My Favorite New Movies of 2011
Happy New Year, HTMLnets. I watched fewer new films in 2011 than usual, but that won’t stop me from opining on what I saw. Although I should clarify that the following list isn’t limited to 2011, but covers “the thirty newish films I saw this past year.” And here are my lists from 2009 and 2010, for comparison’s sake.
We’ll start with the best…
2010 in Books (+1 album, TV show, movie)
I read a little more than half a Louisville Slugger’s worth. Not included: the books I started and didn’t finish. Included below but not pictured: books I’ve given to friends. It was a great year, though, in that I read more books that I know I’ll reread than in any other. In mostly scattered order:
Ken Baumann—
Gossip until it’s not, but anyway: James Franco to write/adapt & direct As I Lay Dying and Blood Meridian.
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Andrew James Weatherhead—
Apparently the original Space Jam website still exists. Are there other “vintage websites” still around like this? I’d be interested in browsing them.
More excellence from MK, NNT & KS
Mike Kitchell: his big screening log.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: “Don’t tell my publishers, but as soon as I see a book of mine in the stores, my book is dead for me. My book is only alive when I am still writing it otherwise it does not respond to me anymore (Socrates who hated the written word said the same about the statues of Daedalus: you cannot talk to them). I only like to talk about things (LIKE THIS) I am writing.” and “I was explaining Antifragility to my Italian publisher: a writer is antifragile, a blue-collar worker robust, others fragile. If I beat up an economist, I would spent a few days in an Italian jail, but book sales would shoot up and my message wd be authentic. People would be convinced of the validity of my DeVany-style workout. If a corporate executive did the same his career …” Both of those from his Facebook.
Kickstarter: Howard Glitch, a multimedia jigsaw puzzle.
A Six Minute Trip, But It Feels Like Eternity: Sundance Film Festival, a review.
11 degrees and snowing. The weather and its children–snow, slush, wet shoes, stung faces–frames Sundance. As much as I’d like to say I acclimated, I didn’t. But the weather does amplify a sense of frenzy & camaraderie already present for the sake of the namesake: movies. People go to see movies, buy movies, sell movies–share movies and share themselves. And, yes: if you don’t have passes, know that you should wake up at 6am or earlier every morning to stand in line for hours at the box office, just to find out that you can only get tickets to 2 (max) of the 5-8 movies you wanted to see. There was a guy, first in line, who camped out at the box office for the night only to be beaten to the punch for tickets by someone who paid faster (cash). Devotion.
So there is a madness to the festival. It is worth it. I met filmmakers–actors, writers, directors, producers–I highly respect, and had leisurely conversations with them. All were warm, all were happy to be sharing. I saw six films in four days and a night, three of them great. It was thrilling.
The title above comes from a line in Enter The Void–one of the characters is describing a DMT trip. I stayed away from the DMT, but the festival, all gathered & gleaned, is a very specific and inspiring drug and gauntlet.
Okay. Here’s what I thought of the films:
BEST MOVIES OF THE DECADE (THE NEW YORKER’S AND MINE)
Dale Peck as a child
And here’s Denby’s list of the best movies of the decade. The only ones that I really love are There Will Be Blood and Caché (even if it’s probably in my top 20 rather than top 10). He also includes The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which I had extreme difficulty sitting through. I don’t care if the movie is about a guy who’s lost the use of his body and can’t even really open his eyes. I don’t want to spend the first twenty minutes looking at a lens smeared with Vaseline.
My list, which you should feel free to dismember, is after the jump.
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Ken Baumann—
David Cronenberg is remaking The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg.
Also, the Disney-helmed adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank-written by David Mamet–isn’t turning out as planned.
B o o k l y f e :: Stretch Edition
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Appropriate.
Jeff Vandermeer, friend to all, shares the journey of his book Finch, from inception to interior layout. I think Jeff is remarkable; he’s prolific AND he spends a lot of time on the internet.
I really look forward to this: The Interview Project, from David Lynch.
A profile of the man who created the much-emulated cliché ‘Hollywood Agent Type’, Irving Lazar.
An interview with William Gass. This one’s so full of good. An excerpt:
As for youthfulness: I value experimentation. In that area I am one of the youngest writers now writing. I smile when I see all these old young people still treating a sentence as if it had been a child of Dick and Jane. A sermon of Donne’s often has more ideas, more energy, certainly more art, than these writer’s entire books. And the meters of Sir Thomas Browne are confounding and should astonish everyone. Age is not a function of time but of mind, the old old old saying goes. Try a novel by the great Spanish writer, Juan Goytisolo. He’ll measure how young you are, not the New Yorker. I recently had to do a retrospective piece. It was a horrible experience. Don’t look back; complete immobility may be gaining on you.
More stuff after the jump.
BookLyfe, or Compendium #1
Millions crushed underneath.
Hello everyone. Pappy Blake Butler has allowed me to talk out loud a bit, and for that I am grateful. I hope to not bug the hell out of everyone here at HTMLG.
I’ve gleaned a lot of booktalk from the internet in the past week or so, and I’ll present it here, all at once. To start: Over at the Vroman’s Bookstore blog, Patrick Brown discusses the National Book Critics Circle’s recommended reading list. Patrick says:
…their recommended list leaves a bit to be desired. It’s not that the books on the list aren’t good — they are — it’s that they’re, well, a little obvious. My friend Cory, blogger at Skylight Books in LA, pointed out that Philip Roth made the list. Looking at the fiction list, I feel a little like Jack Black’s character in High Fidelity, “Philip Roth? Not obvious. No, not obvious at all. Come on, NBCC, couldn’t you make it easier? What about Hemingway? How about William Shakespeare? Why not recommend Hamlet?” I don’t mean to hammer on Philip Roth, who I love, but come on. Does he really need the readers?
