I watched Syriana about two weeks ago and thought it was excellent. The cast is great, especially Clooney, Damon, Amanda Peet, Jeffrey Wright, and Alexander Siddig who plays the eldest son of the Sheikh. One of the best films of the year.

Here is a good synopsis by Steve at Creative Generalist about why you should see this film.

I just read this fascinating article about an episode of religious unity in Israel generated by the visit of a group of Sikhs to the various faith communities in the Holy Land. Yes, Sikhs. Pretty cool, huh?

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World

A controversial but important point that I left out of my last post is the cultural importance I attach to blockbusters. On Salon this evening, I looked at a couple of their best-movies-of-the-year lists, one by Stephanie Zacharek, titled "The 10 best movies of 2005" and another about independent films, Andrew O'Hehir's "Beyond the Multiplex: the best of 2005".

I, of course, haven't even heard of many of the films that make their way into the top lists of these professional film critics. Mine are skewed towards more popular films, simply because I believe these generally have greater cultural importance. Certainly many obscure indie or art films do this as well, and may even be better uses of the film medium, but in many cases they often turn out to be very good stories of fringe cultural interest.

Let me give you an example. 1996 was a good year for movies. However, the most important cultural artifact that year was also the biggest at the box office: Independence Day. That film provided a window on the near future of North American views and values. Even one uncomplimentary amateur reviewer selected at random proves the point when he complains that the film trades on the worst picture of American culture: "Men are heroic, women are loyal, foreigners are hostile, military force is an appropriate response, science will save us, the struggle for dominance is primary, and male drunks are charming."

Similarly, the 1980's produced thousands of excellent films, but the pretty bad Rocky and Rambo serials still rise to the surface as documents of the Reagan era.

This is why my lists always contain an overabundance of popular films, and always will.

For me, settling on a list of the best and worst films of the year is no easy task. First of all, the problem is that I LOVE movies. Consequently, a movie has to be extremely bad--to have many, many shortcomings or more often a very few overwhelming ones--for me to consider it to be a bad film. For me, a bad movie is one where the film medium dies, one that I will consider walking out of, and I do. This year, I remember walking out of one film, but I can't remember what it was. Since it didn't jump out at me in the list of 2005 releases, it must be one of last year's films that, consequently, doesn't appear on my list. Out of the 73 movies that I have seen, only six make my "Worst" list. I have given short explanations for each.

The second reason is related, and is even more perplexing. You see, my most important criterion for a movie is the emotional, intellectual, and existential impact it has on me. Since this initial experience remains so strong in my mind, I find it difficult to separate this from the other elements which should determine the quality of a film. Therefore, it is easy for me to tell you which are my favourites, but separating the "Favourite" list from the "Best" list is difficult.

Let me give you an example. My favourite of the year is the Revenge of the Sith. I saw it four times, and it had by far the biggest impact on me, naturally for reasons not wholly internal to the film itself. But, as I considered film after film for my "Best" list I found, to my dismay, that I was forced to keep dropping Revenge of the Sith lower and lower, to the point where I wondered whether it would even appear on the list at all. It doesn't, and neither does Harry Potter, for which I had the same dilemma. Similarly, I thought Kingdom of Heaven would be my pick for Best of the Year, although it ended up twelfth.

And it goes without saying that I have only included films I have actually seen.

Best Films of 2005

1. Syriana
2. Good Night, and Good Luck
3. Capote
4. King Kong
5. Crash
6. Walk the Line
7. Memoirs of a Geisha
8. Brokeback Mountain
9. The New World
10. War of the Worlds
11. Munich
12. Kingdom of Heaven
13. Pride and Prejudice
14. Cinderella Man
15. Sin City

My Favourite Films of 2005

1. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. King Kong
4. Walk the Line
5. Kingdom of Heaven
6. Good Night, and Good Luck
7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
8. War of the Worlds
9. Elizabethtown
10. Hitch
11. Cinderella Man
12. Doom
13. Ice Princess

Worst Films of 2005

1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
-- Because it just sucked. I never read the book, and now I never will. The whole film looked and felt cheap, the acting and direction were terrible. I would have walked out if I hadn't been convinced that the film had to get better, but it remained terrible right to the end.

2. Shopgirl
-- If Steve Martin would have shut up it would have been better, but not good enough to get out of this category. The story and characters were empty, some of the scenes were stupid and gratuitous (remember the binoculars scene?) and the highly-touted performance of Claire Danes was a dud. Poor girl, it wasn't her fault: I'm sure she did the best that was humanly possible with what she was given. But the most telling feature of this movie is that the most important parts of the story, which could have given the film some life, were instead transformed into platitudes spoken verbatim by an invisible narrator. Translation: "This story wasn't worth the creative effort to actually make into a film, so we might as well just tell you the reasoning behind it, etc., etc., etc."

3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
-- This one could have been good, but then we had to go inside the factory. They stuck to the book so closely that there was no imagination to the film, and the factory which should have been overflowing with magical wonders was vacant. The songs were painful and the Oompa-Loompa's were depressing and scary. And that gentleman Deep Roy should have been punted out of the picture.

4. Chicken Little
-- Take a funny one-liner and stretch it to fill 81 minutes and you have Chicken Little, which takes its unenviable place next to such classics as Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Hollywood Homicide, content-deprived strips of celluloid masquerading as movies. It does have some redeeming qualities, such as the cute little three-eyed orange alien, which prevented it being a real walk-out but not much more.

5. Unleashed
-- A serious story about a guy who was a dog. How watchable do you expect this film to be?

6. Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior
-- This one had potential, which is no doubt one reason the theatre was so packed that Friday night, but it can be filed along with those movies whose trailer is a quantum leap better than the film. It opened with promise, and the first fight or two had some punch, but then they ran out of choreography, and ended up showing the same moves over and over again, especially the staple "bring-elbow-down-on-opponent's-head" technique. Another movie hyped beyond its capacity, and there wasn't even very much hype.

Slashdot has a cool story about a student in England who decided to sell 100-pixel ads on his home page. He started with some family and friends and then released a press statement. The release was picked up by British media and the next thing he knew he had made a million dollars.

This is serious; no joking.

Here is yesterday's Reuter's news story about it. You can buy ads for $10 a pixel.

Have a look at the Million Dollar Homepage. It is certainly unique.

Listed below are the 73 films I have seen so far in 2005: "so far" because it's only 29 December, and I will likely get two or three more in before the ball drops on Dick Clark. [posting updated 31 December, 9:00 p.m.]

This list shows films released in 2005 that I have seen in theatres; rentals and 2004 releases are not included. If you're wondering why I don't just download them it's because, first, I don't think it's right to steal movies that are easily available, especially when I get so much enjoyment from them. Secondly, film is a communal experience that is deeply diminished without a big screen, immersive sound, and audience reaction. TV shows, which I am already paying for anyway, are open season for me on Bit Torrent.

The films are numbered in order of worldwide box office earnings to date.

1 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
2 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
3 War of the Worlds
5 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
6 Mr. & Mrs. Smith
7 Batman Begins
8 Hitch
9 Fantastic Four
11 King Kong
13 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
15 Constantine
16 Kingdom of Heaven
18 Chicken Little
19 Flightplan
20 The Longest Yard
23 The Interpreter
24 The Ring Two
25 The Island
26 Sin City
27 Monster-in-Law
28 Herbie: Fully Loaded
29 The Legend of Zorro
31 Bewitched
33 Sahara
35 Saw II
36 March of the Penguins
38 Cinderella Man
40 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
46 Be Cool
47 Red Eye
49 The Skeleton Key
52 Walk the Line
54 Sky High
57 Crash
58 Hostage
59 Coach Carter
60 Stealth
62 Pride and Prejudice
63 XXX: State of the Union
65 House of Wax
74 The Constant Gardener
77 Doom
78 Elizabethtown
81 Unleashed
88 The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
89 Into the Blue
90 Broken Flowers
91 Serenity
94 Derailed
95 Assault on Precinct 13
96 The Family Stone
102 Syriana
104 The Fog
106 Rent
109 Aeon Flux
110 Ice Princess
113 Good Night, and Good Luck
115 Two for the Money
118 Man of the House
126 North Country
127 Domino
128 Memoirs of a Geisha
134 Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior
141 The Jacket
147 The Man
153 Shopgirl
154 Brokeback Mountain
156 Proof
160 The Polar Express - IMAX

Unranked to date:

Munich
Rumor Has It . . .
Mystery of the Nile (IMAX)
Cosmic Voyage (IMAX)

I use BoxOfficeMojo.com to check movie earnings. Here is a list of the all-time worldwide top grossing movies, followed by the same list adjusted for ticket-price inflation.

In the second list, Titanic comes 6th, with Gone With The Wind winning the race.

All-time Worldwide Gross (unadjusted)

All-time Worldwide Gross (adjusted for inflation)

Remember the Letterman posting a few days ago? Here's the conclusion.

CNN.com - Judge tosses Letterman restraining order - Dec 27, 2005

James Poniewozik of Time Magazine has named Battlestar Galactica as the best TV show of 2005. He writes:

"Most of you probably think this entry has got to be a joke. The rest of you have actually watched the show. Adapted from a cheesy '70s Star Wars clone of the same name, Galactica (returning in January) is a ripping sci-fi allegory of the war on terror, complete with religious fundamentalists (here, genocidal robots called Cylons), sleeper cells, civil-liberties crackdowns and even a prisoner-torture scandal. The basic-cable budget sometimes shows in the production, but the writing and performances are first-class, especially Edward James Olmos as the noble but authoritarian commander in charge of saving the last remnants of humanity. Laugh if you want, but this story of enemies within is dead serious, and seriously good."

The American Film Institute has made their selection of the best movies of 2005.

The surprise in the list is The 40-Year-Old Virgin. You still couldn't pay me enough money to see it.

I saw The Family Stone last night. It was a really nice Christmas film (although the Christmas part wasn't necessary) that I recommend. Highlight: Claire Danes (as Julie, Sarah Jessica Parker's sister) and Rachel McAdams (as the mean sister-in-law to be) are excellent.

I have noticed that most reviews are bad, and although it takes an awful lot to make me dislike a movie, let me tell you the shortcomings. First, Sarah Jessica Parker's performance was really not very enjoyable. It felt a bit fake.

Also, one review I have read mentions a lot of moralizing, but I only noticed this during a single dinner scene where there is a commotion during a discussion about gays, the youngest son of the family being one. I know most people will cheer the scene because it attacks bigoted perspectives on homosexuality (which were expressed by Sarah Jessica's character), but you would think that the family would have just a little bit of understanding and patience for someone who obviously didn't understand any of the sensitivities around the issue and was making an honest attempt to discuss it. They didn't; they went on the attack. And although it might have served to demonstrate some unspoken tensions in the family, this must have been unintended since it reveals a sinister undercurrent that runs against the spirit of the film. Whichever way you look at it, it was, frankly, tasteless.

But this is only one scene and doesn't take away from the rest of what is, overall, a movie very much worth watching.

Well, it's official. I just saw Katie Couric confirm that that crazy Letterman fan has been granted a restraining order against him.

I don't know if you have heard about this story, but it's a wacky one.

You see, this woman from Santa Fe, New Mexico, has accused David Letterman of stalking her. So what exactly has he been doing?

1. Continuing to harrass her to become a co-host on his show.
2. Communicating to her over the television with special hand signals and code words.

What was the latest code word he has been using on the show to ask her to marry him? Are you ready for this?

"Oprah"

Right. Go Dave.

I am a little behind reporting on my recent films. These are forthcoming:

Good Night and Good Luck
Syriana
King Kong
The Polar Express (in IMAX 3D)

This is what I am going to be watching on the big screen this Christmas season.

Munich (by Steven Spielberg, Eric Bana is a Best Actor possibility)
Capote (gotta see Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance)
Mrs. Henderson Presents (Judi Dench has already got a Golden Globe nod for this)
The Family Stone (don't see many comedies, but this one looks fun)
Rumor has it... (this one too), and
Memoirs of a Geisha (Just so you know for future reference, foreign films really aren't my thing. I can count on less than one hand the ones I actually like. With some embarrassment I must draw your attention to the fact that the only foreign film listed below in my Top 20 was made by Hitler.)

Other possibilities

Wolf Creek (A horror movie in the Australian Outback and based on, of course, a true story), Brokeback Mountain (I don't really want to see this, but I probably should), and
The Producers (This was a definite until I read this, and this, and this, and...you get the idea. My favourite comment from these reviews is in the Boston Globe, which compares Nathan Lane's performance to "an assault with a deadly ham".) :-)

Movies to see again

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (On IMAX!!!)
King Kong (Because, duh!)
and maybe Pride & Prejudice (because it was just soooo good!)

This afternoon I discovered Miga, an excellent new Korean and Japanese restaurant in Mississauga, near Toronto.

The complementary appetizers, main dishes and even the tea are superb.

There is also a full Japanese menu, but the Sushi and Bento combinations are closed on Mondays.

Miga is at 2382 Dundas St. W. between Winston Churchill Blvd. and Erin Mills Pkwy.

My friend Bamdad yesterday suggested that, since I see SO MANY movies, I should use my site to write reviews. Well, that's too much for me at present, but I have decided to log all the films I see here. I have been doing some of the notable ones over the past few days because of Oscar season, but I will comment on everything I see from now on, at the very least for my friends who would like to know which films to see.

At the outset, let me list for you my Top Ten favourite films. Some of them consist of more than one film such as, for example, a trilogy covering a unified story or single epic. Following the Top Ten, I have listed below my Next 10+, which is a more nebulous listing of other films in no particular order which, for one reason or another, just don't quite make it into the Top Ten.

Upon digesting my list, some may question my sanity, and at least my taste. How can Rocky III dare aspire to the same company as Citizen Kane or Casablanca? Well, there's lots of reasons, and I may update this post later on so you may at least try to decipher some of my criteria from the list.

I might also add that the list is not set in stone, as can be seen from the generous inclusion of quite recent films. Even though general box office receipts seem to be slipping recently, the appearance of what I consider to be several great films in the last few years indicates to me that this is a great time to be alive--that is, as long as you're watching movies.

Having posted this list, I must mention that I have just watched Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire once again, and I am leaning towards dropping it into the Next 10. I'm not sure yet which film will replace it.

[P.S. Done. Let's see if Finding Nemo can hold its position against its pursuers. In other words, can dear Dory just keep swimming with enough eye of the tiger to hold off the no-win scenario of a preppie, or isn't she a Jedi yet? --JM]

Top Ten

1. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)

2. Citizen Kane (1941)

3. Casablanca (1942)

4. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

5. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

6. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

7. Almost Famous (2000)

8. Beauty and the Beast (1991)

9. Titanic (1997)

10. Finding Nemo (2003)

Next 10+

Love Story (1970)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Rocky III (1982)
All About Eve (1950)
City Lights (1931)
Independence Day (1996)
Triumph of the Will (1935)
Toy Story (1995)
Star Wars: Episodes III (2005), IV (1977), VI (1983)

"Keira Knightley gives a witty, vibrant, altogether superb performance."
-- Entertainment Weekly

Not only is Keira Knightley my new choice for Best Actress, but Pride & Prejudice is the best movie I have seen all year. The directing by Joe Wright, in his first feature film, is also just fantastic: look for the single-camera ballroom scene.

Did you know that although it seems like they are always bringing out a new version of this Jane Austen story, this film actually happens to be the first big screen adaptation of Pride & Prejudice in 65 years? The last was made in 1940 by Laurence Olivier. The version in most recent memory was actually a six-hour television miniseries in 1995.

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice

View the movie poster here.

Not sure how I feel about this choice, but after 15 minutes, it's growing on me.

"The Good Samaritans: For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME's Persons of the Year."

I am sad to report that the talented John Spencer, who plays Leo McGarry on The West Wing, died Friday of a sudden heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 58 years old.

John Spencer as Leo McGarry in The West Wing

This year is the 50th year, and NORAD will again be tracking Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Check out the great site!

"The tradition began after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. store advertisement for children to call Santa on a special "hotline" included an inadvertently misprinted telephone number. Instead of Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief's operations "hotline." The Director of Operations, Colonel Harry Shoup, received the first "Santa" call on Christmas Eve 1955. Realizing what had happened, Colonel Shoup had his staff check radar data to see if there was any indication of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Indeed there were signs of Santa and children who called were given an update on Santa's position. Thus, the tradition was born."

(CONAD stands for Continental Air Defence, the forerunner of NORAD)

This year, in order to make sure those evil doers don't try to blow Santa and his reindeer out of the sky, Santa will have a full military escort. Canadian CF-18 fighters will accompany Santa throughout North America.

Santa will largely bypass Africa this year, since until we rich people get rid of our farm subsidies African children won't be getting anything on Christmas Day.

Reese Witherspoon: for such a compassionate portrayal of a truly remarkable woman.

Reese Witherspoon as June Carter in Walk The Line

"Rich nations give developing countries £50billion in aid each year, but cost them three times as much in protectionist trade policies."

-- Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton in the Daily Telegraph

"If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity."

The Slashdot signature of RasendeRutje, a Slashdot user. It was so witty I just had to post it.

Until this evening, Renée Zellweger was my pick for Best Supporting Actress for Cinderella Man. Then I went to see Narnia, and now, Georgie Henley is. In her acting debut she plays Lucy Pevensie, the little girl who discovers Narnia.

Her amazing performance carries this film, and renders our suspension of disbelief possible.

Georgie Henley, as Lucy Pevensie
in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Hey, I just saw this story on Global News in Canada. Hans the Dog lost the use of his back legs, and so now he works bringing smiles to the patients at a hospital in Florida.

Read Hans the Dog's story here!

The word "God" is a noun, and so falls into the category of things and objects. For metonymic writing this is not an insuperable problem: what is beyond all things and objects can still be a noun, or at any rate have a name. For most writers of the second phase, God represents an immutable being, set over against the dissolving flow of the world of becoming in which we are; and practically the only grammatical device for conveying this sense of the immutable is the abstract noun. For third-phase writing, founded as it is on a sense-apprehended distinction between objects that are there and objects that are not, "God" can only go in the illusory class. But perhaps this kind of noun-thinking is, at least here, a fallacy of the type that Whitehead calls a fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

In Exodus 3:14, though God also gives himself a name, he defines himself (according to the AV) as "I am that I am," which scholars say is more accurately rendered "I will be what I will be." That is, we might come closer to what is meant in the Bible by the word "God" if we understood it as a verb, and not a verb of simple asserted existence but a verb implying a process accomplishing itself. This would involve trying to think our way back to a conception of language in which words were words of power, conveying primarily the sense of forces and energies rather than analogues of physical bodies. To some extent this would be a reversion to the metaphorical language of primitive communities, as our earlier references to a cycle of language and the "primitive" word mana suggested. But it would also be oddly contemporary with post-Einsteinian physics, where atoms and electrons are no longer thought of as things but rather as traces of processes. God may have lost his function as the subject or object of a predicate, but may not be so much dead as entombed in a dead language.

-- Northrop Frye, The Great Code, p. 19-20

(Underlining mine)

By knitting an intricate fabric of symbolic fragments and literary allusions, T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land laments the tragic collapse of nineteenth century European ideals. Fully grasping Eliot’s literary allusions is critical for a deep understanding of the poem and nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the reference to Mylae, the opening sea battle of the First Punic War.

The poet watches a crowd cross London Bridge in a brown fog, evoking the damned multitudes marching into Dante’s hell, and recognizes an old friend: “ ’Stetson! / ‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!” It seems to be a light-hearted reunion with an old chap from the service. However, perceiving the reference as a literary one, not simply historical, drastically changes the meaning of the poem.

Our source for the battle of Mylae is Polybius, the Greek statesman. An important aspect of his account is the arrogance of the Carthaginians who, knowing themselves to be a superior people, dismissed the Roman threat when they saw new-fangled “ravens”, ship-boarding devices, on the prows of the enemy ships. Through pride and carelessness they sailed to their destruction at the hands of the crude contraption of a lesser race.

In invoking Polybius, Eliot condemns the superior attitude of the Allies during the Great War. They knew that the war with the inferior Huns would be short-lived, and were oblivious to the technological power of what turned out to be not so inferior a race after all. The Germans’ raven, the machine gun, succeeded in mowing down thousands of Allied soldiers every day while they continued in bloody futility to send wave after wave of men against it.

Recognizing the allusion to Polybius transforms a nominal war reference and nostalgic memory of a past friendship into a visceral disgust of the nineteenth century self-satisfaction that sent millions marching across the bridge to their deaths, and adds a deeply ominous cast to the subsequent irony: “ ‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / ‘Has it begun to sprout?”