Jim Hill an exhaustive look at Pixar's self referencingReports from the Edge wasn't Enchanted but offers up great suggestions for future roles for one James Marsden
Wow Report says that Keira's Atonement dress will be cloned very soon and sell like crazy
Jurgen Fauth attends the There Will Be Blood premiere
Bright Lights finds meaningless Christmas film coincidences
Hollywood Snark apparently QT likes Lindsay Lohan. I'm sure he could pull a terrific performance out of her. He can pull that from anybody.
Secret Fun A graphic designer celebrates his obscure contribution to popular movie culture in the Hairspray DVD release. This is both secret and fun just as the blog title promises. Well done.
List TimeSlant "the year in film" How awesome is their graphic? --->
MSN Movies "Moments Out of Time" I used to love this feature in Film Comment. Love it still...
In Contention Tapley puts his hands in the air for the western genre in his 'best of the year' column
The Projectionist has a truckload of year end rankings
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16 comments:
Urgh, I hate how Ed Gonzalez thinks that for a film to be list-worthy it has to be in a foreign language. I mean Offside, Golden Door and Syndromes and a Century are all very fine films (and all make it into my top 25 of the year) - but to fill a top 10 list full of them and documentaries is just pretentious and frankly undiscerning.
On a nicer note, hopefully that breathtaking coruscating beautiful beautiful dress will win for Jacqueline Durran her Oscar.
On an even nicer note, that green dress will is quickly becoming the new 'it' gown. Design house Faviana (i've never heard of them, either) are launching a 1930s spin-off range from that dress.
The good news: The dress is becoming iconic. (And so is Keira.)
The bad news: it'll most likely cost an arm and a leg!!!
It's interesting amir that based on this one message, you strike me as someone who is just pretentious and frankly undiscerning.
And I'm not sure what's with your fixation on Ed, whose list strikes me as worthy precisely because it doesn't treat subtitles as a handicap. It makes a lot more sense than the lists that tell me the 10 best films in the world are made in America every year.
Ed Gonzalez didn't pick all foreign films. And any critic worth his or her salt wouldn't insist the ten best films of the year were all American...unless they were. So you're both wrong.
The point is that Ed Gonzalez is a bitter dick.
I'm just looking for 10 best lists for 2007 that don't have No Country for Good Men on them. Looking for people who have original choices and not all the films that have come out the past three months.
Thanks, Y Kant Goran Rite, for the nice words. I won't lie and say that amir_uk's presumptuousness doesn't sting, but it amuses me at the same time how someone can feel as if they have someone figured out so well but be so completely off-base. I know many people who admire my list, but let me be clear when I say that I do not want (or seek) anyone's admiration or approval with it. This is something people like amir_uk don't seem to grasp: That my list isn't some calculated effort to appear "worldly" (or "pretentious"—to quote him). This is just how the cards fell this year: 3 documentaries, 6 films with subtitles, 4 American productions. The list is an honest reflection of my favorite cinematic pleasures this year—films that sparked crying jags (The Life of Reilly), thrilled me with their genre-bending wit (Exiled), touched nerves in very canny and personal ways (Golden Door), or sparked deep spiritual contemplation (Into Great Silence)—and had the cards fallen any differently, as they have in other years, then maybe the Americans would have persevered and I probably wouldn't be writing this post right now. There are critics like Peter Travers that could benefit from traveling outside the multiplexes from time to time, just as there are critics who should leave the festival circuit on occasion (one wonders what amir_uk thinks of the year-end lists from the staff of Film Comment and Cahiers du Cinema), but even if there were critics out there purposely (and dishonestly) setting out to make some equal-opportunity list that accommodates films of all sizes and colors, what could possibly be so insidious about such a practice? Of course, it could just be that he thinks I'm, to quote Jason, a "bitter dick," and as such I can do know right.
From Slant:
"This year saw the resurrection of the western in forms both classical (3:10 to Yuma) and revisionist (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), a comeback that speaks to the genre's enduring power"
Did nobody see Kevin Costner's amazing Open Range four years ago? It's like it never existed with all these critics harping on about the western returning for the first time since Unforgiven.
oh Goran you forgot something:
The ten best films of every year are always american AND they always just opened in movie theaters.
how can you forget???
Amir -- i'd be happy to see Durran win an Oscar too and not only for Atonement... I think her work on Vera Drake and Pride & Prejudice were stellar too.
ed hi !
and by were i meant was
kamikaze camel: You said, "Did nobody see Kevin Costner's amazing Open Range four years ago?"
I did, liked it more than most people, reviewed it, and think it's richer than both 3:10 to Yuma (which I liked) and Assassination of Jesse James (which I didn't). Westerns are always around, but I find that critics seem to think of them as tumbleweed: something that rolls by and feels as if it wasn't here, no matter how much money it made (and Open Range was a solid performer). In five years you'll hear the same song again.
I'm actually generally sort of embarrassed that my lists don't have enough foreign films or documentaries... I don't see enough (although last year two (!) documentaries did sneak into my list, so that was a major coup). But no one reads my lists anyway, so I guess it's irrelevant.
Anyone who publishes a top ten list is at least somewhat pretentious.
Anyone who says something like that is somewhat pretentious.
Ed, good to hear about Open Range (I don't read you, sorry, I don't tend to read any American critics - i'm Australian) it gets all too forgotten in any discussion, whether it be a discussion about the movies of 2003, or Kevin Costner's career, or Annette Bening's career, or the western genre and so on. One of the best shootout sequences I've ever seen, too. And yes, it was a box office hit. But, again, that gets all but forgotten too.
I like ed gonzales 10 best list. My own list is full of foreigh flicks, drama/mex, silent light, 4 months 3 weeks, 2 days, mourning forest, persepolis, blame it to fidel, etc
They say that when you write a scathing review you should do it with the thought in mind that you will have to read it out to the director/artist/person responsible for what you're criticising.
I have to be honest and to hold my hands up and say I didn't think Ed would read my comment: and I'm sorry if it came across as insulting. I should've in this instance just kept my opinion to myself. And no, I don't think you're a "bitter dick" - not my words.
Ed, if that is your Top 10 films of the year then who am I to judge you on it? I just think Offside wasn't even the best Iranian film of the year, let alone the year's second best film period. (Would you really excuse those final 5 minutes if they appeared in a Western production?) And that Syndromes and a Century is the weakest in Weerasethakul's feature film output so far. (Many of the criticisms levelled at Wes Anderson for his last feature would more fittingly apply to Weerasethakul for his retread in Syndromes - but of course, very few critics would dare criticise Weerasethakul in case they were to come across as uncultured and unworldy, whereas Anderson-bashing is seemingly now an indicator of one's great taste.) The fact is, Panahi and Weerasethakul are a chic currency with which to trade one's culturedness; Wes Anderson not so much. These points led me to presume (and that is the operative act for which I apologise) that you weren't being completely honest with your list, given what a rich year 2007 was for many national cinemas. But it seems, by your own admission, I was wrong about your honesty.
One thing though: Goran, I'm at a loss in understanding how my comment makes you think I'm a pretentious and undiscerning person.
Also, to those who may have misunderstood me: I LOVE films of quality, be they foreign or English-language! My point certainly wasn't that foreign films aren't as good as English ones. It's just there is often a snobbery that favours subtitled films because of what they connote - critics do tend to give world cinema productions an easier time than British/American ones. That is a fact that can't be denied.
PS. Nathaniel - You're right, Durran's been great nearly all her short career. I would've given her the statue for her reclaimist take on Pride and Prejudice that year, and nom'd her for Vera Drake. Her work on Young Adam was also similarly inspired.
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