Monday, January 23, 2006

My Continually Updated Top 10 of Last Year!

My Continually Updated Top 10 of Last Year!
1. Jonathan Nossiter, Mondovino
2. Miranda July, Me and You and Everyone We Know
3. Alex de la Iglesia, El crimen ferpecto
4. Wong Kar Wai, 2046
5. Andrew Bujalski, Funny Ha Ha
6. Arnaud Desplechin, Kings and Queen
7. Frank Ross, Quietly on By
8. Alain Resnais, Not on the Lips
9. Sumiko Haneda, Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa
10. George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck

Very Honorable Mentions (In No Order):
Stephen Chow, Kung Fu Hustle
Tetsuya Nakashima, Kamikaze Girls
Jim Jarmusch, Broken Flowers
Ke-Jia Zhang, The World
Dong-seok No, My Generation
Jean-Francois Richet, Assault on Precinct 13

Biggest Disappointment:

Richard Linklater, The Bad News Bears
Marco Tullio Giordana, Best of Youth

Best Male Leading Performance:
Guillermo Toledo, El crimen ferpecto
Tony Leung Chiu Wai, 2046
David Strathairn, Good Night and Good Luck

Best Female Leading Performance:

Patricia Clarkson, The Dying Gaul
Tao Zhao, The World
Emmanuelle Devos, La femme de Gilles and Kings and Queen

Best First Film: Tie between Me & You & Everyone We Know and Funny Ha Ha

Best Cinematography: Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan & Yiu-Fai Lai - 2046

2 Comments:

Blogger Alex said...

Richet's Assault on Precinct 13 is actually the converse of both the Carpenter original and Rio Bravo and not a remake at all.

Richet subtly shifts the entire ground of the originals.

Both Rio Bravo and Carpenter's Assault rely on a society that is not broken. People will try to help the sheriff or cops out. Even (some) criminals will aid the police on occasion. Richet's Assault is the reverse - essentially everyone in the movie is either a criminal (most of the police are criminals too) or pretends to be one. The only bonds between ANY people in Richet's Assault are pure self-interest, except for a single character.

Richet creates an entirely amoral universe where what counts is self-interest and the power one can wield to advance one's interest.

Beyond that Carpenter's original, as Richet correctly percieves, is in keeping with an America whose politics was already rapidly moving far to the right in 1976. (Yes, Carpenter shows his urban street gang as multi-racial. It was also pretty clear to his 1976 audiences what color - black - he really meant).

1:44 PM  
Blogger john said...

i see you're a big fan of making lists...

9:48 PM  

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