Winter’s Bone,Debra Granick in The Daily Beast

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Each week, The Daily Beast scours the cultural landscape to choose three top picks. This week, the indie drama of the year emerges, the swampy vamps of True Blood return, and a polished re-issue of the best drinking bible ever written shakes things up.

An Early Summer Chill

Sebastian Mlynarskii / Roadside Attractions Director Debra Granik sure knows how to diversify the season usually reserved for barbecues and light cinematic fare somehow involving Judd Apatow. Granik’s Sundance-winning, gritty indie drama, Winter’s Bone, won’t leave you with a summery, happy-go-lucky feeling, but it is a good antidote to all of the brainless fluff in theaters. The Gothic noir-style film follows a family on the verge of homelessness; 17-year-old Ree Dolly (played by an amazingly adept young actress named Jennifer Lawrence, who is already on critics’ lips as an award candidate) must take things into her own hands, as her barely there mother and meth-cooking father cannot do it themselves. It is always thrilling to see a teenage girl so self-possessed in the face of hardship; as Marshall Fine writes, “There isn't an ounce of self-pity in this character, only a determination that seems unquenchable, even as she meets one frustration after another,” and New York magazine’s David Edelstein argues that “as a modern heroine, Ree Dolly has no peer, and Winter’s Bone is the year’s most stirring film.” You’ll be glad you ditched the comedies for a day.

A Bartender’s Best Friend

When the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Bernard DeVoto first published The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto in 1948, it was considered the first book to have ever taken the humble martini or noble Manhattan truly seriously, right down to analyzing the philosophy of why we drink. Now, Tin House has republished the volume with a new introduction by Daniel Handler, in a successful attempt to reposition the text in a modern context. But here’s all you need to know: In terms of the cult of happy hour, this may be the best tome ever written, and if you like to shake and stir at all, it is an essential volume to keep on your bar cart. As author Wallace Stegner wrote, “The Hour is not simply a piece of humorous cultural patriotism either. It is a manual of witchcraft, a book of spells and observances.”

Many Bloody Returns

John P. Johnson / HBO While most of the nation’s tweens are twiddling their thumbs waiting for the next Twilight installment, those of us with cable are opening our homes on Sunday to a more sophisticated set of vampires, those located in Bon Temps, Louisiana, in the world of HBO’s True Blood. Mortal Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), and all the others are back for a third season of Alan Ball’s devilishly good drama, in which vampires must campaign for their constitutional right to equality in the swamps, all while acting out some of the steamiest scenes not on Cinemax. Nothing like fangs to spice up life on the bayou.

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via thedailybeast.com

Winter's Bone was an intense film. This photo above shows one of the more unsavory characters that chills you to the bone in this independent feature film about a young woman's choices in trying to find her drug-addled father.

Great cinematography from the RED camera and the bleak countryside only lends itself to this story of isolation and grim choices. One of the best scenes in the film is when the 17 year old protagonist, Ree, is talking to an army recruiter and asks about when she gets the $40,000 bonus for enlisting. Amazing guts from Jennifer Lawrence who portrays Ree as someone at the end of their 'young rope', who has to make dangerous choices.

A powerful and bold film about a female character that is
relentless in her duty to her family.

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