mainstream success (the film was famously held hostage by its distributor which feared that it wouldn’t be 'understood by audiences in Iowa and Oklahoma') Snowpiercer obliterates the safety of the status quo roughly ever eight minutes. Like the train on which the film is set, the film hurtles itself forward--moving from squalor to opulence and from darkness into light--destroying everything in its wake. Snowpiercer boldly reinvents itself every time it moves from one compartment to the next (the metal doors that frequently give way even recreate the effect of a curtain parting, as though the film were resetting and starting anew), demonstrating genuine pride in each new reveal. Reveling in the craft of its showmanship and the confidence of its storytelling.

"This is a vision unlike anything we’ve seen in a long time, a world that is both fantastic and tactile. Ondrej Nekvasil’s geographically nebulous but ingenious production design surrounds the film’s eclectic cast with sights as wondrous as they are unnerving. Calling attention to their own absurdity as the last vestiges of civilized society and creature comforts. Juxtaposing, in just one of many examples, an industrial sweatshop with the last sushi bar on Earth, conveniently encased within an aquarium. The film lays its 'Swiftian' allegory on a little thick but it recognizes the indignity in having your nose pressed up against the glass, forcing you to acknowledge your 'betters' on the other side (if nothing else, the film ensures we’ll have a handy reference for the first class section of the airplane for years to come).

"But if the film’s aesthetics are the sizzle then the steak (not that I’d trust anything food-related here) is the assurance with which Bong allows Snowpiercer to unfold. Lock picking is a runner throughout the film, which is apt as it often feels like a series of tumblers are clicking into place. The film disguises its devastating twists with seemingly incongruous digressions (a procession of grizzled amputees, a bloody axe battle pausing so its combatants can wish each other 'happy New Year,' a school car full of 10-year-olds breaking into an especially morbid sing-along) that only gain resonance in hindsight. There’s an admirable level of patience to the way the film withholds its grand design, teasing out clues that have been methodically dropped along the way. Bong would seemingly be out of his comfort zone here, corralling an enormous, technically demanding international production. Yet he more than meets the challenge, confirming his status as a master in any genre.

"There will be no sequel to Snowpiercer. The film doesn’t care how many Oscars winners are in its cast or how many blockbusters its leading man has been in. Everyone here is in service of the film’s ruthless economy. This is a film on a collision course with the only possible conclusion that material this bleak and singular could have. It doesn’t step timidly or leave anything reserved in the tank. It doesn’t take the easy way out and it never stands still." ~ Andrew Dignan