Best films 2000 & 2001

The only way to consider what the best films of the decade were is to make a list of the top ten [or so] year by year.
It was a heck of a good decade. I'll do one post each day this week.
>2000
Aimee & Jaquire
Beau travail
Croupier
The Girl on The Bridge
Humanite
Human Resources
The Idiots
It All Starts Today
Pollock
Ratcatcher
Traffic
Yi Yi
Wonder Boys
You Can Count on Me


>2001
Amelie
Amores Perros
La Cienaga
Chunhyang
Code Unknown
The Gleaners and I
In The Mood For Love
Last Resort
The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring
Memento
Mulholland Drive
Under The Sand
Wisconsin Death Trip

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I will try to be consistent with one rule and that is the film needs to have been released for a regular run in either NY or LA the year it is listed. If it played at a festival or was released in another country in an earlier year then it does not count until the year it gets an actual release in the US.

Kissing Divas

Found Silent film clips from Diva Dolorosa

Girl Gun Silent

Film ist A Girl & a Gun
A three minute excerpt above.

Cloud Atlas

I decided to read a book titled 'Cloud Atlas', which is considered to be one of the best fiction books of the new millennium.

What could be easier than going to the library and finding a book published in 2004 with a relatively easy title to remember? Turns out it was pretty easy - maybe too easy. I went to the computer catalog, typed in the title, found it, then wrote down the author's name and headed for the shelves. There it was. Clean, unread, ready to be checked out. [Hmmm, how can such a celebrated book appear to be unread, I thought?]

I took the book home and began to read it. It was quite good. Then, looking back at the 'best of' list, I realized that the author's name on the list was not the same name on the book I had checked out. Whoa, I was reading the wrong book!

Turns out there are two books published in 2004 with [basically] the same title. Yep, 'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell and 'The Cloud Atlas' by Liam Callanan.

Anyway, The Cloud Atlas is a good read. May not be the best of the last ten years but then again I liked it better than a couple other books that made that 'best of' list. So I'll chalk this up as a serendipitous read. Plus, it taught me a little about the rarely reported Japanese balloon bombs used during World War Two.

Turns out I'm not the first to do this.
Here and here.

O Sangue

Lost Island of VHS...

Il Ladro di Bambini - Gianni Amelio - 1992

Much praised in 1993 when it came out but much forgotten in the world of DVD / Blu-Ray this film is about a police officer [carabiniere] who is instructed to take a young brother and sister to an orphanage - but due to complications regarding the girls abusive past the officer decides to take the two to another orphanage in Sicily.

Even though his actions are kind he is essentially kidnapping them - unwittingly, of course. Along the trip they begin to bond with him in ways they never did with their mother. Directed by Gianni Amelio, the film takes a serious episode [sort of neo-neo-realism] and makes into something warmer, smarter but still heartbreaking.

This is long overdue on DVD.

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A side note: I recorded this on VHS years ago and through an intermediary lent the copy to Antonio Banderas - who was considering a remake. I never got back the original but I did get back a studio copy in a more official case.

Easy Life

The Easy Life

This is a really good Italian comedy / drama directed by Dino Risi in 1962. Very rare and not available in DVD in the US the film was an influence on both 'Easy Rider' and 'Sideways'.

The title in Italian, Il Sorpasso, translates as 'The Overtaking' and is more accurate in the context of the movie in more ways than one.

Articles on the film here.

Milk of Sorrow

Trailer for The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada), which won the Golden Bear at this years Berlin Film Festival.
The full length film is available here [no subtitles]

Castro

Castro - an Argentinian film.

More Rare dvd

Here is a list of more rare DVDs that aren't really rare - just not seen enough and often tough to find.

Croupier [Image]- This is a terrific drama with a young [pre-famous] Clive Owen who works as a croupier to to curb his own gambling addiction but gets word of an inside job that he can't pass up. The script is very strong with nary a wasted scene. It should be a classic.

Day of the Outlaw [MGM] - This is a rarely seen Andre de Toth western from the 1950's. Shot in a stark black and white the film is about a tough rancher who faces off against a group of thugs who come to town and take over for a day or two. It has a good amount of tension with a nihilistic streak that would have made Peckinpah proud.

The Rabbit is Me [First Run Features]- A terrific East German film about a young woman who has an affair with a judge who happened to sentence her brother to prison for political activity. A tricky dynamic is at work and a very political one as well. Made in the 1960's the film was banned in East Germany for years.

Reconstruction [Palm]- This postmodern romance from Denmark played many festivals and had great word of mouth - for those who saw it. Basically it is about a photographer who meets and falls in love with a woman in the course of one intense day. Influenced, no doubt, by Last Year at Marienbad it is both complex and perplexing but worth seeing again and again.

The Soft Skin [Fox Lorber] - Hard to imagine that a Francois Truffaut movie could be rare but this one [which is out of print] is. Directed after the success of his first three films [which everyone knows] the film never took off and it's hard to know why. But the doomed love affair it deals with fits right into the themes of the French New Wave of the period.

39 or 59

Was 1959 a better year in film than 1939?
It's certainly better than 2009.

Eleven great films from 1939
Gunga Din
Stagecoach
The Wizard of Oz
Gone with the Wind
The Rules of the Game
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Only Angels Have Wings
The Roaring Twenties
Le Jour se lève
Ninotchka
Midnight


Eleven great films from 1959
Pickpocket
The 400 Blows
Some Like It Hot
The World of Apu
North by Northwest
Jazz on a Summer's Day
Hiroshima, mon amour
Wild Strawberries*
Day of the Outlaw
Room at the Top
Ben-Hur

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* made in 1958 but released in the US in 59

Rashomon already played

RASHOMON IS PLAYING AT THE NUART blares the headline on the LA Times [web] today.

Followed by a nice sentence: The beautifully restored print of Akira Kurosawa's landmark 1950 drama "Rashomon" visits the Nuart Theatre for a one-week engagement beginning Friday.

Nice press, you say?
Yes.
The only problem is Rashomon actually closes tonight.
It opened last Friday.

Nice work LA Times. This is what you get with a depleted staff at a sinking newspaper? If anything you'd think the Arts & Entertainment section would be their strongest department. [Sigh].

BTW I saw Rashomon last night. And the print never looked better. The black and white is ravishing.

Bach

The Silence Before Bach - one scene from this very intriguing movie.

Delta - a Hungarian film

Sylvia

In the City of Sylvia.
A good movie that features a young artist who looks at and follows women who appear to be staring off into space alot.

Telluride festival photo

I was trying to get a photo of Helen Mirren and I managed to get a [not very good] photo that included - from the left - Anouk Aimee, Carey Mulligan, Brenda Blethyn and Helen Mirren.

Compare with this photo by Leonard Maltin, from a better angle.

Wishbone Ash

Wishbone Ash - Argus - 1972

Time Was
Sometime World
Blowin Free
The King Will Come
Leaf and Stream
Warrior
Throw Down the Sword

Van Gogh brushstrokes

There are 1753 brush strokes in Van Gogh's "Vincent's Bedroom in Arles".

The whole video about catching fake Van Gogh paintings with computers is here.

Godard tweets

So I did a Twitter search for Godard as in Jean Luc Godard.
And it's interesting because in a matter of a few hours there were two famous quotes by Godard that were going around and mentioned by a good number of people who I am guessing were not connected to one another.

To be or not to be. That's not really a question. showed up 8 times in 40 tweets.

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order showed up 4 times in 40 tweets.

The first quote is one I had never heard from Godard and I am not sure where everyone else heard it. I am guessing a meme is going around.

Huntington

I visited the Huntington Library this weekend. It's a beautiful place. Of course, I forgot my camera, which is actually a good thing because otherwise I would have spent too much time snapping photos and not enough time looking at the beauty and sheer size of the place. However, there are many good photos over at Flickr.