I'd be sort of sad if I had to start my annual year-end film detrius thread here.

Also, the world should remain centrist or skewed to the right if it means Chris Marker will continue to make bemusedly outraged movies.

(btw, Eric, I like the first 80 minutes of All That Jazz)

That's great to hear, but I sort of think the last 10 are what pushes it into insane, embarrassing greatness.

Why is Nicholson taking a beating for "showboating" in The Departed when that's more diverting than Damon's vanilla corruption or everything embarrassing about the Vera Farmiga scenes? This William Monahan guy is great at the local color and alpha-swearing, characters not so much.

I don't have a problem w/ Farmiga (still haven't seen Down to the Bone), but the whole damn part is unplayable. The shrink in IF wasn't sleeping with both of them, was she? And if Marty fought for the ending, that includes the crowd-pleaser (relatively speaking) of offing Damon?

Think of this film with Wahlberg and Ryan Gosling in the leads. Not all the problems solved, but most.

The atrophying of DiCaprio's talents is one of the tragedies of the last decade in American film (or maybe he just wasn't versatile to begin with). One of the great teenage actors ever, but since turning 21 he's seemed lost in the school play save for Catch Me If You Can. Think of what young Kirk Douglas could do with a line like "The only thing more fulla shit than a cop is a cop on TV." When Leo says it you can hear the keys clacking.

Message to Mark Wahlberg in winning polls/awards for this rather than I Heart Huckabees: BE MORE ONE-NOTE. (After the splendid verbal soul-rape of Leo, it was push Repeat.)

Leo was never versatile. Even as a young actor his talent was for acting feral (...Gilbert Grape excepted), and he's gotten better at it at the cost of several yards of charisma. What does Scorsese see in him -- how my generation copped all its cockiness from watching De Niro's mirror scene in Taxi Driver without living first?

(Alfred, is yr family sleeping late too?) Yes, Baldwin never better (not sure how much that's sayin).

Merry detrius Christmas

I'm debating whether to finish playing Miles' "He Loved Him Madly" or to watch Melinda Dillon doing her show-mommy-how-the-piggies-eat scene in A Christmas Story.

He did win the VV poll for I Hart Huckabees, tho.

'the departed' is so much better than 'infernal affairs'.

I presume you don't think DiCaprio and Damon flat-out suck, then?

IA's form fits its content, while Scorsese pouring 150 minutes of his operatic naturalism on a blatantly dreamworld plot, hinged on the depth of two actors who can only get deep through lightness (as in Catch Me If You Can and Stuck on You), inevitably leads to ludicrousness. The jarring rat joke at the end suggests that the whole thing should've been done as a black comedy a la (the truly great) Prizzi's Honor.

The Dropkick Murphys count as a corny musical interlude.

they quote Freud to get laid?

1) Applause (1929)
2) The Big Trail (1930)
3) Blazing Saddles (1974)
4) The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916-17)
5) Daughter of Shanghai (1937)
6) Drums of Winter (1988)
7) Early Abstractions #1-5,7,10 (1939-56)
8) Fargo (1996)
9) Flesh and the Devil (1927)
10) Groundhog Day (1993)
11) Halloween (1978)
12) In the Street (1948/52)
13) The Last Command (1928)
14) Notorious (1946)
15) Red Dust (1932)
16) Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-72)
17) Rocky (1976)
18) Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989)
19) Siege (1940)
20) St. Louis Blues (1929)
21) The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)
22) Tess of the Storm Country (1914)
23) Think of Me First as a Person (1960-75)
24) A Time Out of War (1954)
25) Traffic in Souls (1913)

Does anyone have a running list of movies they've outrageously neglected to induct yet?

I'm sure Fargo is relieved that it will no longer languish in obscurity and neglect.

Owen Gleiberman's #1: 007.

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1572278_1_0_,00.html

Robert Wilonsky

http://www.houstonpress.com/Issues/2006-12-21/film/film.html

Jim Ridley

http://www.houstonpress.com/Issues/2006-12-21/film/film2.html

hehe, I don't remember The Reeler doing this last year -- The Top 10 of Top 10 Lists (Part 2 tomorrow):

with their scepter-swinging nominations of the same 20-25 titles to the year's hyperbole canon, Top 10 lists reward a backloaded release calendar that all but buries dozens of worthy films that preceded their selections earlier in the year (many of which, it should be added, the most influential list-fetishists have not even seen). That it all amounts to so much hogcalling makes it even worse: Choose an authentically singular classic like Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! and you're a contrarian; rub one out in the brimming gallon jug marked L'Enfant and maybe that first freelance gig will arrive before April next year.

http://www.thereeler.com/features/top_10_of_top_10_lists_2006_part_i.php

(I don't mind the Slant pair's rhapsodies over IE, cept for the distressing Bjork mention.)

Since Armond voted for Chris Evans for Best Actor for London, and Ed Gonzalez declared CE a hot piece of ass in his review (Cellular indicated so), I need to get my hands on him...it. Who were the most arousing men of the year? I'm currently sticking with terminally ill Melvil Poupaud in Time to Leave.

jessica biel is the title character. jason statham is also in it. there's lots of cocaine use in place of a plot.