10 Movies, 2000-09

These movies are spectacular. I too don’t have much to say.

10. Bad Education (Almodovar, 2004)

9. Matchpoint (Allen, 2005)

8. Far From Heaven (Haynes, 2002)

7. There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2008)

6. Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006)

Kevin’s top 10 films of the decade

I don’t have the time, breath, intelligence or energy to give any explination for this list. Images and your collective imagination will suffice. Off we go:

10. Cache (Haneke, 2005)

9. George Washington (Green, 2000)

8. Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006)

My Favorite Films This Decade – John

#1 Gomorrah-

Powerful from the first shot. There’s lots of beauty in this film’s ugly. The plot reminds me of Italian film at its best. Meticulous mese en scene.

A SCENE

#2 2046-

An entrancing dream. Wong Kar Wai makes some of my favorite fantasies in cinema, and this is his best. He has a shocking command of visual and music. Tony Leung…

A SCENE

#3 The New World-

The cinematography is so engrossing and poetic you almost forget about the story. The drama more than lives up to it though.

A SCENE

#4 Syriana-

So underrated. The best thriller of the decade. So multi-layered it puts you off-balance. Intelligent in all the best ways, and ahead of the curve politically. And it’s brave enough to have scenes in mall parking lots where nothing explodes.

A SCENE

#5 American Psycho-

It creates it’s own bizarre world that makes so much sense. Hilarious and terrible. So many classic scenes. And C. Bale might have created the decade’s best character.

A SCENE

#6 The Royal Tenenbaums-

Anderson at his peak. No self-doubting here. The soundtrack is simply perfect, the jokes rattle off, and the family melodrama comes off organic, even with all the beautiful artifice.

#7 Wall-E-

Pixar with swagger. Bold and beautiful. A sad film. Much love to Chaplin and Keaton (there’s a ton of old Hollywood in here I don’t know too). And when Wall-E’s flying through space, you’re a sucker for the special effects too.

#8 There Will Be Blood-

Looks incredible, sounds incredible, acted incredibly. You watch it and feel like it’s film at it’s fullest potential.

#9 Talk To Her-

Almadovar has a way of making the simple so layered and make the difficult things in life so airy. A joy to watch every time.

#10 Paranoid Park-

Uses a completely different language. With so many films so bad at depicting the life of a teenager, this film is almost shocking to watch. The beautifully simple plot structure orbits around the crime at the center of the story.

10 more.

What Were You Watching?

Yowzers. If you happen to be Richard Brody for the past 10 years, it wasn’t anything I was watching. The New Yorker’s film critic just put out his decade’s list.  Here’s another helpful link for you once you’re done reading the list: Netflix.

OK, Let’s Talk Herzog

more about “OK, Let’s Talk Herzog“, posted with vodpod

Man, I aught to make a tumblog of Herzog quotes or something. This guy has been real funny the last couple days. He’s got a little film seminar in LA next January. You can go if you want to fork over $1500 and if Werner lets you. He’s also the admissions office to this thing, and probably the copywriter for the website here are a couple choice quotes.

Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth.

Rouge Film School is not for the faint hearted; it is for those who have traveled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs, or as wardens in a lunatic assylums, for those who are willing to learn about lockpicking or forgien shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects.  In short: for those with a sense of poetry.  For those who are pilgrams.  For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention.  For those who have a fire within.

Prior working experience, diplomas, credits are of minor importance.

Related, but more reflective, will be a reading list: if possible, read Virgil’s “Georgics”, read “Hemingway’s “The short happy life of Francis Macomber”, The Poetic Edda, translated by Lee M. Hollander (in particular the Prophecy of the Seeress), Bernal Diaz del Castillo “True History of the Conquest of New Spain”.

And another one about the time where Herzog turned down an invitation to be a guest in Nick Cage’s house. I like this sentance a lot.

We would not be two men meeting unshaven in the morning over coffee. VIA

Gilmore Boy (or Post Grad)

This is just to say that Nick Becker has a review of Post Grad on Tiny Mix Tapes and that you will most likely be seeing other reviews of other films by the same man on other occasions soon. Keep an eye out. I’m so proud.

An open invitation

I have been running a few blogs (with many posts from me when I was in high school, if you are into that) and felt as if i would share them with all you chaps. One is on film and the other is on books. On either side of the coin you get my immediate, brief and entirely uneducated/spasmodic thoughts on the dvd I just ejected or the book I have just begrudgingly closed. All entries take ten minutes or less, so don’t judge me (or my grammar).

Synesthesialgia

Apnoea

Movies and Their Times

more about “Movies and Their Times“, posted with vodpod

If you liked the film related posts I’ve been giving to you the last couple weeks, great, this is for you. An hour long docu-essay on 80s blockbusters and how they mirrored the times. It’s sharp. And a little nostalgic. And good. Basically, it’ll make you reexamine films you take for granted.

Here’s the rest:

Part II

part3

P IV

&5

Do check out these guys’ blog The House Next Door. Its not great all the time, but they’re still some of the best blogger/critics around.

This Mad Mad World

Mad Men starts season three on Sunday, so the excitement and the links keep building up.  The great thing though is that there’s a lot of intelligent stuff out there, stuff on the craft of filmmaking. It creates an great picture of a masterpiece in progress. Consider this my Mad Men link dump.

On Cinematography

more about “This Mad Mad World“, posted with vodpod

On Costume Design

On the Auteur at Work

And yes, On Cocktails

UPDATE: Footnotes of Mad Men – to catch those little references.

Breastfeeding

A.O. Scott [the new co-host of At The Movies! - John] recently put an article in the Times discussing the way Hollywood has been treating us all like children these days. I guess I don’t have much more to say about it other than I agree. Check it out here. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, just watch the audio slide-show which sums it all up pretty well.

Thoughts? Are we too cranky? Is this just the reality of summer cinema these days?