You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory

I had the most incredible spring semester interning at Sikelia Productions, and I am so excited to continue working there over the summer for my lifetime hero, Martin Scorsese - not to mention his legendary editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and the rest of the gracious and wonderful people at the office. After heading back to Austin for a few days in late May, I am now back in New York City and currently jumping into pre-production on my next film, which I am planning to shoot in late July.

Here's a quick wrap-up of my spring semester, leading into my plans for an exciting and productive summer. In mid-April, my roommate Bobb Barito and I signed a lease on our first-ever apartment in New York City, along with our friend Adam Boese. We are now the proud occupants of an excellent three-bedroom apartment in the Lower East Side - I have included a few pictures of my room throughout this post. Over the summer, in addition to working three days a week as an intern at Sikelia Productions, I will also continue working as a Technical Assistant at Tisch's Post-Production Center.

This past Spring Break, I was lucky enough to have two of my best friends from Austin High School - Cora Walters, who is currently attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon; and Bolton Eckert, who just recently started studying at the Art Institute of Los Angeles - visit me in New York City. It was excellent having them both as guests. Bolton, Bobb and I celebrated Saint Patrick's Day at Shades of Green Pub & Restaurant, where we somehow became fast friends with a very friendly Irish family, as well as members of the Irish rock band The Saw Doctors, who were just returning from a concert. It was great fun.

There are two movies that I've seen this year that I believe deserve extraordinary praise. Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom – the director’s first film since the should-have-been-Oscar-winning animated feature Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) – is the movie event of the summer. This is a poignant and hilarious picture, and on a personal level, I haven’t been so deeply affected by one of Anderson’s films since The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), one of the last films I saw with my father before he passed away. In a New England community in the 1960s, twelve year-old outcasts Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) run away from home together, convinced beyond any doubt that they are in love (once on the adventure, they are aided by Sam’s considerable skills as a Khaki Scout). Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand and Harvey Keitel are among the adults and parents leading a search-and-rescue mission to find Sam and Suzy. Willis and Norton, in particular, do some of their best work in years.

In this film, Anderson beautifully expresses both the joy and melancholy of first love. Even though Moonrise Kingdom does end on a positive note, there’s still a hint of a dissatisfied adulthood waiting for our protagonists by the end of their adventure. Whether Suzy and Sam end up together in the long run is irrelevant – their love will never feel as real and as powerful as it does in their memory. Their utopian ‘moonrise kingdom’ is something the adults have long since abandoned, and soon enough, it will exist only in Suzy and Sam’s memories. Moonrise Kingdom is the only movie I’ve seen this year where a packed audience erupted in applause when the film ended. I would have joined them, but I was busy wiping tears from my eyes. After seeing the film, I got a little wild at Regal Union Square's Rock of Ages booth - here's a link to a truly astonishing video.

On Saturday, April 28th, I saw Bernie, the new film from Austin's own Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Before Sunset), at the Angelika Film Center. In this endlessly funny and sometimes achingly sad true story of small-town murder, actual locals from Carthage, Texas recount the tale of Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), a beloved small-town mortician on trial for murdering a disliked elderly woman (Shirley MacLaine). East Texas is an area that hasn't received much cinematic attention (and an area that I hold close to my heart, having spent quite a bit of my childhood in Hallsville and Longview), and it comes to vivid life as a loving and warped environment in Linklater’s film.

After the screening, Linklater held a Q&A with the audience. I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Linklater both during the Q&A and after the screening, and he remains the quintessential Texas filmmaker. We talked briefly about East Texas, Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, and when I first met him back in 2004 at the Criterion DVD signing of his film Slacker (1991) at Austin's Waterloo Video (see the comparison picture to the right, of Linklater and me through the years). He is such a nice person, and one of the best filmmakers out there. Bernie, which also features career-best performances from Black and Matthew McConaughey, is a testament to Linklater’s enduring genius.

Earlier in April, I served as Assistant Director for my friend Jordan Fein's Intermediate Narrative film White Carpet. It was one of the most ambitious film sets on which I've had the privilege of working - after four days of shooting in Sleepy Hollow, New York, the entire crew was exhausted, but we were proud to have worked so hard on a large-scale student film. In early May, I also served as Assistant Director for a music video directed by my friend Ben Dewey.

The Tisch Dean's Scholars program once again provided me with some extraordinary opportunities this semester. In addition to seeing the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (which I wrote about in my last blog entry), we toured the outstanding Harlem School of the Arts in late March, and for our final event of the semester, we went bowling at Bowlmor Lanes on University Place. As always, I was surrounded by incredible students and the most supportive professors and administrators at Tisch.

On Friday, June 1st, I was lucky enough to see Once on Broadway, the new musical based on the 2007 film. Once is nominated for eleven Tony Awards, and I'd say it deserves just about every one of them. The play manages to capture both the intimacy of the film (which is essentially a two-person movie) while effortlessly transitioning into rousing musical numbers by a talented ensemble of musicians-actors-dancers.

As far as classes are concerned, it was quite a whirlwind to finish everything by mid-May. For my last Developing the Screenplay class, I read the first fifty pages of my feature screenplay in class, and I wrote two final essays for my History of Modern Ireland and Introduction to Performance Studies courses. Finally, for my Intermediate Editing Workshop class, I finished editing my friend Ben Dewey's Intermediate Narrative film Quitting. Now, whether I like it or not, I have to start referring to myself as a senior.

I am very sad to report that the Tisch School of the Arts' Steenbeck Lab, where for decades film students have edited their 16MM Sight and Sound: Film projects by hand, has been dismantled, to be replaced by a computer lab for digital editing in the fall. As far as I know, Intermediate and Advanced Production students will still have access to film equipment for their projects, but all future sophomore classes will not have the opportunity to shoot on black-and-white 16MM film and then edit their pictures by hand, as students have done for over forty years. NYU was one of the last film schools to actively use Steenbecks, and it was only a matter of time before the powers-that-be decided that the machines be discontinued. Despite the fact that most of my larger projects have been shot digitally (mainly for cost reasons), I am a firm believer in the power and importance of film, and my heart sinks when I now pass that eerily empty Steenbeck room. Learning how to use that machine and edit five of my own black-and-white Sight and Sound: Film projects on the Steenbeck was one of the most valuable things I've learned in film school, and I feel fortunate to have been a part of the second-to-last class to take this extraordinary course in its purest form. In honor of the Steenbeck machines, here's my favorite of the five films I made in Sight and Sound: Film, Heart of Gold - shot on 16MM and edited by hand on a Steenbeck.


Heart of Gold from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

Although Moonrise Kingdom and Bernie stand above the rest of this year's theatrical releases, there have been a few other excellent pictures. Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea has the sad power of a fading memory, with a rich, melancholic atmosphere and an extraordinary performance from Rachel Weisz. Mark and Jay Duplass' Jeff, Who Lives at Home doesn't have a cynical bone in its body - the performances are so engaging, the actors so likable and the writing so good, that it's hard to imagine the film not winning someone over. Joss Whedon's The Avengers is a summer superhero thrill-ride with outstanding performances from two of the best working actors, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. (there was a certain satisfaction in seeing a mini-reunion between the two actors, after their memorable pairing in David Fincher's masterpiece Zodiac). Nicholas Stoller's The Five-Year Engagement is a very honest and heartfelt romantic comedy, and another home-run for Stoller, Jason Segel and Judd Apatow (I particularly enjoyed the steady stream of Van Morrison tunes).

In addition, I saw the restoration of Jean Renoir's masterpiece Grand Illusion (1937) at Film Forum this week, and it was an absolutely astonishing print of the picture (as I was heading out of Film Forum, John Turturro and his family were heading in to see Django). And a recent viewing of Elia Kazan's devastatingly powerful and hauntingly beautiful East of Eden (1955) confirmed that, much like John Steinbeck's novel of the same name, the film is a kind of reflection of my values and beliefs as a person.

Oy Oy! Round and Round the Garden, Tisch Gala, The Wheels and Rebecca Miller

On Thursday, April 5th, I had an absolutely extraordinary day. Only a few days prior, I was named the recipient of the Sony Electronics Scholarship by the Tisch School of the Arts. I accepted this award - which included a Sony technology package with an amazing amount of Sony products - at the 2012 Wasserman/ King Awards at the Cantor Film Center on Thursday (the Wasserman/King Awards are a ceremony where the top prizes from the 2012 First Run Festival are also announced - essentially, it's NYU film school's Academy Awards). Thursday, however, was also the opening night of Tisch New Theatre's Mainstage production of Alan Ayckbourn's Round and Round the Garden, in which I was performing as Reg. I arrived at Cantor at 5:45 PM, and luckily, the recipients of the Sony Electronics Scholarship were awarded near the beginning of the ceremony. I went onstage and accepted the award from our wonderful Dean Mary Schmidt Cambell, and then I hail-tailed it to the Kraine Theater on East 4th Street for our first performance of Round and Round the Garden at 7:30 PM. You can click here to view pictures from the 2012 Wasserman/King Awards.

I am so lucky to have been a part of Round and Round the Garden - the play easily ranks among the finest productions in which I've had the good fortune to perform. I'm as proud of this production as any film work I've done while at Tisch, and it was enormously rewarding returning to this particular play after five years (I played Norman in Austin High School's 2007 UIL One-Act production of Round and Round the Garden). The other five actors in the cast - Daniel Richardson (Norman), Taylor Myers (Tom), Kira Kull (Ruth), Flora Greeson (Annie) and Elise Kibler (Sarah) - are extremely talented artists, and after spending so much time with them onstage and offstage, I consider them among my closest friends. Our director, Daniel Hasse (who starred in my film The Wheels) and producer, Bethany McHugh (who serves on the Tisch New Theatre Executive Board with me) are the two oustanding leaders who made the play possible. There's something about this endlessly hilarious and unexpectedly moving play that brings out the love among its cast members - this was true in 2007, and it is still true in 2012. Flipping heck!

After our first performance, I went to celebrate with some of my friends and family who had come to see the production, including Bobb Barito, Ben Dewey, Mike Cheslik, Ani Tomasic, Tom Corbisiero (who played the father in my film The Wheels), Karen McFarlane (who played Lucille in my film With Love, Marty) and, of course, my mother Gretchen and our family friend Leslie Eckert, both of whom flew in from Austin to see the performance. We went to the B Bar & Grill, just down the street from the Kraine Theater, and it was wonderful to be surrounded by my friends.

Like most shows, our Round and Round the Garden company kept getting better with each performance. Luckily, our closing night was filmed by the director himself, and we were never better than during our final performance. After that performance, the cast and crew celebrated at U2 Karaoke Lounge and Suites on Saint Marks. I'll admit to performing a few rousing numbers, among them "Sloop John B" by The Beach Boys and "What's Up?" by 4 Non-Blondes.

From having our incredible poster proudly framed and displayed in the Tisch lobby for many weeks to attracting large and enthusiastic audiences for every performance, my second (and hopefully not final) Round and Round the Garden experience was nothing short of amazing, and another wonderful collaboration with Tisch New Theatre, one of the finest of all Tisch organizations. More than anything, it was exhilarating to get back onstage again. Here is a link to both a feature on Round and Round the Garden on the Tisch School of the Arts website, as well as an article from NYU Local about our production. Congratulations to my fellow cast and members and the crew, and thank you to my friends and family for coming to see the show!

On Thursday, April 19th, I attended the 2012 Tisch Gala After Party at the New York Marriot Marquis. Only a week earlier, the Dean's Scholars had been offered tickets to the After Party, as well as the opportunity to record a special video tribute for Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell, who was being honored for her twentieth year as Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at this year's Gala. I immediately recorded a video thanking Dean Campbell, explaining that, as a Tisch Dean's Scholar, there is no way I could attend this extraordinary school and pursue my dreams if it were not for her support and wonderful leadership. As usual, this year's Tisch Gala was star-studded, with Martin Scorsese, Alec Baldwin, Spike Lee, Tony Kushner, Bill Paxton and Clive Davis among those in attendance and speaking at the event. You can click on this link to see some of the photographs from the Gala.

However, I had no idea that my tribute video would play - in its entirety - for the whole audience at the 2012 Tisch Gala at the Marriot Marquis. As I arrived at the After Party, a few of my professors who were leaving the Gala said that not only was my entire video played, but that I was the only current student featured among the tribute videos honoring Dean Campbell from Tisch graduates (including Ang Lee. This was such an incredible honor, and I was nearly beside myself to learn that Scorsese, Baldwin, Lee and, of course, Dean Campbell - among many others - watched my video (I can assure you that, the next morning while working at Mr. Scorsese's office, I waited for him to recognize me from the video - alas, this did not happen).

The 2012 Tisch Gala After Party was an extraordinary time to spend with friends and celebrate the end of the semester. If you want to view some of the official After Party photographs from the Photo Booth, you can find those here at this website. Here are more official photographs from the event, including the stage and screen where my video played for the crowd.

Earlier on that same Thursday, I had tickets to a Tribeca Talks Director's Series panel called 100 Years of Universal (one of many special events hosted by the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival), during which Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep and Judd Apatow were slated to speak about their films with Universal Pictures. I was enormously excited for this event, as it marked the first time I was able to see De Niro - my lifelong hero (along with Scorsese) and the finest actor in the history of cinema - in person. Ben, Mike and Nicole joined me for this event at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and although Mrs. Streep was unfortunately unable to attend at the last minute, I was overjoyed to hear De Niro speak for an hour about the Tribeca Film Festival, his upcoming projects, his preparation as an actor, and a few memories about the many films he has made at Universal (The Deer Hunter, Casino, Midnight Run, The Good Shepherd). Thank you so much to my godmother, Kay Lee Werlin, for treating my friends and me to this wonderful event!

In other news, the feedback on my film The Wheels has been wonderful around Tisch. The film has received some very high praise from the professors, and I am especially proud of this particular movie. Tisch Professor Geoff Erb invited me to screen The Wheels for his Freshman Colloquium class, as part of a presentation of complex student films that were successfully produced. Professor Erb and his colleagues were very kind in their praise for the film, and on Tuesday, April 24th, I screened the film for his class (essentially half of the entire freshman class) on a large screen at Cantor. After the screening, Ben, Bobb and I came onstage and participated in a Q&A with Professor Erb and the freshman class, detailing the intricate pre-production process of The Wheels and explaining how we successfully worked with the NYU production supervisors and the great people at Deno's Wonder Wheel to shoot a seemingly "un-filmable" student project. It was such an honor presenting and screening my film for the class, and the fact that The Wheels is being used as an example of a successful student film is humbling, to say the least.

In the midst of mailing out DVDs of the film to my IndieGoGo contributers and showing the project to my friends (in addition to an upcoming joint-screening of The Wheels and my producer Erica Rose's film And I Love Her at Tisch), I have slowly but surely been attempting to thank everyone who gave so much support to the film. Please click here to check out The Wheels on IMDB.

Before performing in Round and Round the Garden, I was able to join the Tisch Dean's Scholars to see the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, directed by the legendary Mike Nichols and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield. I was anticipating this production more than any Broadway performance in recent memory, as Miller's work has such a profound influence on me, and the teaming of Hoffman and Nichols was almost too good to be true. I do not exaggerate when I say that Death of a Salesman was the best piece of live theatre I have ever seen - as the curtain went down on the performance, tears were streaming down my face. I have never been so moved by any theatrical performance in my life. I cannot thank the Tisch Dean's Scholars program enough for the tickets to this extraordinary revival, which is now nominated for several Tony Awards.

After the performance, Nicole and I waited outside the Stage Door as many famous faces emerged from backstage, including Mike Nichols, Andrew Garfield, Liza Minneli and Alan Alda. But what was truly amazing about the experience was being able to talk about the performance with my directing professor Rebecca Miller (Arthur Miller's daughter). She has taught me so much about directing actors this semester, whether through coaching me as I directed my final scene from Michael Mann's The Insider (1999) in class, or giving insight into her own films, such as The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009). She is an extraordinary professor, and her directorial wisdom has made an indelible impression on me - I am so honored to have had such a remarkable person as my professor. Luckily, I have had the opportunity to tell her how much of an impact her films - particularly The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), starring her husband, Daniel-Day Lewis - have made on me. Here is a link to a fascinating article on the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman that opens with extraordinary praise from Professor Miller.

Speaking of Broadway, while my mother and Mrs. Eckert were visiting New York City, I had the pleasure of joining them to see Gore Vidal's The Best Man on Broadway at the Schoenfeld Theater, directed by Michael Wilson and starring James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, Candice Bergen, John Larroquette, Eric McCormack and Michael McKean. Filled to the brim with incredibly talented actors and impeccably directed by Mr. Wilson, The Best Man was an outstanding production. After the play ended, I had the good opportunity to see Mrs. Lansbury exit the Stage Door and greet her many fans. At eighty-six years old, she is still astounding audiences with her performances.

There are many other experiences from this semester that I will report in my next blog post. The end of this semester - with Round and Round the Garden performances, the Wasserman/ King Awards, working extra days at my internship, apartment-hunting for the summer, Assistant-Directing a most ambitious Intermediate Narrative film, submitting The Wheels to films festivals and mailing out DVDs of the movie, preparing for a summer film project, writing my feature screenplay for Developing the Screenplay, directing my final scene for Rebecca Miller's class, editing Ben Dewey's Intermediate Narrative film Quitting and keeping up with my classes - has been exhausting. I will close by expressing my deep sadness regarding the death of Levon Helm, one of the finest musicians of all time. I encourage everyone to watch Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz (1978) to witness Helm's breathtaking musical performance, or listen to Helm's wonderful songs (both with The Band and his solo work) in his remembrance. His voice, his music and his power will never fade away.

Lastly, Sunday, April 29th marked the ten-year anniversary of the death of my father, John Kyser. If you knew him, hold on to his memory. He was a wonderful father and a great man, and I miss him every day.

That Her Face, At First Just Ghostly, Turned A Whiter Shade of Pale

Although I still have many things to report from my fall semester and winter break, I want to write a little bit about my spring semester thus far. Starting in January, I have been interning at Martin Scorsese's office, Sikelia Productions, which is nothing short of a dream come true for me. If you know me, then you know that Mr. Scorsese has been my hero since I was eleven years old. In my review of Hugo, I wrote: "I await a new Scorsese movie the same way some anticipate a sort of religious experience. His work is such a fundamentally important part of my life that there are times when I don't know how much I originally found similarities between my personal demons and Scorsese's work, and how much Scorsese's work ultimately influenced my behavior." In short, it has been the honor of a lifetime to work at his office this semester. Here's a link to a recent CBS News look inside Mr. Scorsese's office.

In February, I auditioned for and was subsequently cast in Tisch New Theatre's Spring Mainstage production of Alan Ayckbourn's Round and Round the Garden. I have written in many previous posts about my enormous love for this play, as I starred in Austin High School's 2007 UIL One-Act Play production of Round and Round the Garden as Norman, and the other cast members in that production became some of my best friends to this day (including Lucas Loredo and Cora Walters). That production of Round and Round the Garden advanced to the Texas State Championship (the first Austin High production to do so in eighteen years), and along the way, I was named Best Actor at the Zone, District and Area competitions, and won All-Star Cast awards at the Regional and State competitions. Out of the twenty-three plays in which I performed at Austin High, Round and Round the Garden will always remain closest to my heart.

I am incredibly excited for this new production, in which I am playing Reg. The other five cast members are brilliant performers, and our director, Daniel Hasse, is doing a fantastic job. The performance dates for Round and Round the Garden are April 5th, 6th and 7th at 7:30 PM at the historic Kraine Theatre in the East Village (last year, my friend Alexander Fofonoff and I produced Tisch New Theatre's Spring Mainstage production of Last Exit No Toll at the Kraine, and so it is nice to return to a familiar stage). Last semester, Daniel starred in my Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels; now the tables have turned, and he is directing me.

Tisch New Theatre recently put up our IndieGoGo fundraising page for Round and Round the Garden, and I highly encourage you to contribute to this fantastic production if you can! Here is the link to the IndieGoGo page, as well as our promotional video:

Finally, after one final ADR session last Friday, my Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels is completely finished. I sent the following update to my wonderful IndieGoGo contributors just a few weeks ago regarding the current status of the film:

Dear Contributors,

It’s been about three months since my crew and I finished shooting The Wheels, and now, the final film is nearly complete. I wanted to update all of you regarding its production status as my team and I head into the final leg of post-production.

About two weeks ago, my cinematographer Benjamin Dewey began color-correcting the film in a finishing suite at Tisch. After fine-tuning the colors over the course of several evenings, Ben succeeded in giving the picture a haunting, faded look, similar to that of an old photograph or a distant memory. I sat in on the process and watched as Ben worked his magic, and I feel so lucky to have him and so many talented others working on this project.

After the color-correction process, Ben helped design the closing titles to the film. We are meeting for a final time tomorrow evening to tweak some small picture details in After Effects. Ben recently posted his new Cinematography Reel for Fall 2011, and it includes some color-corrected footage from The Wheels. If you have a chance, make sure to watch his reel below, which features clips from many outstanding projects that he shot last semester (including The Wheels). Here is Ben's reel:

Ben is also currently working on the poster for The Wheels (he created a beautiful poster for my last film, With Love, Marty). As soon as the poster for The Wheels is completed, I will send the image out to all of you.

My roommate, good friend and sound designer extraordinaire Bobb Barito is currently putting the finishing touches on the sound design, and his work is extraordinary. Once that is completed, The Wheels will be entirely finished. Once again, thank you all so much for your support of this project – it means the world to me, and my wonderful crew and I would not have had the opportunity to make this movie if it were not for your generosity. I very much look forward to showing you the final film.

Sincerely,

Jack Kyser

My classes this semester are absolutely amazing. My favorite class is Directing the Actor, as my professor is Rebecca Miller, the acclaimed writer and director of The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009), wife of Daniel Day-Lewis, and daughter of Arthur Miller. I was hoping more than anything to have Mrs. Miller as my directing professor, and she is an outstanding teacher. Two weeks ago, I directed a scene from Michael Mann's The Insider in front of Mrs. Miller and my Directing the Actor class, which was a thrilling experience. Her comments and criticism of my direction were invaluable, and the two actors I cast in the scene were enormously talented.

I am also taking Developing the Screenplay, a wonderful screenwriting class taught by the great writer Ken Dancyger. He's a brilliant professor, and, after pitching my feature screenplay in front of the class and meeting with him privately, I feel motivated and energized to continue writing my feature script. My other classes include Intermediate Editing, where I am editing Ben Dewey's Intermediate Narrative film Quitting (I was also the Assistant Director on that film last semester) on AVID; Introduction to Performance Studies; and History of Modern Ireland, a class at NYU's Glucksman Ireland House.

I have served as Assistant Director on two projects so far this semester. Most recently, I was the Assistant Director for my friend Nicole Cobb's Intermediate Experimental film Athanasia's Waltz, one of the best projects I've had the privilege to work on. After weeks of location scouting in Red Hook and across Brooklyn, as well as sitting in on rehearsals with Nicole and her two very talented actors, the picture was shot last weekend in Brooklyn with an incredibly supportive crew. As soon as I receive the production stills from the set, I will post them on this blog. In the meantime, here is a link to the page for Athanasia's Waltz on Nicole's website.

I also worked as Assistant Director for Ben's Intermediate Short Commercial Form project Don't Try This At Home in late February, with a small crew that included Ben, Bobb and Jon Annunziata. On the last day of February, I presented my Dean's Scholars Collaborative Project to the Tisch Dean's Scholars, where I collaborated on a small project with another film major and a photography student. That incredible program, to which I devoted an entire post earlier this year, has some amazing events lined up for this semester that I will share in the coming weeks.

With regard to this year's Academy Awards - first of all, I was ecstatic on the morning of the Oscar nominations, as Hugo led with eleven nominations, and both The Tree of Life and Terrence Malick were nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, respectively. Yes, there were many omissions (We Need to Talk About Kevin, Margaret, Take Shelter, Shame and Young Adult were completely ignored), but the triumph for Hugo lifted my spirits - at least until the Oscar ceremony.

My heart was a little broken this time last year, when David Fincher and The Social Network lost their Oscars to a less deserving picture. But this year was much worse. I hadn't been this close to the Oscar race since 2007, when Scorsese won his first Best Director Oscar for The Departed. There is no question that Scorsese deserved this year's Oscar - not simply because he has a long history of losing to inferior films, but because he made the best film of the year, Hugo. Although I was very happy to see Hugo win richly-deserved Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects, nothing stings as badly as watching the most deserving film lose the top awards - particularly when it loses them to a charming and inoffensive silent picture that appeals mainly to people who haven't seen many silent films. Oh, well - history will be the judge. The Artist joins Dances with Wolves, Ordinary People, Chicago and Rocky. Hugo, meanwhile, joins Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Gangs of New York and The Aviator.

Additionally, for the second year in a row, many performers who deserved to win the Best Actor Oscar (Leonardo DiCaprio for J. Edgar, Michael Shannon for Take Shelter, Michael Fassbender for Shame) were not even nominated. Meanwhile, the extraordinary performances that were nominated (Brad Pitt for Moneyball, Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Clooney for The Descendants) failed to win the Oscar. On a positive note, I was very happy that Christopher Plummer, Woody Allen and Alexander Payne all received Academy Awards.

I have seen several films since I returned to New York City, including two outstanding holdovers from 2011 - Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, which deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus, a brilliant and brutal Shakespeare adaptation with incredible performances from Fiennes, Jessica Chastain and Vanessa Redgrave, who unquestionably should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. New 2012 releases that I have admired include Paul Weitz's Being Flynn, with an unforgettable performance from our finest living actor, Robert De Niro (a performance that will hopefully result in an Oscar nomination for De Niro, after his astounding recent work in Stone and Everybody's Fine went overlooked); David Wain's ferociously funny Wanderlust, delightfully full of that unmistakable Wain humor (the best bit, besides an outrageously funny mirror-monologue from Paul Rudd, is a morning news show with Wain, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black doing their thing); and Tony Kaye's Detachment, an immensely powerful film with an excellent lead performance from Adrien Brody. Note: Michael Showalter is a professor at the Tisch Schools of the Arts, and when I see him at Tisch, it's hard not to express my enthusiasm for his work, from the brilliant Wet Hot American Summer to his appearance in Wanderlust - so, instead, I'll express my love here. Mr. Showalter, you are a comic genius.

Finally, here's a comedy short for which I served as Assistant Director last semester - Surprise! - from the new sketch comedy group Unlikely Allies. My friend Mike Cheslik directed the short, and Bobb did the sound - take a look!

The (Rest of the) Best Films of 2011

After listing The Ten Best Films of 2011 in an earlier post, I want to talk about the year's other great movies - and there were many. In fact, my second Top Ten are all films that would easily make the final ten in a weaker year. 2011 was a particularly strong year for movies, in my opinion, and all fifty-six of these titles are worth your time and consideration (and believe me - plenty of worthy films were left off the list entirely).

11. Shame (Steve McQueen)

Shame is an uncomfortably vivid and raw portrait of Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a sex addict in New York City. Oh, but the film is about so much more, touching on our fear of emotional intimacy in the twenty-first century and examining addiction and self-abuse more profoundly than any film since Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas (1995). Director Steve McQueen shoots most of the movie in long, unbroken takes that are extraordinarily uncomfortable and effective. Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, as Brandon’s sister, give two of the year’s best performances.

12. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)

In the midst of an almost unbearable summer full of superhero garbage and brainless sequels, Woody Allen released Midnight in Paris only seven months after the release of You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, his 2010 offering (which, although critically maligned, I found every bit as profound and affecting as Midnight in Paris). 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. 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. 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). 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.

13. Beginners (Mike Mills)

Beginners is one of the most heartfelt movies I’ve seen in a long time, and it features two of the most touching love stories of the year – the first, between Ewan McGregor and his dying father, Christopher Plummer; and the other, between McGregor and Melanie Laurent. In any other year, Beginners would have easily placed very high on my top ten list. Plummer is deservedly winning many of this year’s Best Supporting Actor accolades.

14. Moneyball (Bennett Miller)

Expertly directed by Bennett Miller and featuring brilliant performances from Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Moneyball opened exactly one year after the release of David Fincher's brilliant The Social Network - another talky, fact-based account of recent-year events written by Aaron Sorkin, who co-wrote Moneyball with Steve Zaillian. Both movies are relentlessly fascinating, and they serve as rare examples of high art and popular entertainment. If every major studio release were as smart and compelling as Moneyball, it would be a golden age for cinema. Pitt gives yet another outstanding performance (after his extraordinary work earlier this year in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life) as Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who, in 2002, changed the game of baseball by using new and radical methods to select players for the team. Moneyball works as just about everything - a rousing sports movie, a powerful character study, an involving look inside the politics behind baseball and, most notably, superb entertainment for all audiences - baseball fans or not.

15. Young Adult (Jason Reitman)

For some people, high school is easily forgettable, a simple opening chapter to a larger and better life. But in Mercury, Minnesota, high school is the life experience that defines everyone and follows them to the end of their lives. Mavis (Charlize Theron), the heroine of Jason Reitman’s incendiary and brilliant Young Adult, escaped Mercury and fled to the big city – Minneapolis – at a young age, becoming a somewhat successful author of young adult novels. Divorced, unhappy and a bitter alcoholic, Mavis returns to Mercury at the opening of Young Adult to win back her now-married high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), who she believes is unhappy in his marriage. Yes, Mavis suffers from delusions, and yet the film doesn’t ignore the delusions and imperfections of the small town people, as well. At one point, Mavis tells her parents that she thinks she’s an alcoholic. Both her mother and her father laugh it off, and we immediately understand a bit of the genesis of her problem. But Young Adult isn’t afraid to embrace Mavis’ delusions and even bypass that whole redemption nonsense by the film’s end, opting for a startlingly honest and bold closing chapter.

This is a sad film with characters who reek of desperation, and the result is a little uncomfortable (it shares a number of similarities, in fact, with Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece The King of Comedy). Diablo Cody wrote the screenplay, and for my money, she eclipses the work she did in Juno (2007). The movie is harsh and oftentimes a little bleak – but the film – and Theron’s character – are also right on the money. The last thirty minutes of Young Adult are as biting, risky and audacious as anything I’ve seen in a mainstream comedy in years.

16. We Bought A Zoo (Cameron Crowe)

I’m embarrassed to admit the number of times Cameron Crowe’s We Bought A Zoo brought tears to my eyes. A deeply personal filmmaker, Crowe ranks among my favorite directors, and his movies – from Jerry Maguire (1996) to Almost Famous (2000) – are full of heart, hope and absolute sincerity. We Bought A Zoo also features many perfect soundtrack moments (a signature of Crowe’s pictures) with Cat Stevens’ Don’t Be Shy, Bob Dylan’s Buckets of Rain and a powerful original score by Jonsi adding to the warm atmosphere. In the center of the picture is an honest and soulful lead performance from the endlessly talented Matt Damon that stands alongside the other moving portraits of single fathers this year (The Descendants, Moneyball). With a wonderful supporting cast (Thomas Haden Church! Peter Riegert! Scarlett Johansson!), We Bought A Zoo is a genuine movie about a family in grief moving forward. The human comedies of Cameron Crowe, Alexander Payne and Jason Reitman are the kind of pictures I want to make, and I'm overjoyed that all three of those filmmakers released new films this year.

17. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)

Ryan Gosling – who, if you recall, deserved last year’s Best Actor Academy Award for Blue Valentine (2010) – continues his streak of excellent performances with this thrilling neo-noir directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, who won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Drive is a rewarding, pulpy masterpiece – partially resembling both the Los Angeles noirs of Michael Mann and the 1980s romances of John Hughes (that Hughes comparison comes straight from Gosling himself, in fact). There’s nothing ironic about the film, though – it’s meant to be taken seriously, and it features one of the most fascinating and complex antiheroes of the year.

18. The Ides of March (George Clooney)

George Clooney’s The Ides of March is the sort of film that almost doesn’t exist anymore – a serious adult drama starring Hollywood’s finest working actors released by a major studio. Ryan Gosling undergoes a Michael Corleone-esque transformation as a naïve staff member for an inspiring presidential candidate (Clooney) battling to win the Ohio Democratic primary. It goes without saying that the performances from Gosling, Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti are outstanding.

19. Warrior (Gavin O’Connor)

The personal drama among estranged brothers, Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan (Joel Edgerton), and their alcoholic father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), paves the way for a rousing series of Mixed Martial Arts tournaments in Warrior. Brendan fights for his family’s survival (they are in desperate need of money), while war hero Tommy fights for the family of a fallen soldier. Paddy trains Tommy, while desperately seeking to regain the love of both of his sons. Warrior is a heart tugging, emotionally satisfying sports film that will easily resonate with audiences – I heard cheering and applause regularly in my theater during the second half of the movie. But while the film’s fighting scenes are wonderfully directed, it’s the human drama – the time that director Gavin O’Connor spends outside the ring with his characters – that makes Warrior such a powerhouse. Hardy and Edgerton, two excellent actors, are given the spotlight, and they are never anything less than brilliant. But Nolte’s performance is perhaps the best of his entire career. There’s an incredibly touching scene near the end of the picture in which Paddy has relapsed into his alcoholism, and Tommy finally breaks from his stone exterior and comforts his father. It’s more likely to make you weep than anything in the film’s stunning finale.

20. Rampart (Oren Moverman)

Woody Harrelson gives the performance of a lifetime as a corrupt Los Angeles police officer in Rampart, an outstanding film from Oren Moverman. “I’m not a racist,” Dave Brown (Harrelson) says. “I hate all people equally.” He may be telling the truth, and the most disturbing part of Rampart is watching Dave as he tries to do the right thing, in his own perverse and corrupt way. A decidedly different but equally powerful take on the Bad Lieutenant films, Rampart is its own modern-day Raging Bull (1980) or Taxi Driver (1976). Harrelson and Moverman previously collaborated on 2009's The Messenger, which established Moverman as one of the great new filmmakers.

21. The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)

The Artist is a wonderfully charming film. Any hesitation on the part of audiences to see a silent, black-and-white film will hopefully be eradicated by the overwhelming critical praise the film has received since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

22. A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)

Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender are absolutely wonderful in this involving and incredibly engaging film from director David Cronenberg. The deep focus shots are stunning.

23. Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog)

I saw Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss at its Opening Night Gala presentation at the DOC NYC Festival. I was particularly excited for this Herzog film, as it explores the story of a death row inmate in Huntsville, Texas convicted of murdering three people, and his accomplice, who is serving a jail sentence of forty years. The film, which studies the impact of the murders on the surrounding community, is astonishingly powerful, and Herzog allows us to see the humanity of everyone involved in this tragedy – the victims, their family members and even the murderers themselves. There is so much sadness and regret in the film, and yet Herzog shows us that beyond this horrible tragedy, there is still life and love among the survivors. It's rare that I see a movie where I feel so strongly for so many characters - or subjects, I should say – all of them so honest and so human. In the live discussion after the film, Herzog spoke about his stance on the death penalty and the process behind making the film. After the discussion, my friends and I talked briefly with Mr. Herzog about Texas and his Rogue Film School, which I'm hoping he brings back to New York City in the near future.

24. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)

To quote Roger Ebert, Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff is "the first film I've seen that evokes what must have been the reality of wagon trains to the West." A gorgeously filmed, immersive mood piece starring Michelle Williams (the best actress of her generation), Meek's Cutoff is destined to become an art-house classic.

25. 50/50 (Jonathan Levine)

How much did I love 50/50? When Joseph Gordon-Levitt tells Anna Kendrick, "I wish you were my girlfriend," my heart melted a little bit.

26. Everything Must Go (Dan Rush)

When I say I wish I had made this film, I mean that wholeheartedly. Everything Must Go is 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.

27. Margin Call (J.C. Chandor)

Everything about J.C. Chandor's debut feature film Margin Call is absolutely first-rate, particularly its brilliant screenplay and outstanding performances from Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons. When I saw the film at New York’s Angelika, Chandor spoke afterward about the challenges of making a movie about the “bad guys” on Wall Street. I eagerly anticipate his next work.

28. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)

Sean Durkin's film Martha Marcy May Marlene is a major triumph not only for the filmmakers and stars Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes, but also for the Tisch School of the Arts, from which a wave of new talent has made its way into cinemas.

29. War Horse (Steven Spielberg)

After a three-year absence, it's nice to have Steven Spielberg back with a new directorial work. War Horse is a beautiful and crowd-pleasing picture, and the battle scenes are quite outstanding.

30. Carnage (Roman Polanski)

Roman Polanski's adaptation of God of Carnage is just as much fun as the Broadway stage version (performances from both are outstanding - I don't see a reason to compare). While the film lacks the immediacy of a live performance, we do get a claustrophobic sense of what house arrest must have been like for Polanski.

The Rest:

31. Another Earth (Mike Cahill)

32. Win Win (Thomas McCarthy)

33. Contagion (Steven Soderbergh)

34. Terri (Azazel Jacobs)

35. Submarine (Richard Ayoade)

36. Rango (Gore Verbinski)

37. Source Code (Duncan Jones)

38. The Guard (John Michael McDonagh)

39. Tabloid (Errol Morris)

40. The Beaver (Jodie Foster)

41. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird)

42. Crazy, Stupid, Love. (Glenn Ficarra)

43. My Week With Marilyn (Simon Curtis)

44. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)

45. Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)

46. Our Idiot Brother (Jesse Peretz)

47. Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times (Andrew Rossi)

48. Super 8 (J.J. Abrams)

49. Hanna (Joe Wright)

50. A Better Life (Chris Weitz)

51. The Muppets (James Bobin)

52. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog)

53. The Future (Miranda July)

54. Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon)

55. The Conspirator (Robert Redford)

56. Cedar Rapids (Miguel Arteta)

My Semester with the Tisch Dean's Scholars

During my Fall 2011 semester at New York University, I was once again very honored to participate in many exciting activities with the Tisch Dean's Scholars. I have written in previous posts about many of the amazing opportunities that this program has offered over the past three years - including the Scholars' private luncheon with Alec Baldwin, tours of nearly every department at Tisch, our invitations to Broadway performances (including Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and David Mamet's Race) and meeting and talking with the actors after the performances, including Robin Williams and Kerry Washington. In this post, I want to highlight some of the amazing opportunities we were given this fall.

The past semester opened with a Dean's Reception in the Dean's Conference Room at Tisch, where returning scholars, including my good friend and fellow film student Nicole Cobb, welcomed the Tisch Dean's Scholars Class of 2015 and met with our wonderful Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell. I was unfortunately unable to attend an early September weekend trip to Dia: Beacon (because of a mandatory weekend safety tech for my Intermediate Narrative course). But on Wednesday, September 14th, I joined the scholars for an extraordinary New York Mets game at Citi Field stadium in Queens. Not only did we have our own private suite (courtesy of the extremely generous Cohen family) and private box seats for the game, we were joined by Dean Campbell, Associate Dean Louis Scheeder, Associate Dean Robert Cameron and film professor Yemane Demissie (my advisor at Tisch) for the game. We were served a delicious dinner and watched a great game between the Mets and the Washington Nationals with the best possible seats in the stadium. Not only was this an extraordinary experience for the scholars to spend time together, but it was also a great opportunity to get to know these fantastic deans at Tisch. Dean Scheeder, for instance, is a brilliant director and professor (the founder and director of The Classical Studio, among many other accomplishments), but he also knows everything about baseball. Sitting next to him during the Mets game, I learned more about baseball than I could have ever imagined.

Later in September, the scholars were invited to a dinner at Cafe Espanol, a very famous Spanish restaurant on Bleeker Street. Aside from these amazing outings, the regular Dean's Scholars meetings are held in the Tisch Office of Student Affairs at 726 Broadway. In October, the upperclassmen scholars shared our work with the younger scholars. In my case, I screened two of my Sight and Sound: Film projects from my sophomore year. In November and December, we were given private tours of both the Tisch Dance department and the Drama department. On Thursday, November 10th, the scholars experienced an evening with NYU Photography professor Shelley Rice, where she "[led] a lively discussion [and] debate on social media and interactions through technology," as described by one of our fantastic and dedicated leaders, Professor Chris Chan Roberson.

On Thursday, November 17th, the scholars were invited to a dance performance by the amazing HT Chen and Company on Mulberry Street. We were served dinner at the historic Chen Dance Center, and before and after the performance, we were offered a chance to talk with Mr. Chen. During the actual performance, warm green tea and food were readily available on small tables next to our seats. It was an outstanding dance performance, and another incredible New York experience about which I wouldn't have known if it weren't for the Dean's Scholars program.

This is somewhat unrelated to the amazing opportunities provided by the Dean's Scholars program, but on Wednesday, November 2nd, my good friend Jeremy Keller invited me to the DOC NYC Festival's Opening Night Gala presentation of Into the Abyss, the latest documentary from legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog. The event was held at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, and Mr. Herzog, one of the greatest living filmmakers, participated in a discussion after the screening. I attended the premiere with Jeremy not only excited to see the powerful new movie from an iconic director, but also with the hope of meeting and talking with the man himself.

As Jeremy and I walked into Skirball, Mr. Herzog stood near the front of the lobby, talking with one of our friends who also attended the screening. Both before and after the movie, Mr. Herzog was an extremely approachable man and kindly fielded many questions from the admirers surrounding him. Jeremy and I arrived in time to grab some perfect seats in the auditorium, and as soon as Into the Abyss started, I was absorbed by the documentary. I was particularly excited for this particular Herzog film, as it explores the story of a death row inmate in Huntsville, Texas convicted of murdering three people, and his accomplice, who is serving a jail sentence of forty years. The film, which studies the impact of the murders on the surrounding community, is astonishingly powerful, and Herzog allows us to see the humanity of everyone involved in this tragedy - the victims, their family members and even the murderers themselves. There is so much sadness and regret in the film, and yet Herzog shows us that beyond this horrible tragedy, there is still life and love among the survivors. It's rare that I see a movie where I feel so strongly for so many characters - or subjects, I should say - all of them so honest and so human. In the live discussion after the film, Herzog spoke about his stance on the death penalty and the process behind making the film. After the discussion, my friends and I talked briefly with Mr. Herzog about Texas (Nicole, who attended the Opening Night Gala, is also from Texas) and his Rogue Film School, which I'm hoping he brings back to New York City in the near future.

I hope to write soon about some more of the amazing experiences from my Fall 2011 semester. I am grateful to the Tisch Dean's Scholars program for providing so many incredible opportunities every semester. By the way, if you're interested, here's my friend Shaun Kim's freshman year Frame and Sequence final project - an old relic from the spring of 2010, in which I appear. Take a look: