19 February 2016

Skandies: #1


Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road (357/24)




Best Director: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road (425/26)
Skandie history: #8, Babe: Pig in the City (1998). (Do more sequels, George!)




Best Actress: Rooney Mara, Carol (283/24)
Skandie history: #20s, The Social Network (2010); #15, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011); #14s, Side Effects (2013).



Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan, Creed (223/19)
Skandie history: None.




Best Supporting Actor: Oscar Isaac, Ex Machina (190/15)
Skandie history: #2, Inside Llewyn Davis (2013); #13, A Most Violent Year (2014). That's three years in a row.




Best Supporting Actress: Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria (402/26)
Skandie history: #18s, Adventureland (2009); #16s, Still Alice (2014).




Best Screenplay: Phyllis Nagy, Carol (222/19)
Skandie history: None.




Best Scene: "Speak Low," Phoenix (253/19).

(Scene is on YouTube, but embedding is disabled. Also, as Theo observed in the comments, this scene is completely meaningless out of context, whereas in context it ranks among the most powerful endings in recent film history—some would say in all of film history.)

Complete results available here. Thanks to all voters, and especially to Mark Pittillo for programming the automated ballot and maintaining the website. The big post-mortem will be up in the next day or two.

5 comments:

Joshua said...

Is it my imagination, or are a lot more films getting Skandies-eligible releases than was the practice back in the day when I was a Skandies voter? If I'm counting correctly, there seem to be a thousand or more films that were eligible this year.

Are there more theaters in NYC now, or has it become less expensive for a filmmaker to book a documentary now (maybe to qualify for an Oscar), or is the situation different in some other way?

md'a said...

There are many, many more films released now than there were in the '90s. Mostly due to four-walling. The number of theaters hasn't significantly increased, but venues like Cinema Village (and until recently the Quad) change their entire slate every week—it's all one-week runs of movies nobody wants to see, that are playing strictly to get a New York Times review for home video promotion purposes. Thankfully, the NYT has started ignoring most of these films, so it's starting to ease off. Slowly.

Charles Odell said...

Also, the Empire 25 (especially) has been devoting 3-6 screens a week over the last couple of years to Bollywood and Asian films, and they're included in Mike's list.

Joshua said...

Thanks, Mike and Charles.

DMXcrement said...

I also want to publicly thank Mike and all those involved in the Skandies. It's always a lot of fun to read and to guess where/if my favorites are going to land. This is the year-end survey I most look forward to, and due to both its' breadth and transparency, the one I trust the most. Keep up the great work guys & gals (or buds and budettes?).