List #4: Questionable Praise

What’s perhaps more indicative of a person’s best of or worst of any given year is where they feel the general public has been mistaken. Certainly, frat boys and soccer moms galore will scoff at my pick of 300 for the worst film of the year (if you need proof, I believe Maxim magazine named it the best film of the year… that says it all). There are a number of critical bandwagons that always end up puzzling me, even if it doesn’t outright offend my sensibilities. Sean Penn’s Into the Wild was easily the most over-bloated junk of the year (hence it’s placement on my worst of the year list), but it was hardly the sole offender of a clusterfuck of a year where the only real agreement seems to have been that Cannes had a pretty phenomenal crop of films this year (No Country for Old Men, Zodiac, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Persepolis, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to name a few). Here’s nine films (consider Into the Wild your tenth) that perplexed this reviewer as to their wild critical praise.

I’m Not There – dir. Todd Haynes – USA

I’ve been a long-time fan of Haynes ever since I got my hands on an edited VHS copy of his Poison. Haynes never really seemed to adhere to what most people would expect of him; after all, what would you have really expected him to follow Poison with anyways? There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll never top the brilliance of Safe, but even with his haughty ambition in I’m Not There, I think I wanted something more than I got. Haynes has always been a visual director, though I wouldn’t say his films are necessarily from the same spectrum. Yet… I’m Not There feels like his best attempt to throw everything and the fucking kitchen sink into something that’s, well, a mess (purposeful or not, it’s still annoyingly untidy). You have Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, 8½, Don’t Look Back (naturally), and even Haynes’ own Velvet Goldmine. And what do you do with all that? I’m afraid I’m going to have to toss it back. I don’t usually like to spit upon others’ interpretations of films (unless, of course, you thought Into the Wild was painted with the stroke of God), but I think most of the praise for I’m Not There comes from looking really hard and trying to find something that’s really not there (no pun intended). Certainly, though, if you rummaged through someone’s messy house you’d likely find a stray twenty-dollar bill or maybe a great vinyl somewhere within the wreckage. I just don’t see why you’d want to find out.

The Savages – dir. Tamara Jenkins – USA

I always find the need to defend myself when I refer to something as “boring.” My definition of “boring” probably doesn’t mirror the general consensus; to go back to Haynes, I don’t think Safe is boring in the least (though I’m sure many would beg to differ). The Savages bored me to sobbing tears. It was the sort of boredom that would make most equate to watching paint dry. I’m serious. Laura Linney’s character, when discussing her as-of-yet-unwritten play, constantly begrudges her brother (Philip Seymour Hoffman), making sure he doesn’t think it’s terribly bourgeouis, and I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t Jenkins voice coming out on the screen, shaken and uncertain as to whether anyone could muster up an ounce of caring for what might as well have been a pipe slowly rusting. Yeah, sure, the film was smart, unsentimental (thank God), and well-acted, but none of that added up to something I’d want to sit through again.

Margot at the Wedding – dir. Noah Baumbach – USA

What bothers me most about Margot at the Wedding was what preceded Baumbach on his way to another bitter tale of intellectual malaise. The Squid and the Whale was just wonderful. Absolutely fantastic, and yet it was one of those movies a friend of mine described as a film everyone raved about for the two weeks it was in theatres only to forget about it shortly afterward. And, yeah, that’s probably true. So with Margot, Baumbach needed something that would stick, not something that felt like a day-old coffee pot version of something he’d already made. I’ll watch Jennifer Jason Leigh in fucking anything, so when even her presence fails to hit me in the right spots, my alarm signal goes off. Margot is stale, familiar, and, worst of all, wholly forgettable. Like she does in To Die For and The Others, Nicole Kidman always makes for a great cunt, all tightly-wound with Botox, tin-lipped and viper-tongued. Most of Margot’s detractors complained that no one in the film was likeable, but it was precisely the opposite case for me. No one in Margot at the Wedding was nearly as dislikable as I would deem necessary to hold interest further than the first explosion of words between its snake-y characters.

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone – dir. Tsai Ming-liang – Taiwan/Malaysia/China/France

I’ve never known anyone to casually like the work of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang (or his compatriot Hou Hsiao-hsien, for that matter), as their films seem geared toward the most avid of international film aficionados. There’s nothing in the realms of accessible to their agonizing long-shots of, usually, nothing, and that was just splendid… for a time. With I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai has continued this streak, painfully. What seemed like radiance and freshness in What Time Is It There? or Vive l’amour has grown tiresome. He doesn’t really break any new ground with his latest, and for once, I’ll stand by you, the MTV generation, and concur, “this shit is fucking tedious.”

Superbad – dir. Greg Motolla – USA

I’m one of those jerks that usually make for a bad person to ask about films. I’d decided, before seeing either, that I would hate Knocked Up and love Superbad for purely superficial reasons. Firstly, I laughed a grand total of once during Judd Apatow’s sketch comedy-cum-romantic yarn The 40-Year Old Virgin (and I saw that grueling two hour “unrated” version). I also don’t follow the notion that his beloved, cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks was anything special. With Superbad, the crudeness seemed without Apatow’s signature schmaltz, without that thin message of acceptance that makes me run for the eject button on my DVD player. And it had that Michael Cera in it expanding his life past the criminally-axed Arrested Development where he proved to have the best comic timing of the whole bunch. Unfortunately, my expectations got the better of me, and I ended up sheepishly enjoying Knocked Up and just-about loathing Superbad. I don’t do zany, and I don’t do antics. And for every minute of awkward teenage dialogue about cocks and Orson Welles, there was another nine of zany antics. Superbad is a comedy of errors, and to throw a zing at ya, I made an “error” watching this crap. Yeah, see, that joke was about as funny as most of what I witnessed in Superbad.

This Is England – dir. Shane Meadows – UK

If I had one word of advice for filmmakers working today, I’d say, “lay off the cheap sentimental bullshit.” And I’d say it just like that. This Is England (what a stupid title) is director Meadows’ recounting of his youth during the early stages of the Thatcher regime, and, yet, hindsight for him is less 20/20, more a lousy sermon. I always want to go back to a quote from Bernardo Bertolucci where he criticized the youth of today for not rebelling against the forces that be like his generation did in the 60s (his own auto-fellatio can be seen in The Dreamers). Let’s face it, budding filmmakers, cinema hasn’t changed anything in this world in a long time. And it ain’t going to anytime soon. Therefore, you don’t need to be vomiting up lessons and messages to your potential audience (unless that lesson happens to be that lessons don’t do a damn thing… subversive, eh?). This Is England isn’t a complete waste and probably isn’t even one of the great offenders of 2007, but for garnering an impeccable 86/100 rating on Metacritic (a slightly better version of Rotten Tomatoes), I could have used my history lesson away from the pulpit.

Gone Baby Gone – dir. Ben Affleck – USA

I guess what confuses me most is whether critics actually liked this one or were just surprised that Ben Affleck happens to be a better director than he is an actor, because Gone Baby Gone isn’t phenomenal by any stretch. One of its main detractors, as I discussed in my review for it, was that Affleck chose to cast two primary cast members from the television show The Wire (Amy Ryan and Michael K. Williams), which may very well be the finest thing to grace television screens… ever. Affleck didn’t need the comparisons; in fact, I can hardly muster up any interest in any films crime-related any more after my eyes have officially been opened by the uncompromising brilliance of The Wire. Gone Baby Gone suffers from the Pumpkin syndrome: a film that ends with a bang, almost forgiving the missteps taken throughout the rest of its running time. Almost.

The Simpsons Movie – dir. David Silverman – USA

I haven’t watched anything from the latest seasons of The Simpsons, but general consensus is that, without most of their original writers, the show blows. Like Seinfeld though, when The Simpsons officially signs off the air, it will always be remembered for its high points instead of its low ones. Therefore, it won’t be remembered for The Simpsons Movie, an eighty-seven-minute expansion of what would have been a mediocre episode (despite the return of many of the series’ creators) in the first place. About a third of The Simpsons Movie is hysterical, but you’d really have to rack my brain to recall any of those moments (and I just saw it two weeks ago). Instead we’re left with a missed opportunity, the first (and supposedly last) foray of America’s favorite animated family onto the big screen.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – dir. Sidney Lumet – USA

In my review of Sidney Lumet’s latest, I said something along the lines of “if Lumet chose to retire now, he’d retire on the high note he’d failed to achieve in the past twenty years of his career.” What I said was true; Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is probably better than all of the films he’s made since the 90s put together. However, you have to consider that adding Critical Care, Gloria and Find Me Guilty together would result in something slightly better than the last Jennifer Lopez movie. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is one of those films that’s just “fine.” It’s well-acted by PSH, Marisa Tomei, and even Ethan Hawke (I think Albert Finney is kinda hammy here), and I love the kaleidoscopic structure of Lumet’s modern tragedy. And, yet, I still can’t muster up any real excitement for the film. Maybe it’s my loss here, but its universal praise strikes me the same way Gone Baby Gone’s does. Here’s a film no one expected to be good, it ended up being pretty decent, and the praise flew in. See Match Point for another example of a once-great filmmaker who’d been stuck making mediocre films for years, only to come back with something comparatively better with accolades to follow.

List #3: Best of 2007, Film

... that added confusion as to whether or not I should include films that had yet to receive official US distribution, such as Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Ploy or Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. It also crossed films such as Old Joy and Wild Tigers I Have Known, which were officially released in 2006, only to come to Saint Louis this year. It’s not so much that I’m a stickler for these regulations, but it just adds to confusion once 2008 rolls around as possible best of’s like Ploy and Paranoid Park don’t make the cut (I’ve opted for waiting until next year for Van Sant’s, as it does have an official release date for March from IFC Films). Perhaps though, this is the point of an introduction, to give a roadmap to the reader as to why certain things made the cut and others did not (officially, my #1 of 2006 and 2005, Children of Men and Caché respectively, didn’t hit Saint Louis until after the new year, so the politics of a “Best of the Year” list for film are decidedly murky). Thus, I have compiled a 20 best, which includes those 2007 films without official releases and skips out on the 2006 ones that didn’t make it here until 2007. Notable films that I didn’t have the opportunity to catch before writing this include: 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Juno, Sweeney Todd, Syndromes and a Century, Quiet City, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Persepolis, No End in Sight, Manufactured Landscapes, Rescue Dawn, and Lars and the Real Girl. Here’s the official, revised list of the Best Films of 2007:

1. No Country for Old Men – dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen - USA

The American press has caused such a hoopla over the Coen brothers’ latest film that it almost bares no importance for me to say anything further. I vacillated between listing this or my number two, Grindhouse, at the top, but I realized a simple coin toss wouldn’t cut it. I think I only wanted to list Grindhouse at number one just so that my list didn’t look like every other film critic out there, and that wouldn’t be fair. No Country for Old Men is, without question, the finest film I saw this year, impeccable on nearly every level of filmmaking and dramatically shattering in a way all its own.

2. Grindhouse – dir. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright - USA

Pardon shall never be given to those Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez fans who skipped out on their double-feature. Actually, despite the film’s unfortunate box office receipt, I lean toward feeling sorry for those who missed out on the most rousing cinematic event you could ever ask for, and this is coming from someone’s who’s never liked a film by Rodriguez and could barely muster interest in anything Tarantino did after Pulp Fiction. I refuse to look at Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof as separate entities, because they damn well shouldn’t be. Most of the pleasure of Grindhouse is in their placement, in knowing that after you saw Rose McGowan kill a bunch of zombies with her machine-gun leg that you had a whole ‘nother treat in store with Kurt Russell plowing down hot chicks in his car. But it’s not so much knowing as it is experiencing. The final twenty minutes of Death Proof provide the most intense car chase scene in movie history, not just closing itself perfectly, but concluding more than three hours of trashy cinematic ecstasy. In fact, I don’t want to believe that two other films could compliment one another better than they do in Grindhouse. Grindhouse was a one-of-a-kind cinema blessing that could have never been reproduced on home video, even with the highest level consumer HD (and assuming that the films weren’t annoyingly released separately on DVD without Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, and Edgar Wright’s hilarious faux trailers). Curse yourself, please, because you really fucking missed out. Full review here.

3. Black Book [Zwartboek] – dir. Paul Verhoeven – Netherlands/Germany/Belgium

After Hollow Man, you too were probably thinking that there was no way Paul Verhoeven could return to your good graces. Hopefully, after Black Book, you couldn’t even remember that he made that awful movie. Black Book is stunning, from start to finish, and probably the most Verhoeven of all of his recent films. For in who else’s mind does a graphic depiction of pubic hair-dying and ripping the top off a woman only to douse her in feces constitute as historical realism? In his lead actress Carice van Houten, Verhoeven finds absolute radiance, depicting her as if she were the most beautiful woman to ever grace the screen, even when he’s dumping literal shit on her. Black Book is the sort of war film for those who found Schindler’s List a bit too morally refined and Lust, Caution a bit too, well, sedated in everything but its sexuality. And for a sleaze-bag who has loved Verhoeven since seeing Basic Instinct as an impressionable youth (including Showgirls, mind you!), you know which vision of wartime peril I prefer.

4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – dir. Andrew Dominik - USA

There’s an unofficial debate among those I know as to whether this or No Country for Old Men reigns superior. It’s not so much a conflict between the classic western versus the neo-western by any means; the argument is pretty straight-forward. The general consensus probably leans toward No Country (even I rank it higher), but that doesn’t diminish the fact that The Assassination of Jesse James is a spectacular motion picture. There are plenty of similarities between the two films as both bring their underlying melancholy to the foreground in their third acts and dispel the notion of legend (or the past, as is more the case in No Country). The Assassination of Jesse James finds the titular legend (Brad Pitt) in the final stages of his life, recruiting a crop of Missouri thieves (among them the astonishing Casey Affleck as Robert Ford, James’ assailant) for his last, unspectacular robberies. Andrew Dominik (Chopper) fashioned an intentional response to that famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, opting instead for printing the sad fact of mistaken glory. In many ways, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the companion piece to No Country for Old Men, as both brilliantly feed off one another and, combined, leave a haunting spell greater than any other double feature you might pair together this year (Grindhouse was many things, but “haunting“ wasn’t one of them). Additional accolades should be given to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ score, as Cave has finally found his cinematic home in the form of the western (after last year’s The Proposition).

5. Bug – dir. William Friedkin - USA

If Bug proved anything (other than the fact that Lionsgate’s marketing department sucks), it’s that the old standard of atmospheric, creepy horror films has officially been replaced by the slice-’em-up torture porn of the Saw and Hostel films. Yet for those who prefer paranoia to dismemberment, Bug was an utterly unnerving and bleak examination of a woman’s (a brilliant Ashley Judd) descent into complete obsessive terror with the help of a stranger in town (Michael Shannon). William Friedkin walks Bug along a dangerous line between sheer horror and over-the-top mayhem, and to those without patience (mainly the people who bought into Lionsgate’s misleading promotion), it didn’t work. For others like myself, Bug unsettled to the point of cringing and total personal disruption. I was literally shaken and stirred, and formed a return appreciation for Freidkin’s dying brand of terror.

6. Glue – dir. Alexis Dos Santos – Argentina/UK

It would befit the majority of film critics who don’t appear to have been hired by the studios to include, at the very least, one film you’d never in your life heard of on their yearly rundown of the best of the year. To some, it might be out of snobbery that they would do such; a lot of times, it probably is, but I can only defend myself. One would typically assume that someone who wrote about films did so because they loved cinema, and this, usually, would be the case for me. Glue was an accidental Netflix rental, one I hadn’t remembered adding to my queue until it arrived in my mailbox. Much to my surprise, I fell in love with it, as it almost perfectly recalled some of my favorite films of the past decade (Morvern Callar, Come Undone, George Washington). Yet merely reminding me of those films isn’t enough, and thankfully Glue exceeded mere association. Taking place in a rural town in Argentina, Glue depicts the teenage longings of two people, one a glue-sniffing waif of a boy with awesome hair, the other a pretty girl with shy tendencies and dorky glasses. First-time director Alexis Dos Santos paints Glue in kaleidoscopic reverie and perfectly captures the awkwardness of youth in all its miscommunication and pent-up sexuality. Though it got much less attention on the international circuit, I can only hope for great things from Dos Santos, who’s just as impressive a filmmaker as his co-patriot Lucrecia Martel, who received many accolades for 2004’s The Holy Girl.

7. Ploy – dir. Pen-ek Ratanaruang – Thailand

Though it greatly depends on who you ask as to where it falls, Ploy marks a high point in Thai director Ratanaruang’s filmography. It’s high-hurdles better than 6ixtynin9 and Monrak Transistor, and a stylistic commonality with Last Life in the Universe… yet Ploy is such an exceptionally haunting film that I would dare to call it his best (I actually have yet to see his Invisible Waves for the record). Ploy is a dreamy and alternately nightmare-y tale of a married couple, stuck in a Bangkok hotel with a strange, lonely girl. Deceptions and jealousies arise beneath the eerily calm and gorgeous cinematography. If it ever comes stateside (by either Tartan or Palm, I would guess), see for yourself Ratanaruang’s growth as a filmmaker, from once Tarantino-wannabe to Wong Kar-wai heir apparent (after My Blueberry Nights, it appears as if we desperately need one).

8. Red Road – dir. Andrea Arnold - UK

Red Road is a tale of forgiveness, and when you eventually discover that’s what the film’s all about, a true appreciation of it must come from your own amnesty. Conceptually, Red Road is the first entry of Lars Von Trier’s “Advance Party,” in which a trilogy of films will explore, differently, the stories of three prewritten characters played by the same actors (the other two films have yet to be completed). In Red Road, Andrea Arnold, an Oscar winner for her short film Wasp, makes her feature debut with the assuredness of someone whose been in the business for decades. Arnold layers her film with as much palpable suspense and tension that you saw in No Country for Old Men, yet with an air of evocative mystery, as it takes two-thirds of the film for its ultimate “purpose” to be revealed. Its revelation is disappointing, perhaps only in contrast to the sheer rapture of what proceeded it. Your feelings toward Red Road will inevitably come rushing out in its third act, for better or worse, but for my money, I can’t think of another film that captivated me as fully as Arnold did here, and first time actress Kate Dickie, as the central CCTV operator, is astounding. Full review here.

9. There Will Be Blood – dir. Paul Thomas Anderson - USA

My experience with There Will Be Blood was a murky one. I got word that there was going to be a screening directly in the middle of feeding my obsession with the third season of the television show Lost. Naturally, I hadn’t slept much the night before (every damn episode of Lost ends with a cliff hanger!) and wasn’t thrilled to see There Will Be Blood, an adaptation of Upton Sinclar’s Oil!, in the first place. Though I liked Punch-Drunk Love, my feelings for Magnolia and Boogie Nights were tepid at best. As uncompromising as his previous three films were, Paul Thomas Anderson churned out the most ambitious film of his career, a claim I doubt even fans of Boogie Nights or Magnolia will disagree with. There Will Be Blood is such a curious and peculiar film that it’s hard to even recognize Anderson as the author. Though it’s certainly long, Anderson appears to have set aside his pretentious quirks for something altogether fascinating. Daniel Day Lewis is breathtaking here, solidifying his place as the most consistently exceptional actor working today. Equipped with a brilliant score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood successfully managed to take my mind off the mysteries of Lost island and became much, much more than just a fleeting distraction.

10. Once – dir. John Carney – Ireland/UK

I’ve had living nightmares that sounded similar to an outline of Once. As a vast admirer of the golden era of the Hollywood musical, the notion of a stripped bare, un-glorious entry into the genre (with no dancing even) sends chills down my back. I’d also like to see anyone in their twenties not raise their hand when asked whether or not they knew someone who’d pick up an acoustic guitar at the most inopportune time and start to play their sub-Dylan, sub-Young, sub-Ani Difranco singer-songwriter bullshit for an unsuspecting audience. As someone who’s not a musician, the very thought of watching “band practice” makes me want to gnaw at my wrists. Yet… for some reason, Once is just fucking lovely. Its musical scenes (though lacking sequined outfits) resonate with the intensity of watching the musicians perform live. Aside from being added to the list of celebrities who resemble yours truly (a nice change of pace from the usual Anthony Rapp conclusion), Glen Hansard sparks such joyful chemistry with Markéta Irglová that you can’t help but slide your own romantic cynicism aside. Thankfully, the answers in Once aren’t as easy as they might appear, adding its own supposition to the notion “the couple that harmonizes together…”

11. Private Property [Nue propriété] – dir. Joachim Lafosse – Belgium/Luxembourg/France

If you feel the need to make a list of the ten best actresses that have ever appeared on the screen, your list would be incomplete without Isabelle Huppert. Madame Huppert solidified her placement in 2001 with her devastating portrayal of frigidness in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher. In the years following, fear set in that The Piano Teacher might be her last earth-shattering performance, but with Private Property, all hope has been restored. As in all her best films, Huppert provides the anchor to a film that probably wouldn’t work otherwise. In Private Property, she plays the mother of adult twins (Jérémie Renier, Yannick Renier, real life brothers, but not twins) who’s ready to cut the chord and live her own life. In the films that followed The Piano Teacher, Huppert often played a parody of her expected role (most effectively in 8 Women, where her Augustine seems taken from the exact same character sketch), but in Private Property, she’s radiant and, believe it or not, equipped with a sense of humor. In many ways, Private Property should have been just a showcase piece for her talent, but director Joachim Lafosse constructs a fascinating piece of familial tragedy, both dramatically alluring and void of incessant melodrama. As a great companion to this, have yourself a double feature of the 2007 thespian delights of Isabelle Huppert, with Claude Chabrol’s Comedy of Power as your follow-up. If you can’t defend her residency on the list of the world’s greatest actress after those, you’re a lost cause. Full review here.

12. Great World of Sound – dir. Craig Zobel – USA

As Mutual Appreciation was my needed reminder last year, first-time director Craig Zobel made his Great World of Sound this year’s sole reminder of the vitality and imagination of the American independent scene. Co-produced by David Gordon Green, Great World of Sound is evocative and moody, all while never condescending its subjects (even when some of them may have needed to be). Both leads, Pat Healy and Kene Holliday, are remarkable.

13. Eastern Promises – dir. David Cronenberg – UK/Canada

For doing exactly what it needed to, Eastern Promises probably should have been my number one for the year. It’s an amazingly effective crime yarn, consistent and stirring. In his second pairing with director Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen is phenomenal, a delicate performance culminating in that breathtaking naked bathhouse brawl.

14. Zodiac – dir. David Fincher – USA

Or, All the Zodiac Killer’s Men. Zodiac was riveting in ways I never expected, particularly coming from a director who’d lost any notion of subtlety after his first big film.

15. Flanders [Flandres] – dir. Bruno Dumont – France

Flanders was a perfect example of reading between the lines. Its story and, in fact, its power lied somewhere outside of the frame, which probably explains why nearly every critic hated it when it was briefly released earlier this year. Dumont doesn’t stray too far from his roots of shock value, but there’s something a bit more human at work in Flanders than is usually expected of him. Full review here.

16. Golden Door [Nuovomundo] – dir. Emanuele Crialese – Italy/Germany/France

The stellar work from the cinematographers of There Will Be Blood, The Assassination of Jesse James, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and No Country for Old Men overshadowed Agnès Godard’s astounding work on Golden Door, a wonderful fable of freedom and hope through the eyes of a Sicilian family who meets a mysterious English woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) on their boat ride to the New World.

17. The Orphanage [El orfanato] – dir. Juan Antonio Bayona – Spain/Mexico

Rarely has a horror film been this playful. When searching for her missing son, Laura (Belén Rueda) discovers a world of dead children ghosts in the former orphanage she now calls home. Like Pan’s Labyrinth (director Guillermo del Toro co-produced this), there’s still a level of desperation and cruelty to what’s going on, but it never hinders the lively joy of The Orphanage’s jolty horror.

18. Starting Out in the Evening – dir. Andrew Wagner – USA

Starting Out in the Evening is the sort of film that should have been made in the 90s. It’s a chamber drama/character study of three individuals (Frank Langella, Lauren Ambrose, Lili Taylor) that’s hugely reliant on its dialogue and plot devices (the film is actually based on a late-90s novel by Brian Morton, so this all makes sense). Yet Starting Out in the Evening, the film, breathes new air into this nameless genre of chatty character studies, aided by three exceptional performances, updating its story to something more relevant, more intelligent than it may have been had its incarnation came ten years ago.

19. The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down – dir. Paul Sapiano – USA

Never has a high concept worked so well beyond my own expectations. In The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down, a spoof of educational dating films, the potential “short film” material manifests itself oh-so-brilliantly in its assessment of twentysomething night life. It’s hilarious and absolutely spot-on (you know you’ve found the house party when you see a drunk girl crying on her cell phone on the staircase). I have much anticipation for the film’s upcoming sequel, The Boys and Girls Guide to Being Gay.

20. Joshua – dir. George Ratliff – USA

As one of the most misunderstood films of the year, Joshua was a wholly contemporary horror film tackling the difficult issue of modern parenting. Though marred slightly by expected demon-child clichés, Joshua was unnerving, haunting, and with a wonderfully peculiar ending to match that of Rosemary’s Baby. Full review here.

Special Mention:

Karen Moncrieff's The Dead Girl falls into a weird limbo category for year. Technically, it was released two days before January 1, 2007, but no one saw it. I suppose it made a small run for Oscar consideration, but like I said, no one saw it. And that's a shame. With an impressive ensemble cast which includes Piper Laurie, Toni Collette, Marcia Gay Harden, Giovanni Ribisi, and Kerry Washington, The Dead Girl is exceptionally good, with a surprisngly devestating performance from Brittany Murphy as the titular "dead girl."

Honorable Mentions:

Sicko - dir. Michael Moore - USA

Away from Her - dir. Sarah Polley - Canada

The Boss of It All - dir. Lars Von Trier - Denmark/Iceland/Sweden/Norway/Finland/France
The Cats of Mirikitani - dir. Linda Hattendorf - USA

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - dir. Seth Gordon - USA

Stephanie Daley - dir. Hilary Brougher - USA

Comedy of Power [L'Ivresse de pouvoir] - dir. Claude Chabrol - France

Waitress - dir. Adrienne Shelly - USA

The Exterminating Angels [Les Anges exterminateurs] - dir. Jean-Claude Brisseau - France

Fay Grim - dir. Hal Hartley - USA/Germany and Broken English - dir. Zoe Cassaevetes - USA/France/Japan [both for Parker Posey's exceptional work]

Zoo - dir. Robinson Devor - USA

More readings:

Fay Grim

Broken English

Stephanie Daley

Old Joy

Wild Tigers I Have Known

Best of 2006 [Not revised, by the way]

List #2: The Horse-shit of 2007

Airbrushed abs, the Ten Commandments, Lindsay Lohan, and a sassy, five-hundred-pound bitch named Rasputia irreverently populate my list for the year’s biggest hams to invade your local cinemas. In some ways, this list is meant to be cautionary, steering you clear of a miserable evening if you happen to pick one of these turds up at the video store. In other ways, it’s combative, in a small attempt at dispelling whatever good things your doofus brother might have said about a few of these (trust me, I know he liked more than a few on this list). I had reservations about the inclusion of a few of these, as I’ve personally provided my own commentary on Snow Cake, which is an example of a film whose awfulness must be seen to be believed. I could go on for hours about how stomach-churning a scene where Sigourney Weaver makes Alan Rickman play a game of made-up-word Scrabbel or how Rickman was probably made fun of for running like a little girl when he was a child… but my words can only do so much. So, in a way, I’m also recommending some of these crap-fests (I laughed a lot more during Snow Cake than I did Hot Fuzz, if you were wondering). Though I didn’t get a chance to see Daddy Day Camp, Captivity, Bratz: The Movie, Delta Farce, Perfect Stranger, Wild Hogs, or Good Luck Chuck, rest assured that these films could hold their candle to those films you already knew were going to blow. I’d also like to extend a few dishonorable mentions to The Namesake, The Brave One, and The Bubble for totally sucking though not hard enough to make the cut. Good luck next year, Jodie Foster! Additional commentary: I'm having second thoughts as to the inclusion of I Know Who Killed Me after reading someone describing the film as a splatterpunk remake of The Double Life of Veronique. Ha! And, even if you disagree with my placement of The Ten, just think I had to include the awful Jessica Alba on the list somewhere, and as I didn't see Fantastic Four, Awake, or Good Luck Chuck, this was my only option. And without further adieu, the worst films of 2007:

1. 300 (Zack Snyder, Warner Bros., R)

It takes a special kind of awful to sit atop someone’s list of “worst of the year” list nine months after its initial release. I spent those nine months incubating my hatred, allowing for passivity to hatch out of me some months later. Such wasn’t the case. Much more than just proving that the success of director Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake had everything to do with James Gunn’s clever screenplay, 300 lowered Hollywood to a new level of stupid. I’ve heard it described as many things (gay porn for soccer moms, a fanboy wet dream, shallow propagation for xenophobia), but all of it just adds up to a glossy pile of manure. For having endless possibilities in filming on a green screen, 300 is remarkably flaccid visually, and haven’t we had countless examples already of why Matrix-style action sequences should have never been imitated outside of that film (including the originator’s two sequels)? Dramatically, 300 is just as uninteresting, as the film’s progression hits dead end when you realize that the “heroes” never actually advance any closer to Persia the higher the body count rises. Plus, how am I supposed to root for the Spartans when Synder makes Persia look so appealing in its video-game interpretation of Caligula? That’s not even to mention that their leader looks as if he were the ancestor of Grace Jones. I could probably provide a DVD commentary for everything that’s wrong with 300 if I could even muster to look at another frame of it again. Ultimately, with that commentary, I’d like to prove that the sum of all of 300’s shittiness greatly exceeds its putrid whole, but no matter how you look at it, 300 was 2007’s biggest piece of garbage. Full review here.

2. The Ten (David Wain, ThinkFilm, R)

The Ten probably isn’t the worst film you’ve ever seen, or even the worst you saw all year, yet it’s astonishing only in how a collection of so many talented people could pull off such a laughless dud. It’s also a pretty bad sign if Winona Ryder is the best thing about your movie.

3. Snow Cake (Marc Evans, IFC Films, NR)

Mystery Science Theater 3000, meet Snow Cake. Well-meaning dramedies about the handicapped come around nearly every year, but seldom do they come in such an unintentionally hilarious package as Snow Cake, which is surprisingly more embarrassing for Alan Rickman whose crusty hauteur “melts” after informing the autistic mother that her hitchhiking daughter died in his car during an accident than Sigourney Weaver who plays the token handicapped in her most over-the-top manner. Snow Cake should be further reprimanded for using several songs off Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It in People, almost forcing me to never want to hear the otherwise-incredible “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” again.

4. Norbit (Brian Robbins, DreamWorks, PG-13)

On a dare, I sat through Norbit. Out of my own self-loathing, I sat through the whole fucking thing. It was probably the most offensive experience I had all year, and not because the fat jokes and farting spoiled my prudent sensibilities, but that a bunch of white studio execs decided that this could pass as funny. To anyone. On top of not being remotely funny, it’s also a transparent romance, the kind that makes a Meg Ryan film look nuanced by comparison.

5. O Jerusalem (Eli Chouraqui, Samuel Goldwyn Films, R)

Well-meaning historical dramas about tolerance in the face of conflict come around every year too, but few can be as exasperatingly miserable as O Jerusalem. The suffocation of genre cliché always tend to annoy me more when the director has otherwise good intentions. Nick Cassavetes’ Alpha Dog was riddled with a polished familiarity, but it didn’t come close to provoking the agitation this reviewer felt while enduring the formation of Israel through the eyes of two best friends on different sides of the battle. It would be too easy to condemn O Jerusalem for its lousy production values, clumsy acting, or the fact that everyone in the film spoke English (and this was a French production, to boot!). Instead, O Jerusalem crumbles in its hokey melodrama and clueless understanding of human relations. Full review here.

6. The Page Turner [La tourneuse de pages] (Denis Dercourt, Tartan Films, NR)

There’s no way that The Page Turner was meant to be taken seriously. No possible way. It had to be a joke from the French to the USA, I thought. The Page Turner is the finest example of taking every single cliché of your nation’s cinema and placing it on full display for the world. I couldn’t tell if director Denis Dercourt loved or really, really hated Claude Chabrol, as The Page Turner could be seen as either the most faithful love-letter to the renowned filmmaker or the harshest condemnation of an artist I may have ever seen. I leaned toward the former as a film this horrid couldn’t possibly harbor subversive elements of any sort.

7. Boy Culture (Q. Allan Brocka, TLA Releasing, NR)

I had hoped that films with a snarky, self-referential narration would have died in the 90s, but with Boy Culture, director Q. Allan Brocka gives the notion a breath of rank regurgitation in his tale of a hooker with a heart of… something that resembles gold. Who would have thought that a hard-exterior male prostitute, who goes by the name X, could begin to crack when a lonely wealthy man offers him wisdom instead of money and sex? Boy Culture congratulates itself in its acknowledgement of the old, expected stereotypes of queer cinema, only to fall into the trappings of new ones. I think I preferred when my cinematic homosexuals were still doom-and-gloom.

8. I Know Who Killed Me (Chris Sivertson, Tri-Star, R)

I Know Who Killed Me was made three years too early. It really should have existed as another reminder of its fallen star (Lindsay Lohan), instead of being the reason she fell. It’s almost more disturbing seeing the faded promise of a child star than the gruesome dismemberments that take place in the film. Full review here.

9. Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer, Paramount, R)

Black Snake Moan promised me a sizzler of a good time and didn’t even come close to giving it to me. To set the scene, I woke up on a Friday morning, painfully early, not realizing, “shit, I have absolutely nothing to do today.” Instead of letting ennui set in, I opted to go to an early bird show of whatever opened that week, and, lo and behold, I saw Black Snake Moan. Perhaps due to my lofty expectations of a saucy, exploitive Hollywood picture, I found myself even more bored than I would have been wasting my afternoon browsing YouTube videos. Black Snake Moan was earnest, “meaningful,” and good-natured. Fuck all that noise! My friends tell me that the film really wasn’t as bad as I make it out to be, but here it stands, at number nine, if only for memorably ruining my morning.

10. Into the Wild (Sean Penn, Paramount Vantage/Miramax, PG-13)

Yeah, so, this isn’t a very popular choice, I know, but as I didn’t see Epic Movie, it left room for Into the Wild. The film isn’t so much bad as it is musty; Sean Penn’s ambition has all the staleness of unwarranted self-importance… and it’s nearly two-and-a-half hours of it. There’s an awkward moment midway through the film where Emile Hirsch breaks the fourth wall and smiles directly at the camera. Sorry, but Godard nor Wayne’s World this is, Sean Penn, and I just can’t help wondering if that was his cue to make sure you hadn’t already fallen asleep. If it weren’t for that morning’s pot of coffee, he probably would have found me guilty. Full review here.

List #1 for 2007

Here's my first list of the year. There'll be at least two more (best, worst) and maybe another (performances), but here are your best new-to-region-1-DVDs of 2007, in alphabetical order. I didn't have the time or patience to annotate the list, so please forgive (I've been catching up on The Wire, which is better than fucking sliced-bread. (Naturally, the Twin Peaks Gold Box would have made the cut, but I disqualified it as everything but the pilot was already available)

Army of Shadows [L'armée des ombres] - dir. Jean-Pierre Melville - Criterion. With Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret. France/Italy. 1969.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Criterion. With Günter Lamprect, Karlheinz Braun, Hanna Schygulla, Brigitte Mira, Barbara Sukowa. West Germany. 1980.

The Films of Kenneth Anger: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 - dir. Kenneth Anger - Fantoma. Sets includes Fireworks, Puce Moment, Rabbit's Moon, Eaux d'artifice, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising. With Anger, Marianne Faithfull, Anais Nin. 1947-1972. USA.

Mala Noche - dir. Gus Van Sant - Criterion. With Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate. 1985. USA.

The Milky Way [La voie lactée] - dir. Luis Buñuel - Criterion. With Paul Frankeur, Laurent Terzieff, Michel Piccoli, Pierre Clémenti, Delphine Seyrig. 1969. France/West Germany/Italy.

Muriel [Muriel, ou Le temps d'un retour] - dir. Alain Resnais - Koch Lorber. With Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée. 1963. France/Italy.

Performance - dir. Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg - Warner. With Mick Jagger, James Fox, Anita Pallenberg. 1970. UK.

Sombre - dir. Philippe Grandrieux - Koch Lorber. With Marc Barbé, Elina Löwensohn. 1998. France.

Sweet Movie / WR: Mysteries of the Organism - dir. Dusan Makavejev - Criterion. With Carole Laure, Pierre Clémenti, Anna Prucnal / With Milena Dravic, Ivica Vidovic, Jackie Curtis. 1974/1971. France/Canada/West Germany / Yugoslavia/West Germany.

Viva Pedro: The Pedro Almodóvar Collection - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - Sony Pictures. Set includes: Bad Education, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, The Flower of My Secret, Live Flesh, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, as well as new-to-DVD titles Law of Desire and Matador. With Carmen Maura, Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Antonio Banderas, Cecilia Roth, Javier Bardem, Assumpta Serna, Darío Grandinetti, Rossy de Palma, Rosa Maria Sardà, Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Javier Cámara, Gerladine Chaplin, Paz Vega, Leonor Watling, Chus Lampreave, Eusebio Poncela, Francesca Neri, Liberto Rabal. 1986-2004. Spain.

Sundance 2008, baited breath

Good news for all Gregg Araki fans (they appear to need it after Smiley Face). The Living End will screen on January 18th at the Sundance Film Festival. Not only has the film been completely remastered and restored by Strand Releasing and Fortissimo Films, but it will appear in its uncut 92-minute version. This is fucking great news as the rest of the line-up for Sundance looks pretty snoozy (except for Bruce LaBruce's Otto; or Up with Dead People... yeah, gay, I know). I would expect a special edition DVD for The Living End (billed as "an irresponsible film by Gregg Araki") sometime in 2008 from Strand, and here's hoping that they can get their hands on the other unavailable Araki titles (Nowhere, Three Bewildered People in the Night, and the made-for-MTV-but-never-aired This Is How the World Ends) and fix the severe fuck-up of the Lionsgate/Trimark Doom Generation disc. Baby steps, I know, but here's hoping.

2008, baited breath

The spring of 2008 is already looking like a hot arena for world cinema, particularly if you're following IFC Films' releases for the early part of the year. Here's a rundown of some notables for the coming year.

Of course, I'm most excited about Catherine Breillat's latest, The Last Mistress [Une vieille maîtresse], which went home empty-handed at Breillat's first Cannes this past May but has received positive feedback on the North American festival circuit (even from her detractors). Sample dialogue: Asia Argento (to another woman): "Ugh! I hate everything feminine... except young boys of course." Brilliant. With Argento, Roxane Mesquida, Fu'ad Ait Aattou, Anne Parrillaud, Sarah Pratt, Amira Casar, Claude Sarraute, Yolande Moreau, Lio, Caroline Ducey. France/Italy. 25 April. IFC.

Romanian cinema has never felt so exciting as it has in the past two years, with the astounding Death of Mr. Lăzărescu and the lauded (though yet unseen by me) 12:08 East of Bucharest. The crowning jewel of this new attention is the Palme d'Or winner of 07, Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a minimalist abortion drama that's already scooping up a number of end-of-the-year critics prizes (it's main opposition in the non-English-speaking realm: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). With Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov. Romania. 25 January. IFC.

Winner of a special prize at this year's Cannes, Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park is dazzling and frustrating, just like you like him. I can assure you it's a change in pace to his Death Trilogy, though still light-years away from, say, Finding Forrester. I just wish Gus would stop finding his "actors" on MySpace as the kids here are given much more to do than just walk dazed through hallways as they did in Elephant. With Gabe Nevins, Daniel Liu, Taylor Mornsen, Jake Miller. France/USA. 7 March. IFC.

Jacques Rivette's latest comes in the form of a period romance from a novel by Honoré de Balzac. Titled Ne touchez pas la hache (translated: Don't Touch the Axe), the film will be released under the more arthouse-approved title The Duchess of Langeais. With Jeanne Balibar, Guillaume Depardieu, Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier. France/Italy. 22 February. IFC.

I guess there were people that liked Gummo. And I guess there will be people who'll cream themselves over Harmony Korine's high-concept Mister Lonely. It got surprisingly positive responses at Cannes, but you know how the French can be. With Diego Luna (as Michael Jackson), Samantha Morton (as Marilyn Monroe), Denis Lavant (as Charlie Chaplin), Anita Pallenberg (as The Queen of England), Joseph Morgan (as James Dean), Richard Strange (as Abraham Lincoln), Werner Herzog, Leos Carax, James Fox, David Blaine. USA/UK/France/Ireland. 30 April. IFC.

Although they have yet to do anything with the director's last film Mary, IFC picked up Abel Ferrara's latest Go Go Tales, a "screwball comedy" at a go-go dancin' club. The reception has been tepid, at best, but I know there are people who will watch anything the Bad Lieutenant director touches (even if all of them happen to live in France). Added bonus: Asia Argento makes out with a pit bull. With Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins, Matthew Modine, Argento, Lou Doillon, Pras. Italy/USA. Date UNK. IFC.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi has made her second feature as director/writer/actress in another tale about, well, herself. As much as I love the Franco-Italian actress (see Cote d'Azur or Time to Leave for reasons), her indulgence appears to be wearing thin on her admirers with Actresses [Actrices] (the film has gotten bad notices at nearly every festival it's played). Still, I'll see it. With Bruni Tedeschi, Noémie Lvosky, Louis Garrel, Mathieu Amalric, Valeria Golino. France. Date UNK. IFC.

I've gone on record stating that I kind of hate Christophe Honoré, the author-cum-filmmaker of the wretched Ma mère and the blah Dans Paris. But I've also gone on record stating my love for the musical, particularly France's interpretation of it (outside of Une Femme est une femme, damn you). Here's his take with Love Songs [Les Chansons d'amour]. With Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastorianni. France. 19 March. Red Envelope Entertainment/IFC.

I do not count myself among the followers of Canada's Guy Maddin, a pretentious bore whose The Saddest Music in the World and collection of shorts have made him a favorite among the film student crowd. His latest, My Winnipeg, won the prize for Best Canadian feature at the Toronto International Film Festival... because, well, other than David Cronenberg and Sarah Polley, how many working Canadian directors can you name? With Darcy Fehr (as Guy Maddin). Canada. Date UNK. IFC.

Hou Hsiaco-hsien's greatest fans don't reside in his homeland of Taiwan, or even the continent of Asia. They reside in, surprise, France, so it was no surprise at all that he crafted his first French-language feature this year with The Flight of the Red Balloon [Le voyage du ballon rouge], a strange take on the classic Red Balloon, making its rerelease rounds in the US right now. With Juliette Binoche, Hippolyte Girardot. France. 2 April. IFC.

Oh, Claude Chabrol, how you cease to thrill me outside of your collaborations with Isabelle Huppert. Thankfully, he's enlisted the lovely Ludivine Sagnier for his latest dark comedy/thriller A Girl Cut in Two [La Fille coupée en deux]. Every time you think the seventy-seven year old director has made his last, he churns out another. With Sagnier, Benoît Magimel, François Berléand. France/Germany. Date UNK. IFC.

IFC Films' calendar for 2008 is exhausting already, and here's the last of the crop: Tom Kalin's Savage Grace with Julianne Moore returning to more Safe material than The Forgotten. It's a docudrama about an infamous murder case from the 70s. Kalin hasn't directed a film since the early 90s with Swoon, so I'm most excited to see his long overdue follow-up. With Moore, Eddie Redmayne, Stephen Dillane, Hugh Dancy, Belén Rueda, Unax Ugalde, Elena Anaya. USA/Spain. 28 May. IFC.

The Hungarian dark comedy Ex Drummer went through plenty of turmoil when Jan Bucquoy tried to adapt Herman Brusselmans' novel in the mid-90s. Only now was it completed, with Koen Mortier in director's seat. The film follows the manipulation of a man who joins a rock band of three "handicapped" dudes. Rumor has it Mortier really pulls out all the "shock" punches with this one. With Dries Van Hegen, Norman Baert, Gunter Lamoot, Sam Louwyck. Hungary. Date UNK. Tartan USA.

Tartan is pulling a double bill of Hungarian shock cinema with György Pálfi's follow-up to his wildly original Hukkle, entitled Taxidermia. The film follows three men, according to the IMDb, "an obese speed eater, an embalmer of giant cats, and a man who shoots fire out of his penis." Hot. Hungary. Date UNK. Tartan USA.

Olivier Assayas' English-language crime thriller Boarding Gate boasts the third mention in this post by Miss Asia Argento, all three of which premiered at this year's Cannes with varying results. My friend Pete hated it, but he's disliked most of what Assayas has done, so I'm not fully convinced. His new French-language film with Juliette Binoche will be out from Sony Pictures Classics sometime later next year. With Argento, Michael Madsen, Carl Ng, Kelly Lin, Alex Descas, Kim Gordon, Joana Preiss. France. 14 March. Magnet Releasing/Magnolia.

Michel Gondry's new film, Be Kind Rewind, sounds like just about the most fun you could have at the theatres come January. The film takes place in a video rental store during the VHS era where Jack Black aids Mos Def in making their own versions of such cinema classics as Ghostbusters. With Black, Mos Def, Mia Farrow, Danny Glover, Marcus Carl Franklin. USA. 25 January. New Line.

Unhappy with the lightness of the television series of the same name, the producers of City of God crafted their own sequel to the highly popular Brazilian film, called City of Men. With Douglas Silva, Darlan Cunha, Jonathan Haagensen, Rodrigo dos Santos. Brazil. 18 January. Miramax.

Europe seems to think Turkish-German director Fatih Akin is the bee's knees after Head On and In July, two films that did nothing for me. He won the Best Screenplay award at this year's Cannes for his latest The Edge of Heaven. Germany/Turkey. Date UNK. Strand Releasing.

See if you can join the small crowd of people that actually enjoyed Wong Kar-wai's English-language debut, My Blueberry Nights, a curious starring vehicle for singer Norah Jones. I'm sure, at least, that it will be pretty. With Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, David Strathairn. Hong Kong/France/China. 13 February. Weinstein Company.

US Studios are still scared of the NC-17 rating. Even in the horror genre. I suppose it's because most of the audience for horror films, particularly the Saw films, is under 17... but still. The Weinstein Company is having issues with their pending release of the Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury's gruesome French horror film Inside [À l'intérieur] due to its NC-17 rating. It's still suspected that they may do something with it around March, but it may shoot directly to an "unrated" DVD release instead. With Béatrice Dalle, Alysson Paradis. France. Date UNK. Weinstein Company.

There's a number of other films that I will touch upon later, but duty is calling and I must invest the rest of my time elsewhere! Until then...

John Waters liked Away from Her??!!

More interesting than whatever overweight, middle-aged man who makes a living writing film criticism has to say about the merits of the films of a given year, I'm always interested in seeing what people who actually make films would list (I always wonder if Faye Dunaway attends films that she hasn't starred in... probably not). John Waters is always a reliable source for this, making a top ten for Artforum each year and being the only one I noticed to have included Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny on his list a few years ago (God bless John). This year is no different and his list is as follows:

1. Grindhouse - dir. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright
2. Before I Forget [Avant que j'oublie] - dir. Jacques Nolot [Note: Strand will have this out 2008]
3. Away from Her - dir. Sarah Polley
4. Zoo - dir. Robinson Devor [You knew John would love a documentary about horse-fucking]
5. Lust, Caution - dir. Ang Lee
6. Brand Upon the Brain! - dir. Guy Maddin
7. An American Crime - dir. Tommy O'Haver
8. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With - dir. Jeff Garlin
9. Flanders - dir. Bruno Dumont
10. I'm Not There - dir. Todd Haynes

Of course some of the choices are kind of obvious, as Jeff Garlin was the director of his documentary This Filthy World, but I must applaud John for being the only critic I've noticed so far to have the balls to put Grindhouse on top of his list... and does anyone else wish they had a camera on Waters while he was getting misty-eyed for Julie Christie in Away from Her? I sure do. I'm also surprised that Lust, Caution made his list and Black Book didn't. IndieWire provided, a few years back, a rundown of famous people giving their lists of the year, including John Cameron Mitchell, Paul Schneider, and Peter Dinklage. Unfortunately, I haven't noticed them doing it lately, so... this will have to do. Plus, I know you were way more curious to see what John Waters liked this year than, say, Stephen King.

Crunch Time

I only have five days left to screen as many 2007 films as possible and give them a write-up for Playback's Best of 2007. I've already finished my 'Worst of 2007' film list, but it's the best of... that's giving me the most trouble. In the past five days I've watched ten films (There Will Be Blood, The Savages, Michael Clayton, Starting Out in the Evening, The Orphanage, Lust, Caution, Once, Margot at the Wedding, The Simpsons Movie (which blows), and Paranoid Park) and the entire third season of Lost. Here's what I have left of the possible viewings: Juno, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Ratatouille, The Hottest State, Mr. Brooks (yes! I'm told it's wonderfully awful), Great World of Sound, Terror's Advocate, Redacted, Reservation Road, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, and the Sisters remake... and if I'm lucky, maybe The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Persepolis (but those two are going to be the tough ones). No possibility, however, for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or Syndromes and a Century, unfortunately. Anything else I'm missing? Holla at me. All this and I still haven't watched the fourth season of The Wire (which will more than likely be better than all of the films I've lined up)!

Chilly

Criterion has announced 3 titles for March, two of which have already been available on R1 DVD before. Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, the one we all knew was coming (regretfully), will have a two disc treatment with awesome cover artwork. Hiroshi Teshigahara's Antonio Gaudi, a documentary about the famous architect, will be their second release (the film was previously available through the Milestone Collection); the disc will also include a short about Gaudi by one of my faves, Ken Russell. And, for the first time on DVD, Alberto Lattuada's dark comedy Mafioso. Rounding out the Eclipse box will be the Delirious Fictions of William Klein, which includes the satirical Who Are You Polly Maggoo?, Mr. Freedom, and The Model Couple. Would you consider it a good month if you're more excited about the Eclipse series than the Criterion releases?

Good Move, Penny

GreenCine Daily is reporting that Penélope Cruz will once again work with director Pedro Almodóvar on his next feature, Los abrazos rotos. After literally igniting the screen (and garnering the attention she never received in any of her English-language films) in Volver, this is probably the smartest move Cruz could have made. No word as to when Pedro will reteam with Antonio Banderas, who was supposed to star as the priest in Bad Education at one point.

Resnais en février

Kimstim/Kino will be throwing four Alain Resnais films from the 80s on your shelves on 19 February 2008. The titles include I Want to Go Home (1989) with Gérard Depardieu and Geraldine Chaplin; Life Is a Bed of Roses [La vie est un roman] (1983) with Fanny Ardant, Vittorio Gassman, and Chaplin; Love unto Death [L'amour à mort] (1984) with Ardant; and Mélo (1986), also with Ardant. I'd have rather Criterion announced Last Year at Marienbad, but take what you can get.

A Thought or Two on Golden Globe noms

Seriously... Jodie Foster for The Brave One? Gross. I can accept this nomination simply on the fact that Into the Wild got only one nomination (for song, no less), and because I'm thrilled any time Tilda Swinton is nominated... for anything. But where was Josh Brolin? Oh well. You can find the full list here.

Surprise!

Universal has (finally) announced what looks to be a pretty bare-bones edition of David Lynch's Lost Highway for 25 March 2008 (which is actually two days after my birthday, so if you forget and don't get me anything, I will still be accepting gifts two days late). More details (hopefully) to follow.

Yes, there will be blood

Four more critics' circles announced their year-end awards today. Amy Ryan seems to be taking the place of once frontrunner for the best supporting actress category Cate Blanchett (though I may suspect that confusion would be made as to whether she was the lead or supporting). Frank Langella has also emerged as a dark horse candidate for Best Actor... and if you're wondering about Colossal Youth from Portugal which took two best "experimental" films, the film, as of yet, has no US distributor (I'll keep you posted with that one). And this year's Cannes line-up appears to be connecting with the US film awards much more than previous years with In Competition films like No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Colossal Youth, Persepolis, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days all faring quite well in the year-end rush of prizes. Keep in mind though that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is ineligible for the Foreign-Language Oscar as France chose Persepolis as their official selection. I'm pretty sure a good portion of the film is in English as well, so France avoided the conflict that Israel is facing now with their selection of The Band's Visit. I really don't have anything to say other than that... but here they are anyway. UPDATED: 12/11 with San Francisco Film Critics Circle.

Boston Film Critics Assosication

Film: No Country for Old Men

Director: Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

Actor: Frank Langella (Starting Out in the Evening)

Actress: Marion Cotillard (La Vie en rose)

Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)

Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)

Screenplay: Brad Bird (Ratatouille)

Foreign-Language Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Documentary/Non-Fiction Film: Crazy Love - dir. Dan Klores

Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

New Filmmaker: Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone)

Ensemble Cast: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Amy Ryan, et al)

Independent/Experimental: Colossal Youth [Juventude Em Marcha] - dir. Pedro Costa

Los Angeles Film Critics Association

Film: There Will Be Blood
Runner-Up: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
Runner-Up: Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Runner-Up: Frank Langella (Starting Out in the Evening)

Actress: Marion Cotillard (La vie en rose)
Runner-Up: Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)

Supporting Actor: Vlad Ivanov (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)
Runner-Up: Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)

Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)
Runner-Up: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)

Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins (The Savages)
Runner-Up: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)

Foreign-Language Film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile] - dir. Cristian Mungiu
Runner-Up: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - dir. Julian Schnabel

Documentary/Non-Fiction Film: No End in Sight - dir. Charles Ferguson
Runner-Up: Sicko - dir. Michael Moore

Production Design: Jack Fisk (There Will Be Blood)
Runner-Up: Dante Ferretti (Sweeney Todd)

Animation (tie): Ratatouille - dir. Brad Bird; Persepolis - dir. Vincent Parannaud, Marjane Satrapi

Music: Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova (Once)
Runner-Up: Jonny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood)

Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Runner-Up: Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood)

New Generation: Sarah Polley (Away from Her)

Career Achievement: Sidney Lumet

Independent/Experimental: Colossal Youth [Juventude Em Marcha] - dir. Pedro Costa

Washington DC Film Critics

Film: No Country for Old Men

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men)

Actor: George Clooney (Michael Clayton)

Actress: Julie Christie (Away from Her)

Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)

Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead)

Ensemble Cast: No Country for Old Men (Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, et al)

Breakthrough Performance: Ellen Page (Juno)

Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin (Charlie Wilson's War)

Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody (Juno)

Animated Feature: Ratatouille - dir. Brad Bird

Foreign Language Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - dir. Julian Schnabel

Documentary: Sicko - dir. Michael Moore

Art Direction: Sweeney Todd

New York Online Film Critics

Film (tie): The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - dir. Julian Schnabel; There Will Be Blood - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)

Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)

Actress: Julie Christie (Away from Her)

Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)

Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)

Cinematography: Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood)

Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola (The Darjeeling Limited)

Foreign Film (tie): The Lives of Others - dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmark; Persepolis - dir. Vincent Parannaud, Marjane Satrapi

Documentary: Sicko - dir. Michael Moore

Music/Score: Jonny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood)

Breakthrough Performance: Ellen Page (Juno)

Debut as Director: Sarah Polley (Away from Her)

Ensemble Performance: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Amy Ryan, et al)

The 11 Best Films of 07 (alphabetically):
Atonement - dir. Joe Wright
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - dir. Sidney Lumet
The Darjeeling Limited - dir. Wes Anderson
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - dir. Julian Schnabel
I'm Not There - dir. Todd Haynes
Juno - dir. Jason Reitman
Michael Clayton - dir. Tony Gilroy
No Country for Old Men - dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Persepolis - dir. Vincent Parannaud, Marjane Satrapi
Sweeney Todd - dir. Tim Burton
There Will Be Blood - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

San Francisco Film Critics Circle

Film: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men)

Actor: George Clooney (Michael Clayton)

Actress: Julie Christie (Away from Her)

Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)

Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)

Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins (The Savages)

Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley (Away from Her)

Documentary: No End in Sight - dir. Charles Ferguson

Foreign Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - dir. Julian Schnabel

Victoria Beckham, my ass: Andrea Arnold's Wasp

Wasp - dir. Andrea Arnold - 2003 - UK

Examining a director’s relationship to their subject can be a tricky endeavor. No matter whether you’re creating someone as vile as the two leads in Godard’s Weekend, the subject will always be a product of the filmmaker’s loins. In that regard, it’s thus difficult to establish your subject without the hint of a paternal attachment, a strange level of affection and criticism. In Andrea Arnold’ Wasp, her relationship with her subject is a deeply complex one.

On one level, Wasp is a depiction of the strange worship of celebrity. America doesn’t, and probably never will, understand David and Victoria Beckham, the uber celebrity couple of Great Britain, as America’s equivalent, Brad and Angelina, seems to function on a different level. The Beckhams are the epitome of the fashionably idolized. They’re the idealized depiction of family with three terribly good-looking young sons whose existence never steps in the way of living the glamorous life. David’s not so much the greatest football player in the world as he is the prettiest, and Victoria, a one-time pop star of limited talent, spends her time at fashion shows. They’re, in a sense, the perfect celebrity family.

For Zoë (Natalie Press), the Beckhams are the ideal. In an embarrassing scene, one of her three daughters tells a woman how she says she’s as pretty as Victoria, resulting in scoffs from the other woman and Zoë telling her daughters to not tell anyone that again. In many ways, there’s an impossibility about Victoria Beckham, the ideal of the young, attractive mother. Motherhood for Victoria isn’t a sacrifice; her wealth provides the useful opportunity of maids and nannies to allow her time to shop and pose for the sea of paparazzi.

There’s a sadness to Zoë’s idealized notion, for she can barely even feed her children. When Zoë runs into Dave (Danny Dyer), a former crush showing his first bit of interest in her, one of the girls remarks, “He looks just like David Beckham!” This, naturally, elicits a knowing smirk from Zoë, in a way opening herself up to the possibility of coming to a closer realization of her idolization. Of course, as long as she can get someone to watch her kids for their evening date to the pub. The Beckhams function similarly in Wasp as ABBA does in Muriel’s Wedding. For Muriel (Toni Collette), ABBA is the escape of her own harsh personal reality, their infectious pop the archetype of eternal bliss and happiness. For Zoë, the Beckhams represent the same thing, the false pinnacle of desire: fashionable motherhood, physical perfection in marriage. The young girls share their mother’s obsession with celebrity, asking their mother to play Robbie Williams at the pub and demanding her to take them to McDonalds (or Mack-donals, as they call it).

It would appear that Zoë is a pretty awful mother. She beats a woman up in front of her young girls, even with the understanding that she’s doing so because the woman hit one of her girls. When she can’t find a babysitter, Zoë plants her children outside the pub to fend for themselves. They’re starving, and she has no money to buy them anything more than crisps. However, this ultimately comes in question when the titular wasp threatens to crawl inside her baby’s mouth. Zoë’s in Dave’s car, passionately making out with him, yet at the moment the screams from her girls erupts, she bolts out of the car to find out what’s the matter. The incident proves to be the wake-up call she needed, eclipsing her own personal desires for a man or, more accurately, to play the part of Victoria to Dave’s David.

Yet Arnold isn’t as sure about this. There’s a glimmer of a happy ending in Wasp, where Dave finally realizes that the young girls Zoë played off as belonging to her girlfriend are, in fact, hers. Instead of running away (which always looks like it might be a possibility), he gets the children fed and takes the family home. Despite the realized importance in Zoë’s life, this comes with a return to the consumerism of fast food, and on top of that, a merry car ride to horrible pop music. The last shot of Wasp shows the car driving off as one of the passengers carelessly throws their bag of fast food out the window. On one hand, Arnold says that some things will never change. On the other, there’s a happiness achieved in spite of it all. Arnold knows Zoë will never be the Victoria she so longs to become… and, really, Zoë knows this underneath as well. Yet with said understanding, Zoe finds what she’s both looking for and not expecting to find. However, happiness doesn’t come with a clean slate.

You can find Andrea Arnold’s Oscar winning short film as a special feature on Tartan’s release of her debut feature, Red Road, or on Warp Films' release of Cinema16's European Short Films.

[Written as my fourth entry in the Short Film Blog-a-thon, hosted by Seul le cinema and Culture Snob.]

The NBR's fave "INDIE" and "SUBTITLE" movies of 07

How stupid. The National Board of Review also unveiled the best foreign-language, documentary, and "independent" (In the Valley of Elah and A Mighty Heart are "indies," but not Juno) films of the year. You may notice that the NBR showed no love for I'm Not There, Sicko, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, There Will Be Blood, or Charlie Wilson's War. Don't ask me what the fuck an independent film is these days, but here they are anyway. I also have no idea what is eligible or not... I'm pretty sure as long as the folks who vote saw it this year, it counts, as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days ain't being released in the States until January. All lists are alphabetical... though I don't think they realized the "La" in La vie en rose is a damned article.

Best Foreign Films (other than winner The Diving Bell and the Butterfly):
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile] - dir. Christian Mungiu - Romania
The Band's Visit [Bikur Ha-Tizmoret] - dir. Eran Kolirin - Israel/France/USA
The Counterfeiters - dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky - Germany/Austria
La vie en rose - dir. Olivier Dahan - France
Lust, Caution -dir. Ang Lee - Taiwan/USA

Best Independent Films:
Away from Her - dir. Sarah Polley - Canada
Great World of Sound - dir. Craig Zobel - USA
Honeydripper - dir. John Sayles - USA
In the Valley of Elah - dir. Paul Haggis - USA
A Mighty Heart - dir. Michael Winterbottom - UK/USA
The Namesake - dir. Mira Nair - USA/India
Once - dir. John Carney - USA
The Savages - dir. Tamara Jenkins - USA
Starting Out in the Evening - dir. Andrew Wagner - USA
Waitress - dir. Adrienne Shelley - USA

Best Documentary Films (other than winner Body of War):
Darfur Now - dir. Ted Braun - USA
In the Shadow of the Moon - dir. David Signton - USA/UK
Nanking - dir. Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman - USA
Taxi to the Darkside - dir. Alex Gibney - USA
Toots - dir. Kristi Jacobson - USA

Kickin' off award season

The National Board of Review started the ball rolling for the year-end film awards, naming the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men the best film of the year. Keep in mind that the National Board of Review is probably one of the less reputable sources to hand out awards each year. The awards are as follows:

Best Picture: No Country for Old Men - dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Best Director: Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd)

Best Actor: George Clooney (Michael Clayton)

Best Actress: Julie Christie (Away from Her)

Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)

Best Ensemble Cast: No Country for Old Men (Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, et al)

Best Foreign Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - dir. Julian Schnabel

Best Documentary: Body of War - dir. Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro

Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille - dir. Brad Bird

Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild)

Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Ellen Page (Juno)

Best Directorial Debut: Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone)

Best Original Screenplay (tie): Diablo Cody (Juno); Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men)

2-11 of the Best Films of 2007 (in alphabetical order):
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Bucket List (seriously?)
Into the Wild
Juno
The Kite Runner
Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton
Sweeney Todd

Lucifer Rising 2: Bee Girls, Lifesize Cats, Busby Berkley, and Paris Hilton

[This is intended as my third entry to the Short Film Week Blog-a-thon hosted by Seul le cinema and Culture Snob, and also as the sequel to the post Lucifer Rising, Come into My World; or Welcome the Children of Anger]

I felt like George Castanza after posting my first music video blog, remembering so many fabulous videos that I neglected to mention the first time around. Forgive the intentional negligence of a handful of videos, for I chose to stray away from the ones whose appreciation seemed pretty well established ("Thriller," of course, being the big one... and though I like that he always did different stuff with video, I can't call any of David Bowie's videos personally memorable). In this post, you will find examples of cinematic reverie, technical creativity, and, maybe most importantly, the ability to resonate.

1. Sonic Youth - “Death Valley 69” - dir. Richard Kern, Judith Barry, Sonic Youth

In a way, all of Kern’s films were “music videos,” and all of his music videos films. He never looked at them separately, though “Death Valley 69,” which features moments of rollicking, haunting images of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and company going crazy on their guitars, is probably his closest thing to your typical “music video;” it’s electrifying nonetheless. Cutting between Zabriskie Point-esque planes and deserts (no orgies, sorry), Lung Leg (cover girl for the band’s album EVOL), and a bizarre massacre, the only thing holding Kern back, artistically, is the rare instance of early consumer-level video footage. If nothing else, Kern always knew how to marry music and film in the best possible way.

2. Cibo Matto - “Sugar Water” - dir. Michel Gondry

In terms of quantity and quality, Gondry’s probably the best music video director our generation knows. How the video was so perfectly constructed and timed, I never want to know, as it even exceeds “Come into My World” in its technical prowess. Its split-screen splendor will blow your mind harder than anything Mike Figgis could have imagined. For more split screen beauty, check out Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop.”

3. Madonna - “Bedtime Story” - dir. Mark Romanek

Madonna has always tried to outdo herself in efforts varying from puzzling to silly. Written by Björk for the Queen of Pop herself, “Bedtime Story” was probably the best song she released throughout the 90s and with a video of startling vision. A lot of her videos look the same, the videos for “Rain” and “Nothing Really Matters” (which was really just her attempt to sell herself to whoever was holding the money for the Memoirs of a Geisha film... didn't work, obviously) are totally children of “Bedtime Story,” but when the lyrics, “Words are meaningless, especially sentences,” pops onscreen in the form of text, you have to congratulate her, and director Romanek, for successfully outdoing herself, if only for once. [Naturally, if you haven't seen the banned-from-MTV video for her "Justify My Love," do yourself a favor and click that link.]

4. Missy Elliott featuring Ciara and Fat Man Scoop - “Lose Control” - dir. Dave Meyers, Missy Elliott

The musical genre got a serious facelift with the onslaught of the music video, and Missy Elliott has always provided some of the more dazzling examples of video choreography, even if you (and everyone else) could do without Tommy Lee’s cameo at the end of “Lose Control.” Here, body movement and color form a cornucopia of delights, looking like the wild, illegitmate child of Busby Berkley. Though its transitional sets don’t make much sense, the nice thing about playing with the format is that consistency and continuity don’t matter, just as long as it keeps impressing, as Elliott seems to always do.

5. Blind Melon - “No Rain” - dir. Samuel Bayer

“No Rain” proved that narrative and music video weren’t mutually exclusive, chronicling an awkward little girl in a bee suit running away from the scowls of a talent competition to perform on the street. Eventually, after the street folk prove as critical an audience as the laughing judge, she finds fellow bee adults in the meadow. It’s sweet and iconic, a likely inspiration for Abigail Beslin in Little Miss Sunshine, and a lot more effective in its simple narrative than the ever-popular Alicia Silverstone Aerosmith videos of its day.

6. Broken Social Scene - “Almost Crimes” - dir. George Vale, Kevin Drew

Silhouetted Leslie Feist, how you do it for me. The Canadian supergroup’s best video is a triumph of visual rhythm, using only overlaying silhouettes of the band in a dancing frenzy. It probably helps that “Almost Crimes” is the band’s most rock-out, anthem-y song, but the video manages to evoke such a contagious joy in movement, even if you never see anyone in the band’s face. Ms. Feist would continue to astound in the music video format as she left the group to go solo. Note: despite all this Feist-loving, I’m not positive that it isn’t Emily Haines who sings and performs in the video.

7. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds featuring PJ Harvey - “Henry Lee” - dir. Rocky Schenck

It’s one thing for the video, which features Cave and then-girlfriend(?) Harvey, to be as quietly disturbing as the song itself, off Cave and the Seeds’ Murder Ballads album. It’s another to achieve the sort of painful, should-I-be-looking-at-this uncomfortable intimacy as David Lynch did in Mulholland Drive with Naomi Watts’ audition scene. Cave and Harvey, dressed similar and with blanched skin, invade one another the closer the camera comes to them in that ever-wondrous use of the single take. As the camera approaches them, the tension builds and the squirming is induced, intentionally of course… for who wants to feel at ease during a murder ballad. For a vastly different approach off the same album, Cave’s duet with Kylie Minogue, “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” evokes not uneasiness, but the painful, epic beauty of killing the girl you love.

8. Gnarls Barkley - “Smiley Faces” - dir. Robert Hales

Zelig lives! In the form of Gnarls Barkley. Kudos to getting Blue Velvet costars Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell together for the video, but “Smiley Faces” is such a loving tribute to the great Woody Allen satire that it wouldn’t have mattered if they chose Pauly Shore and Carrot Top instead. Cinematic “parodies” in music video have worked before, such as in Jonathan Glazer’s Blur video “The Universal” which tributes A Clockwork Orange, but “Smiley Faces” works the best for my dollar for adopting more than just a stylish representation of Zelig. Note: Equally successful is The Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight," a stylized tribute to Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon. And... if you want a much less successful example, watch Busta Rhymes' "I Love My Chick" which features the rapper and actress Gabrielle Union (in place of Kelis, who provides the back-up vocals) in a humdrum homage to Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

9. The The - “Slow Emotion Replay” - dir. Tim Pope

Matt Johnson was, and is, a total artist. Though best known as the creator and only constant member of The The, he always firmly believed in video as an extension of the music itself. “Slow Emotion Replay” excellently displays this fusion, using testimonial documentary footage overlapping portions of the song. It certainly feels like a case of taking superiority over your subjects, but certain moments suggest otherwise, notably when the camera fixates on the old man drying his tears. Johnson never tried to break ground with his videos, but instead capture mood as an augmentation of his music. You can find the complete collection of Johnson and The The’s videos on his official website.

10. Peaches - “Diddle My Skittle”

This particular Peaches video manages to repulsive even the most iron-stomached of viewers. With pink spandex, a lot of camel-toe action, hairy pits, a Charles Manson (or is it Jesus?) T-shirt, and two silver balls, Peaches tests the ground of perversion. It’s the sort of video I’d imagine from Richard Kern if he ever directed electrotrash music. Somehow, she manages to turn her silver balls into a pendulum of vulgar hypnosis as her display of impropriety never really allows you to take your eyes away. It would be no wonder that she later toured with John Waters (in fact, she sort of reminds me of Divine from Pink Flamingos here). Note: You need RealPlayer to view the video as YouTube, naturally, does not have it.

11. Vincent Gallo - “Honey Bunny” - dir. Vincent Gallo

Gallo’s video is deceptively simple: women in states of undress on a rotating table. Though notably a curiosity piece for featuring Paris Hilton (his album When opens with the track “I Wrote This Song for the Girl Paris Hilton”), it’s a remarkable work and a fine companion piece for The Brown Bunny, no matter how you feel about that. “Honey Bunny” basically takes all the themes of The Brown Bunny and consolidates them into this five-minute film, leaving a haunting exposé of male fantasy… or, at least, male fantasy as interpreted by Vincent Gallo. Things are made all-too-clear with the video’s final image, which truly depends on your tolerance for the man himself. Note: my apologies for the video site, as Gallo went on a rampage, forcing nearly every website known-to-cyberspace to remove his personal videos. So, if the link doesn’t work, you may be shit out of luck.

12. Björk - “The Triumph of a Heart” - dir. Spike Jonze

At the point "The Triumph of the Heart" was released in both Björk and Jonze’s career, they had complete artistic freedom (not that they ever lacked it) to do whatever the fuck they wanted. And, they did. And, I have to throw respect at them, even if I think the video is just ridiculous. Here, Björk’s husband isn’t paying attention to her, so she goes out on the town, gets tanked, falls through the streets, sends messages of love in the shape of floating pink hearts, and realizes that she prefers the country-life and wants her man back. Oh yeah, her husband is a cat. And he turns lifesize at the end. As stupid as it sounds (and, sorry, is), could you really imagine anyone else marrying and dancing with a human-sized cat? Björk is so uncompromising, the song even stops when she takes a break to the loo. In fact, all of the videos off her album Medulla are intriguing failures, proving like Inland Empire that artistic freedom can come at a price... at least to the spectator

13. Talking Heads - “Once in a Lifetime” - dir. David Byrne, Toni Basil

It should also not come as a surprise that Byrne and his Talking Heads fully utilized the possibilities of the video format. Byrne, particularly here, is an extraordinary presence. The video plays like an experimental version of Sliding Doors (albeit with more fascinating results, even in its brief length), where Byrne multiplies and yet somehow remains the same ("same as it ever was")… possibly. “Once in a Lifetime” marked one of the first times a music video deemed itself worthy of intellectual analysis in both its imagery and relationship to the lyrics.

14. The Replacements - “Bastards of Young”

“Bastards of Young” is metaphysics, Dadaism in its finest incarnation in the medium. The camera lingers, relentlessly, on a speaker… and, yeah, that’s it. It’s fucking brilliant. I’m serious. It’s terribly subversive and utterly transfixing. Blah! I love it.

15. Sigur Ròs - “Viðrar vel til loftárása” - dir. Celebrator (Stefan Arnie, Siggi Kinski)

Taking cues from established cinematic or even literary motifs isn't always a bad thing. If Blind Melon’s “No Rain” is my favorite narrative music video, this video from the Icelandic group is my favorite of poetic realism. Aided by the dreaminess of the song, two lonely boys find love in the form of brainless dolls and a futbal match. Its daringness (more likely a product of the band’s unparalleled musical stylings and abandonment of expected form than an assault against MTV) drifts away as the video progresses, leaving a wordless, handsome love story, as effective if not more than any feature-length romance you could name off the top of your head.

16. Nada Surf - “Popular” - dir. Jesse Peretz

If you were a child of the 90s like myself, I would hope you would have fond memories of this video, which ranks as one of the pinnacle "alternative rock" songs and videos of all time. It’s really hard for me to speak of what I might have expected from the video as I could never separate the song from that crane shot of the cheerleader mouthing, “I’m the cheerleading chick,” to the camera. It resounds with that tongue-in-cheek dissection of high school hierarchy, even more successfully than the herds of teensploitation flicks that would inevitably follow.

17. Portishead - “Only You” - dir. Chris Cunningham

If Gondry is the most prolific of the music video directors, Cunningham is the most revered. “Only You” is frightening and, above all, reason to forgive Cunningham for Madonna’s “Frozen,” and, most importantly, stunningly mysterious. Filmed seemingly underwater (here’s another example of a video whose astounding technicality would only ruin the experience), a young boy floats while a man overlooks, cut alongside lead singer Beth Gibbons in a similar state of submersion. The addition of the man overlooking the alley from a factory window multiplies the eeriness, which only further aided the glory of the song itself.

18. The Pretenders - “I Go to Sleep” - dir. Derek Burbidge

It’s oh-so-simple, yet perfectly evocative. When I first saw the video, it was on a lousy VHS which had the top half of Chrissie Hynde’s face cut off, and somehow that almost worked better. Yet how it stands, it’s one of the best songs from the group even though it's a Kinks cover. In so many ways, “I Go to Sleep” was the band’s clairvoyant requiem, pre-dating the drug overdoes of two of the core members. With its final shot of an empty room with lonesome instruments, the video works outside itself, furthering a hindsight appreciation through the lyrics, minimalism, and subtle movements and facial expressions of the incomparable Hynde.

19. Kelis - “Bossy” - dir. Marc Klasfeld

The effectiveness and trash-elegance of Kelis would never work if she were as popular as, say, Mariah Carey. She struts around “Bossy” as if she fucking invented R&B, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. She makes a costume change around every twenty second mark, from slinky bikinis to designer sunglasses to ribcage-high jeans. It’s the finest recent example of ludicrous excess in music video egoism, surpassing all of her peers as a result of such refined obliviousness. Kelis’ shameless, undeserved self-confidence makes her the most fantastic shrew in the popular music circuit, and with her smug dance moves and green poodle, “Bossy” is thus the best visual representation of this.

20. Feist - “1234” - dir. Patrick Daughters

I’m still unaware how Leslie Feist turned into the spokeswoman for just about everything music-related, from iTunes to VH1, but unwarranted it surely isn’t. Her third album, The Reminder, isn’t as excellent as it’s cracked out to be, but with a song like “1234,” forgiveness comes easy. Ms. Feist released this video, along with two others, before her album even hit stores, and with that alone, she became the finest endorsement for her own product. Feist has a certain Morrissey-quality to her finer songs; she laces the poppy tone with a melancholic longing. “1234,” the video, is fucking stunning, no matter how many times you’ve seen that iPod commercial. It’s another of those one-take wonders that’s never as alarming or jaw-dropping the second time around (see Children of Men). Yet that doesn’t even matter. The fact that the video is void of editing becomes an afterthought upon multiple viewings and what remains is the consummate joy that puts even the perky Hairspray musical to shame. Its charm is immeasurable which is considerably more than I can say for, really, anything at this point in time. God bless those Canadians.

Ecoutez l'histoire de Bonnie et Clyde

File this under, "about fucking time." Warner will be releasing a two-disc special edition of Bonnie & Clyde on 25 March 2008. The set will also include a hardcover book of photos and such, and who doesn't need more pictures of Faye Dunaway to look at? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the disc will include Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot's music video for "Bonnie and Clyde." Dommage.

Lucifer Rising, Come Into My World; or Welcome the Children of Anger

[This is intended as my second entry to the Short Film Week Blog-a-thon hosted by Seul le cinema and Culture Snob.]

Oh, Kenneth Anger, damn you. His fast editing and use of music marked the beginning of the end: MTV. The format of the music video really should have been the perfect format for directorial experimentation, but instead has become the staple of musicians of meager talent to distract the poor music with flesh and neon lighting. This isn’t to say the music video format hasn’t provided us with some brilliant works of art, and that’s what this post is for. Here’s 20 music videos that broke the mold, beamed with artistry (or, in some cases, extreme lack thereof), exploring possibilities instead of resorting to masturbatory showmanship. I've included links to each of the videos, though I apologize if you're reading this much after I've posted this, as they may not work any longer. I would also like to mention that these aren't the finest 20 videos you'll ever see, but more examples from my personal history of music video viewing of art in video.

1. Kylie Minogue - “Come into My World” - dir. Michel Gondry
Who knew a music video could be so technically astounding and so beautifully meta at the same time? Kylie’s brand of pop music has always exceeded her peers (though with little success stateside), but it’s perhaps one of the few pop music videos I can recall that directly addresses the very nature of pop music. As Kylie walks in circles around a Parisian block, she multiples, along with her settings, in technical bravado. It’s the sort of visual brilliance that would only lose its majesty by discovering how it was done, yet Gondry fully understood what he was doing, turning the pop songstress into robotic, alien-like clones of herself; how perfect for a pop star who, especially considering her mythical existence in the United States as Europe’s biggest star, might as well be a product herself (check out her official website, where you can buy Kylie scented drawer liners… seriously).

2. Björk - All Is Full of Love - dir. Chris Cunningham
Though “Pagan Poetry” probably remains her most (in)famous video and "It's Oh So Quiet" her most popular, Cunningham’s “All Is Full of Love” brilliantly compliments Gondry’s “Come into My World” in its critical assessment of the music itself underneath such ecstatically astounding technicality. Here, two robot Björks (literally) embrace romantically, their movements controlled by an unseen force. Unlike Kylie, Björk is probably a bit more attune to the very nature of her own music, a sort of artpop that’s garnered her obsessive fans for over ten years. The video is cold and eerily sensual, yet would it surprise you that, unlike whatever self-congratulatory rap video you could find on MTV, Cunningham is cleverly jabbing at Björk’s undoubted self-love? It sure wouldn’t surprise me.

3. PJ Harvey - “C‘mon Billy” - dir. Maria Machnacz
I must give thanks to Bradford for calling my attention to the wonderfulness of this video from PJ Harvey, my lifelong obsession. For most, PJ’s videos are less assuming and memorable than others; she constantly works with Machnacz who’s hardly as striking as one of those Palm Directors Series guys, yet it’s hard to deny that Machnacz understands PJ Harvey. Many have discussed her subtle chameleon-like personas as Harvey shifts images with every album she’s released, albeit more quietly than, say, Madonna, Annie Lennox, or David Bowie. With To Bring You My Love, Harvey exudes her most theatrical, “more drag queen than any drag queen could ever hope to be,” as Bradford said, a sort of cross of Marelene Dietrich and the loving parody of a woman most drag queens exemplify. Harvey was a woman of desperations with that album, probably best known for the haunting “Down by the Water,” which introduced the MTV world to her, yet “C’mon Billy” explored the multifaceted image Harvey portrayed with To Bring You My Love, amplified emotions, harsh aggressiveness, and a girlish vulnerability. To Bring You My Love, perhaps her most widely lauded album, is also her most schizophrenic, with its chaotic blues, and “C’mon Billy” is probably the finest example, video-wise, of Harvey’s stirring progression of altering egos.

4. Rollins Band - “Liar” - dir. Anton Corbijn
This video is just about fucking perfect. Like the videos already mentioned, Corbijn exhibit’s a serious understand of his artist here and, specifically, the hilarious duality of the song itself. It’s almost like watching someone else’s nightmare (more amusing that it’s not yours), with Henry Rollins as your devil-in-diguise, jumping from glasses-donning “understanding guy” to red-painted fiend. Rollins does his best bit of acting here (much more so than in Lost Highway or any other shitty horror film he’s later starred in), flexing his neck to unbearable strains, and in the foreground yet out-of-focus no less. It’s alternately hilarious and frightening.

5. Young MC - “Bust a Move”
Okay, a little less reflexive and artistic, this video made my early MTV days. It’s was kind of like that cafeteria scene in Fame, only way cooler. Who didn’t want to go to a school where the kids get up on their desks and, well, bust a move. It’s refreshingly unpretentious and unchoreographed, sort of a House Party-meets-Breakin’ in a music video, and who wouldn’t love that?

6. The Smiths - “The Queen Is Dead” - dir. Derek Jarman
You know serious business it to be had when the video is introduced as “A Film by Derek Jarman.” This isn’t any old music-fucking-video, and it’s probably the most remarkable thing Jarman ever did in short format. It’s kinetic, gorgeous, and almost the perfect heir to Kenneth Anger. Jarman similarly used the overlapping imagery in his segment in Aria, but The Queen Is Dead is so much better… and even more startling would be the absence of Morrissey, Johnny Marr, or any of the other Smiths within. The video’s a perfect depiction of the angry, romantic British youth beneath Thatcher; though Brian Eno’s music suited most of Jarman’s work flawlessly, Jarman here has perfectly complimented someone’s music instead of the vice versa. The link above only contains the video for “The Queen Is Dead,” though the “film” itself also contains Jarman’s videos for “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” and “Panic,” which make for the perfect trilogy of London youth via The Smiths. [Also, why not also check out Jarman's video for Marianne Faithfull's "Broken English."]

7. U.N.K.L.E. - “Rabbit in Your Headlights” - dir. Jonathan Glazer
While Glazer has yet to prove himself a formidable feature director, his talents on the music video circuit are undeniable. U.N.K.L.E.’s “Rabbit in Your Headlights” is probably his most rewarding. French actor Denis Lavant (Beau travail, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf) walks through a busy tunnel to the voice of Thom Yorke. In fact, for cineastes, it’s hard to disassociate oneself with Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, where Lavant plays a fire-blowing homeless man in love with Juliette Binoche. Glazer also adds to the video Lavant’s indistinct mumblings, almost alleviating the video from the song itself without disrupting rhythm. As Lavant continues to get hit by passing cars, the video becomes more and more exquisite, climaxing with such luminous beauty. With the cars swirling and Yorke singing something about a “Christian suburbanite,” social relevance peaks through, but without eclipsing the visual power and intensity.

8. Aphex Twin - “Windowlicker” - dir. Chris Cunnigham
I wanted to stay away from multiple entries from the same director, especially when they’re as renowned as Cunningham, but he’s such a visionary that I couldn’t mention “All Is Full of Love” without “Windowlicker.” More than just a condemnation of rap culture and its related misogyny and excessive luxury (which makes Ali G in Madonna’s “Music“ video look pedestrian by comparison), it’s an uproarious funny horror flick, with those terrifying Richard D. James masks, sun-kissed, booty-shaking cellulite, and the most pervasive use of the word “nigga” since Quentin Tarantino burst onto the film scene. It’s arguably the finest music video I’ve ever seen, and words only spoil its luster. If you want another example of Cunningham's genius, check out his other Aphex Twin video, "Come to Daddy," which is ten times scarier than any horror film you can put in front of you. “Shit, bitch, you make a nigga wanna fuck!”

9. Busta Rhymes - “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” - dir. Hype Williams
Busta Rhymes was once a serious innovator when it came to the world of music videos, sort of the male counterpart of Missy Elliott, one of the few other rap artists that embraced visual experimentation and alarming surrealism over glossy indulgence. Like Elliott, Busta fuses his videos with a humorous self-image, neither as parody or slapstick. Plus, it’s one of the few times where a fish-eye lens is actually used effectively. Busta's further collaboration with Hype Williams includes the wonderful Looney Tunes parody "Gimme Some More."

10. Peter Gabriel - “Sledgehammer” - dir. Stephen R. Johnson
Former Genesis member Peter Gabriel still remains one of the few artists who managed to look like he had fun making his videos, and even one of the fewer that allowed his audience to have fun with him. Really, his videos often looked like extended stop-motion segments from Seasame Street, but what’s wrong with that? I guess, if I wanted to be nicer, maybe if Jan Svankmajer directed a segment of Seasame Street. Is that better?

11. Justice - “D.A.N.C.E.” - dir. Jonas et François
Whether you love Eurotrash earnestly or ironically, French electro-duo’s “D.A.N.C.E.” is the best video released last year. MTV USA even nominated it for “Video of the Year,” eventually losing out to that flaccid Rihanna video for “Umbrella.” Nominating the video without giving it the award was sort of like when the Academy gave David Lynch a nod for Mulholland Drive; a snub would have been better than a consolation prize. Both the band and the video lovingly recalls the heyday of Daft Punk, musical and video innovators, and somehow exceeds them with a single transformation of the T-shirt.

12. Junior Senior - “Move Your Feet” - dir. Shynola
In keeping the trend of possible flash-in-the-pan Euro-electro duos, Danish brothers Junior Senior’s pervy tribute to Atari-like pixelized cartoons exquisitely matches the band’s addictive quirkiness. Like the band, there’s something about the video coming from Europe making what would have been silly become fascinatingly entertaining. There are just certain things that Europeans and Japanese folk can get away with that no American could even begin to repilicate (see François Ozon’s 8 femmes for your feature-length example). Juicy!

13. Fiona Apple - “Criminal” - dir. Mark Romanek
Romanek’s video for “Criminal” remains probably one of the most misinterpreted videos of all time. Apple, then eighteen, got nearly overnight stardom with her album Tidal, a bluesy, soulful, personal sung diary of a “bad bad girl,” with its breakout single “Criminal.” Apple notoriously made a fool of MTV (and in many people’s eyes, herself) as she accepted the Best Female Artist video, solidifying the delusion of her video against child pornography in fashion. Romanek’s camera turns toward furniture and anonymous body parts opposite scantily-clad Apple and others is so magnificently Antonioni that it somehow, in retrospect, comes as no surprise that no one got it. How many of the MTV-viewing public would have understood the final moments of L’Eclisse? Venturing a guess toward “zero” wouldn’t be too terribly off base. But to the ill-informed (read, young teenage boys like myself), the waifish, seductive Apple became the girl dreams are made of.

14. R.E.M. - “Everybody Hurts” - dir. Jake Scott
R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” feels like the best elements of Gus Van Sant and Richard Linklater combined into a single video. It’s perfectly sparse storytelling, with subtitles of thoughts beneath the crowds of people in a Weekend-esque traffic jam. In just a single image and an abbreviated sentence, Scott, son of Ridley Scott, touches and breaks your heart. Say what you will about the end of the video, where everyone gets out of their cars, in listening to the Michael Stipe’s lyrics, it could end no other way. It’s a hope that’s not compulsory, but unnerving and lovely.

15. Massive Attack - “Protection” - dir. Michel Gondry
Perhaps there’s always going to be an important linkage between cinema and music video. In Gondry’s “Protection,” the camera pans across an artificial apartment building à la Rear Window, or maybe more accurately, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire with its somber curiosity. The camera pans to the various members of Massive Attack, scattered actors, and guest singer Tracey Thorn (of Everything But the Girl) in single-take splendor. The video is the perfect counterexample to Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, a somewhat misstep for the director which still embodies, even if unsuccessfully, the video elements he displayed in “Protection.” It’s no coincidence that the video follows R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” on the list, as both exemplify unity in loneliness, though Gondry’s exists in a purely candy-coated, toy-model realm.

16. Christina Aguilera - “Dirrty” - dir. David LaChapelle
You didn’t think I was kidding when I mentioned that I was going to dissect the artistry of all of the videos of Christina Aguilera. Well, I embellished a little, but LaChapelle’s “Dirrty” is sort of a miracle of fashionable sleaziness. The video, single-handedly, drew attention to the singer’s otherwise forgettable album, allowing for a more ferocious and carnal Aguilera to eclipse the Disney-created girl-next-door of her previous album. Watching “Dirrty” is like partaking in the seediest, gayest exploitation film ever made. It’s entrancing in its fetishistic “dirrtiness.” After watching it again fully equipped with all-girl showers, misplaced Easter Bunnies, mud baths, and break dancing, don’t you kinda wish LaChapelle directed Million Dollar Baby instead?

17. New Order - “True Faith” - dir. Philippe Decouflé
New Order was one of the first bands to truly embrace the possibilities of the music video, and while their video for “Bizarre Love Triangle” is probably more fascinating, I’ve always been drawn to “True Faith,” which mixes concert footage of the band with cartoonish characters moving to the beat of the song (one of them looks frighteningly like the bald, painted man in the beginning of Jarman’s Sebastiane). Live footage can tend to be rather dull, but the juxtaposition of fantasy and reality manage to work well here. Or maybe I just chose this so as not to be too obvious.

18. Grace Jones - “Slave to the Rhythm” - dir. Richard Hunt
One would think that a Grace Jones video that didn’t feature her prominently would be an utter failure, but not here. Jones is represented here as robot, model, photograph, seldom actually making body movements. Instead, “Slave to the Rhythm” is a surrealist, sometimes Buster Keaton-esque depiction of race, both comical and visually arresting. Ms. Jones never explored the world of music video as much as we all know she should, but “Slave to the Rhythm” is a fine example of the extension of Jones’ talent and artistry.

19. Soundgarden - “Black Hole Sun” - dir. Howard Greenhalgh
I must admit that most of my video reference comes from the mid-90s, so whether Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” deserved to be one of the twenty, I can’t say objectively… yet it remains one of the more haunting videos for me as a youth, a morbid, frightening denunciation of suburbia. Looking at it now, I fucking get it; in fact, I got it before rewatching it. However, the images of this video (along with Anton Corbijn’s video for Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box”) will probably never leave me. You prepared for the rapture, right?

20. The Knife - “Pass This On” - dir. Johan Renck
Also known as the only video from the Swedish brother-and-sister duo where they actually appear. Being camera shy has never necessitated shitty videos; see Aphex Twin and Daft Punk for examples. The band’s video for “Heartbeats” is magnificent, but there’s a strange, haunting beauty to “Pass This On,” in which Swedish female impersonator Rickard Engfors (who looks like Hedwig, Juliette Lewis, and Rachel Griffiths all in one) sings the song in front of a curious bunch of cafeteria folk. There’s palpable tension which is wholly mysterious and such a satisfying break of that tension. Absolutely dazzling and the best thing I could think of to end the list.

Other videos worth mentioning, albeit briefly:

Anything Devo ever made. I couldn't chose just one, so do a search on your own via YouTube and witness their brilliance in motion.

Robert Palmer - "Addicted to Love" [if only for scaring me as a child and thrilling me as an adult, his “backup band” looks like the sort of ladies I’d imagine rocking out to Kraftwerk]

Killdozer - "King of Sex" - dir. Richard Kern [easily Kern's finest video, a sleaze-fest with topless girls, Nick Zedd in drag, and blow jobs. Naturally YouTube took the video down, I'll post a link if I ever find another]

If you want to question your sexuality, no matter what it is, or perhaps even your sanity, I'd advise you to check out this video. It's a secret, but don't worry, it's safe for work viewing.

And, really, special mention should go out to David Bowie, Trent Reznor, Fatboy Slim, Missy Elliott, Daft Punk, Portishead, The Eurythmics, Nick Cave, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Madonna, and even Marilyn Manson for continuously making interesting videos, whether "good" or not, throughout their careers.

Paris je t'aime... moi non plus

[This is intended as an introduction to the Short Film Week Blog-a-thon hosted by Seul le cinema and Culture Snob.]

“Short film” is such a broad term that, really, no rules do or should apply to them, yet we can all agree that the same rules for feature-length films or documentaries need not be the same. The general ideas of storytelling, character arc, rising- and falling-action, climax, and whatnot limit vision in a feature, so why try to infuse them into a smaller frame of time? In fact, “short film” is the perfect method for experimentation with mood and even tonality. With Paris je t’aime, it appears as if most of the directors, typically known for the features, forgot the possibilities and, perhaps, limitations of the format, leaving us with a bunch of filler and one of the least impressive assemblies of unrelated short films to be seen by a wide audience.

Paris je t’aime sounded like an ambitious project. The creators had designed the film to cover each of the twenty arrondissements of Paris, but directors Christophe Boe (Reconstruction) and Raphaël Nadjari (Tehilim) backed out, and what we’re left with, quite literally, is an unfinished, misstructured vision of the City of Lights with most of its directors seriously under- or over-estimating the medium of the short film. [Note: New York, je t’aime is on its way, in case you were wondering, though it will likely change names to something like I Heart NY]

What ends up problematic about most of the shorts is the directors’ inability to adhere to their time limitations. In Gurinder Chadha’s “Quais de Seine,” she examines similar themes as she had in feature-length Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice, namely the assimilation of Indian and western European culture, yet here, she packs the yawn-inducing culture clash and subsequent tolerance into five minutes, instead of a more watered-down version that would stretch throughout an hour and a half or so. Her motives and message in both features were apparent, even without having to watch the films, but in five minutes, she fails to capture slice-of-life and depicts racial fantasy, in which a young French boy abandons his crude buddies to help a young French-Indian girl stand up after tripping. The moment she falls becomes effectively startling, as her veil comes off revealing long, beautiful black pearl hair, but the moment is quickly ruined by a comic scene with the French boy attempting to put the veil back on her. Had Chadha focused on the small, revelatory moments instead of the overbearingly “meaningful” ones, she might have accomplished what I can only believe the creators of the project wanted: small moments in the lives of those on the streets of the most romantic city in the world.

In “Parc Monceau,“ Alfonso Cuarón also fumbles in his endeavor, relying poorly on a five-minute excursion in cinematic deceit. He uses his now-famous single-take as smoking American (Nick Nolte) makes a rendez-vous with a young French girl (Ludivine Sagnier), crudely not mentioning the reason for their meeting. He ends up being her father, in Paris to babysit her baby, though they speak of the baby as if it were Sagnier’s lover. The deception is juvenile storytelling, providing the cheap surprise at the finish. It’s been twenty-five years since Cuarón last directed a short film (Cuarterto para el fin del tiempo, available on the Criterion disc for Sólo con tu pareja), and he appears to have forgotten how to use time.

On the other hand, Gus Van Sant’s “Le Marais” uses its closing “surprise” expertly, not just by contrast to Cuarón’s (Van Sant’s film actually comes before Cuarón’s sequentially). The revelation that the boy in the factory (Elias McConnell) doesn’t understand the questions that the French boy (Gaspard Ulliel) asks him does embody that knee-jerk “ha!” that seems to have plagued many of the shorts featured within Paris je t’aime, yet Van Sant’s vision is more clear. The set-up (boy comes as translator for Marianne Faithfull to sell some sort of artwork) never introduces the possibility for suspicious cinematic deception, instead unfolding beautifully in probably the most “romantic” of the segments. There’s an afterthought of “well, why didn’t the American boy just tell the French one he didn’t speak English,” which ultimately doesn’t hinder too harsh a judgment as Van Sant’s vision of disconnect and romanticism is so controlled and uncompromised.

Similarly balanced is Olivier Assayas’ “Quartier des Enfants Rouges,” in which American actress (Maggie Gyllenhaal) leaves a party to buy some drugs from her dealer (Lionel Dray). Though it’s hard to step away from Assayas possibly making fun of Kirsten Dunst (Gyllenhaal is working on a film that looks not-so-coincidentally like Marie Antoinette), yet he never feels compelled to make his short more than it needs to be. Unlike Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’ “Loin de 16ème,” in which Catalina Sandino Moreno drops off her baby to babysit a rich woman’s, “Quartier des Enfants Rouges” uses foreshadowing dialogue/scenes more effectively cryptically. The line, “attention, il est fort” (or “be careful, it’s strong”) eventually conjures up dual meanings, particularly though Gyllenhaal’s face as the second drug dealer finishes the line with, “mais, tu le connais” (“but you know that”). Salles and Thomas’ repeating of the Spanish lullaby Moreno sings to the babies feels heavy-handed, socially important. The drug dealers’ warnings to Gyllenhaal work more effectively in their, perhaps, simplicity.

Alexander Payne’s “14ème Arrondissement” is the pick of the lot (though a lot of people viewed it as terribly condescending and anti-American… ha!). It works, possibly, because it’s the only film that doesn’t feel like a “short feature” or “fragment,” but a wholly realized five-minute film. Carol (the amazing Margo Martindale) clumsily recites a paper she wrote for a French class about her first trip to Paris. It’s charming, beautiful, and surprisingly touching without condensation or unnecessary expansion. “14ème Arrondissement” ends Paris je t’aime, blazing past all the other shorts in every regard and unfairly making the audience wonder, “shit, maybe this wasn’t a total waste of time.” The creators knew what they were doing with its placement, but botch the project further with the end montage to Feist’s “We’re All in the Dance,” in which Paris je t’aime becomes less a collection of shorts as it does fucking Crash. It’s almost worth it to see Juliette Binoche raise her glass to Gena Rowlands, but not really.

I don’t really care to research the filmmaking history of the directors who participated in Paris je t’aime to see if they began their careers in the realms of the “short film,” because it really doesn’t excuse most of the missteps therein. What remains (other than the inevitable sour taste) is a fine example of successful feature directors’ inability to adhere to limitations (I remember Lumière et compagnie, in which a bunch of directors like Peter Greenaway and Spike Lee made shorts with the camera the Lumière brothers used in the 19th century, to be a bit more fascinating). With the short film week blog-a-thon, I doubt I’m going to (or anyone else, really) establish any truths about short format filmmaking, but let Paris je t’aime be your cautionary tale of unfortunate missed opportunity.

Sucking Ass in the STL

A friend e-mailed me today, reminding me, “oh shit, the year is almost over, and I have to make a top 10 list for 2007.” Granted, the list I provide for them is a bit preliminary, since living in Saint Louis means seeing films weeks after everyone else has. It sounds better, though, than my poor friend Stewart, whose town in Tennessee isn’t even showing No Country for Old Men. For my benefit, I’m compiling a list of films I need to see (whether I can or not, or whether they have a healthy shot at making the list or not) to make a well-rounded best of 2007 list for the new year. My “actual” best of the year list will come sometime in January.

Margot at the Wedding - dir. Noah Baumbach
The Orphanage [El Orfanato] - dir. Juan Antonio Bayona
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [Le Scaphandre et le papillon] - dir. Julian Schnabel
Persepolis - dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi
The Savages - dir. Tamara Jenkins
Crazy Love - dir. Dan Klores

Redacted - dir. Brian De Palma
Terror’s Advocate [Avocat de la terreur] - dir. Barbet Schroeder
The Darjeeling Limited - dir. Wes Anderson
Enchanted - dir. Bill Kelly
Michael Clayton - dir. Tony Gilroy
Southland Tales - dir. Richard Kelly

Hannah Takes the Stairs - dir. Joe Swanberg
In the Valley of Elah - dir. Paul Haggis
Lust, Caution - dir. Ang Lee
Molière - dir. Laurent Tirard
Once - dir. John Carney
Rescue Dawn - dir. Werner Herzog

Ratatouille - dir. Brad Bird
Manufactured Landscapes - dir. Jennifer Baichwal
Youth Without Youth - dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Sweeney Todd - dir. Tim Burton
There Will Be Blood - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Cassandra’s Dream - dir. Woody Allen

Lars and the Real Girl - dir. Craig Gillespie
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - dir. Andrew Dominik
3:10 to Yuma - dir. James Mangold
Atonement - dir. Joe Wright
Juno - dir. Jason Reitman
Descent - dir. Talia Lugacy

Quiet City - dir. Aaron Katz
Ghosts of Cité Soleil - dir. Asger Leth
No End in Sight - dir. Charles Ferguson
The Hottest State - dir. Ethan Hawke
Klimt - dir. Raoul Ruiz
Lady Chatterley - dir. Pascale Ferran

If you can think of any others to add to the list, let me know. And, yeah, I know there ain’t a shot in hell that The Darjeeling Limited will make my list… and it’s just about as likely that I will actually see Cassandra’s Dream... and I want to see Atonement about as much as I want to watch the 2Girls1Cup video again.

As for the short-list of what may make that list, here she is:

Away from Her - dir. Sarah Polley
Black Book - dir. Paul Verhoeven
The Boss of It All - dir. Lars von Trier
The Boys and Girls’ Guide to Getting Down - dir. Paul Sapiano
Bug - dir. William Friedkin
Comedy of Power - dir. Claude Chabrol

Eastern Promises - dir. David Cronenberg
The Exterminating Angels - dir. Jean-Claude Brisseau
Fay Grim - dir. Hal Hartley
Flanders - dir. Bruno Dumont
Golden Door - dir. Emanuele Crialese
Grindhouse - dir. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino

Joshua - dir. George Ratliff
King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - dir. Seath Gordon
No Country for Old Men - dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Ploy - dir. Pen-ek Ratanaruang
Private Property - dir. Joachim Lafosse
Red Road - dir. Andrea Arnold

Sicko - dir. Michael Moore
Snow Cake - dir. Marc Evans [this is only included in case I decide to be really fucking snaky as it’s probably one of the most entertaining (for its sheer awfulness and earnestness in dealing with death and autism) films I saw all year]
Stephanie Daley - dir. Hilary Brougher
Waitress - dir. Adrienne Shelly
Wild Tigers I Have Known - dir. Cam Archer
Zodiac - dir. David Fincher

As for the worst of the year, I'll leave that more of a secret...

I wonder if Robert Redford is a fan of Bruce LaBruce...

Out of all of the international film festivals out there, Sundance thrills me the least. It's been a long time coming, long before the likes of Paris Hilton would show up there. Next year, my only real interest will be in the form of Bruce LaBruce's latest film, Otto; or Up with Dead People, which will make its world premiere on January 19th. Who knows when it'll make it to US theatres afterwards, but you can visit Otto's myspace page for more information. Also premiering is the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, the debut film from actor Clark Gregg (The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, One Hour Photo, among others). This will be the second film based on Palahniuk's work (the first, of course, being Fight Club), and it looks as though an adaptation of his Invisible Monsters is on the way as well. Gregg co-stars along with Sam Rockwell, Kelly Macdonald, and Anjelica Huston.