THE MOST BELATED END-OF-YEAR REVIEW FOR 2010

Hello, and Happy New Year, all you cheery blog-readers and cinema-freaks! It's been a while since my last missive, much longer than I wished for – I pop my head up late last year, meerkat-like, after gruelling time spent in the wilds of work, then immediately pop my head below the surface for another month. This time it was all down to spontaneous holidays during the Christmas break, then spontaneous house-moving in the new year. Pretty much no internet access for over three weeks. Almost enjoyed not being tied to the world wide interweb, but as soon as access came up at the new apartment a couple of days ago, here I am, back in the swim.

With all the holiday hubbub, my end of year overview of best films for 2010 is coming out a tad late. Just imagine, then, that we back in old world of snail mail, and this is an edition coming atcha via seafreight. Nice and sloooowww.

Here's my Top 10 for the year.

1. NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (Patricio Guzman; France/ Germany/ Chile)

Mixing astronomy, archaeology, and the national history of Chile, this is a breath-taking and heart-breaking philosophical intertwining of universes and everyday lives, placing loss inside the heart of the cosmos. Utterly exquisite.

2. LOURDES (Jessica Hausner; France)

Using the pilgrimage to Lourdes as her framework, Hausner assesses faith and hope as an almost humdrum routine, where belief seems to be conditional rather than fervent. Sylvie Testud gives the quietest yet most engaging performance of the year, constantly watching and listening to the endless chatter of an ensemble of fellow miracle-seekers, nurses, and priests, all at odds with their desires and religious convictions.

3. CERTIFIED COPY (Abbas Kiarostami; France/ Italy)

Kiarostami returns to narrative-style film-making with boldness and poise. The couple's game (is the relationship between the man and the woman real or play-acted?) becomes the film's game becomes the audience's game. A beautiful convolution of psychological manoeuvring, revelling in the art of cinema, it reveals a buoyant new potential path of story-telling for Kiarostami.

4. ANIMAL KINGDOM (David Michôd; Australia)

An outstanding ensemble of performances, all presenting the snowballing vicious meltdown of a crime family with incredible aplomb. Ben Mendelsohn finally shucks off the shackles of years of comedy and light drama roles and presents a family firebrand not seen in Australian film since David Wenham's rage-filled turn in The Boys 12 years ago.

5. ALAMAR (Pedro González-Rubio; Mexico)

The simplest of premises – a father and his son spend time in a fishing hut in his home village before the son goes with his mother to Italy – creates a film with the richest relationship and a stunning visual palette. Pristine blue sea and sky, with the constant gentle soundtrack of lapping water, frame the tenderest bond between a father and son I've possibly ever seen on screen.

6. VILLALOBOS (Romuald Karmakar; Germany)

A sublime and engaging minimalist portrait, not just of a DJ at work in the studio or club, but of a person utterly committed to exploring life through sound. Presented in a series of long-takes, the subject's long monologues are surprising in their depth, richness, and lucidity. This is not merely a documentary for techno-heads, but an articulate depiction of a person relating the passion for their vocation to the wider world.

7. UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Apichatpong Weerasethakul; France/ Germany/ Spain/ Thailand)

To say this is Weerasethakul's most accessible work belies a film that quietly but heartily affirms that reality might in fact consist of many worlds that interweave and co-exist, and that forests may be the gateway where the living, the deceased, and the hairy spirits all meld together.

8. OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW (Sophie Fiennes; France / UK/Netherlands)

A cinematic traipse through Anselm Kiefer's workshop/ gallery-space in Barjac, France, where the huge former factory and it's surrounding grounds have become one gigantic art-piece in it's own right. Fascinating not just for watching the artist Anselm Kiefer happily at work creating his monolithic art, but also for the regular, graceful meanders through Barjac, which looks like the ruins of an alternate world.

9. POETRY (Lee Changdong; South Korea)

Changdong's story of a grandmother dealing with encroaching memory loss and unravelling the truth behind her grandson's involvement in a girl's suicide is as delicately-woven and finely-spun as a silk garment. Although the main character struggles with poetry and writing a single poem, the film is replete with it's own exquisite, open-framed poetry.

10. SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD (Edgar Wright; USA)

Yes, really. It beguiled me with it's unshakeable infectiousness, and somehow I appreciated the film's fearlessness in being ridiculous yet sweet. It brought back memories of teenage video-game addiction and imagining the wonderful 'what-ifs' of life as an arcade game.

Screening Alert - The Salvation Hunters

Big-time screening alert! Josef von Sternberg's The Salvation Hunters (1925) will be screening at UCLA this Saturday March 14 as part of their 14th Festival of Preservation.

Preservation funded by The Stanford Theatre Foundation

THE SALVATION HUNTERS
(1925) Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg's first film--shot for less than $4,800 on location in San Pedro, Chinatown and the San Fernando Valley--was possibly Hollywood's first "independent" production. The gritty realism of its locations, the lack of artifice in its story and the lower depths of its characters shocked audiences and the industry alike. The film remains thoroughly modern. Sternberg's images thrive on composition and stasis. His ending resolves nothing and yet everything is different. The Salvation Hunters made a star not only of Sternberg, but also of Georgia Hale, who would play opposite Chaplin in The Gold Rush (1925).

Academy Photoplays. Producer: Josef von Sternberg. Screenwriter: Josef von Sternberg. Cinematographer: Edward Gheller. Editor: Josef von Sternberg. Cast: George K. Arthur, Georgia Hale, Bruce Guerin, Otto Matiesen, Nellie Bly Baker. 35mm, 72 min.

Preceded by...
OIL: A SYMPHONY IN MOTION
(1933) Directed by M.G. MacPherson

Preservation funded by The Stanford Theatre Foundation

Oil was produced by a Los Angeles collective of amateur filmmakers, called "Artkino," who here attempted a lyric documentary from the point of view of the oil itself.

Cinematographer: Jean Michelson. 35mm, 8 min.
Live musical accompaniment will be provided.

List Addiction - From Citizen Kane to Kill Bill Vol. 1

For the past four or five years, I've had this little ritual that I perform in the first month of every year. I slaughter a chicken then...no wait, not that ritual, must not talk about that one.

Ever since I ambled across the They Shoot Pictures Don't They? website about five years ago, I have pored over their two regularly updated lists, the Top 1,000 Greatest Films of All Time and the Top 250 Films of the 21st Century, and worked out my own “haven't seen them yet” lists. I'm anally retentive enough to have a document that I regularly amend, listing all the films I haven't seen yet from these lists. Remove the films I've seen, add any new additions from the annual updates, and I'm set for another year.

I'm a sucker for film lists. Yes, they're problematic – they reinforce canons and ignore the unheralded. But I usually forgive a list for for its shortcomings if it introduces me to films I'd never heard of previously, or never considered watching in a hurry. The first time I came across the Top 1000 list on TSPDT, there were scores of films that I simply had no idea about - films that I still haven't seen (due to inaccessibility), like Limite, Sugar Cane Alley, Il Sorpasso, The Childhood of Maxim Gorky. Filmmakers I'd barely heard of, like Mark Donskoi and Luis Garcia Berlanga. The list has encouraged me to watch films that have utterly blown me away – Hitler: A Film From Germany, Touki Bouki, Zorn's Lemma. Yes, the lists have also lead me to films that gave me a headache, but hey ho, small price to pay, this is always going to happen in the world of cinephilia. (Example; why is The World According to Garp on the list? This film is a great example of turning a pretty good novel into a messy, incoherent puddle of visual dribble. And Babe has entered this years Top 1000 list as a first time entrant? What the fuggin' what? Thank god I've already put myself through the hell of seeing this execrable film years ago).

And I guess that IS one problem with building a wall of cinephilia based on lists – you get addicted to the idea of conquering the list, watching everything on it, and therefore forcing yourself to watch films you really have no desire to see. Its easy to become obsessed with the lists, and viewing choices are limited only to films from those lists. There are scores of films I have put to one side in favour of watching a list film, saying to myself “I'll watch this some time later, once I've finished with the lists.” Thankfully, I'm far less obsessed than I was a few years ago. I first created a list from the 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die book in September 2005. At that stage I was woefully lacking in my 'classic Hollywood' background, and had always avoided the horror and musical genres. I think my tally of films to watch was around 450 or so. For about 2 to 3 years, almost every film-viewing choice was based on knocking films off the list. When I introduced the TSPDT lists in late 2006, it tripled my obsession. I think it was nigh-on impossible to squeeze in any other film than ones on the 3 lists I had created. I still refer to these lists now, but I've gotten a handle on the obsession and am happy to work on them a little more slowly now, knocking them off bit by bit while enjoying once more the art of browsing for ANY film to watch.

For the record, and perhaps as a note to myself here as much as anyone else, I have the following totals for films yet to be seen on each of the 3 lists:

Source Films Remaining
1001 Films You Must See Before You Die 67
TSPDT Top 1000 of All-Time (Jan. 2011) 213
TSPDT Top 250 Films 21st Century (Jan. 2011) 53

I'm also anally retentive enough to keep a tally of films that I haven't seen that have dropped off the TSPDT lists each year. The stats are as follows:

TSPDT Top 1000 of All-Time (Jan. 2011)
Last Year in Top 1000 Films To See
2010 18
2009 26
2008 48
2007 47
2006 13
2005 22

TSPDT Top 250 Films 21st Century (Jan. 2011)
Last Year in Top 250 Films To See
2010 6
2009 15
2008 11
2007 15
2006 16

Bored yet? One more stat, then I'm outta here. Taking into account that some films cross over into other lists, the grand total for all lists combined is 570 films to view. Bugger all, really.

The link to the TSPDT Top 1000 of All-Time is here.

And the link to the TSPDT 21st Century Top 250 is here.

If you haven't seen 'em before, have fun.