You May Say That We Ain't Free, But It Don't Worry Me

Starting in July, I have an internship with Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas - the creative home of filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, who I have long admired (particularly because of his ability to not only write, direct and produce his movies, but also to edit, shoot and score many of them, as well). Until my internship starts, I have been wrapping up post-production work on With Love, Marty (my friend Jonah Greenstein is writing the score to the film), as well as working on a new film project with my friends Brian Schwartz and Catherine Schwartz, two extremely talented people with whom I went to Austin High School (Brian and I were in quite a few plays together as Red Dragon Players). I've also been reminiscing about some of my great New York City experiences this past semester that I've neglected to mention in my earlier blog posts.

I wrote in length about my immense love for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris in earlier posts - two films that I have no doubt will place very highly on my year-end top ten list (I'll add a third to that list - Mike Mills' wonderful Beginners, with Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Melanie Laurent giving memorable performances in a moving love story). In particular, The Tree of Life is a movie that continues to live with me - I mean it sincerely when I say that, watching the film, I felt inspired to someday attempt to make something as personal and philosophical as Malick's movie - that is, of course, if I have the benefit of being a filmmaker many years from now. The Tree of Life is such an artful piece of personal filmmaking, and it's the kind of movie that gives me the hope that, one day, I can make a film that furiously and passionately grasps at the lingering questions from my childhood, the death of my father and the story of my youth. Just don't expect a fraction of the cinematic poetry and grace that Malick brings to The Tree of Life.

As I'm slowly catching up with things after the whirlwind of last semester, I wanted to post some films made by my friends from over the past year. Below is a link to my good friend Alexander Fofonoff's third Sight and Sound: Film project The Sailor of Tomorrow, in which I appear as a disgruntled dock worker (Alex and I were in the same Sight and Sound: Film crew, which also included my great friends Jonah Greenstein and Benjamin Dewey). Here's the film:

In January, my roommate Bobb Barito and I saw Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore starring Olympia Dukakis on Broadway. This incredible production was directed by Michael Wilson, who, along with Tony-nominated actress Hallie Foote (daughter of the late playwright Horton Foote), will hopefully be speaking about the actor-director relationship at one of Tisch New Theatre's Master Classes in the fall (I have had the pleasure of getting to know Mrs. Foote over the years through my friend Bolton Eckert, starting back in 2006, when I attended Mr. Foote's 90th birthday party with Bolton and his family in New York City).

In March, my good friend and collaborator Benjamin Dewey and I saw the newly restored 35MM print of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) at New York's historic Film Forum, which was just a breathtaking experience. I've seen the film countless times (dating back to when I was eleven years old and just beginning my life-long obsession with Scorsese's work), but it's never looked as beautiful as it did at Film Forum. I've seen beautiful prints of Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) before in theaters - not to mention seeing Scorsese's incredible output in the 2000s upon their original theatrical releases (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shine A Light, Shutter Island) - but never Taxi Driver. And, I'll tell you, there's a haunting power in watching that film and living in New York City. I look at the picture a little differently now - it takes on an entirely different meaning and context (not that the New York City of the 1970s resembles the New York City in which I live in 2011 at all, really - but still, there's an added resonance).

The past few months - both in New York and in Austin - I've been able to watch some great new releases worth seeking out in cinemas, including Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff, a gorgeously filmed, immersive mood piece that seems destined to become an art-house classic; Dan Rush's Everything Must Go, a wonderful, moving portrait of an alcoholic, with a lead performance from Will Ferrell that should do for him what Punch-Drunk Love (2002) did for Adam Sandler; Submarine, a wonderful coming-of-age movie with the heart of Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude (1971) and the style of a French New Wave classic; Joe Wright's strangely hypnotic Hanna, which features one-take action sequences that put the heavily-edited, incomprehensible action scenes from most Hollywood movies to shame; Jodie Foster's The Beaver, worth seeking out for Mel Gibson's extraordinary performance; J.J. Abrams' Super 8, a wonderful throwback to a better kind of summer blockbuster; and Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a fascinating, meditative documentary exploring the inside of the Chauvet Cave in France, which features prehistoric cave drawings more than 30,000 years old. Did I mention that the film is in 3D? Leave it to Werner Herzog to make extraordinary use of 3D technology.

Since I've been in Austin, I've been catching up on re-watching some old favorites and some films I've overlooked through the years, including Niehls Mueller's The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004), a great film that proves that Sean Penn is unquestionably the best working actor today (together with his work in Mystic River and 21 Grams, his performance in this film represents the best output in the span of one year of any actor I can recall); Martin Scorsese's thrillingly entertaining The Color of Money (1986), where Paul Newman has never looked so cool; Robert Altman's revisionist western McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), starring Warren Beatty as the kind of brash 1970s antihero that makes me love that decade's cinema so much; and Joel and Ethan Coen's debut film Blood Simple (1984), a movie that demonstrates that these brothers knew how to make a movie better than anyone else around right from the start.

I have to spotlight two recent Scorsese viewings that just left me floored. I re-watched his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1969), which started out as his senior thesis film at New York University, and developed over the years until its theatrical release in 1969. The movie is full of the same raw energy and kinetic liveliness as Mean Streets (1973). Everything is here in his first feature - the thrilling use of pop music, the Catholicism, the guilt, the male awkwardness, the social discomfort, New York City, a wonderful performance from Harvey Keitel - in other words, it's the kind of movie I live for! It's full of the immediacy that has always drawn me to Scorsese - his uncontrollable need to tell you this story right now, because it's so personal, so close to his heart, and if he doesn't get it out there - well, then, how else can he get you to experience what he experiences?

The second Scorsese film is last year's documentary A Letter to Elia, Scorsese's loving tribute to Elia Kazan, the filmmaker who inspired Scorsese more than any other. The film is especially powerful because of Scorsese's close, personal connection to Kazan's pictures, if not Kazan the man. Watching the film, I couldn't help but recognize Scorsese's loving adoration and respect for Kazan as the same adoration and respect I feel so strongly for Scorsese. There are many quotes from the film that haunt me, particularly the following one, in which Scorsese describes his friendship with Kazan:

"There was a kind of understanding between us. I mean, I never tried to tell him how much his films meant to me -- I don't think it would've been fair. When somebody's work has touched you that deeply, you can never expect them to understand how much they mean to you. It had to stay between me and the pictures. Those pictures mean so much to me that I can't imagine where I'd be without them. And when the lights dimmed, I was standing in the wings and I looked at the images from his tribute reel. It was an overwhelming feeling. It was as if I was seeing layers of my own experience, my own life, unfolding right there up on the screen. So, Elia, it always had to stay between me and the movies, and the only way I could tell you how much you meant to me was by making movies.”

I may never know Martin Scorsese personally, but if I ever do have the chance to know him, I think I will feel the same way. Scorsese's work has touched me so deeply and defined every aspect of my life for as long as I can remember. I don't think he will ever understand how much he means to me - he is a sort-of father, a father I've never met, but one who understands me. And so, if I am lucky enough to make pictures for a living, it will be my way of telling Martin Scorsese how much he meant to me and how his films are like a piece of my own personal history, embedded in my mind like my own experiences. And perhaps, one day, I can make A Letter to Marty. But, you know, even an hour-long documentary of the sort couldn't ever really hint at how he's shaped my life and the way I look at the world.

In honor of Scorsese, here's my Vocalization sound project from my Fall 2009 Sound Image class at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts - in which I provide all of the voice work. After years of listening to Scorsese talk about his films, I've had time to work on a Scorsese impersonation:

And Now I Know Spanish Harlem Are Not Just Pretty Words To Say

Why make With Love, Marty? During the second half of my spring semester at NYU, I was swamped with Sight and Sound: Studio projects, the Tisch New Theatre mainstage production of Last Exit No Toll and many other projects (not to mention classwork), and so naturally it seemed like an unwise decision to make an outside-of-class movie, especially considering that I wanted to not only direct the project, but also star in the film. The script was sixteen pages long, and to make the movie properly, it would involve shooting at a number of hard locations, including Columbia University and a crowded New York City bus stop. Ultimately, I chose to make the movie not only because I have long wanted to take advantage of the incredible camera equipment and facilities at Tisch, but particularly because I have the privilege of knowing people who were excited about the project and who were willing to do everything possible to make the film that I wanted to make. If I were anywhere else in the world other than the Tisch School of the Arts, I could not have possibly assembled such an incredible cast and crew, full of people so eager to collaborate that they gave up their time, talent, energy and sleep for the sake of the movie. There is something about the collaborative nature of film (and theatre, for that matter, too) that really inspires me. By the way, the poster above was created and designed by Benjamin Dewey, who was also my cinematographer on the film.

There were also, of course, the artistic reasons for making the film. I love writing about loners. I love stories about outsiders and people who are trying very hard to be a part of a social group. My scripts always reflect the way I feel about something, to a certain extent. As an actor, I also tend to write characters modeled, more or less, on myself, or at least characters that I think I could play well - and oftentimes, writing these stories and these characters help me understand myself better. Admitting this is a double-edged sword, though. When people watch With Love, Marty, I don't want them to think that this story is autobiographical, because it's not. And yet, I wouldn't have been so passionate about making the film if it didn't represent a certain aspect of my personality. I am not Marty by any means, but it might be fair to say that his behavior is a highly exaggerated example of how I have felt at times in the past.

I finished writing the screenplay for With Love, Marty shortly before my Spring Break, and during my break I reached out to my friends and classmates who I had worked with in the past to see if they would be interested in making this outside-of-class project. My cinematographer, the incredible Benjamin Dewey, was my loyal collaborator from the very beginning. Shortly after I returned from Spring Break, he and I met constantly to draw storyboards and make shot lists for every scene in the script (sometimes during our Monday night shifts at the Post-Production Center, where we both work as Teaching Assistants). He assisted me in purchasing the appropriate lighting equipment, and he also provided the EX1 camera, tripod and sound equipment necessary to shoot this film. My roommate Bobb Barito was also on board the project from the very beginning, both starring in the movie (as a character modeled on him, named Bobb) and agreeing to serve as Sound Mixer and Sound Editor for the film. During the shoot, there were scenes where Bobb was acting and therefore could not do sound, and my friends Andrew Griego, Adam Boese and Jeremy Keller graciously offered their sound-mixing and booming skills during that time.

For the opening interior apartment scene, I wanted to use the apartment of my good friend Mike Cheslik, whose apartment on 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue has become a sort of permanent film-set this past semester (it's almost a rite-of-passage to shoot something in his apartment at this point). Not only did I want to use his apartment, but I wanted to cast him in the film, along with our friends Jon Annunziata and Justin Levine, as versions of themselves (the characters are named Mike, Jon and Justin). They were all incredibly willing participants, bringing so many ideas to the table and showing off some incredible acting talent. Long before shooting the opening scene of the film - in which Bobb, Mike, Jon, Justin and I riff and make lewd jokes in the apartment - the five of us gathered together to go through the script and re-write that opening scene, essentially, with our improvisations. You can imagine that these were very fun screenwriting sessions - everybody was trying to be as hilarious as possible, and I included the funniest, most relevant bits in the final screenplay. I cannot thank Mike, Bobb, Jon and Justin enough for their hilarious work in both forming that scene in the final script, and for their eventually hilarious performances on set.

My producer, Erica Rose, was so incredibly helpful in getting this project off the ground, and not only did she keep me focused, help cast the film and set up auditions with actors, organize cast and crew members with daily call-sheets, gather extras for a large party scene and help me find filming locations, she also served as my Assistant Director on set, always keeping me on schedule (she acts in the film, too, in the small role of Rose). Erica recommended that I have an Art Director for the film, and the wonderful Madeline Wall came on board to help us. Madeline is responsible for all of the art, make-up and much of the costuming in the movie, particularly the interior scenes. She sent out specific instructions to our party extras on how to dress for the hipster party scene at Columbia University (her work with glitter and face paint stands out in this section of the film). She was present at all times during the shoot, also working as a Boom Operator, Gaffer and any other position we needed.

After having some production meetings with Erica and Ben - where we made shooting schedules, divided up responsibilities among the crew and assembled necessary equipment - it was time for me to cast and subsequently rehearse with my actors. The scenes featuring Bobb, Mike, Jon, Justin and me were easily rehearsed, not only because we are all good friends, but mainly because my character in the scene is mostly silent as everybody else is fraternizing, and so it was easier for me to forget about my performance in rehearsal and really focus on directing my friends. However, the more serious scenes in the picture - particularly the ones where my character is the most emotionally vulnerable - required a different kind of rehearsal.

Erica suggested that I audition an actress named Alexis Gay for the role of Kellie in the film, and from the moment she walked into the audition room, I knew she was perfect for the role. I rehearsed with her privately twice, and we discussed the complicated interaction in the film between Kellie and Marty. Our final scene together in the film - the most important part of the movie, really - is such a painful and discomforting scene that it was a difficult task for me to direct her and simultaneously perform in the scene as this anguished, slightly delusional character. Thankfully, Alexis was so naturally receptive to my direction and understood her character so well that it made the process considerably easier for me.

I had another separate, private rehearsal with Karen McFarlane, an actress who auditioned for the role of the elderly Lucille. Karen was brilliant. Lucille's scene in the movie is relatively short - she's only onscreen for about a minute and a half - but her role is critical. I'll admit, I was worried that Erica and I would not find a fantastic older actress who fit the part, even though Erica posted a casting call online weeks in advance. But when Erica brought Karen into the audition room and I read through the scene with her, I knew she was perfect. She was incredibly flexible with her schedule, too - we were scheduled to shoot her scene at 10:30 PM on the evening of April 24th at a bus stop near Union Square, and it started pouring down raining shortly before our call time. We had to reschedule to another date, and she could not have been more understanding (we ended up shooting the scene at 11:30 PM on a Friday night - and I'll tell you, we had to fight against some rowdy late-night crowds). It was a joy to work with Karen, and I think she's terrific in the picture.

An exact shooting schedule went something like this - on the evening of Saturday, April 23rd, we shot the Columbia hipster party scene in Erica's dorm room at Gramercy (doubling for the interior of a Columbia dorm room). Lee Gold and Jon Annunziata were on hand as Gaffers for the evening, and we had a great group of party extras who were extremely patient. The shoot took about three-and-a-half hours, mainly because Ben and I had planned a complicated tracking shot following Marty into the party and through the dancing crowd of hipsters. One of Ben's most beautiful shots is in this scene - a medium shot of Alexis, in full party attire, with her back to a window overlooking the nighttime traffic on Third Avenue.

The second night of filming involved shooting the scene between Karen and me at the bus stop, which ultimately took about two hours to capture. This was a difficult scene for Bobb (as the Sound Mixer), because the bus stop by Union Square was certainly not quiet at 11:30 PM on a Friday night. It certainly didn't help matters that we had, more or less, taken over a public bus stop in one of the most popular spots in Manhattan. Later that night, Ben and I wandered around the West Village and picked up some beautiful exterior shots.

The final day of shooting was the pressure cooker - we had to shoot about seventy-five percent of the movie in one day. We shot day-for-night in Mike's apartment from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, which included the opening scene of the film, the last scene of the film and a critical scene between Bobb and me that sets the story in motion. Then, after a short break, my crew and I met at Columbia University around 7:00 PM to shoot the scenes between Alexis and me, as well as all exterior Columbia University shots. The exterior Columbia scenes look absolutely beautiful, thanks to Ben's outstanding cinematography and a little help from C0lumbia's stunning campus. After that, we were more or less wrapped with the production, aside from a few smaller shots that required fewer people on set. It was an exhausting and rewarding day thanks to the incredible work of Ben, Bobb, Erica, Madeline, Alexis, Mike, Jon, Justin, Andrew and Jeremy - I could not have possibly asked for a better production experience or a better creative team.

For the post-production process, I edited the film using Final Cut Pro in the editing laboratories at Tisch during the last few weeks of the semester, seeking input constantly from other students. Shortly before he left to return to Colorado for the summer, Ben color-corrected my picture-locked cut of the movie in a suite at Tisch, and the movie looks incredible because of his talent and hard work. I have since handed over the picture-locked cut to Bobb, who is currently working on the sound design. My good friend Jonah Greenstein offered to write an original musical score for the movie, and I couldn't have been more thankful for his offer. I know he will do brilliant work.

Anyway, that's a fast breakdown of the production of With Love, Marty. I'm enormously excited to screen the final product for anybody who wants to see the picture, and I am so lucky to work with such dedicated and talented people at the Tisch School of the Arts. I love making movies, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to have made this particular one.

Film Review - The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is a miracle, a picture consumed by the wonder, amazement and beauty of life that surely feels as personal to its creator, writer and director Terrence Malick, as it does to so many of the people who have left the theatre moved and haunted by its power.

Watching the film on opening night in Austin with a packed audience (many of whom worked in some capacity on the film, which was shot in Smithville), it was not unlike taking in the grand spectacle of The Lion King on Broadway for the first time as a young child. It is an overwhelmingly emotional experience.

How many people will see this film and watch in awe as memories of their own childhood flash before their eyes? I know I did. The story concerns Jack, an eleven year-old boy raised in Texas in the 1950s whose wondrous and carefree childhood slowly gives way to a more troubling, complicated understanding of human nature as he loses his innocence. You can see where I might find some similarities (as long as we’re swapping the 1950s for the 1990s). As he grows into a disillusioned adult (Sean Penn), he struggles to come to terms with the two ways through life: the way of human nature, fierce will and determination, epitomized by his father (Brad Pitt, in a hauntingly understated performance); and the way of love, compassion and grace, epitomized by his mother (Jessica Chastain).

But Malick’s movie extends back to the beginning of time, offering us beautiful sequences depicting the creation of the world that call to mind similar scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). I’ve often wondered how audiences would respond to 2001 if that film were released in theaters today. The answer has come. Our generation now has our own 2001 – a mystifying, extraordinarily ambitious epic that forgoes narrative filmmaking almost entirely. But as film critic Roger Ebert notes in his review of the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey “[lacks] Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling” present in The Tree of Life. Indeed, this is a film driven by small, powerful human moments. Pitt, Chastain and Penn’s performances are oftentimes completely wordless, but they linger in the mind days after having seen the picture. As much as I love Kubrick’s film, the same cannot be said for its characters.

This is a film that requires patience and respect for Malick’s vision. There were boos and hisses from some audiences when 2001 was first released in 1968, and The Tree of Life has received similar reactions (even at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or). But these are films that live beyond their audiences, masterpieces that aren’t easily digestible for the masses.

I’ve seen the film twice now, and both times the ending – a glimpse of everyone in Penn’s life coming together and journeying together to a sort of afterlife – is equal parts beguiling and soul-stirring. I left The Tree of Life full of hope – not just spiritual hope, or the hope of someday understanding all things – but hope for the future of cinema.

Film Review - Midnight in Paris

Thank God for Woody Allen. In the midst of an almost unbearable summer full of 3D superhero garbage and brainless sequels, he has given us his latest film Midnight in Paris only seven months after the release of his last film, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger. The middling critical reception to You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger bewildered me – of that film, I wrote: “Allen’s characters face existential dread, find comfort in ridiculous paranormal spiritualism, destroy their relationships with one another and learn the hard way that, in terms of romantic relationships, the grass will always be greener on the other side.” Powerful stuff, but for some reason, American critics weren’t impressed. Perhaps it’s because Allen offers us, on average, one movie per year, and aside from Match Point (2005) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), most of them aren’t nearly as good as his masterworks from the 1970s and 1980s.

Well, so what? A middling Woody Allen film is better than ninety-nine percent of everything else out in current release. Not that I would consider You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger a middling film in the least, mind you.

Fortunately, there’s no getting around the fact that Midnight in Paris is the funniest and most endearing movie you’ll see this year – critics and audiences alike are recognizing the film as Woody Allen’s finest work in years. Owen Wilson gives one of his best performances as Gil (the ‘Woody’ character), an American writer visiting Paris with his fiancé (Rachel McAdams) and her unbearably uppity parents (Allen’s depiction of McAdams’ conservative family would seem harsh if it wasn’t so, I don’t know, spot-on).

Gil, bored with his status as a hack Hollywood screenwriter, yearns for the Paris of the 1920s, when F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso walked the streets and tossed ideas around in cafes. And so it happens that, while Gil is walking alone through the city after midnight, Paris magically morphs into that era, and Gil quite literally hangs out with the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway and the rest of the gang. Along the way, he falls in love with Picasso’s mistress Adriana, played by Marion Cotillard, who perfectly embodies all of the beauty of Paris in any era.

The joy of this film is discovering all of this for yourself, and so I’ll refrain from saying anything else, except that Allen’s work with the Surrealists (including Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali) is brilliantly absurd. With the playful and fantastical premise, Allen is free to wrestle with large ideas in a very funny manner (not dissimilar to his work in 1985’s wonderful The Purple Rose of Cairo).

Along the way, Allen takes playful jabs at the current state of Hollywood screenwriting, Tea Party dimwits, and pseudo-intellectuals alike (Michael Sheen is perfect as that guy – you’ll know the character once you see him). This is a film that assumes you’ll catch the joke about Luis Bunuel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), or the jokes about Hemingway’s speech pattern (he talks the way he writes). Allen doesn’t bother explaining them to you because he’s not interested in pandering to the lowest common denominator, and in today’s cinema of digestible fluff for the masses, that’s quite an achievement.

More importantly, it’s a wonderful movie about nostalgia, a force so strong and bittersweet that Allen has devoted an entire film to the subject. Gradually, our protagonist learns that all people feel disillusioned with their own time and place, and secretly yearn to live in the idealized past, no matter the current era. It’s Gil’s (and Allen’s) own discovery of this truth that lends Midnight in Paris its poignant insight.

For this particular Woody Allen fan who holds Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) close to my heart, I mean it when I say that Midnight in Paris is as wonderfully poetic, sad, touching and funny as anything Woody Allen has ever made.

I Sighed A Million Sighs, I Told A Million Lies To Myself...To Myself

My Spring Semester at NYU has been the best, most productive period of my life. From acting in my friends' Sight and Sound: Studio and Film projects to meeting and receiving advice from writer/director Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby), it's been an incredible ride. The most rewarding part of my semester - writing, directing and starring in a personal project outside of class titled With Love, Marty - has just officially wrapped, and I am happy to say that the shoot was extremely successful, thanks to the hard work and help from my friends and collaborators (particularly my extraordinary cinematographer, Ben Dewey; my producer and assistant director, Erica Rose; my sound mixer and sound editor, Bobb Barito; and my art director, Madeline Wall). But before I discuss Marty, I want to write about some noteworthy moments from the semester.

On April 22nd, I directed my final Sight and Sound: Studio project – a scene from Martin McDonagh’s great play The Pillowman. I adapted the scene and first presented it to my class in mid-March, and after I returned from Spring Break, I held auditions at NYU’s Todman Center, and cast three very talented actors in the roles of Katurian, Tupolski and Ariel. I rehearsed diligently with the three actors for a few weeks before the shoot, and then, finally, on April 22nd, we shot the scene in a three-camera television studio on the 12th floor of the Tisch School of the Arts (the television studio more or less became home for all of the students this semester). My three actors - Hunter Rodgers, Danny Pudelek and Armen Armazza - gave wonderful performances during our two-hour shoot, where I managed to get three takes of the scene (which is pretty good, considering that set construction, lighting, and camera rehearsals take a significant amount of time). Here is my final project:

The Sight and Sound: Studio class was one of the most rewarding and fascinating classes I’ve taken at Tisch – it is every bit the compliment to my Sight and Sound: Film course. My professor, Alex Sichel, was a wonderful teacher, and she really prepared me as a director with my first three Studio exercises, which were entertaining but ultimately uneven. With her guidance and great criticism, I was prepared for a more ambitious, ultimately successful final project. My peers in the class were some of the finest people I have had the chance to work with, and everyone in the class formed a lasting bond together. I will miss them, but I look forward to working professionally with them in the years to come.

On April 11th, my friend Lucas Loredo stayed with me for a week in New York City before he traveled overseas for a semester abroad at Oxford University in England (Lucas is about to finish his third year at Stanford University). The trip marked Lucas’ first time in New York City, and I wanted to show him the best possible time while he was visiting. Among many other adventures, I got us tickets for live tapings of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. It was fascinating to watch the behind-the-scenes production of these great shows, particularly as the television studios were not entirely different from the studios we use for our Sight and Sound: Studio production class. Before the taping, both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert greeted the audience and answered questions from the small crowd. Lucas, always one to rise to the occasion, conversed directly with Mr. Stewart and asked him some fascinating questions.

As Lucas and I reminisced about our glory days as Red Dragon Players at Austin High School (by my count, we were in six plays together under the direction of Mr. Billy Dragoo), I wanted to show him the best theatre that Broadway had to offer. We lucked into some fantastic seats for the infamous Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, which proved to be an enormously entertaining - if not entirely coherent - night of theatre. But the show that really floored us was Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Motherf**ker With The Hat, starring Bobby Cannavale, Chris Rock and Annabella Sciorra. Lucas and I landed front-row tickets to this extraordinary play, which recently received six Tony Award nominations, including Best Play, Best Director (Anna D. Shapiro) and Best Actor for the devastating performance from Cannavale (who I last saw in the Off-Broadway production of Trust last fall).

During his stay, we also had a chance to walk through Central Park, visit Rockefeller Center and NBC Studios, enjoy ourselves at Lincoln Square, explore Greenwich Village and the NYU area, and make our way through Times Square more than a few times. We saw an NYU student production of No Exit, a French play by Jean-Paul Sartre, which was directed by my good friend and fellow film student Erica Rose (she most recently served as Producer and Assistant Director for my new film, With Love, Marty). She's an incredible talent, and her play was impeccably directed, staged and acted. Lucas also had a chance to be an extra in my friend Morgan Ingari's final Sight and Sound: Studio project, which was a great chance for Lucas to see some of Tisch's great facilities.

The weekend before Lucas arrived, I had the honor of working as Assistant Director for my friend and roommate Bobb Barito's film Lead Me To The Clouds. For the film - a student production outside of class (very similar to my own film that I shot in late April) - Bobb assembled an incredible crew of Tisch students, and we successfully shot his movie over a three-day period at a variety of locations all over the city. Bobb is currently in the post-production stage with the film, simultaneously sound editing both his project and my movie (I am incredibly lucky to work - and live - with somebody who is so brilliant regarding the art of sound mixing and sound editing).

On March 23rd, the Dean’s Scholars were invited to see Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo on Broadway, a brilliant new play by Rajiv Joseph, starring Robin Williams and directed by Moises Kaufman. After the play ended and the audience cleared the theatre, the Dean's Scholars were invited to come to the front of the stage and meet privately with Mr. Williams, who has been a huge supporter of the Tisch School of the Arts. Mr. Williams could not have been more gracious and kind to our small group of scholars, particularly after giving such an arresting and exhaustive performance. The show itself is one of the finest shows I've seen on Broadway yet - a truly incredible piece that unfortunately did not pick up as many Tony nominations as I would have expected. Pictured above is my good friend and fellow Dean's Scholar, Nicole Cobb, and me with Mr. Williams after the show.

The Dean's Scholars program has led to amazing opportunities throughout the semester, and it's resulted in a great sense of community among the students. Professor Chris Chan Roberson and Anita Gupta, the leaders of the program, organized the first ever Dean's Scholars Collaborative Projects in March, where two scholars from different Tisch departments worked together on creative collaborations. This project was largely, to quote Roberson, "designed to capitalize on the interdepartmental tours and scholars meetings" that we have participated in during the school year. Kiah Victoria, a freshman in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, and I collaborated on a short music video for her song Find Me. Kiah wrote and performed the song, and I filmed the movie, shooting footage of Kiah in Washington Square Park and incorporating one of my silent Sight and Sound: Film projects from last semester into the film. I have posted a link below to our video:

On Thursday, April 28th, I was invited as part of the Dean’s Scholars program to attend the Alec Baldwin Luncheon, where eleven Tisch scholars had an hour-and-a-half lunch with actor and Tisch alum Alec Baldwin in the office of Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell on the 12th Floor of the Tisch Building. Although every student prepared questions for Mr. Baldwin, he was very interested in talking to us about our backgrounds and our passions. Mr. Baldwin has always been a huge supporter of the Tisch School of the Arts, and his incredible career advice was so valuable. Although I asked him a serious question about his career, I also had to tell him that he absolutely owned Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) with only ten minutes of screen time. Mr. Baldwin, of course, modestly replied that nobody should ever try to 'own' a movie, but it's very true - his brilliant supporting roles in films such as Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004) and The Departed (2006) are every bit as memorable as his leading roles (I will admit that I took particular pleasure in hearing Mr. Baldwin impersonate Scorsese, and also talking about his experience working with Robert De Niro on various projects, including 2006's The Good Shepherd). Overall, it was an absolutely wonderful experience to sit and have lunch with one of the most respected actors in the film business. Pictured above are the eleven scholars and Mr. Baldwin.

This semester, I produced the Tisch New Theatre mainstage show Last Exit No Toll with my friend and fellow Tisch New Theatre Executive Board Officer Alex Fofonoff. The play, written and directed by sophomore Rachel Music (who previously directed me in her short play Consciousness, for which I received my first Off-Broadway credit), premiered at the historic Kraine Theatre on Wednesday, April 27th and ran for five performances. We were able to use the Kraine Theatre before the nightly performances of the incredibly talented New York Neo-Futurists, who regularly perform their brilliant show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind in the Kraine at 10:00 PM on Friday and Saturday nights. The company of Last Exit No Toll was thrilled to share a performance space with some of New York's most talented artists.

The rehearsal process began in early January, and it was an incredible experience to assist the director and performers with rehearsal space, assemble a technical crew and manage the concerns of the company as a whole as the play slowly came to life. I have to thank my friend and professional partner Alex Fofonoff, who helped me enormously as a first-time producer. In the end, our fundraising efforts (we raised over $1200 for the show with a Kickstarter campaign, from very generous donations from our supporters) and our successful production of the play made us both very proud. Working with the very talented cast and crew was an honor and a privilege. Here is a link to an article the Washington Square News wrote about the production of the play.

This semester has been incredibly productive - I've never felt more at home and surrounded by brilliant, amazing people. I have much more to report, and so I will continue my thoughts and anecdotes in another post in the very near future. In the meantime, I need to continue editing and fine-tuning my new film With Love, Marty - the production that will be the focus of my next entry.

Blame It On A Simple Twist Of Fate

Note: In between the posts below, I have posted a link to each of my five Sight and Sound film projects from last semester - the films have just been transferred digitally at the Post-Production Center at Tisch.

It's hard to believe that the second semester of sophomore year is already half-way over. In early February, I worked on a short film titled "The Hanged Man" for The Tisch 48-Hour Film Festival. For this competition, Tisch students have to write, direct, produce and edit an original film in forty-eight hours. Teams were given a prop, a character and a line of dialogue at the start of the competition that had to be included in the movie - in this case, the prop was cards, the character was a drop-out, and the line of dialogue was "I'm still learning." I was lucky enough to work with a fantastic group of people, including Benjamin Dewey, Nicole Cobb, Bobb Barito, Zeshawn Ali and Celine Comolet, on this particular project.

This semester, I have an incredible variety of classes. My major production class is Sight and Sound: Studio, a television-production class that consists of shooting short scenes in a television studio environment. Shooting the scenes live with your actors and operating with a three-camera set-up is extremely exciting, and the class provides invaluable directing experience, as heavy emphasis is placed on the rehearsal process between the director and the actors (there is a separate class that accompanies Studio, called Rehearsal Techniques, that serves as an acting class for directors).

I am also taking Writing the Short Screenplay with the great professor Nick Tanis; an Italian Cinema course with writer, director, film critic, professor and cultural icon Antonio Monda (who appears in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou as the Festival Director who asks Bill Murray about the scientific purpose of killing the shark); Pre-Production Colloquium with filmmaker Pete Chatmon, preparing screenplays for next semester's intermediate production classes; and The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews, a fascinating history course taught by the brilliant professor David Engel. For Monda's course Hollywood Auteurs, he brought in screenwriter and filmmaker Paul Schrader as a guest to speak about his film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985). I had the pleasure of sitting in on the class and meeting Mr. Schrader, who is my all-time favorite screenwriter (among many other works, he wrote Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out The Dead). In short, it was the highlight of my week.

I am currently co-producing Tisch New Theatre's Spring Mainstage Show, Last Exit No Toll, written by sophomore Rachel Lewis, with my good friend and fellow TNT Officer Alex Fofonoff. The show is scheduled to open in late April at the Kraine Theater in the East Village, and I am incredibly excited to be a part of the production team for this great student work.

The 83rd annual Academy Awards were something of a disappointment, if only because the year's best film, David Fincher's The Social Network, did not walk away with the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars it so richly deserved. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the Oscars during the last four years, when daring and brilliant movies such as Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006), Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (2007) and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker (2009) all won the Best Picture Oscar - I figured the Academy would continue its relatively new tradition of actually awarding the best film. At any rate, The Social Network joins the list of Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990), Pulp Fiction (1994), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Taxi Driver (1976), Citizen Kane (1941), L.A. Confidential (1997), Fargo (1996) and The Aviator (2004) as one of the many masterpieces to have lost Best Picture to a lesser movie.

But there were some very deserving winners at the Oscars, including Christian Bale, who won Best Supporting Actor for his tour-de-force performance in David O. Russell's The Fighter, and Natalie Portman, who won Best Actress for her great work in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. The winner for Best Live Action Short, God of Love, was a particularly exciting win, as writer/director/star Luke Matheny was a graduate student at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts last year, and God of Love was his graduate thesis film at NYU. I was also very happy to see Melissa Leo, Aaron Sorkin, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Wally Pfister, Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs walk away with Academy Awards.

Admittedly, I haven't had the time to see an overabundance of films theatrically this semester, but there are a few titles I can recommend. Miguel Arteta's Cedar Rapids is a disarmingly sweet and funny comedy, with great performances from John C. Reilly, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Ed Helms. Patrick Lussier's Drive Angry: Shot in 3D is every bit as ridiculous and joyously entertaining as it sounds, starring Nicolas Cage at the height of his campy powers. And although I seem to be in the minority, I enjoyed Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet. To be completely honest, most of the movies worth seeing in theaters are late award-season contenders from 2010 (including Mike Leigh's Another Year, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biuitful, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, George Hickenlooper's Casino Jack, Richard J. Lewis' Barney's Version and John Wells' The Company Men).

There is one new release, however, that stands above the rest. Rango is one of the funniest, most original and extraordinarily strange animated films I’ve seen in years. Gore Verbinski, the director of the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, is responsible for the first great movie of 2011. After all, it’s not every animated film that features a villain largely inspired by John Huston’s corrupt character from Chinatown (1974), a trippy dream sequence with Clint Eastwood’s character from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966), an action sequence paying homage to the helicopter attack scene in Apocalypse Now (1979) and a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson. As Roger Ebert notes in his review of the film, “The more movies you’ve seen, the more you may like it."

But more than sending up and paying homage to the western genre (which it does brilliantly), Rango is simply more fun than any children's movie in recently memory. The energy is fueled by Johnny Depp's hilarious performance as Rango, a chameleon who dabbles in performance and playwriting. Rango is unexpectedly forced to protect an Old West town from a water shortage, and through his methods of improvisation, he convinces the town that he's a gunslinger from the West. The performance represents Depp's best work in years - he's genuinely lovable and wonderfully aloof. The supporting characters are incredibly detailed (not to mention very funny), and the animation rivals the aesthetic beauty of the best-looking animated films of all time. Rango is a family film that takes chances and isn't afraid to embrace the bizarre, and the result is incredibly rewarding.

The Best Films of 2010

1. The Social Network (David Fincher)

"How does it feel to be

One of the beautiful people?"

David Fincher's The Social Network is the best film of the year. Although the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard undergraduate who created the website Facebook and subsequently became the youngest billionaire in the world, doesn't sound like material worthy of comparison to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), the comparison is more than justified. Fincher's astounding direction, Aaron Sorkin's brilliant and dense screenplay and the performances - particularly from Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg - are all first-rate. The film brilliantly illustrates both Zuckerberg's apathy toward the Harvard social elite and his desire to somehow be a part of their social network - and in the process, the movie, with its kinetic energy and obsessive characters (one of the film's many resemblances to Fincher's finest film, 2007's Zodiac), chronicles the rise of the smartest man in the room and his ascension to power.

In the end, however, The Social Network is astonishingly powerful not simply because it brilliantly illustrates the twenty-first century rise of brains over brawn, but because it gives us a portrait of a talented young man who, despite having taken the entire social experience of college and put it online, will always remain on the outside looking in, strangely alienated from both the real, physical world (the college parties, normal relationships with other human beings) and the virtual world of his own creation. And it is in this way that we understand and empathize with Mark Zuckerberg. Because, by the end of the film, he's still reaching out for that one thing more unattainable than money, social status or five-hundred million online friends - his own personal Rosebud.

2. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)

Blue Valentine is a film that tore my heart into pieces. Writer/director Derek Cianfrance worked for years to get this gritty, Cassavetes-inspired relationship drama made, and his passion for the project is evident in every frame.

Ryan Gosling, who gives the most fearless, heartbreaking performance of any actor this year, and Michelle Williams, who is equally incredible, play a young married couple whose once-thrilling relationship is now slowly disintegrating. And while certainly both characters have their virtues and faults, I must admit that I haven't connected so strongly or felt so deeply for a character in many years as I did with Gosling's Dean, a genuinely decent young man who wears his heart on his sleeve. Blue Valentine resonated strongly with me, and I have a feeling it's because I saw a lot of myself in Dean (there's one scene near the end, in particular, that frustrated me endlessly, as Dean visits his wife at work and is considered 'a threat' by her co-workers). Blue Valentine is the sort of film that feels ripped straight from personal experience - it's as raw and honest a portrait of young love as I've ever seen, and it's a tragedy that will resonate with anyone who has ever been where this film takes us.

3. Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is a fascinating character drama, an exciting and almost experimental exploration of the human mind, a reinvention of the horror genre and a dynamic acting showcase for its star, the incredible and still very underrated Leonardo DiCaprio. Shutter Island is also an incredibly appropriate entry in the Scorsese canon – it’s a film about an alienated man haunted by his past. Add Teddy Daniels to the list of Scorsese’s tragic and multilayered antiheroes – Jake La Motta, Travis Bickle, Henry Hill, Howard Hughes, Billy Costigan, Rupert Pupkin, Jesus Christ. The film also continues Scorsese's fascination with our understanding of violence (it should be noted that our perception of the lead character's violent actions changes dramatically when watching the film for a second time).

Shutter Island is eerie from the very beginning. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his newly assigned partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) steadily approach an island off the coast of Massachusetts known as Shutter Island, a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Hovering over every scene is a paranoid, post-war anxiety shared explicitly by our protagonist and thoroughly felt and realized by Scorsese. Tensions rise as Teddy recalls horrific memories from liberating a concentration camp during the war, and his suspicions of Nazism and conspiracy by the House of Un-American Activities on the island become our suspicions. The best Scorsese films force the audience to live inside the minds of moderately-to-severely delusional characters weighed down by an enormous and overwhelming guilt. Shutter Island does just that. DiCaprio’s performance is superlative and even more layered than one initially realizes. With this performance, I think it’s safe to say that DiCaprio is the best actor of his generation.

The film is a brilliant melding of film noir, detective mystery and psychological horror, at its very core an exploration of an emotionally disturbed human psyche, disguised as a Hitchcockian thriller that works as both a homage to Scorsese’s favorite psychological thrillers from the 1940s and 1950s while simultaneously elevating itself into something larger and more complicated. When you watch Shutter Island, you're not just watching Scorsese's film – you're watching thousands of classic movies at once, assembled together in a picture conceived by a filmmaker whose encyclopedic knowledge of film history pours into every detail of every frame, so much so that an already-genuinely suspenseful scene of DiCaprio racing up a flight of winding stairs simultaneously serves as a homage to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948). The ranking of Shutter Island behind The Social Network and Blue Valentine is arbitrary - in a year of great films, these three are the best.

4. The Fighter (David O. Russell)

The Fighter is one of the rare films that gives me hope that the gritty, character-driven dramas of the 1970s are not completely dead. Four terrific actors – Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo – are given powerful material and, with David O. Russell behind the camera, they are allowed to dynamically explore some intense and raw relationships in a boxing drama that wisely aims for the realism of Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980) rather than the hokiness of the Rocky films. Bale gives the male performance of the year, in a brilliant, Method-driven portrayal that ranks alongside the best work of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. In fact, The Fighter is the kind of project that would have attracted the talents of De Niro and Pacino years ago. Unsurprisingly, it took Wahlberg five years to get the movie made in the current Hollywood climate.

There’s a scene between Bale and Leo where, in the midst of a tense confrontation, Bale starts singing The Bee Gees' I Started A Joke, and, slowly, leads Leo into singing along with him. It's the sort of uncomfortably honest scene that you don't see in movies anymore. The Fighter undoubtedly features the best ensemble cast of the year.

5. Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)

The films of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu have regularly appeared near the top of my past ten-best lists. 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006) were two of the decade's most powerful films, and in those films, Inarritu directed Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi in some of their finest performances to date. His latest film, Biutiful, stars Javier Bardem, whose performance is head and shoulders above every other male performance this year, with the exception of Ryan Gosling's work in Blue Valentine and Christian Bale's work in The Fighter. If every Academy member went out and saw this extraordinary film, Bardem would almost certainly win the Best Actor Oscar - he is astonishing. With Biutiful, both Bardem and Inarritu are doing the best work of their already impeccable careers.

6. True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen)

“Time just gets away from us.”

There's a moving and unexpectedly emotional resonance in True Grit that I didn't experience fully the first time I saw the film. Joel and Ethan Coen, the most consistently excellent of all American filmmakers, have made a western that stands in brilliant contrast to their nihilistic and grim masterpiece No Country for Old Men. If the latter film captured the disillusionment and brutality of the new West, then True Grit surely captures the heart and the sadness of the old West. Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon give three of the year's best performances, and the screenplay is as dryly hilarious and strangely poetic as the finest of the Coen's works. With the moving hymn Leaning On The Everlasting Arms by Iris DeMent closing the picture, Joel and Ethan Coen offer a softer but no less profound meditation on spirituality than their masterpiece from last year, A Serious Man.

7. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)

I suspect the reason I love Darren Aronofsky so much is because, as Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly pointed out, his films remind me of the early work of Martin Scorsese. Aronofsky's The Wrestler (2008), the best film of that respective year, had a sort of gritty realism that recalled Mean Streets (1973). With Black Swan, Aronofsky once again calls upon an actor to go above and beyond the call of duty, and, just as Mickey Rourke bled for his artful performance in The Wrestler, so does Natalie Portman bleed and suffer here, in a role that should unquestionably win Portman the Best Actress Academy Award. The entire film is disturbingly visceral and haunting, and the supporting cast - particularly Barbara Hershey as a frighteningly possessive mother - is phenomenal. It's the best movie I've ever seen about performance anxiety. In a year of films dealing with psychological trauma, Black Swan may very well remain the finest.

8. Inception (Christopher Nolan)

This breathtakingly original and fascinating film is not a sequel, a remake, a superhero movie or the latest installment in a film franchise. Nolan, who brought gravitas to superhero films with 2005’s Batman Begins and especially 2008’s The Dark Knight, is one of very few commercial American filmmakers taking risks and exploring new territory with his films, and Inception may represent his finest accomplishment yet. The film is a complex and thrilling heist movie, a tragic romance, an exploration of the human psyche and Nolan’s own, seemingly personal commentary on what separates our dreams from our reality. As far as science-fiction thrillers are concerned, Inception is the best of its kind since Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002).

Leonardo DiCaprio, further cementing his status as the best actor of his generation, is Cobb, a ‘dream thief’ who specializes in extracting ideas from people’s minds while they are asleep. What distinguishes Inception from nearly every other big-budgeted action picture in recent memory (particularly James Cameron’s Avatar, which seems less impressive with each passing day) is the film’s sheer originality in concept and execution, and, most importantly, Nolan’s use of a dynamic ensemble of actors, including Marion Cotillard’s deeply felt and powerful performance as Mal, Joseph-Gordon Levitt’s sly and ingeniously underplayed point man Arthur, and Cillian Murphy’s troubled tycoon Fischer, a character so compelling that he deserves his own film. When was the last time a science-fiction action picture broke your heart and engaged your brain simultaneously? With Inception, Nolan has set the bar extremely high for summer entertainment.

9. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle)

Danny Boyle's extraordinary 127 Hours is, quite simply, the most intense and gripping theatrical experience I've had in years. And yet the movie is also one of the most uplifting, life-affirming and joyous odes to the human spirit that I've seen since Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Boyle and his star, current Tisch School of the Arts student James Franco, have taken fascinating true-life material and elevated it to great art. This is masterful filmmaking and features a lead performance from Franco that will be talked about for years to come.

10. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)

The Ghost Writer is one of the year's great surprises - a thrilling, shocking mystery that represents Roman Polanski's finest work in years. This film opened on the same weekend in New York City as Shutter Island, and it was amazing to sit back and watch as two legendary filmmakers, Scorsese and Polanski, showed their younger peers how to direct deliberately-paced and shocking thrillers. As grim as Chinatown (1974) and every bit as entertaining, The Ghost Writer is the sort of movie that would have made Alfred Hitchcock very proud. Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams and Tom Wilkinson give fantastic performances.

There were more than ten excellent films this year, however. Here are fifty-one movies that deserve some recognition. Following the list, I've posted some personal awards.

1. The Social Network

2. Blue Valentine

3. Shutter Island

4. The Fighter

5. Biutiful

6. True Grit

7. Black Swan

8. Inception

9. 127 Hours

10. The Ghost Writer

11. Another Year

12. Hereafter

13. You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

14. Greenberg

15. Animal Kingdom

16. The Town

17. Life During Wartime

18. The Kids Are All Right

19. Somewhere

20. Fair Game

21. I Love You Philip Morris

22. Rabbit Hole

23. Barney's Version

24. Solitary Man

25. Let Me In

26. Get Low

27. Never Let Me Go

28. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

29. Toy Story 3

30. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

31. The American

32. Inside Job

33. A Letter to Elia

34. Please Give

35. Cyrus

36. The King's Speech

37. Enter the Void

38. Winter’s Bone

39. Casino Jack

40. City Island

41. Stone

42. Leaves of Grass

43. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

44. Mother and Child

45. Green Zone

46. Farewell

47. I Am Love

48. The Killer Inside Me

49. Exit Through the Gift Shop

50. The Other Guys

51. Love and Other Drugs

52. Ondine

53. Harry Brown

54. Machete

Best Picture: The Social Network

Runner-Up: Blue Valentine and Shutter Island

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island

Runner-Up: David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Actor: Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine and Javier Bardem, Biutiful

Runner-Up: Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island

Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Runner-Up: Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine and Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Runner-Up: Matt Damon, True Grit

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Runner-Up: Amy Adams, The Fighter and Lesley Manville, Another Year

Best Original Screenplay: Christopher Nolan, Inception

Runner-Up: Blue Valentine and Black Swan

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

Runner-Up: Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit