2009 in Film (and Some Thoughts on Two Years of Blogging)

We'll get to the best films of 2009 in a moment, but first some thoughts as I think about the second anniversary of this blog…


Well this week marks the anniversary of this blog, and I have to say I'm surprised I've kept with it for this long. There were times when I felt like throwing in the towel, but I kept coming back to why I started this thing in the first place. When I started this blog two years ago it was just an excuse to throw my amateur musings on film into the already crowded blogosphere…it also gave me an excuse to talk about things that interested me like books, sports, religion, and Italian horror movies. I remember thinking that it would be fun to do cross-posts with my brother about bad movies, and this year, two years after the initial thought, Troy and I finally started our "bad movie" blog. I think what's most amazing though about my two years on this blog is that people actually read what I have to say. I know it seems passé to say that, but it's true, and there isn't a hint of cynicism behind those words: I truly am amazed. When I stayed I never thought I would have 86 followers…now I know not all 86 of those people read the blog, and really the "Follow" option is admittedly an ego boost when I don't feel like my blog is worth a damn, but I'm more than thrilled that people feel compelled to click that little button on the left side of my screen. More thoughts and my list for the best movies of the year after the jump...

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Sharing the Road We Walk: Wes Anderson and His Music

Watching The Darjeeling Limited the other day I was completely energized by a moment in the film that I had forgotten altogether. The moment is the funeral scene where our three wanderers, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman – three brothers on a quest to find familial unity in India – happen across three boys struggling to carry some cargo across a raging river. As their load crumbles, so do the boys, and they are sent into the water at the mercy of the current. As the brothers try to save the kids from drowning we find that the kid Brody's character tried to save "didn't make it." What follows is a beautiful moment where the brothers walk – in slow motion of course – through the village as "Strangers" by the Kinks (the second time Anderson has used a Kinks song set to slo-mo effectively, the first being the fantastic scene in Rushmore where Bill Murray jumps off a diving board into his pool) plays in the background. It's a heartbreaking detour for a film – essentially a road movie with a pretty standard plot where our protagonists try to "find themselves" – that I was initially uneven on when I first saw it in the theater three years ago. However, this recent viewing has not only de-soured me on the film, but it got me thinking about a Wes Anderson trope that I always look forward to in his films: his "music videos".

You know what I'm talking about if you've seen an Anderson movie. These are the moments that are almost always in slow motion and accompanied by great music that shows us a filmmaker who is willing to share with us his headphones and listen in on the soundtrack of his life. The funeral scene in Darjeeling is something that could have taken the viewer out of the movie – a "look at me" moment – but instead it feels as if we're walking along with the three brothers, sharing in the poignant experience with them, maybe thinking about our own brothers or sisters in the process. This one scene reminds me that these feelings and moods are evoked in every post-Bottle Rocket Wes Anderson movie. He's a masterful storyteller and one of his greatest assets is the way he can intertwine his music (which seems very much him) with his narrative without being too showy or distracting.

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2009 Capsule Reviews, Part 3: The Limits of Control, The Hurt Locker, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and A Serious Man

Well, I've tried to watch as many 2009 films as possible in the past two weeks, but a co-worker got sick and I had to sub all week -- so I was teaching from 8am - 7:30pm -- thus squelching all of my movie-watching possibilities during the day (I normally teach from 3 - 7:30).  There are more than a few movies I had planned to watch that I just didn't get the opportunity to, but I'll list those in a later post.  I'm hoping to get my year-end review/2nd Anniversary post up sometime tomorrow or Tuesday, so for now enjoy these hastily written capsules...my last reviews for the films of 2009.

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Rethinking Spielberg's War of the Worlds

I'm sitting here at work watching War of the Worlds with the students while they work on projects, and I forgot how good this movie is.  It got me thinking...have I missed something about what Spielberg accomplished in the 2000's?  I mean he made to sure-fire masterpieces Minority Report and Munich, a big-budget (and dare I say arty) summer blockbuster in War of the Worlds, and not to mention a movie I still haven't seen that many consider his greatest achievement of the decade, A.I.  So...this got me thinking: should I do a retrospective on Spielberg's 2000-2009 output?  There are still some films I need to see (the obvious one being A.I.), and I think that I could benefit from revisiting his films -- most notably War of the Worlds since I'm half watching it now (and am damn impressed with it) while the kids do their projects -- like The Terminal (didn't think much of it when I first saw it) and Catch Me If You Can.  I'm considering starting in 2001 with A.I. and rethinking his oeuvre the past decade and giving the man the due he deserves for a decade of quality work. Anyway...am I alone on thinking that War of the Worlds is a near-great action movie?

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No...not the bees!

It's no surprise if you aren't aware that my brother Troy and I have a blog entitled It's Garbage Day -- where we discuss the merits of bad movies -- because we haven't posted any new material in about four months.  But the long awaited Wicker Man post is finally up.  Head on over to the Garbage Day blog and see what we have to say about a really weird Nicolas Cage performance...and not weird in the good, Bad Lieutanant kind of way.

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My Favorite Albums of 2009

I usually don't talk music on here, but I figured since I'm working on my year-end review (to be posted at the ever-relevant time of January 25th) I would toss up 20 of my favorite albums I've heard this year.  My tastes aren't for everyone, but there's some good stuff in here, and I hope some of you will ask about them in the comments...I'll be more than willing to let you know which songs to sample. 

My choices after the jump...

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Symbolism has never looked so tasty...

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