German cinema is mourning the loss of two greats this week, composer Peer Raben and actress Gisela Uhlen. The news of their deaths should be especially heartbreaking to fans of Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, since it features the talents of both. Raben, who died Sunday at the age of 66, collaborated with Fassbinder on most of the director's films, including Querelle, which unfortunately earned the composer three Razzie nominations. Despite that one moment of fault, though, Raben was the recipient of a lifetime achievement honor at the 2006 World Soundtrack Awards.

In addition to scoring Fassbinder's major works, he also wrote original music for Wong Kar Wai's 2046 and The Hand (Wong Kar Wai's segment of the portmanteau Eros), Barbet Schroeder's Tricheurs and a restored version of Pandora's Box. And he occasionally wrote, directed, acted, produced. Uhlen died on January 16 at the age of 87. She had worked fairly steady as an actress for the past 70 years, though the aforementioned Fassbinder film is probably the work she's most known for in the States. It is also the film that brought her the one German Film Award she would ever receive. The only film that I have seen her in (I know, I need to see more Fassbinder) is Totò the Hero, and her death reminds me that it is disappointingly still unavailable on DVD in America.

On the Los Angeles Times website, Tom O'Neil offers a fascinating look at the voting behind the National Society of Film Critics Awards. As I reported in yesterday's post on the group's honorees, it took six ballots for Capote to be chosen as best picture - the details of the voting, however, are fascinating. The first ballot is conducted either in person or by proxy, so the vote of each member, whether they're at the meeting or not (this year's was held in New York, at Sardi's restaurant). After those 55 votes were counted, A History of Violence was in first place, but its lead over Brokeback Mountain was not substantial enough to give it an outright victory. As a result, a second vote was taken, but this time only the 26 critics at the meet were allowed to vote. In round two, those present listed their three favorites (awarding three points to the one at the top of their personal list) of the five films that received the most votes in round one: Violence, Brokeback, 2046, Capote, and The World. Still with me?

After the second round, A History of Violence had taken a substantial lead over Brokeback Mountain, but it still didn't have enough points to win (a winner must have the most points and be listed on the majority of ballots). If no winner has been chosen by the fifth round, the rules stipulate that only the top thee vote-getters - in this case, A History of Violence, 2046, and Capote - compete; after that vote, 2046 had the fewest points and was dropped. So, in round six, the remaining voters simply chose between the works of Bennett Miller and David Cronenberg. As we know, Capote won - but the victory was by a single vote.

O'Neil's article also lists the vote totals (and number of ballot) for the other major categories and is worth a read - it's not often we're allowed a behind-the-scenes look at how the winners of major awards are selected.

After six ballots, the 55 film writers who make up with National Society of Film Critics chose Capote as the best film of 2005. In the second spot was A History of Violence, followed by a film that has received little notice this awards season, Wong Kar-Wai's 2046. Capote star Philip Seymour Hoffman also received top honors for his work as Truman Capote, just beating out The Squid and the Whale star Jeff Daniels for the honor. The gay cowboy, er, sheepherder, himself, Heath Ledger, finished third.

Refreshingly, apart from that whole Capote thing, this group of critics didn't really follow the 2005 awards trends, and ended up giving their prizes to a fairly diverse group of people and films. Other major winners were David Cronenberg, who took home the best director award (for A History of Violence), and Reese Witherspoon, who was named best actress for Walk the Line. Additionally, the rarely-mentioned pair of Ed Harris (A History of Violence) and Amy Adams (Junebug), won the supporting awards, while Noah Baumbach picked up yet another screenwriting nod for the hilarious, acerbic The Squid and the Whale.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai has a clear affection for the Cannes Film Festival, and Cannes has long returned his love. Starting in 1997 when Happy Together won Wong best director honors at the Festival, whenever his work appears there it is received with gushing praise. in 2000, In the Mood for Love was a Palme d'Or nominee, and his follow-up to that film, 2046, was recognized in the same way.

Now, though, Cannes has honored the director in an entirely different way: he's been selected to head the jury of this year's Festival. Though I've never full understood exactly how much power a festival's jury chair holds, the appointment is nevertheless both a recognition of Wong and of the rising status of Asian cinema on the world stage. It'll be interesting to see if any of Wong's fingerprints will be discernible when the jury hands out its awards this spring, or if the logic behind them will be just as murky as it usually is.

With an absurd amount of "best of" lists floating around the internet this week, there haven't been many that focus solely on movie trailers. In fact, I searched around a bit and couldn't find one. It's somewhat sad because studios and filmmakers rely so heavily on trailers to convince people to see their movie that, when it comes time to honor the year that was, these poor suckers are kicked to the curb like an old toy or a half-eaten slice of pizza.

So, in an attempt to highlight some of what we here at Cinematical think were the best trailers of 2005, I've gone and put together a unique year-end top ten list. Keep in mind, this list has nothing to do with the way the actual movie turned out, good or bad. This "best of" list is all about the trailers. The visuals. The music. The action. The emotions. The giddy feeling of anticipation that one can only get after their first peek at a blockbuster release. From epic to indie. From funny to sad. From January to December. Folks, we're looking at the best of 2005 on this week's Trailer Park...

Film writing, just like everything else, has been affected by the speed at which we live:  we're all (myself very much included) moving too quickly most of the time to sit down and really absorb things. So, instead, we read RSS summaries of articles. We watch Headline News to get the gist of what's happening in the world. We send abbreviation-laden text messages instead of actually speaking. Things that are thoughtful and sophisticated and pointed get brushed aside, if they even exist at all.

All of that is why Graham Fuller's extraordinary essay (from, of all places, The Village Voice) on a single still from 2046 is something everyone who loves film should read. Whether you agree with him or not, Fuller's carefully developed piece shows such depth of knowledge and thought that it serves to remind all of us just how inspiring film writing can be. And, indeed, to reassure us of the simple, irresistible power of cinema.

• Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers topped the indie box office take this weekend, with Wong Kar Wai's 2046 coming in a very respectable second. Broken Flowers took in over $780K its opening weekend - not a bad take, considering that Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, only took in $3 mil total. Looks like long-time indie fave Jarmusch might be on his way to his biggest commercial success to date.
• Beverly Kills, a film about an aging drag queen out for revenge (a screen shot from the film is at right), which has been making the festival circuit, has scored distribution from TLA Releasing. The film won the best men's feature award at the Fort Worth Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. TLA will release the film in mid-2006.
• The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, a documentary about the murder of a black man in Mississippi in 1955, has been acquired by ThinkFilm US. The two men tried in the case were acquitted by an all-white jury. The film's New York premiere will take place at the United Nations through the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, with attendees including Mos Def and Al Sharpton.
• Organizers of the Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off September 8, has announced the addition of 29 international documentaries to the festival lineup, including the world premieres of Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry, Lian Lunson's Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man, and The Heart of the Game, a film about a girl's basketball team which finds success under a maverick coach.

As a filmmaker, Wong Kar Wai has two essential modes: he's either exploring sex and longing and miscommunication and isolation in various modern milleu (Fallen Angels, Chungking Express); or else he's exploring sex and longing and miscommunication and isolation in 1960s Hong Kong. Watching his last two films, 2046 and In The Mood For Love, I've wondered what kind of refractory nostalgia prism the guy is trapped in: at times it seems less like he's romanticizing an era gone by, than trying to recapture the aura of his second film, Days of Being Wild. The more he insists on fetishizing a certain kind of up-do, a certain kind of agonizingly slow stroll, and, above all, the art of the well-tailored cheongsam, the more interesting each individual film in his modern-ennui series (of which I think Happy Together is the indisputible champion) seems, in contrast, to be. Go see Days of Being Wild tonight at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village (it's bound to look amazing in that big auditorium on their giant screen) and tell me I'm wrong - I dare you.