Here are a few more Wild Card categories that struck me while reflecting on the year in film.
The number of women making top-rated films is no longer a novelty. A greater-than-usual number of women filmmakers have been commonly spotted on critics’ Top 10 lists throughout the country.
Some of the most prominent and most successful at this year’s box office include Lisa Cholodenko with The Kids Are All Right, Debra Granik with Winter’s Bone, Andrea Arnold with Fish Tank, and Nicole Holofcener with Please Give. But what’s really interesting is that, while it’s still not sexual parity, it still represents a tremendous increase in the number of women considered to be among our top working filmmakers. Still more remarkable is that this phenomenon hasn’t become a common talking point in the year-end summaries. Have we reached the point where women filmmakers aren’t the zebras in the room, causing commentators to remark on each and every sighting? All this, too, in the year after Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to receive an Academy Award for directing?
What’s up with all the talking-animal movies? Is this what the success of Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Alvin & the Chipmunks has wrought? I’m not referring here to animated movies featuring talking animals. Animals in cartoons have been mouthing off ever since Mickey Mouse crawled out of the inkwell, and somehow the anthropomorhizing of animals seems an altogether appropriate use of animation. The trend now is for a mixture of live-action human and animatronic animal interactivity. Furry Vengeance, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Litter, Yogi Bear: All these films rank among the worst of the year.
This article appears in December 31 • 2010.
