Sean’s Top 100 of the Decade

My favorite films of the past ten years, in order:

Top 25

1-3. The Lord of the Rings

4. The Royal Tenenbaums

5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

6. Battle Royale

5. Ratatouille

6. There Will be Blood

7. Let The Right One In

8. Anchorman

9. Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

10. The Incredibles

11. Wonder Boys

12. Ghost World

13. High Fidelity

14. WALL-E

15. The Dark Knight

16. Lost in Translation

17. City of God

18. Requiem for a Dream

19. King Kong

20. No Country for Old Men

21. OldBoy

22. Children of Men

23. The Fountain

24. Hedwig and the Angry Inch

25. Kill Bill Vol 1

The remaining 75, in alphabetical order:

24 Hour Party People
28 Days Later
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
About a Boy
Adaptation

Adventureland
Almost Famous
Amélie
BAADASSSSS!
Bridget Jones’s Diary

Bubba Ho-tep
Casino Royale
Catch Me If You Can
Cloverfield
Collateral

Crank
Death Proof
Donnie Darko
Drag Me to Hell
Election (japanese)

Elf
Gangs of New York
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hot Fuzz
Howl’s Moving Castle
Infernal Affairs
Iron-Man

Juno
Kill Bill: Volume 2
Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang)
Lilo & Stitch
Mean Girls

Memento
Minority Report
Monster’s, Inc
Mulholland Dr.
Narc

Once
Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
Panic Room
Pineapple Express
Pitch Black

Rambo
Shaolin Soccer
Shaun of the Dead
Sin City
Spiderman II

Spirited Away
Star Trek
Superbad
Sympathy for Mr. Vengence
Syriana

The 40-Year-Old Virgin
The Bourne Identity
The Descent
The Devil’s Backbone
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

The Machinist
The Matrix Reloaded
The Proposition
The Ring
The Rules of Attraction
The Squid and the Whale

The Wrestler
Thirteen
Tokyo Gore Police
Training Day
Unbreakable

V for Vendetta
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
War of the Worlds
Watchmen
Zodiac

Someone’s Best Films of the Decade

Sean T Collins linked to Rob Humanick’s rather ballsy list of his top (favorite) 100 movies of the decade. There are a lot of flicks on the list I simply didn’t care for, but for the record I’d also rank these in my Top 100 of the decade as well:

A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
MULHOLLAND DR.
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
LOST IN TRANSLATION
There Will Be Blood
Zodiac
Gangs of New York
Donnie Darko
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
No Country for Old Men
Kill Bill: Volume 2
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Ghost World
WALL-E
The Fountain
War of the Worlds
The Proposition
Catch Me If You Can
Casino Royale
Adaptation
Lilo & Stitch
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Ratatouille
The Squid and the Whale
Narc

Of course, now I want to add titles like “City of God,” “The Prestige,” “Let the Right One In,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Battle Royale,” “The Dark Knight,” “Spider-man II,” “Traffic,” “Oldboy,” “Rules of Attraction,” “The Ring,” “Ocean’s 11,” “King Kong,” and “Star Trek.” And those are just off the top of my head.

I think I’ll mull this over a bit and throw my hat in the ring by the New Year. Because lists making is fun. Hell, I might even try and rank ‘em!

Drawing – I Was A Teenage Devil From Venus

Pencil and Ink

Colored in Photoshop; background illo by C.C. Beck

Junkpile – 11.25.09

Junkpile is a semi-regular feature wherein I dump all the random crap that isn’t fit for its own post.

Twilight

I wonder if people would hate this franchise so much if it were about the forbidden love between a country music star and a girl from the inner city? I don’t remember much of a stink being made in our circles over The Bridges of Madison County or even High School Musical.  That kind of thing may leave a sour taste in a geek’s mouth, but it certainly never inspired calls for face stabbing. So what puts this franchise on the radar? Geek pundits can go on and on about how horrible the Twilight books and films are, but doesn’t it really boil down to  fan entitlement over vampires themselves? Putting it simply, I think geeks, horror fans in particular, are pissed off that someone has co-opted a piece of their cultural iconography and used it to successfully sell a teen romance. It can’t be the story itself – a teen girl falls in love with an immortal paramour.

But the difference there is that Buffy was a show by geeks that appealed to geeks – it wasn’t designed first and foremost as a love story aimed at young girls. Which brings me back to the sorry truth that I think most geeks are only upset by this franchise because it dared muddy the genre waters and use horror elements in a non-geek approved fashion.  And the worst offense? These “defanged” vampires now have more cultural credit than Buffy…or Christopher Lee…or Near Dark…or Let The Right One In!!! Sparkly “vegetarian” vampires, indeed.

Sad that nobody will take Vampires seriously anymore

Here’s something for you to chew on this Thanksgiving: “Am I really mad at Twilight for making vampires uncool, or am I just mad at myself for not realizing before now that they were never cool?”

And speaking of vegetarian vampires…

Sarah Palin Likes Meat

She says so in her new book. Perhaps she should watch this.

Thanksgiving at the Palin's

What’s in a Genre?

Somebody explain to me how this:

Is a different genre of music than this:

Time to get over your pop bias, dark wavers.

Thanksgiving

I wish this movie existed, if only so I could watch it tomorrow and fast forward all the boring bits…oh, wait, that’s exactly what this trailer does.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Sprockets 11/22/09

So apparently there’s this re-mastered, swanky new version of Susperia coming out on Blu-Ray. This may be the release that finally forces me to get off my can and get a PS3 if nothing else. Susperia is one of my all-time favorite films, certainly one of Argento’s most beautifully shot, and we’ve been cursed by pretty lousy transfers for years. Now if they can just release Blu-Rays of Black Sabbath and Battle Royale…

Spike Jonze is pre-hyping Mark Romanek’s adaptation of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishiguro is a writer I’ve always respected, but he’s a talent I’ve admired far more than I’ve enjoyed. There’s alot to recommend in Never Let Me Go, including an effectively subtle approach to the science fiction, but I grew restless with the story around the half-way mark and admit to never having made it through the final 50 pages or so. But Romanek’s One Hour Photo had a lot going for it, and I can see the potential for a beautiful film in the source material.

Twilight Saga: New Moon made a lot of money, reaffirming that a movie’s target audience doesn’t give a damn about critical opinion if they love the property enough.

Update 2

Sorry for the web silence lately. Usual excuses – day job, family, laziness, comics, movies, tv…

Will have a new series of illos up soon, and some paintings. Also have some cool artists whose work I’d like to spotlight coming shortly.

 

Kaiju on Black Velvet

Beautiful work by artist Bruce White, showing once again that black velvet paintings are not just for folks who vacation in Graceland.

Source: Dangerous Minds and Pink Tentacle

Ceramic double-rotor two-wheel disk drive!

Yes, that is a to-scale replica of Kaneda’s bike from Akira. Apparently, there are lots of folks out there who have tried to hobby one of these together.

Since I don’t know how to ride, I’ll settle for one of Sideshow’s 1/6 scale replicas, with functioning lights!

On “Selling Out”

I get letters from people expressing their outrage that they heard the music of The Stooges, The Ramones, The Buzzcocks, or The Fall in an ad and I understand their anger and sense of loss as they figure yet another one of their well-kept secrets has just become part of the corporate structure and the band is nothing more than the lap dogs of the man, the very man they were supposed to be sticking it to in every waking moment. These bands are not being co-opted or selling out at all. Selling out is when you make the record you are told to make instead of the one you want to make. I wonder if it ever occurred to these people that the reason the music of these interesting and alternative bands is being recruited is because their fans are now the ones calling the shots. In other words, we have arrived! Of course the ad is trying to sell you something and by using a band you like, attempting to gain your confidence by exploiting the band’s integrity for a commercial end. So what? You’re not a fuckin’ moron are ya? You see through that, don’t ya? What would you rather hear, Iggy and The Teddybears doing “I’m A Punk Rocker” in a car ad or enduring some generic background music? I thought so. Do you have any idea what some of these bands went through to make that music? The fact that there might be some money for them all these years later is great. You think that paycheck is in any way a slight to their integrity? Are you fucking kidding me? Pay them. Pay them double. Pay them now. It’s about fuckin’ time.

- Henry Rollins in the Huffington Post

Drawing – Lost In Love

Pen and Ink

Colored in Photoshop CS2