Women (in love)

Thanks to Ed at Only the Cinema, I'm posting my list of my 20 favorite actresses, in no particular order and with apologies to many whom I could not include, not the least of which Samantha Morton, who blew me away in Morvern Callar but has been losing favor with me in the past year or so (for no good reason). Others I feel bad ignoring are Sissy Spacek, Julianne Moore, Ashley Judd (whenever she stays away from the Hollywood system), Gong Li, Sheryl Lee (at least in Fire Walk With Me), Liv Ullmann, Julie Christie, Emmanuelle Devos, Bibi Andersson, Nastassja Kinski (hmm), Juliette Binoche, Emmanuelle Béart, Diane Keaton, Ludivine Sagnier and a load of others. And if you know me, you know I'm f'real on my number 20.

Isabelle Huppert - La pianiste

Helen Mirren - The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Tilda Swinton - Teknolust (not her finest, but you get four Tildas for the price of one)

Béatrice Dalle - Betty Blue

Parker Posey - Broken English

Isabella Rossellini - Blue Velvet

Faye Dunaway - Chinatown

Maggie Cheung - Clean

Margit Carstensen - The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Asia Argento - Boarding Gate

Barbara Stanwyck - Double Indemnity

Penélope Cruz - Volver

Ingrid Thulin - The Silence

Glenda Jackson - Women in Love

Irm Hermann - The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (her silence is remarkable!)

Charlotte Rampling - Sous le sable

Laura Dern - Wild at Heart

Harriet Andersson - Through a Glass Darkly

Lara Flynn Boyle - Happiness

Gina Gershon - Showgirls

LA Film Critics Awards

In a surprise move, the LA Film Critics Association named WALL·E the best film of 2008, with The Dark Knight as its runner-up. The rest of the awards went to Danny Boyle, Sean Penn, Sally Hawkins (!), Heath Ledger, Penélope Cruz (!!), Mike Leigh, Still Life, Man on Wire and Waltz with Bashir (though I don't quite understand why it won Best Animation when their best film was animated... alas...). The full list is here, which includes their runner-ups.

DVD Announcements, 9 December

Miramax is releasing Mike Leigh's wonderful Happy-Go-Lucky, starring Sally Hawkins, on 10 March, as well as The Boy in the Striped Pajamas on the same day. Sony will have Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long on 10 February.

Zeitgeist is releasing a remastered version of Guy Maddin's Careful on 24 March. Lionsgate will be releasing Hector Babenco's Ironwood, starring Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep and Tom Waits, on 24 February; it will be the film's R1 DVD debut. Oscilloscope will have the excellent Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father on 10 February. Bertrand Tavernier's In the Electric Mist will skip(?) a theatrical release and hit DVD from Image on 24 March; the film stars Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman, Peter Sarsgaard, Mary Steenburgen, Kelly Macdonald and John Sayles.

Magnolia announced their line-up for March and April with Let the Right One In (10 March), Donkey Punch (7 April), Special (31 March), Timecrimes (31 March) and Shuttle (7 April).

HBO will have Alan Ball's True Blood on 12 May, with the new season beginning sometime next summer. That's all for now!

Kelly Interviews Assayas

Glenn Kenny conducted a wonderful interview with Olivier Assayas, surrounding Zeitgeist's improved DVD of Irma Vep which comes out tomorrow. Other topics include the director's inspiration from Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore and the way Assayas worked with the personas of both Maggie Cheung (in Vep and Clean) and Asia Argento (in Boarding Gate, which after revisiting the other night, will most assuredly make my Top 10 for 2008).

Slumdoggin'

Despite posting the Independent Spirit Award nominations and the National Board of Review's awards, I think I'm going to stray from reproducing all of the critics' awards and best of's for 2008, as you can easily find them on IndieWire, GreenCine or MovieCityNews if you so desire. Instead, I'll post a link here and there to the sites.

The Washington DC Critics Association named Slumdog Millionaire the best film of 2008. Kyle Smith and Lou Lumenick of the NY Post concur.

Gomorrah swept the European Film Awards, winning Best Picture, Director, Actor, Screenwriter and Cinematographer. Roger Ebert lists 20 of the best (narrative) films of 2008, and five docs, in no particular order.

Sight & Sound in the UK has posted their 50-critic poll of the best films of 2008, per UK release date (sort of). With three UK films on the list, the top 10 is as follows:

1. Hunger - dir. Steve McQueen
2. There Will Be Blood - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
3. WALL·E - dir. Andrew Stanton
4. Gomorrah - dir. Matteo Garrone
5. (tie) A Christmas Tale [Un conte de Noël] - dir. Arnaud Desplechin
5. (tie) The Class [Entre les murs] - dir. Laurent Cantet
7. Of Time and the City - dir. Terence Davies
8. Happy-Go-Lucky - dir. Mike Leigh
9. (tie) The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza] - dir. Lucrecia Martel
9. (tie) Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in] - dir. Tomas Alfredson

About time...

IndieWire reports that Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and has been sitting in distribution limbo in the US (likely due to Tartan's demise), will make its way to the Film Forum on 9 January 2009. They didn't name who was releasing the film (nor does the IMDb), but there's a possibility that it may be Palisades first theatrical release since acquiring Tartan's UK and US libraries. The film, which is nominated this year for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film (yeah, I know, I don't quite understand their regulations), is the third film from Reygadas, who previously directed Japón and Battle in Heaven. Go out of your way to see it.

Delay'd

Returning to their unsavory tradition, New Yorker has once again delayed several of their titles. The most drastic change is Alain Resnais' Same Old Song, which was moved from December to 31 March of next year. Perhaps more dramatic, in knowing that they previously announced the film a few year's back, Moses and Aaron is now set (tentatively) for 27 January. Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands and Woman on the Beach have also moved to 30 December. We'll see how long these dates hold.

More music...

Pitchfork posted their Top 40 Music Videos of 2008, in no particular order, including treats from Arcade Fire to The Mountain Goats (and of course "Single Ladies"). Most are well-deserved, whether they're blissfully strange (Goldfrapp's "A&E") or rather charming (Lykke Li, featuring Bon Iver, with "Dance Dance Dance"). I could do without M83's "Kim and Jessie," which I think is pretty blah, and She & Him's "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" (more because I think I detest anything that Zooey Deschanel does), but the list is pretty solid otherwise.

I'd probably also throw Björk's duet with Antony Hegarty, "Dull Flame of Desire," on the list. You can watch it below.

And the ball is rolling...

The National Board of Review has started critics' award month for cinema, giving Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire the top prize. There appears to be too many awards for actors given out by NBR, but so be it... The NBR usually ranks as one of the less sophisticated of the year's awards. The rest are as follows:

Picture: Slumdog Millionaire - dir. Danny Boyle
Director: David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Actor: Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Actress: Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)
Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin (Milk)
Supporting Actress: Penélope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Foreign Film: Mongol - dir. Sergei Bodrov
Documentary: Man on Wire - dir. James Marsh
Animated Feature: WALL·E - dir. Andrew Stanton
Breakthrough Actor: Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire)
Breakthrough Actress: Viola David (Doubt)
Directorial Debut: Courtney Hunt (Frozen River)
Original Screenplay: Nick Schenk (Gran Torino)
Adapted Screenplay: (tie) Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire)
Spotlight Award: Melissa Leo (Frozen River); Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)

Top 10 Films (That Aren't Slumdog, "Independent" or "Foreign," but Can Be Animated)
Burn After Reading - dir. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Changeling - dir. Clint Eastwood
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - dir. David Fincher
The Dark Knight - dir. Christopher Nolan
Defiance - dir. Edward Zwick
Frost/Nixon - dir. Ron Howard
Gran Torino - dir. Clint Eastwood
Milk - dir. Gus Van Sant
WALL·E - dir. Andrew Stanton
The Wrestler - dir. Darren Aronofsky

Top 10 "Independent Films"
Frozen River - dir. Courtney Hunt
In Bruges - dir. Martin McDonagh
In Search of a Midnight Kiss - dir. Alex Holdridge
Mister Foe [Hallam Foe] - dir. David Mackenzie
Rachel Getting Married - dir. Jonathan Demme
Snow Angels - dir. David Gordon Green
Son of Rambow - dir. Garth Jennings
Wendy and Lucy - dir. Kelly Reichardt
Vicky Cristina Barcelona - dir. Woody Allen
The Visitor - dir. Thomas McCarthy

Top 5 "Foreign" Films (That Aren't Mongol)
The Edge of Heaven [Auf der anderen Seite] - dir. Fatih Akin
Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in] - dir. Tomas Alfredson
Roman de gare - dir. Claude Lelouch
A Secret [Un secret] - dir. Claude Miller
Waltz with Bashir - dir. Ari Folman

Top 5 "Documentaries" (That Aren't Man on Wire)
American Teen - dir. Nanette Burstein
The Betrayal - dir. Ellen Kuras, Thavisouk Prasavath
Dear Zachary - dir. Kurt Kuenne
Encounters at the End of the World - dir. Werner Herzog
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired - dir. Marina Zenovich

Puttin' a Ring on It

I’m driving blind at the moment. My computer is busted, and my iPod is minimally loaded, so I’m probably going to run into a lot of issues when I make my official Top 10 for music this year. Unlike most years, I’ve been keeping myself pretty current on the goings-on of the music biz, but without my computer, there’s going to be a number of glaring omissions. And with the rumored release of a sequel to John Parrish and PJ Harvey’s Dance Hall at Louse Point remaining in question, the top spot is up for grabs. I hate to say it, but I doubt there’s a year that PJ Harvey has released an album where it wouldn’t have been my number one.

As for the albums I still haven’t picked up (or in some cases listened to fully yet), the latest from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Ryan Adams, Tricky, Tindersticks, Glasvegas, Girl Talk, Mogwai, Jenny Lewis, Cut Copy, Carla Bruni, Silver Mt. Zion, Oasis, Ray LaMontagne or Of Montreal. I also didn’t include Seaside Rock by Peter Bjorn and John or Sunday at Dirt Devil by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, because they’ve felt like “runners-up all” from the beginning. I’m also discounting Antony and the Johnsons and The Radio Dept.’s EPs, although I think Antony’s song “Another World” is easily one of the top 5 songs of 2008.

I think I’ll probably make a 2008 playlist when I get around to solidifying the list, as there were so many singular moments from a variety of albums that rocked me, even if I wasn’t as smitten with the album as a whole. That’s where you’ll find the likes of Santogold, Cold War Kids, Ra Ra Riot, Brett Anderson, Kings of Leon, MGMT, CSS and Dr. Dog. Naturally, any recommendations are always welcome.

Here’s a shortlist of some of the contenders, though I can already see which ones won’t make the final elimination round:

The B-52's - Funplex
Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Lie Down in the Light
Brendan Canning - Something for All of Us
Cat Power - Jukebox

DeVotchKa - A Mad and Faithful Telling
Eagles of Death Metal - Heart On
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
French Kicks - Swimming

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
Grace Jones - Hurricane
Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
Kaki King - Dreaming of Revenge

Lykke Li - Youth Novels
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Neil Halstead - Oh! Mighty Engine
Poni Hoax - Images of Sigrid

Portishead - Third
Sébastien Tellier - Sexuality [thanks, David!]
Sigur Rós - með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
TV on the Radio - Dear Science
The Verve - Forth

The ABCs of Being Lame (And Bored)

This is just about as shameless as when I would fill out lame iPod shuffle surveys on Myspace, but since Flickhead did it... I may as well alleviate my boredom doing the same, as sort of a free association exercise; I promise that each of the letters are represented by the first film I could think of that I actually liked that began with said letter. Here's the original post. There appears to be plenty of annoying distinctions regarding Indiana Jones and the Lord of the Rings, but none regarding a foreign language title. So I'll just make up my own rule and use the American release title. Meh.

Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973)

Beau travail (Claire Denis, 1999)

Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)

Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2002)

Exotica (Atom Egoyan, 1994)

Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)

Grey Gardens (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer, 1975)

Human Resources (Laurent Cantet, 1999)

Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas, 1996)

Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)

Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)

Love and Human Remains (Denys Arcand, 1993)

Muriel's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1994)

Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)

Otto; or Up with Dead People (Bruce La Bruce, 2008)

Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007)

Queen Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994)

Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)

Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991)

Time of the Wolf (Michael Haneke, 2003)

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

Vixen! (Russ Meyer, 1968)

Wise Blood (John Huston, 1979)

Xanadu (Robert Greenwald, 1980)

Your Friends and Neighbors (Neil LaBute, 1998)

Zelig (Woody Allen, 1983)