2006 Top 10s (Print Media)

[oscar jubis]

TIME MAGAZINE (Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel)


1. LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

The 20,000-plus soldiers who defended the island against the ferocious American assault were ordered to die rather than surrender, and most did. It's a tragic epic that director Clint Eastwood personifies by focusing mainly on two stories: the dutiful, civilized general (Ken Watanabe) and a common soldier (Kazunari Ninomiya) who is clumsily, almost comically, determined to live. The dialogue is in Japanese, but this account of war madness --intense and compassionate--carries a universal and heart-breaking message.

2. BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN

Not since De Toqueville, perhaps, has a visitor to the U.S. uncovered so much about the strange folkways of the natives. The cheerful curiosity of Sacha Baron Cohen's blithely ignorant foreigner is mostly matched by the friendly, if often deranged, behavior of the people he ropes into being themselves. Thus, this happy, hurtful comedy--the gut-bustingly funniest since the South Park movie--is also one of the year's most revealing doc(not just mock)umentaries.

3. THE DEPARTED

The cops put an undercover man in the gang, the gang has an informer among the cops, and Jack Nicholson gives a grand, snarling, nutsy performance as this film's presiding force of evil. Director Martin Scorsese--appalled, yet curiously joyful--has often explored the lives of the criminal class, but this tangle of tormented loyalties brings out the bloody best in him.

4. UNITED 93

No horror movie could have scared so many people away from seeing it as this first major 9/11 film--a meticulous reimagining of the hijacking of one of the planes and the passengers' heroic improvisations to stop it. Paul Greengrass's grueling, ultimately inspiring drama is hard to watch but imperative to see.

5. THE QUEEN

Her Majesty (Helen Mirren in a great performance) does not understand why the public expects a show of official sorrow over the passing of Princess Di, whom QE2 never much cared for. Prime Minister Tony Blair instructs her in media manipulation, and director Stephen Frears makes a high, dry comedy of manners out of the mess--while enlisting our sympathy for the beleaguered sovereign.

6. PAN'S LABYRINTH

A girl in Franco's Spain seeks refuge from her vicious militarist stepfather by retreating into a woodland wonderland. Guillermo del Toro mixes the airiest fantasy with the harshest social realism to prove that fascism is a fairy tale of power and a nightmare of terror.

7. THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Maybe, as the famous Whiffenpoof Song would have it, the sons of Wasp privilege are just lost little lambs. But since some of them spent their postgraduate years founding the CIA, Robert De Niro's finely tuned film wonders if their arrogant sense of entitlement subverted this nation's best, most idealistic impulses. Good question, good movie: very dark, very well written and acted--and very, very worrying.

8. CARS

Pixar's latest is among the computer-animation studio's best: the story of a full-of-itself race car (voiced by Owen Wilson) forced to set down roots in a run-down jalopy town full of rural eccentrics like the rube tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). Not to stomp on Happy Feet or anything, but director John Lasseter, who virtually invented CGI movie wit, smartly rev ups the fun in this, the most stylish car-toon ever.

9. DISTRICT B13

In the very near future, the French have cordoned off their housing projects, sites of immigrant crime and anger. They're even contemplating a nuclear final solution to their problem. That's the pretext director Pierre Morel uses to reinvent the action film with gracefully soaring chases and grittily imaginative confrontations--no CGI, very little wire work, just a subtle, clever use of off-speed cameras and canny editing. The result is a movie that makes all its American competitors look klutzy and flat-footed. Maybe it isn't exactly art, but it sure is kinesthetically dazzling.

10. CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER

The empress (Gong Li) is canoodling with her stepson, the Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) is trying to poison the Empress, and the whole royal house seems less later Tang dynasty than Aaron Spelling's Dynasty. This gorgeous surprise from China's Zhang Yimou (Hero) looks like a martial-arts movie but plays like delirious melodrama. The fearless, peerless turns from Chow and Gong Li demonstrate how the fiercest swordplay can come from two charismatic stars staring daggers at each other.

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Top 10 Fiction Films

Army of Shadows Yes, it was made in 1969, but the late Jean-Pierre Melville's fatalistic masterpiece about the French Resistance, starring Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret, was never shown in the United States until now. An instant classic.

Little Miss Sunshine Pure pleasure—a smart, sweet and edgy comedy about our cultural obsession with winning. This indie movie succeeds in something Hollywood used to be able to do, and rarely does anymore: appeal to everyone.

The Queen Tony Blair vs. Her Majesty, perfectly pitched by director Stephen Frears and writer Peter Morgan between satire and sentiment. With the sublimely subtle Helen Mirren in the title role.

Letters from Iwo Jima Clint Eastwood's devastating look at the war through Japanese eyes isThe Departed Scorsese's supercharged, profanely funny, wonderfully plotted tale of two moles, with an ensemble to die for.

The Departed Scorsese's supercharged, profanely funny, wonderfully plotted tale of two moles, with an ensemble to die for.

Half Nelson A smart, wrenching inner-city teacher/student tale that avoids every cliché of the genre. Ryan Gosling's performance as a teacher who is both inspiring and self-destructive is about as good as it gets.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan How long has it been since YOU laughed this hard? Sacha Baron Cohen has come up with a watershed comic event. The backlash just proves how deep a nerve the faux Kazakh journalist has hit.

Dreamgirls An exuberant reminder of why we love musicals. Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy bring down the house in Bill Condon's grit-and-glitter showbiz epic.

Venus Peter O'Toole dazzles as an old actor in this funny and heartbreaking May-December almost-love story, smartly written by Hanif Kureishi and deftly directed by Roger Michell.

Volver Almodovar continues his remarkable run of triumphs with this serene melodrama about murder and maternal love, with a voluptuous performance from Penelope Cruz.

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A curious form of journalism, film reviewing is highly topical yet essentially timeless. It consists of reporting week after week on out-of-body experiences in a parallel universe—subject to its own laws but intermittently visited by millions of others and filled with references to so-called real life. For this reason, a reviewer's annual 10 Best list is not just a barometer of taste. It's an exercise in autobiography (however veiled) and a contribution (however modest) to the history of the present.
From a purely subjective point of view, the film event that affected me most deeply would be the two-day screening of Jacques Rivette's 14-hour Out 1 at the Museum of the Moving Image. But Out 1 had only a single public show—too few to be more than a personal experience. Similarly, Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows might well have been the best movie released last year—but this "new" movie was actually made in 1969. That's about 32 years too many for me to consider it contemporary. Thus qualified and less than absolute, my 2006 10 Best:

1.The Death of Mr. Lazarescu [Cristi Puiu, Romania] Coincidentally, Cristi Puiu's ode to mortality opened at Film Forum the same week Army of Shadows began its run on one of the theater's other screens, thus establishing West Houston Street as the temporary epicenter of local film culture. Not without a certain grim humor, Puiu takes two and a half hours to tell the tale of a 62-year-old pensioner's final trip from his smelly apartment to a hellish succession of Bucharest hospitals. A dyspeptic colleague paid me the supreme complement when he attributed Lazarescu's enthusiastic reviews to a general "Hobermanian obsession with anything communist and Eastern European." (As if.) Actually, this astoundingly crafted movie—which both simulates and orchestrates the institutional texture of a Fred Wiseman documentary—is rather more Bazinian. That is, it lends itself to the praise the French critic André Bazin long ago lavished on The Bicycle Thief: "No more actors, no more story, no more sets . . . the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality."

2.Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [Larry Charles, U.S.A.] More Hobermania —and every other kind of mania. The year's most universal release, courtesy of Rupert Murdoch's Fox, Borat transcended the distinction between fiction and documentary, as well as high and low culture. ("Not since Dylan went electric . . . " is how Stuart Klawans ended his brilliant Nation appreciation.) Would that Sacha Baron Cohen had brought Borat to the recent Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran— I guess there's a limit to his physical courage. Incidentally, that funny language that Borat speaks is often Hebrew, something that only Israelis seemed to notice.

3.The Decay of Fiction [Pat O'Neill, U.S.A. ] Movies are magic. Los Angeles–based special-effects whiz Pat O'Neill uses a combination of 35mm location shooting and digital overlay to transform L.A.'s once grand and now empty Ambassador Hotel into a movie-haunted mansion. Premiered at the 2002 New York Film Festival, this 73-minute wonder received its belated run at Anthology Film Archives. Ideally, it should go into distribution on a bill with Kenneth Anger's equally wonderful Mouse Heaven—a 10-minute assemblage of Mickey tchotchkes and old pop music that was the hit of the Whitney Biennial.

4.A Scanner Darkly [Richard Link-later, U.S.A.] The most protean of Amerindie filmmakers turns a late, difficult Philip K. Dick novel into an animated cartoon. There was no overwhelming reason to rotoscope this never-more-topical tale of druggy surveillance and political paranoia, except that you'll never forget the movie's look—and it does makes the title literal.

5. The Science of Sleep [Michel Gondry, France] Music video genius Gondry's third feature is another animation hybrid, a bit more old-fashioned in its technique than A Scanner Darkly (and also released by Warner Independent). This one-man show is actually a two-man production: The phenomenally talented Gael García Bernal gives life to Gondry's story of love and fetishism with a comic, heartbreaking performance.

6. Climates [Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey] The modernist "art house" cinema of the '50s and '60s lives . . . in Istanbul. Confirming his stature as one of the world's preeminent narrative filmmakers, Nuri Bilge Ceylan wrote, directed, and (opposite his wife, no less) acted in this rumination on the end of a love affair. It's melancholy yet voluptuously tactile, sensationally shot in high-definition DV. Released by Zeitgeist, Climates opened last October at Film Forum; in a healthy "art house" climate, it would still be running.

7.L'Enfant [Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium ] If this foreign-language release, courtesy of Sony Classics, was marginally more successful than Climates, it may be because the movie has something of a brand name. Practitioners of a spiritually infused social realism, the Brothers Dardenne have a style and set of interests as instantly recognizable as any in the film world. Their latest drama of redemption, involving two feckless teenagers and their baby, is an action flick in which every act is shown to have a moral consequence.

8.When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts [Spike Lee, U.S.A.] HBO has no plans for a theatrical run, but this epic documentary will be released on DVD. I'd like to see it as an installation, shown together with James Longley's doc Iraq in Fragments in a special theater on ground zero. Spike Lee's tribute to the people of New Orleans illustrates how a catastrophic act of natural terrorism became an ongoing political disaster—the Bushian man- made chaos in which, to one degree or another, we all now live.

9. Inland Empire [David Lynch, U.S.A.] Shot on amateur DV and self-distributed, this is David Lynch's most experimental movie in the thirtysomething years since Eraserhead. In movie-ville, it's also the most controversial film of the year. Manohla Dargis's gutsy rave was denounced by the National Review; a critic who walked out on the movie congratulated me on my pan. Say what? Seems that when I characterized Inland Empire as a miasma (that is, "a thick, vaporous atmosphere"), it was taken as pejorative. Anyone familiar with Lynch knows that there are good miasmas and bad.

10.Battle in Heaven [Carlos Reygadas, Mexico] "Just when you thought there might be little or nothing new under the projector-beam sun, Carlos Reygadas's Battle in Heaven ker-blams into town, discombobulating the small thinkers and smiting the wicked." So wrote Mike Atkinson when Tartan released it last winter. A Warholian impresario, Reygadas works without a screenplay to create existential situations under which non- professional actors are compelled to expose themselves—sometimes cruelly— on camera. From the opening blowjob to the climactic, equally real religious procession, this movie is a provocation—confrontational even in its tedium.

11+
Ten Best lists are a priori arbitrary; there are a half-dozen other movies that, on any other day, could just as easily have been on mine. Thus tied for 11th place are Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, U.K.-U.S.A.), Fateless (Lajos Koltai, Hungary), Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, Spain), Letters From Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, U.S.A.), and United 93 (Paul Greengrass, U.K.-U.S.A.). These are followed by nine Honorable Mentions: Gabrielle (Patrice Chéreau, France), Lunacy Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic), Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, U.S.A.), Night Watch (Timur Bekmambetov, Russia), The Proposition (John Hillcoat, Australia), Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, U.S.A.), Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria), The Queen (Stephen Frears, U.K.), and Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan).

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BEST FILMS OF 2006
(Released theatrically in the U.S.)

1. The Departed (Martin Scorsese, U.S.) 779 points
2. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania) 740
3. Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, France/Italy) 657
4. L’Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne,Belgium/Fra) 611
5. The Queen (Stephen Frears, U.K./France/Italy) 587
6. Borat (Larry Charles, U.S.) 455
7. Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, U.S.) 474
8. United 93 (Paul Greengrass, France/U.K./U.S.) 432
9. Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain) 429
10. Inland Empire (David Lynch, U.S./France/Poland) 414
11. Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan) 379
12. A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, U.S.) 363
13. Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, U.S.) 352
(tie) Flags of Our Fathers (Clint Eastwood, U.S.) 352
14. Tristram Shandy (Michael Winterbottom, U.K.) 333
15. Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro,Mex/Spain/U.S.)322
16. Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, U.S.) 318
17. Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, U.S.) 223
18. A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, U.S.) 246
19. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, U.K./U.S.) 244
20. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, U.K./Czech Republic/Germany/U.S. ) 228

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Armond White's Top 10
(New York Press)

1. Broken Sky
2. Neil Young: Heart of Gold
3. A Prairie Home Companion
4. World Trade Center
5. Nacho Libre
6. The Promise
7. Infamous
8. Akeelah and the Bee
9. Bobby
10. Running Scared


Best Performance
Toby Jones, Infamous
Paul Walker, Running Scared
Chris Evans, London
Sook-Yin Lee, Shortbus
Marlon Wayans, Little Man


Best Supporting Performance
Laurence Fishburne, Bobby
Daniel Craig, Infamous
Sharon Stone, Bobby
Lily Tomlin, A Prairie Home Companion
Maria Bello, World Trade Center


Best Director
Julian Hernandez, Broken Sky


Best Screenplay
Douglas McGrath, Infamous

[Chris Knipp]

L'Enfant seems to be coming up a lot, at least by your examples. Of course there are a zillion best lists, and who's to say which ones are significant? I have mentiioned, I find Rosenbaum's voice important, but his annual lists seeem completely off the wall. Armond White is one of the most stimulating reviewers because he's so contrary, but his list works by some kind of reverse logic that renders it highly dubious. Imagine picking Paul Walker in Running Scared as a "Best Performance"!

Film Comment's "BEST FILMS OF 2006 (Released theatrically in the U.S.)" is a good list, which is to say I agree with a lot of the choices! There are a third or a quarter of them that I wouldn't pick, but they're all understandable choices. You might have explained what the "points" system means.

Hoberman: "No reason to rotoscope" the images in A Scanner Darkly, he says, but then he contradicts himself and gives a couple of excellent reasons. This is becoming the thing people want to say; they are turnhing against rotoscoping. "Is it really animation?" went one article. But in fact it is a wonderfully trippy effect, and perfect for depicting a world in which everybody is high, and the rest are concealed by a coat of changing images.

It's true, Climates is dated "art house" stuff, and it is quite good. I don't know that it grabbed me enough to make me put it in a top list, but these lists remind me to consider things I had started to forget about. I think I want to remember Venus, both for Peter O'Toole's performance (and Redgrave's and the others') and for Hanif Kuraishi's screenplay. I had forgotten about Battle in Heaven, but I didn't get to see it. I am not familiar with The Decay of Fiction. Did you see the Spike Lee New Orleans doc, Oscar? I haven't seen it. But it seems like a lot of my choices are coming up here, and since I really saw a lot of movies this year, I am familiiar with a lot of the other choices too. As for Inland Empire, I am convinced it is one of the most significant American movies of the year and I hope it gets real distribution here rather than just showing in one or two places and more people get to see it.

I don't know why Mr. Lazarescu comes up so often exactly, other than that fact that reviewers move in packs, but it is good, and I certainly thought it one of the best presentations of the 2005 New York Film Festival. I can't think that many people have seen it in this country, though.

I think maybe people think they ought to recognize somethingabout 9/11 and United 93 is the better one, so they're listing that. I'm not so sure it has greatness in it.

As for Army of Shadows, I have discussed that with several friends who've seen it, and we've come to the conclusion that this rating it as the best foreign film of the year is a gross exaggeration. It wasn't that great to begin with really. It is getting all this attention out of respect for Melville and a retro notion that "they don't make them like they used to." But it isn't very effectively put together and he did lots better. Not that it doesn't deserve mention; it just is being overrated. As in my opinion certainly Borat is. And Little Miss Sunshine was indeed snappy and fun but I would not get so excited about it at all.

So there are some comments for what they're worth. These lists are just lists unless somebody expresses some opinions about them.

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I was about to post a long response to your post and my Internet Explorer crashed. I'll respond in stages to avoid recurrence.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Of course there are a zillion best lists, and who's to say which ones are significant? I have mentiioned, I find Rosenbaum's voice important, but his annual lists seeem completely off the wall.

I subscribe to Hoberman's view of lists as: a priori arbitrary, veiled exercises in autobiography. All lists are significant in that each is a reflection of a unique individual. Of course, yours is more significant to me because we've invested time and energy to get to know each other over the past four and a half years. But I feel neither vindicated when our choices match nor disappointed when they don't. From one's own narrow perspective, everybody else's list is to varying degrees "off the wall". I tend to share taste and opinions with Hoberman and Rosenbaum (relative to other crits) but I'm surprised yearly by some of their inclusions and omissions. It's only natural.

Armond White is one of the most stimulating reviewers because he's so contrary, but his list works by some kind of reverse logic that renders it highly dubious.

I wish to think of him as one odd cat expressing his honest opinion. I hope he's not dishonestly invested in achieving notoriety by being contrarian.

Film Comment's "BEST FILMS OF 2006 (Released theatrically in the U.S.)" is a good list, which is to say I agree with a lot of the choices!

Polls with a large sample aim at reflecting consensus. They are quite useful in many ways. At least, they provide a list of films one must watch and give a chance.

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Second post in response to yours.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Film Comment's "BEST FILMS OF 2006. You might have explained what the "points" system means.
For Film Comment’s Seventh Annual Critics’ Poll we invited our contributors and colleagues to rank their top 20 films of the year. In each ballot from the 80-plus critical chorus, a first-place choice was allotted 20 points, 19 for second, and so on.

I personally like the Village Voice poll a bit more because it comes from a larger sample and because the deadline to submit ballots is much later. This allows critics more time to watch all the 2006 releases. This is particularly helpful for critics who don't live in NYC or LA. The Voice's poll has not been published. I will post it when it becomes available.

It's true, Climates is dated "art house" stuff, and it is quite good. I don't know that it grabbed me enough to make me put it in a top list, but these lists remind me to consider things I had started to forget about. I think I want to remember Venus
I haven't seen Climates or Venus. I hope to do so before I post lists next month.

I had forgotten about Battle in Heaven, but I didn't get to see it.
I posted a review of it. Watched it twice one night. I like what Hoberman says about it. It's on my Top 10 Foreign.

I am not familiar with The Decay of Fiction.
Haven't seen it.

Did you see the Spike Lee New Orleans doc, Oscar?
Fave doc of 2006. It's on dvd with a 105-min epilogue.

As for Inland Empire, I am convinced it is one of the most significant American movies of the year and I hope it gets real distribution here rather than just showing in one or two places and more people get to see it.
It's being distributed one cinema at a time. It will take months to get around. The programmer at the Cosford Cinema told me he wants to show it but has booked other films already for the next couple of months.

I don't know why Mr. Lazarescu comes up so often exactly, other than that fact that reviewers move in packs
I don't think reviewers move in packs. I think Lazarescu is an excellent film.

As for Army of Shadows, I have discussed that with several friends who've seen it, and we've come to the conclusion that this rating it as the best foreign film of the year is a gross exaggeration.
I think I posted a comment about it here. I don't include films this old in my list. I consider it a "repertory film" even if it was never officially release in this country.

[Chris Knipp]

I subscribe to Hoberman's view of lists as: a priori arbitrary, veiled exercises in autobiography. All lists are significant in that each is a reflection of a unique individual. Of course, yours is more significant to me because we've invested time and energy to get to know each other over the past four and a half years. But I feel neither vindicated when our choices match nor disappointed when they don't. From one's own narrow perspective, everybody else's list is to varying degrees "off the wall". I tend to share taste and opinions with Hoberman and Rosenbaum (relative to other crits) but I'm surprised yearly by some of their inclusions and omissions. It's only natural. That's well said and an admirable expression of your balanced, liberal outlook, and it's nice that my lists are more significant to you, but this present discussion with our focus on Rosenbaum and Hoberman itself illustrates that, to paraphrase Orwell in Animal Farm, all critics are equal, but some critics are more equal than others. And Rosenbaum's annual list choices "surprise" me much more than Hoberman's. So I should perhaps conclude according to your scheme that the degree of "veiled" "autobiography" involved varies considerably. Whatever as you see it list-makers are covertly or subconsciously doing, there is also a difference between what they're trying to do when they make their lists. They're not all just trying to express their personal biases. Some are trying to say what -- as much as possible objectively -- they think the best movies of the year were. We have had this discussion before concerning the tension between what is "a priori" best and what one simply likes best. However, I have myself become more aware in the past four and a half years that personal bias is one of the main elements (though there are others, such as what one has been able to see) that makes one list differ from another, and that since that's so, I might as well consciously exercise my biases when I make up my lists.

I see no reason at all to think Armond White is "dishonestly invested in achieving nororiety by being contrairan." He is far too passionate about his views to think that.

[Chris Knipp]

I think I may like the Voice poll better too but this year I like the Film Comment poll because I like the choices.

I know you wrote about Reygadas' Battle in Heaven and I read what you said and other reviews. As I recall there were some doubts, if not on your part on the part of other viewers. But I'm not sure I could have seen it if I'd wanted to unless the SFIFF showed it.

I guess Inland Empire will have to come up on next year's lists, for those not posted to NYC. Too bad for the picks to get spread over two years, but you can see why a big distributor might not want to handle it.

My phrase,"Reviewers move in packs," is no doubt a provocative way of putting it, and questionable in this case particularly. I still think that buzz gets around though, and fast, and plays a role in picks and pans over all that we have to recognize. I would think that the more mainsttream critics, like the ones for Time magazine, would feel obligated to list movies a lot of people had access to, and so they wouldn't want to pick stuff like Mr. Lazarescu, which must not have been shown much even in urban centers of the US. You wouldn't pretend, would you, that critics don't dicuss movies with other critics or that they don't look at anybody else's lists? This is where the "pack" aspect comes in. Writers for a "hip" publication such as the Villge Voice feel an obligation to include stuff that is not mainstream, hence it's a good ploy for Hoberman to put Mr. Lazarescu first on his list. You can't say there weren't other possiblities, some of them more mainstream.

Your position on Army of Shadows makes sense and corresponds to some big critic's--was it Hoberman? But my position is that it isn't that great a film anyway. This is an example of critical buzz. Somebody thought it would be fun to astonish everyone by declareing that a 37-year-old movie was the best foreign film of 2006, and it caught on.

[Chris Knipp]

Is good to see polls of a selected group that give an informed consensus. However, you can't decide what's best by poll, because good taste is not the taste of the majority. But that is an elitist viewpoint you would not be willing to adopt.

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Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Whatever as you see it list-makers are covertly or subconsciously doing, there is also a difference between what they're trying to do when they make their lists. They're not all just trying to express their personal biases. Some are trying to say what -- as much as possible objectively -- they think the best movies of the year were.

They're all trying to say "what they think the best movies of the year were" and in the process of doing so can't help but express their personal biases. For starters, ask any two people to come up with criteria to choose what's best and the answers will differ greatly. Assume both persons state that "originality" is a major variable, and give them a film to judge on the basis of "originality". Their judgements are still likely to differ based on, among other things, their experience and exposure to films from the past. Some folks can find The Departed quite original, whereas those who've seen Infernal Affairs might feel the remake was redundant.

I can't manage to find a single flaw or anything negative to say about The Departed and The Descent (a nifty UK horror film that made some lists) but you won't find them in mine. I enjoyed both for the perfect genre films I think they are but, for many personal reasons, they're not in my list. I don't find it odd for anyone to list them, although what such person and I love most about movies is probably quite different.

I see no reason at all to think Armond White is "dishonestly invested in achieving nororiety by being contrairan." He is far too passionate about his views to think that.

Great. That's why "I wish to think of him as an odd cat expressing his honest opinion".

[Chris Knipp]

I don't think I agree. I don't think Rosenbaum is simply trying to say "what the best movies of the year were." I think he is consciously calling attention to ones that would be overlooked that he wants people to value. And though maybe two people would disagree on the criteria for a "best" film, collectively the criteria are well agreed upon. The catch is that different films meet different criteria, as is obvious when you refer to what you call "genre" films, which you regard as of a lower category. This is why I think we need more categories. There are no ten best films of the year, so I would break it down more. If The Departed is a great movie according to various criteria, the fact that it's a remake doesn't matter.* The Departed may be a better remake of a genre film than Climates is a remake of a Sixties art film. I think it is. In Olympic competition, somebody wins each event, but one person may set a record that stands out above all the others. And that person is going to be most remembered. You might argue that the criteria are better established in Olympic sports. True, and aesthetics are more difficult to quantify. But time does establish greatness in both fields. Annual best lists are a fool's game because we don't have the perspective of time. But we're trying to achieve it. Or at least I think we are.

I would not exclude a truly remarkable example of something even if I didn't like it too much, assuming I could stomach it at all and was able to judge its merits.

*Incidentally I didn't ever say The Departed was "redundant," I simply wondered why someone of the caliber of Scorsese would put so much effort into something that was a remake. Did not see The Descent so cannot comment, but I understand it is outstanding, so that is my lack. True, I don't run out to see types of films I don't enjoy much, but I do try to see as wide a variety as possible. My reason is so I can say what is best from a broad perspective of types of film. Above all I try to embrace both the big mainstream and the small, obscure, unknown film. My ideal is not to have my personal biases play too large a role, but to recognize where they do. I do not think that is what Rosenbaum is doing at all. But it may be what Hoberman does, with some variations, which I commented on before, due to his audience and his publication, which lean toward the more hip.

My bias in my English language choices is toward mainstream movies that are really good, because praising them seems like more likely to hve a positive influence on people than praising Mutual Appreciation or Old Joy, which few will see. But it's necessary to mention everything, somewhere, which is why I have lists rather than just a list.

[oscar jubis]

I'm not going to make assumptions about whether critics discuss movies with other critics and whether they let other critics influence their judgements. I don't know. Even if they do, I think best lists are expressions of individual and subjective sensibilities. I pay attention to best lists because: 1) They help me get to know the person who made it. 2) Since one can't see everything, even if one watches 650 movies per year, they point towards films one should watch and assess. I certainly wouldn't want to miss any film you list although their inclusion does not affect my judgement. I want my list to be a reflection of what I think it's best and therefore and unavoidably who I am. Thus, whether or not anyone else agrees is of no consequence. I am going to assume that is the case for everyone unless a person explicitly states otherwise. I cannot assume that Hoberman's list is influenced by "an obligation to include stuff that is not mainstream" because he writes for what you call "a hip publication". I think it's rather presumptuous to say stuff like that. Perhaps even disrespectful.

I wasn't thinking of your review of The Departed when I used my reaction to that film to make a point.

[Chris Knipp]

In talking about reviewers moving in packs, I am more focusing on individual movies, not on ten-best lists. Obviously they all come up with their own ten-best lists; no two are alike and if they were it would look bad (hence the need to pull something out of left field to distinguish one's list from somebody else's, when one's list is largely a conventional one). I'm flattered that you want to see any film I list in mine. I am not meaning to be disrespectful of anybody; I'm simply stating matters in an informal and condensed fashion. If I were writing this up for a book, I could phrase it more formally and more politely. The hip publication thing may be irrrelevant as a comment on Hoberman since it's hard to say who is influencing who. The fact is, Hoberman shapes the movie orientation of the Voice, rather than vice versa. Or one would assume so. We can only guess of the politics unless one knows the critics personally, which we don't, but the politics are obviously there, and not knowing exactly what they are does not mean they aren't. My point is that writers for a hip publication are going to list different movies for the year than writers for Time. And ultimately this is not an individual working in a vacuum as you seem to imply but part of a social continuum or a particular "film culture." It's well to be aware of that and not think that each list-maker is simply a unique individual. This is a fantasy of yours of an ideal film culture you have constructed in which each person uninfluenced by anybody else lists only what movies he truly believes are best -- but according to his own private criteria, of course.

As in our discussion of these issues before, you have maintained your position, but you haven't respoonded to what I think is the most important aspect of my ideas about annual best list-making: the attempt to be universal rather than simply personal. Of course lists inevitably tell us things about the list-makers, but more interesting is the standard of excellence set by the best list makers and the ability to transcend one's own preferences in recognizing excellence regardless of category.

[oscar jubis]

I don't know how to be "universal". I don't think it's possible to set "standards of excellence" when dealing with artistic entities. I wouldn't want to do that either. It's futile. I can educate myself about the history and technique of the medium, I can watch a lot of films from different eras, genres, national cinemas, etc. I can learn to express better what is it that turns me on about movies, how cinema makes me a better person, how cinema can teach, delight and edify. But no, I don't know how to be "universal" or how to "set standards of excellence". One simply ends up calling one's personal preferences, values and taste "standards of excellence".

[Chris Knipp]

That is your way; mine is different. I do not believe in a solipsistic world of uniquely unconnectable values. I have expressed my point of view, and you have expressed yours. That is the point of this forum. As an practicing artist I can say that standards of excellence are constantly being imposed in the studio, in the museum and gallery, in "dealing with artistic entities." Maybe in your ivory tower they don't have to be, and that's fine for you. BUt I don't see how it could add to your authority as a writer about cinema because it makes it sound like you don't know how to recognize a good film when you come across one.

[oscar jubis]

I know how to recognize what for me is a good film or a great one. But I think it would be presumptuous on my part to think that my criteria for canon formation should be anybody else's criteria. I've thought about this issue long and hard since 1979, when I took my first college course on cinema at the University of Miami. I've put down in writing a set of personal criteria or "standards of excellence" as you've called it. But I've arrived at the conclusion that it's a futile endeavor to think that this set of criteria is applicable to others. Even if two or more people agree on a set of criteria to decide what makes a film a masterpiece, the criteria would be practically useless because of differences in the application of criteria to any given film.

Perhaps it would be interesting to you to read a long FILM COMMENT article by Paul Schrader, who seems to believe (like you) that the creation of uniform standards of excellence in cinema is worth pursuing. The article is called "CANON FODDER: As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks?" It's not available online. So what I'll do is excerpt the part where he picks seven variables or standards, and a list of top films he believes meet those criteria. I hope this is of interest to you because it's a bit time-consuming.

Standards of taste, as Hume understood, do not restrict art; the work of art will always find a way around the rules. They do, however, establish a necessary framework for judgement. I'd like to posit seven criteria upon which to base a film canon.

BEAUTY
What better criterion to begin than the oldest and most vexing. Beauty is the bedrock of all judgements of taste. Without a respect for Beauty judgements topple in the winds of fashion. The solution to the problem of beauty is not to deny Beauty its power but to expand its parameters.
STRANGENESS
Strangeness is the type of originality we can never altogether assimilate. The concept of strangeness enhances the traditional notion of originality, adding the connotations of unpredictability, unknowability and magic. This strangeness, this unpredictable burst of originality, is the attribute of a work of art that causes successive generations to puzzle over it, to debate it, to be awed by it.
UNITY OF FORM AND SUBJECT MATTER
It's the interplay of forms in relation to function (commercial, educational, aesthetic) and subject matter. In a "great" film the frictions of form join to express the function in a new, "strange" way.
TRADITION
"Tradition is not only a handing down or process of bening transmission, it is alos a conflict between past genius and present aspiration in which the prize is survival or canonical inclusion" (Harold Bloom's The Western Canon")
One of the pleasures of film studies is stacking these filmmakers atop each other, seeing them reprocess their predecessors and fellow directors. Wong Kar Wai, for example, can be seen as first influenced by Scorsese and John Woo, passing through a phase influenced by Tarantino, and emerging as a great artist in a manner owed to Alain Resnais.
REPEATABILITY
Great art "holds up", it can be experienced repeatedly, it can be appreciated by successive generations, it frows in importance and context with time. The ability of certain films to retain their impact over repeat viewings is a textbook example of what makes a "classic". Citizen Kane, for example. There is nothing about it that hasn't been copied and recopied, seen by successive generations of filmgoers a thousand times. Yet, despite this, the fact remains that Kane engages both the first time and repeat viewer.
VIEWER ENGAGEMENT
A film viewer doesn't have to "do" anything. Film demands precious little.The primary appeal of the movies may be, in fact, that they ask so little of us. A great film is one that to some degree frees the viewer from this passive stupor and engages him or her in a creative process of viewing. The film, either by withholding expected elements or by positing contradictions causes the viewer to reach into the screen, as it were, and move the creative furniture around. This is a viewer making identifications he or she had no intention of making, coming to conclusions the film can't control, reassembling the film in a unique personal way.
MORALITY
Movies will always have a moral component. One can't depict real-life situations, develop characters, and tell stories over time without moral ramifications. To paraphrase the injunction Jung had inscribed on his gravestone, "Called or not, morality will be there". Great films have great moral resonance. No work that fails to strike moral chords can be canonical.

Based on the above criteria, Schrader arrives at a universal canon in three categories: gold, silver and bronze, with 20 films in each category. Below a list of the Gold Masterpieces in order:

THE RULES OF THE GAME
TOKYO STORY
CITY LIGHTS
PICKPOCKET
METROPOLIS
CITIZEN KANE
ORPHEE
MASCULIN-FEMENIN
PERSONA
VERTIGO
SUNRISE
THE SEARCHERS
THE LADY EVE
THE CONFORMIST
8 1/2
THE GODFATHER
IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE
THE THIRD MAN
PERFORMANCE
LA NOTTE

[Chris Knipp]

I'm not involved in what's called here by the somewhat odd phrase "canon formation." I simply hope that what I think is a good film isn't just good "for me". Listing great masterpieces or "GOLD" items (it might have meant more if you'd given samples of 'SILVER' AND 'BRONZE' movies to see if this guy's lists make any sense) strikes me as kind of silly since films seem to go out of date faster than good music or good literature, and cinema is such a young art form. I guess I have a problem with the images. With jazz, say, the good stuff doesn't really date. This guy's generalizations are reasonable, some parts seem better than others. What Paul Schrader has to say makes pretty good sense though, I guess. I just don't know what good list-making does. As we've discussed before and arasib said, it's the reasons for putting a title on a list that are interesting, not just the title. It's be pretty safe to say Schrader's list is of good films though. Funny how he slips In the Mood for Love in there. I personally would grant Wong is one of the great ones of the past couple deecades, but you could pick another title of his.

[Chris Knipp]

That list in its exact makeup is personal, but agreement that the list is of good films shows a universality of film values.

[oscar jubis]

I think that film is as valid an art form as any other. I believe that Sunrise and The Passion of Joan of Arc have not dated at all since their release 80 years ago and will be equally beloved 80 years from now.

Schrader's essay is a serious and honest attempt to devise "standards of excellence". An attempt to develop universal criteria to be used to evaluate films. A way to devise a "universal" list of films that would form the curriculum for an Introduction to Cinema college course, or a list of films a neophyte wishing to learn about movies should pursue. These criteria can guide a person to make a yearly Top 10 list that shows what you call "a universality of film values". It's a valiant attempt to combat what Schrader calls "the rise of the nonjudgementals" (which would include me). Like I said earlier, I think it's futile because I believe many forms of subjectivity and circumstantiality permeate all judgements. But I admire him for trying.

Regarding the 20 Silver and 20 Bronze masterpieces he came up with based on the seven criteria, you and anybody else is likely to disagree with several inclusions and omissions. More so than the Gold ones, which largely mirror the Sight & Sound polls taken every decade. Applying the criteria to 2006 releases is likely to produce even more disagreement. My point is that it can't be helped. No single person can make choices that are "universal".

[Chris Knipp]

Okay. I feel films date more than you do. That is clear. I wouldn't question that film is an art form. I have no problem with Schrader's efforts to establish criteria, and as you know I believe in the possiblity of agreeing more or less on what is a good film. I just have doubts about the canon business. He cites Harold Bloom, who's a sweet old guy who wrote some brilliant literary criticism in his time, but Bloom's canons are a bit retro, as canons are pretty much bound to wind up becoming. I can understand for the sake of brevity and making a quick impression your listing only the gold listings but the silver and bronze ones would still give more dimension to one's sense of Shrader's taste. Does taste exist for you, or only preferences?

But we don't have to "reinvent the wheel" just to get to our annual Best Lists!

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I can understand for the sake of brevity and making a quick impression your listing only the gold listings but the silver and bronze ones would still give more dimension to one's sense of Shrader's taste. Does taste exist for you, or only preferences?

I'm the one who's huge into taste and preferences. Schrader claims this list is not a reflection of his taste or preferences. It's an effort to apply standards of excellence to create a list of universally admired masterpieces. Other than films adherence to the 7 criteria, the only other self-imposed directive is to pick no more than one film per director. Here's the Silver and Bronze lists:

SILVER

21. Mother and Son (1997)
22. The Leopard (1963)
23. The Dead (1987)
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
25. Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
26. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
27. Jules and Jim (1962)
28. The Wild Bunch (1969)
29. All That Jazz (1979)
30. The Life of Oharu (1952)
31. High and Low (1963)
32. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
33. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
34. An American in Paris (1951)
35. Voyage in Italy (1954)
36. Taxi Driver (1976)
37. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
38. Blue Velvet (1986)
39. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
40. The Big Lebowski (1998)

BRONZE

41. The Red Shoes (1948)
42. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
43. Chinatown (1974)
44. The Crowd (1928)
45. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
46. Talk to Her (2002)
47. Shanghai Express (1932)
48. Letters from an Unknown Woman (1948)
49. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
50. Salvatore Giuliano (1962)
51. Nostalghia (1983)
52. Seven Men From Now (1956)
53. Claire’s Knee (1970)
54. Earth (1930)
55. Gun Crazy (1949)
56. Out of the Past (1947)
57. Children of Paradise (1945)
58. The Naked Spur (1953)
59. A Place in the Sun (1950)
60. The General (1927)

My conclusion is that even though Schrader was honestly and courageously trying to objectively apply the criteria and remove any element of subjectivity in his selection process, the list reflects his personal taste and his own personality. It can't be helped.

[Chris Knipp]

I didn't mean you to lump "taste" and "preferences" together but to denote two different things with these words, hence my using the word "taste" in the singular, and "preferences" in the plural. I should have made myself more clear.

I'm using "taste" to mean an ability to judge quality, something some have more than others -- good taste, an educable but inborn instinct to distinguish good from bad -- and I'm using "preferences" to mean the individual leanings everybody has. Both come into play when a person makes an annual Best List, but they're different factors. Everybody has preferences and of course Schrader's attempt to make a "universal" by himself using his own prefereces is doomed not to be very successful. I think it's clear that over time people who are well informed about film are (have been and will be) able to agree to a certain extent on what the classics are, but there is no 100% agreement. I am simply saying it is not just personal preference but that one exercises taste, and among people of good taste, wide knowledge, and keen understanding who've educated their instincts, some collective sense of what the (very) best films are tends to emerge, and this even works as quickly as with annual Best Lists. I'd say my lists are something like 2/3 choices I believe to be films of the highest merit, regardless of my personal preferences, and 1/3 are items I put in to advocate my personal preferences, my special favorites peculiar to me. Of course "preference" could be expressed by the phrase "personal taste," but I'm making a distinction in terminology for the discussion which I hope is clear, though I know you won't go along very far with the idea of "good taste." It's a matter of approximations, not absolutes. It's not all universal goodness and it's not all just personal preferences. Your point of view is a romantic one, mine more neo-classical and 18th-century. (Just in tendency, not absolutely.) In the 18th-c. view there were universal values, and "true taste" (the phrase in Pope's Essay on Criticism) was something some are blessed with -- and many critics not. We live in a far different more multiferious world than Pope's, so lists have to be longer and more Catholic, but within categories quality is still discernible, not just personal appeal, as you yourself would grant I think.

[Chris Knipp]

Nothing is more futile than the occupation of those connoisseurs who spend their time compiling first and second elevens of the world's best painters, eights and fours of musicians, fifteens of poets, all-star troupes of architects and do on. Nothing is so futile because there are a great many kinds of merit and an infinite variety of human beings. Is Fra Angelico a better artist than Rubens? Such questions, you insisst, are meaningless. It is all a matter of personal taste. And up to a point this is true. But there does exist, none the less, an absolute standard of artistic merit. And it is a standard which is in the last resort a moral one. Whether a work of art is good or bad depends entirely on the quality of the character which expresses itself in the work. Not that all virtuous men are good artists, nor all artists conventionally virtuous….That it is difficult to tell the genuine from the sham is proved by the fact that enormous numbers of people have made mistakes and continue to make them. Genuineness, as I have said, always triumphs in the long run. But at any given moment the majority of people, if they do not actually prefer the sham to the real, at least like it as much, paying indiscriminate homage to both.

-- "The Best Picture" from Complete Essays, Volume I by Aldous Huxley. You might agree with the first part and I think I do. I wouldn't go along 100% with the last part but I think he's on to something, and it's interesting that he is both relativistic and absolute. You kind of have to be. I think both come into play.

[oscar jubis]

Nice, interesting quote from Huxley. I agree with most of it and will think about it some more.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I'm using "taste" to mean an ability to judge quality, something some have more than others -- good taste, an educable but inborn instinct to distinguish good from bad
This "inborn instinct to distinguish good from bad" feels alien to my way of thinking, but I can tell you perhaps I was born with an unusual interest in all kinds of art. By the time I was in college, my interest in cinema went beyond that of the typical avid filmgoer.

I am simply saying it is not just personal preference but that one exercises taste, and among people of good taste, wide knowledge, and keen understanding who've educated their instincts, some collective sense of what the (very) best films are tends to emerge, and this even works as quickly as with annual Best Lists. I'd say my lists are something like 2/3 choices I believe to be films of the highest merit, regardless of my personal preferences, and 1/3 are items I put in to advocate my personal preferences, my special favorites peculiar to me. Of course "preference" could be expressed by the phrase "personal taste," but I'm making a distinction in terminology for the discussion which I hope is clear, though I know you won't go along very far with the idea of "good taste."
Yes, I can't go far with the idea of some people having "good taste". Using Schrader's criteria, I don't think anyone is a better or worse judge of "Beauty" and "Morality" than me. But when you talk about gaining knowledge and educating one's instincts, that's where we can find common ground. There's no doubt that one's degree of experience with films and filmmaking makes one a better judge of what Schrader calls "Tradition" and "Strangeness", and maybe even "unity of form and subject matter". I can accept this elitism, one based on decades of joyful and focused dedication to appreciating a particular art form and its history. But let's not underestimate how what makes each person unique affects choices. For instance, critics' polls reveal that rarely more than one or two films appear in the Top 10 lists of at least 50% of those polled. The Film Comment list doesn't tell you how many critics voted for each film. The Village Voice one will reveal so. There's a poll of 108 critics by IndieWire. There was only one film to appear in the Top 10 of 50% of the voters (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu). I think this speaks volumes.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't think anyone is a better or worse judge of "Beauty" and "Morality" than me. How about Hitler, for morality?If this issue is a no-brainer than you are wasting your time thinking about what Aldous Huxley says.
There was only one film to appear in the Top 10 of 50% of the voters (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu). I think this speaks volumes.Yes, it suggests Mr. Lazarescu is destined to survive and perhaps become a classic. Unless it turns out to be a sham, in Huxley's terms. I think you're using numbers misleadingly to prove your assertions though. There are quite a few titles that come up repeatedly in the annual best lists. They just don't come up on all of them at once. Howver that is beside the point, because good taste is what emerges over time, not instantly at year's end.

[oscar jubis]

That's what I get for not being specific. I was writing within the context of folks like you and me assessing the beauty and moral aspects of a given film.
1st draft of 2006 lists completed. Films I'll be watching before final draft: The Painted Veil, Venus, Gabrielle, 4, 13 Tzameti, Sherrybaby, The Great Yokai War, Mutual Appreciation, Climates, Wild Blue Yonder.
Also hope to give a second look to: A Scanner Darkly, Half Nelson, Pan's Labyrinth, and Volver.

[Chris Knipp]

You are most diligent. Ones there I have not seen: Tzmeti, Sherrybaby, Yokai War.

[cinemabon]

Is this a personal thing between you two or can anyone join in?

How subjective can one get when defining something as personal as beauty? Nothing objective here, unless of course, you enter the realm of philosophy, which by all accounts so far, you have... hence quoting Huxley etc.

Beauty in film can be described as The Red Shoes (if color is your thing) or perhaps Black Narcissus, once described to me as the most beautiful film ever created (both, by the way, photographed by that unsung hero, Jack Cardiff and directed by Michael Powell). Certainly Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast is about the most beautiful black and white movie I've ever seen, the best argument for art in that scheme I know. However, when discussing film, should we stick to disciplines as criteria such as photography, editing, set design, costumes, score and so on? Or should we start using arbitrary assessment tools, such as beauty?

I believe that when I think about acting or direction or even editing, I take beauty into account without thinking of it as being separated into some sort of objective factor. To believe one can regard beauty as a constant measure is a matter of delusion (to bring psychology into the mix).

Charles Schwab stole the wind from Scanner Darkly's sails, don't you think? Weeks before the film debuted, the investment firm ran a series of commercials using the same technique. By the time the film arrived, it already seemed passe.

By the way, is this a discussion of print media's picks for 2006 or who knows the most about art, film theory and philosophy? I just wondered, for the record.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by cinemabon
Is this a personal thing between you two or can anyone join in?
The more the merrier.

How subjective can one get when defining something as personal as beauty?
Subjective indeed.

Beauty in film can be described as The Red Shoes (if color is your thing) or perhaps Black Narcissus, once described to me as the most beautiful film ever created (both, by the way, photographed by that unsung hero, Jack Cardiff and directed by Michael Powell).
Jack "O"Lantern" Cardiff is 92 and still active. Both films you mention are gorgeous. I love the way the nuns' habits in Black Narcissus cast shadows on their faces.
Most beautiful color film, for me, is probably Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive, now available on Criterion dvd. Other favorites include Parajanov's Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, Ford's The Searchers, Scorsese's Kundun, Ronoir's The River, and Cisse's Yeelen.

Certainly Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast is about the most beautiful black and white movie I've ever seen, the best argument for art in that scheme I know.
Great pick, again. Personal favorites: Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes are Flying, Mizoguchi's Ugetsu, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil, Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie, Reed's The Third Man and Murnau's Sunrise.

However, when discussing film, should we stick to disciplines as criteria such as photography, editing, set design, costumes, score and so on? Or should we start using arbitrary assessment tools, such as beauty?
Both, if you want.

Charles Schwab stole the wind from Scanner Darkly's sails, don't you think? Weeks before the film debuted, the investment firm ran a series of commercials using the same technique. By the time the film arrived, it already seemed passe.
The basic technique of rotoscoping was invented almost 100 years ago. The current process, which is computer-assisted, is called interpolated rotoscoping. Richard Linklater used it to create the first completely rotoscoped feature, Waking Life, back in 2001, a few years before the commercials were made.

By the way, is this a discussion of print media's picks for 2006 or who knows the most about art, film theory and philosophy? I just wondered, for the record.
Exchange evolved into areas of art appreciation relevant to picking the best films, such as to what extent taste and subjectivity are part of the process. Was any of it of interest to you? I don't mind you steering the exchange in any direction you see fit.

[cinemabon]

Pointed out to me in film school, Claude Renoir's beautiful cinemaphotography in The River is another wonderful choice of using a colorful palate (why shouldn't he, with such an artistic family background).

As the French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre said: "L'enfer, c'est les autres." (Hell is other people)

I don't mean to intrude

[Chris Knipp]

I don't mean to intrudeThis only looks like a two-person discussion because nobody comes in. It's open to anyone who joins the site.

P.s. on Rotoscoping, whiich now they're calling "interpolated rotoscoping." Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth in The Five Obstructions three years ago used he same guy who supervised it for Linklater's Waking Life (Sabiston, who is named in the film) for a sequence. According to the Wikipedia article on the technique, it was invented by Max Fleisher and used first in 1914 and also used in films in tthe 30's, 40's, 50's, 70's and 80's--they say not in the 60's. Walt Disney used it in Fantasia. So the concept is older than I realized till Oscar's comment, in general terms, that is, as animating photos of human motion. This specific look we're talking about however is peculiar to the method developed recently--quoting the Wikipedia article)
. . . in the mid-1990's, Bob Sabiston, an animator and computer scientist veteran of the MIT Media Lab, developed a computer-assisted "interpolated rotoscoping" process which the director Richard Linklater later employed in the full-length feature films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Linklater licensed the same proprietary rotoscoping process for the look of both films. Linklater is the first director to use digital rotoscoping to create an entire feature film. I forget the technique, but "motion-something" was a kind of rotoscoping with sensors strapped on parts of the body for Savion Glover and others to do the tap-dance moves interpoloated into the dancer penguin scenes in Happy Feet. I personally love the Sabiston "interpolated" look used in Waking Life and A Scanner, Darkly and love both those films, and I hope to see more of the technique in future films. Not just in ads though. Co-opting stuff for commercial pruposes can cheapen it, in a way.

[oscar jubis]

Reportedly, there will not be a Village Voice Poll. Or more accurately, IndieWIRE has taken over what was used to be the Voice Poll. The bad thing is that IndieWire moved the deadline from the first half of January, as was customary at the Voice, to the first half of December. As a result some films, like Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth and Sands of Iwo Jima, released in late December may be underrepresented.

"Welcome to the first annual indieWIRE film critics' poll. If you're experiencing deja vu, it's because this national survey is a direct descendant of the Village Voice poll, which I conducted from 1999 to 2005 ("Take One" through "Take Seven") with the help of my former colleagues J. Hoberman and Michael Atkinson. Recent developments at the Voice have left that poll without a home and the good folks at indieWIRE have graciously stepped in to adopt it." (Dennis Lim)

Best Film
# Title Points Mentions

1 The Death of Mr. Lazarescu 641 (54)
2 L'Enfant 478 (45)
3 The Departed 422 (40)
4 Inland Empire 416 (35)
5 Army of Shadows 394 (30)
6 Three Times 365 (31)
7 Old Joy 334 (34)
8 United 93 313 (27)
9 Children of Men 285 (26)
10 Half Nelson 271 (26)
11 The Queen 261 (28)
12 Climates 254 (23)
13 A Scanner Darkly 250 (22)
14 Pan's Labyrinth 240 (25)
15 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan 230 (24)
16 A Prairie Home Companion 194 (21)
17 Volver 186 (18)
18 Battle in Heaven 177 (17)
19 Letters From Iwo Jima 146 (14)
20 Mutual Appreciation 143 (16)

Other categories will follow.

[Chris Knipp]

A link to this would be nice. I agree the scheduling is a mistake. I'm also sorry the Voice has given it up. Should think their material would be more interesting, but just the bare list says little anyway..... the usual suspects, minus some later entries, my gap still Reygadas, the one I haven't seen yet. Climates is showing in downtown Berkeley, somewhat to my surprise. I'm glad people can see it here though.

I sent you an email--a week or so ago.

[oscar jubis]

Will reply soon. Sorry.
Here's the link:
http://indiewire.com/critics2006/
Comment if so inclined.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks. I'll comment when I get a chance.

[Chris Knipp]

There's not much you can do with lists like this other than to see if they guide you to something maybe you ought to see or forgot to list.

BEST FILMS. I have a lot of the Indiewire top movie choices on my lists too somewhere, except for Old Joy--nice little film but somewhat overhyped. I prefer Mutual Appreciation. I think that one gets into its people better and doesn't seem so set up.

BEST DIRECTOR. Sure, they're all good. I can't really say. If they made the best films aren't they the best directors? I'd be surprised if lousy directors made great movies. I guess everybody is pushed to put Scorsese first because they know he has gotten bypassed for an Oscar and fully deserves one. Makes sense that way. And only that way. Robert Altman didn't do so well here.

BEST PERFORMANCE and BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE. The usual suspects, only they don't separatre them by sex here. I don't know if that's a great performance by Mark Wahlberg but it's an obtrusive one--so it goes (see my comment on CINEMATOGRAPHY). I am glad to see him listed though because I think he's an appealing actor who came from behind. They made fun of him. "Marky Mark." He showed them he was serious. I still can't see what's so great about Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson, though I greatly admire his work in The Believer. They're overrating Old Joy again. The other choices are okay but not the rankings, which are peculiar in some instances. I don't know what Requium is and I missed The Notorious Bettie Page.

DOCUMENTARIES. I saw more of what's on this list than I'd realized. I just didn't remember them or think they were that important. I could add 49 Up to my list and The Devil's Miner. Some I avoided. Some I flat out disliked. I like a documentary to be moving and significant. (I am actually moved by 49 Up.) Definitely there are some Iraq war ones I should see but haven't. They were not available to me mostly. Shut Up and Sing I could have caught in NYC but missed.

CINEMATOGRAPHY maybe is really better when you don't notice it, ditto acting. Unfortunately what gets awarded is the acting that you notice, and cinematography that's flashy or "beautiful." Interesting that Lynch got listed in 6th place with his grainy crap video. And he should because he makes it work for him. I would agree that the camera movement is amazing in Children of Men, though maybe I'd say that is mise-en-scène, certainly not just camera manipulation. Not seen: Sweet Land, Kikexili.

BEST UNREALEASED. I differ more with this list than the others. I think one reason is that I saw some films they didn't. Do not agree at all with choosing Private Fears in Public Places, Gardens in Autumn and The Wayward Cloud to go here. I can well understand nobody's picking them up and I didn't care for them. But I certainly would approve Woman on the Beach (which maybe I ought to have included), The Go Master, and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (all from the NYFF), and above all of course the wonderful The Sun, though I have listed that before; it was in the NYFF in 2005.

All these are comments on the INDIEWIRE 2006 lists

http://indiewire.com/critics2006/

[Chris Knipp]

Since the film staff of The Village Voice was decimated in a downsizing-merger process (the reason why they couldn't compile a poll this year--see a discussion of this on The Reeler (http://www.thereeler.com/features/the_voice_in_the_wilderness.php) ), and the number-two man, Michael Atkinson, was fired and moved to Boston to work for the Phoenix chain (congratulations nonetheless to Nathan Lee--a lively and pungent writer, for being granted his Voice spot), it may be worthwhile reading Atkinson's 2006 Top Ten list. Atkinson also writes for IFC and it's their site (http://ifc.com/news/article?aId=18517) that publishes his list. Here it is with his comments and runners-up:


(Michael Atkinson's 2006 Best List)
1. Battle in Heaven
2. 4
3. United 93
4. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
5. Woman Is the Future of Man
6. The Departed
7. Cavite
8. La Moustache
9. My Country, My Country
10. The Wild Blue Yonder

[Atkinson comments:] A dire year, all tolled,* appearing from where I'm sitting to have been dominated by the publicity surrounding a handful of tiresome studio films rather than the films themselves or anyone's genuine enjoyment of or satisfaction in them. The smaller and/or imported whirligigs on my list should've generated their own kind of cultural hoopla, but they couldn't afford to buy it; buzz, an increasingly rare resource, doesn't occur naturally anymore. Ah well: when the source-wells for a top ten list include the Philippines, Romania, Mexico and outer space, things can't be all bad. A breakdown: two debuts, three sophomore films, four American (including the Herzog, since he and NASA are both U.S. residents), one doc, three shot on digital video, and seven utilizing, in one form or another, unprofessional actors.
Runners-up (in order): "The Hidden Blade" (Yoji Yamada, Japan), "Lady Vengeance" (Park Chanwook, South Korea), "The Science of Sleep" (Michel Gondry, France), "Army of Shadows" (Jean-Pierre Melville, France), "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" (Albert Brooks, US), "A Scanner Darkly" (Richard Linklater, US), "Mongolian Ping Pong" (Hao Ning, China), "Overlord" (Stuart Cooper, UK), "49 Up" (Michael Apted, UK), "Old Joy" (Kelly Reichardt, US), "Lemming" (Dominik Moll, France), "Workingman's Death" (Michael Glawogger, Austria/Germany), "Kekexili: Mountain Patrol" (Lu Chuan, China), "Brick" (Rian Johnson, US), "Letters from Iwo Jima" (Clint Eastwood, US), "The Troubles We've Seen" (Marcel Ophuls, France).

*Certainly a "dire year" for Atkinson, seeing how it ended.

I (Chris Knipp) have not seen 4, barely missed Cavite, regret missing Battle in Heaven, obviously ought to have seen the Iraq documentary My Country, My Country. Did not know La Moustache was released here; saw it at the Rendez-Vous at Lincoln Center and it's good though not great in my opinion. Did not know or forgot Woman Is the Future of Man was released, but I do like Hong Sang-soo. Interesting list.

For another bit of news from outside the mainstream, here's New York Press film critic and heavy-duty contrarian Armond White's 2006 Best List:


(Armond White's 2006 Best List)
1. Broken Sky (Julián Hernández)
2. Neil Young: Heart of Gold (Jonathan Demme)
3. A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
4. World Trade Center (Oliver Stone)
5. Nacho Libre (Jared Hess)
6. The Promise (Chen Kaige)
7. Infamous (Douglas McGrath)
8. Akeelah and the Bee (Doug Atchison)
9. Bobby (Emilio Estevez)
10. Runnng Scared (Wayne Kramer) If you like you can find White's annual lists from 1997 here. (http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/white.html)

Possibly most interesting is White's "Better Than" list (http://www.nypress.com/20/1/film/18-FILM.jpg) where he parallels each of his choices to a "mainstream" choice that he abhors. As for White, his opinions are frequently maddening or seemingly insand, but what other film critic do you know who has a blog just designed to comment on him (Armond Dangerous) (http://armonddangerous.blogspot.com/)? Even if White's lists and opinions are off the wall, he remains worthwhile as a provocative outsider. He justified his "Better Than" list this way:
Don't be fooled by the "10 Best Films" lists from critics who never even saw the year's most interesting films. They're merely corroborating the promotional campaigns of the most highly publicized movies and failing to seek out the best. This year more than ever, it's necessary to separate genuine achievement from pure hype, thus my alternative: "The Better-Than List."This occasioned some ironic commentary on The Reeler for the evident contradictions to this credo in White's actual list. "To thine own self be true?" It's not self-evident that White achieves that. But he does provoke, even if often the sting fades quickly.

Nathan Lee? His Best Lists (http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0701,lee,75436,20.html) got big billing this year in The Voice, no doubt to publicize his new status as number two man on the flm pages there. Hoberman, happily, has remained. But a good deal of the Voice's sense of a smart, lively crew subject to the caffeine effects of New York life has faded with the merger stuff, which seems to carry with it the promise of reviews phoned in from elsewhere.


(Nathan Lee's 2006 Best List)
1. Inland Empire
2. Army of Shadows
3. A Scanner, Darkly
4. THe Death of Mr. Lazarescu
5. Jackass No. Two
6. Two Drifters
7. The Departed
8. Mutual Appreciation
9. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
10. The Descent

[oscar jubis]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kent Jones
Editor-at-Large, Film Comment.


1. L’Armée des ombres (Army of Shadows, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
A deeply personal film, made in the suspense idiom. To see this on a big screen in coolly vivid colour in 2006 was a shock, æsthetically and morally. Army has a bracing sense of urgency and purpose that I don’t believe I’ve felt in any other movie, by Melville or anyone else, and it puts most of the current attempts to deal with murderous realpolitik in unflattering perspective. The New York Film Critics’ Circle just voted it the Best Foreign Film of the year. I would drop “Foreign”.

2. The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
Jean-Pierre Gorin got it right: forget Hong Kong and think of Eugene O’Neill and the William Faulkner of Pylon. A giddily terrifying experience.

3. Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, 2006)
I liked the first film when I saw it in October, but it seemed excessively restrained to me. A couple of months later, after seeing and being shaken by its companion piece (filmed entirely in Japanese), I went back to see Flags and it was a different movie. The restraint felt entirely appropriate, the inevitable response of traumatized men without the benefit of an emotional outlet. Seen in tandem, these two exquisitely refined films make for a fairly magnificent achievement. Along with The Departed’s ensemble and Laura Dern’s all-stops-out multiple-personality performance in Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006), Ken Watanabe does the best acting of the year as General Kuribayashi.

4. A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006)
Rick Linklater translates one of Phillip K. Dick’s more personal novels to the movies, with the help of digital animation software, Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey, Jr. Another very sad movie, made without a single concession to popular taste. If you’re one of those virtuous types who’s trying to forget that the drug culture ever existed, this is not the movie for you. I would recommend Little Children (Todd Field, 2006) or Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006) – and you have to see Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006).

5. A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, 2006)
Some last films feel more like testaments than others. Altman may have had other projects in the works, but this serene rapture suggests an intuition of his own end.

6. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Spike Lee, 2006)
A pretty good year for Spike Lee. Inside Man was a nice, modest heist movie, with a terrific feel for contemporary Manhattan. Then there was this, a full-force blast at the American government for drowning its greatest city (as the film makes so clear, it wasn’t the hurricane that killed New Orleans but the poorly-built levees), a choral lament and a collective cry of righteous anger.

7. Haebyonui yoin (Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
At first, Woman seems like yet another elegant Hong Sang-soo variation on triangulated male desires and frustrations, which is good enough. Then, at about the midway point, it starts to fill out and doesn’t stop until it’s attained a magical amplitude previously unseen in this director’s work (it even takes time to diagram and dismantle triangular obsessions). Another welcome singularity: it shifts to a woman’s point of view.

8. Wu qingyuan (The Go Master, Tian Zhuangzhuang, 2006)
A work of incomparable elegance and contemplative force, made by one of the world’s most elegant and forcefully contemplative filmmakers.

9. Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater, 2006)
It’s easy to imagine any number of films inspired by Eric Schlosser’s fast food exposé, but it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone coming up with something like this, a multi-character drama that does it right for a change. Nicely low-key where a Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004) and a Babel are borderline hysterical, observant where Little Children (Todd Field, 2006) and Selon Charlie (Nicole Garcia, 2006) are strictly theoretical, this is one of the most trenchantly observed American films in quite some time. If you want to know what the country is like right now, watch Greg Kinnear’s entirely believable corporate capitulation, or the endearing confusion among a group of young political activists as they try to figure out how to make a difference. Score another one for America’s best independent filmmaker.

10. Neil Young: Heart of Gold (Jonathan Demme, 2006)
The year’s biggest surprise. Demme is a terrific filmmaker but he hasn’t exactly been on a roll during the past 20 years. On top of which, Young has had no shortage of concert films, from his own Rust Never Sleeps (1979) through Jim Jarmusch’s very fine Year of the Horse: Neill Young and Crazy Horse Live (1997). Here, Demme is freed from the impossible task of making expensive movies meant to please everyone at the same time, to make what is, in the end, not really a “concert movie” but, like the Altman, a meditation on mortality and comradeship among artists. If you have even a nodding acquaintance with Young’s music and his career, it’s a very moving experience, and the final, lonely solo rendering of “The Old Laughing Lady” is a killer.

At the top of the Runner-up List are: Peter Bogdanovich’s reworked version of his 1971 Directed by John Ford; Alain Resnais’ Coeurs (Private Fears in Public Places, 2006; Inland Empire, David Lynch’s very Lynchian tour through the Lynchian universe; Cars (John Lasseter, 2006), Happy Feet (George Miller, 2006), William Friedkin’s Bug (2006), Pedro Costa’s Juventude em marcha (Colossal Youth, 2006), El Laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006), Sang sattawat (Syndromes and a Century, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006), 49 Up (Michael Apted, 2005); and Richard Kelly’s impossible and exhausting (if not infuriating) but undeniably moving anti-capitalist manga, Southland Tales (2006).

Best of 2007 (so far): My American Dream (Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson), State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman), The Walker (Paul Schrader) and Rialto’s re-release of Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso (1962).

[oscar jubis]

As compiled by Allocine (the French equivalent of Metacritic). Perhaps odd: no film in French in the top 9, only one of them in English. Four animated films in the top 14, none of them American.

[list=1]
PUSHER III (Refn)
PUSHER II (Refn)
VOLVER (Almodovar)
PUSHER (Refn)
NAUSICAA (Miyazaki)
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (Lee)
POMPOKO (Takahata)
THE SUN (Sokurov)
IL CAIMANO (Moretti)
LADY CHATTERLEY (Ferran)
MALA NOCHE (Van Sant)
LIBERO (Rossi Stuart)
U (Elissalde)
AZUR ET ASMAR (Ocelot)
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (Dayton/Faris)
LE PASSAGER (Caravaca)
THE NEW WORLD (Malick)
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK (Clooney)
BLACK BOOK (Verhoeven)
CHANGEMENT D'ADRESSE (Mouret)
DARATT (Haroun)
SHORTBUS (Mitchell)
CAPOTE (Miller)
NEIL YOUNG:HEART OF GOLD (Demme)
TWILIGHT SAMURAI (Yamada)
BAMAKO (Sissako)
UNITED 93 (Greengrass)
QUAND J'ETAIS CHANTEUR (Giannoli)
COEURS (Resnais)
MARIE-ANTOINETTE (Coppola)
[/LIST=1]

[Chris Knipp]

I would say it's not just Metacritic but Metacritic with a dash of IMDb, much though you hate that name... After all, viewers' comments and fan info are also featured on Allociné....

This does show a different perspective, I don't know how it's compiled--box office? Critics' ratings? Anyway, I can agree with a number of their choices where I know the movies but there are a lot we saw a year or so earlier, many years in the case of Mala Noche, and some we haven't seen yet, hardly anything we just saw. If you know if you've been reading my Rendez-Vous reviews and thread, I loved The Singer/Quand j'était chanteur. Libero opened in Paris last fall, I just missed it. Rossi starred in Criminal Romance and before that in The House Keys/le chiavi di casa. I can't remember if I've seen Il caimano, but it is an attack on Berlusconi, I believe; Nanni Moretti is a political activist of the left. Of course I love Sokurov's The Sun. I personally wasn't too enthused by Resnais' Coeurs, but his is a hallowed name. I'd like to see all the other ones, though I am not much of an animation fan. Lady Chatterley I want to see, to find out what all the critical fuss is about. I will be skeptical though, going in.

[Chris Knipp]

On the Kent Jones paste-in the accents and apostrophes get garbled if you're using Mozilla Firefox--work okay with Explorer, but for Firefox you have to use html code I guess, i.e., for an é you have to type "&+eacute+;. For a table of these go here http://www.starr.net/is/type/htmlcodes.html .

[oscar jubis]

*I have no idea why they don't look garbled in my monitor whereas all the words with foreign accents in your recent posts look garbled in my monitor.

*The allocine list is an average of all the scores for each film by print media on a scale from 0 to 4. Pusher II and Pusher III got a score of 3.84, Marie-Antoinette got a 3.0.

*I'm upset I missed the French animated film U (#13) when it played at the MIFF. I'll post a list of significant films I missed at the fest after I post the remaining reviews.

*Mala Noche still not available on home video in its country. Shame.

*I can't wait to watch Coeurs. You know that I worship Resnais. I loved Pas Sur le Bouche which went straight to dvd here in the US of A. I might go to the Sarasota IFF just for the opportunity to watch it (and Raul Ruiz's Klimt).

*I was waiting for an Asian NTSC dvd version of The Sun but I might just get the PAL version now available on Ebay.

*I've read all your Rendezvous reviews including The Singer's.

[Chris Knipp]

*I have no idea why they don't look garbled in my monitor whereas all the words with foreign accents in your recent posts look garbled in my monitor. Oh. Sorry. I've been switching over to Firefox instead of Explorer. I expect that's the reason. I don't know if there is a solution.

On eBay they have a DVD of Sokurov's The Sun described as "made in USA," I wonder what that is? I cannot link to it here--it doesn't work. Just Google "The Sun DVD Sokurov". I would go for the PAL one with English subtitles.

I guess maybe Coeurs is brilliant. I found it kind of dreary. (Maybe I was just having a bad day. But I don't think so--unless you are of the opinion that I have nothing but bad days.) There do seem to be two Alain Resnais, maybe I don't like the later one. Discussion of that and of Resnais and Coeurs (though not really of Coeurs by everybody) on Dave Kehr's website (http://davekehr.com/?p=116) . I'd like to see Pas sur la bouche. I don't know that I would say "I worship" any director. Or maybe I "worship" Kurosawa, but I don't think everything he did is important. As the saying goes, "even Homer nods." (Google is so fantastic, I found in two minutes where that comes from: "quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus" (Horace, Ars Poetica. v. 359). According to Wikipedia, this is strictly defined as meaning that even in poets as great as Homer, there can be "continuity errors," but it's generally taken to mean that even great artists can produce sub-par work at times.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
On eBay they have a DVD of Sokurov's The Sun described as "made in USA," I wonder what that is?
I found it. I think it's a dvd-r. The seller of the PAL discs is one I've had problems communicating in the past so I'll wait a bit longer. Today I bought the dvd of this film: Taste of Tea (http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/tasteoftea?q=taste%20of%20tea) because the tiny distributor won't bring it here and it doesn't have a dvd division.

*Thanks for the link to Dave Kehr's website. Most definitely important topics and films I particularly like being discussed by, among others, Rosenbaum, Schrader, and Kehr, of course.

*When Resnais is not masterfully brilliant he is still experiential and revolutionary.

[Chris Knipp]

If you're experimental and revolutionary when you're 84 that's pretty good. I don't see how a claustrophobic adaptation of an English play, by a highly polished sixty-something knighted playmaker, about lonely people, this well-acted indoor play with experienced, polished professionals, can have much of the experimental about it. So I guess it must be masterfully brilliant.

The Dave Kehr site makes us look like lonely amateurs.

When you get all these DVD's then you sell them again later, don't you? I don't think I could be bothered to do that. And I guess you can get burned in the buying process.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
If you're experimental and revolutionary when you're 84 that's pretty good. I don't see how a claustrophobic adaptation of an English play, by a highly polished sixty-something knighted playmaker, about lonely people, this well-acted indoor play with experienced, polished professionals, can have much of the experimental about it. So I guess it must be masterfully brilliant.
Comment noted. I also read your review. Probably shouldn't say more without watching Coeurs. I obviously respond to Resnais' style. Isn't placing this particular English play within a French milieu by definition a risky endeavor?

The Dave Kehr site makes us look like lonely amateurs.
It does but we do our best.

When you get all these DVD's then you sell them again later, don't you? I don't think I could be bothered to do that. And I guess you can get burned in the buying process.
I've gotten burned but infrequently. Overall it's worth it. The Taste of Tea dvd will cost me $11, including shipping. About the same as the price of a movie ticket plus transportation.
A few months ago I sold 39 dvds to a video store for $200+$100 in rental credit. Not a bad deal for me or them since they have imports you won't find at Netflix.
Yes, it's a bit of a hassle to sell by piece on ebay...... listing, e-mailing, and shipping.

[Chris Knipp]

You have a good system but it wouldn't work for me. I might go back to getting bunch of French and Italian DVDs this year--I didn't last year. Some of them I have watched, from the year before last, and then later they wouldn't play. Nobody could figure it out. Of course I still don't have a multi-region player, because I only like to watch them on my computer. That way I can play around with them more. I'm glad you don't get burned often and it sounds like you have a very nice rental store.

I don't think using the English play with a French setting is risky, no.

The trouble is that on all these sites, even Kehr's, people spend a lot of their time discussing movies they haven't even seen.

[oscar jubis]

You probably have a nice, big computer monitor. Mine is an antique.
Kino International has acquired the rights to distribute Lady Chatterley in the US. No dates announced.
A short trip to Sarasota to watch Coeurs at their festival looks increasingly possible. It's a better festival than the ones in bigger Florida cities like Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando and Palm Beach.

[Chris Knipp]

I have a flat 15" (diagonal) LCD type screen, nothing fancy though, $150 from Gateway. I also like watching films on my laptop, which has a nice long format screen. Both are flat. I am done with curved screens.

Good luck with the cool Sarasota festival. I hope (for my sake) you're not going there only to watch Cœurs. I'm sure you'll see more.

[bix171]

The Dave Kehr site makes us look like lonely amateurs.

Chris, I think you spelled "lovely" wrong.

[Chris Knipp]

Nice.

[Johann]

Ha Ha

[Johann]

Oscar, do you know where to buy When The Levees Broke?

I just saw the 8-mintue montage of it on YouTube and I really want to see the whole thing.

That scene at the end with a guy saying
FUCK YOU MISTER CHENEY! was the shit I needed to see.That scene alone confirmed how much of an asshole Cheney is. "Do you get that a lot, Mr. Vice-President?"
Cheney smiled. The smile hides the truth.
Yessir it does...

Has everyone conveniently forgot about Katrina's devastation? Seems that way.
Everyone's put Iraq in the back of their minds, katrina on the back of their minds, Bush's lies and failures in the back of their minds...

C'mon people this is so sad.
So utterly, devastatingly sad.

[Chris Knipp]

I don't want to plug any dealer but it seems if you Google "Where the levees broke dvd" you will find it available at 1/3 off, for $21 plus shipping. It is also available at Netflix and it's in my queue.

[Chris Knipp]

P.s. Coeurs opened in NYC yesterday (Fri. 13 April 2007) and was reviewed by Mahohla Dargis in the NYTimes. It was a busy week for NYT movie reviewers since yesterday's paper also includes pieces on

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (Maiellaro, Willis)

Dirturbia (D.J. Caruso)

Everything's Gone Green (Paul Fox)

The Glamorous LIfe of Sachiko Hanai (Meike Mitsuru)

Lonely Hearts (Todd Robinson)

Modern Man (Justin Swibel)

Pathfinder (Marcus Nispel)

Perfect Stranger (James Foley)

Private Fears in Public Places (Coeurs)

Red Road (Andrea Arnold)

Voice of a Murderer (Park Jin-Pyo)

Year of the Dog (Mike White)

I would be pretty busy next week myself if I were there. However good they are a lot of these sound worth seeing to me. But I'm in California till late May.

Pathfinder is an apparently crappy ripoff of the classic (but now rare) Scandanavian Nils Gaup film Ofeles (1987) which as I've noted here before, is as neat an example of action storytelling as you'll ever see. This new one is already on video available at Netflix.

[Chris Knipp]

The Reeler is a New York-based online film review website I discovered back in January. Check it out. Vadim Rizov's assessment of Coeurs/Private Fears.... makes good sense I think and is superior to Manohla's overly polite notice. When in doubt, go easy on an icon, is the Times policy....http://www.thereeler.com/reviews/private_fears_in_public_places.php Though I would be reluctant to call The Reeler's writing world class, its evaluations are frequently spot-on.

[oscar jubis]

*Watching When The Levees Broke is quite an investment as the original doc is 4 hours long, and there's a long epilogue on the third disc. But it's brilliant and thorough and well worth your time and effort. I'm glad you guys are interested. Johan, this is probably the best place to purchase it if you want it shipped to Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/offer-listing/B000OPODU4/ref=sr_1_olp_2/702-8439513-8376009?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1176595152&sr=8-2

*That piece on Coeurs at The Reeler is a total waste of space. I haven't seen Couers and have no opinion of the film itself. But the writer's comments about Resnais, his career, and films like Melo betray a complete lack of knowledge and insight into the work of one of our greatest filmmakers.

[Chris Knipp]

*That piece on Coeurs at The Reeler is a total waste of space. I haven't seen Couers and have no opinion of the film itself. But the writer's comments about Resnais, his career, and films like Melo betray a complete lack of knowledge and insight into the work of one of our greatest filmmakers. I think that is totally unfair. First and foremost, I have seen Coeurs, and I think his assessment of it is quite accurate. Second, he says little about the specifics of Resnais. You imply in your comment tht there is great inaccuracy, when you simply disagree with Vadim Rizov's opinions, chiefly of a film you have not seen.
Resnais left off making deliberately confounding films and produced the relatively straightforward Melo in 1986. . . Rizov is cruel in what he says about Resnais, but this is his only specific statement about Melo: that it is "relatively straightforward" compared to more avant-garde earlier works, and signalled a change of style. You can't dismiss Rizov's review as "a total waste of space" simply because he radically disagrees with your assessment of Resnais.

I am not so interested in the overall assessment as I am in the specific assessment of Coeurs. I find his comments helpful.
Thematically, Resnais is working in the shadow of his ex-writer/actress Agnes Jaoui; where her films (such as The Taste Of Others) take stereotypically French examinations of bourgeois comfort and romance, her characters seem to have interesting lives of their own. Ultimately, Ayckbourn’s characters only exist to propagate a very weird, hermetic interest in certain types of mise-en-scene, and boredom settles in. This film shows a decline in powers, not "maturity." There is a difference. Not all artists who go on working into old age produce endless masterpieces. The recently deceased Vonnegut acknowledged that he had said what he had to say decades ago and that in his late seventies and early eighties he had no more books in him. Not all artists are that perceptive and honest. Rizov's opening paragraph also is accurate:
Alain Resnais -- once known for the self-conscious “difficulty� of his films -- has in recent years taken to adapting seemingly innocuous source material, only to keep his formal audaciousness relatively intact. In Private Fears In Public Places, technique outstrips content for a while, although the script’s fundamental toothlessness eventually destroys the movie. The title is nothing if not accurate, though a certain amount of caution is needed: Private Fears is the name of Alan Ayckbourn’s source play, but the French title, Coeurs, means “hearts.� As a composite, the two titles offer a fairly accurate indication of what unfolds: hearts and fears collide in the most public of environments (bars, half-constructed apartments, real estate offices) until the snows of Paris erase the boundaries completely. I cannot sit by and watch Resnais's boring film being celebrated as a mature masterpiece. Cheers fo Rizov for daring to tell the truth.

[Chris Knipp]

P.s. I don't think four hours plus is too long for a documentary about one of the most significant events of our times. We can think of it as a Grindhouse for reality buffs. I like long epilogues and good bonus materials. DVD's have too few of them. However, my assessment of When the Levees Broke will have to wait till I have actually seen the film.

[oscar jubis]

What I said was that When the Levees Broke is "brilliant and thorough and well worth your time and effort". It's atop my Favorite Documentaries of 2006 (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=16885#post16885)

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, and unseen, I was seconding that, and -- obviously -- offsetting your off-putting opener, "Watching When The Levees Broke is quite an investment as the original doc is 4 hours long, and there's a long epilogue on the third disc."