SIDE ORDERS #8

For this edition of the video roundup I call SIDE ORDERS, I've again fallen back on my love for the marriage of movies and music:The single best trailer this year was for Michael Haneke's stunning shot-by-shot remake of his 1990s classic Funny Games. This has the drive and flavor of a trailer for one of Kubrick's movies, right down to the choice of music, graphics, and shots. Alone, by itself,

Film #99: A Charlie Brown Christmas

The 99th film I'm profiling isn't at all a theatrical product--it was made for CBS in 1965. It has been repeated every Xmas for over 40 years, and must surely rank as one of the most watched (and treasured) examples of animation art ever produced. Thus I think it deserves to be ranked as one of my favorite films of all time.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, based of course on Charles Schulz's

I think of her as a cute 5 year old :)

Film #98: Little Women (1994)

It being Christmas Eve, 2008, I figured I'd offer up a recommendation for a holiday movie everyone should enjoy, but relatively few movie lovers ever site in this manner. Australian director Gillian Anderson delivered quite a lovely screen version of Louisa May Alcott's perennial classic Little Women in 1994, and though it's not a Christmas movie per se, it sure feels like one. In fact,

Merry Xmas!

These little things are just so fun to create! I'm gonna make more and more!

Film #97: Napoleon Dynamite

A reprint here of the interview Dark City Dame (of Noirish City fame) conducted with me in November regarding one of my favorite movies of the 2000s!DarkCityDame: Let me start off by asking you this question: why did you select the film Napoleon Dynamite to be #23 on your list of the top 30 films from this decade? Dean: It's really quite simple: no movie of the 2000s has made me laugh harder. I

What About The Honorary Awards?

As a ridiculously devout follower of the Oscars, I pay attention to the details. That means that I wonder, every annum, who's gonna win the Honorary Oscars AS WELL as them Golden Boys we all expect to be handed out year after year.

To wit: In 2004, I was surprised, but then really not so much so, when I predicted the winner of that year's Honorary Oscar to be the reliable producer/director/

Film #96: Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning!

Max and Dave Fleischer were sibling animators who made film history with their long series of Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman cartoons, and with their groundbreaking full-length 1939 movie Gulliver's Travels (the first non-Disney animated feature and the first film to use a process of animation called rotoscoping, based on tracings of live action images, later popularized further by 70s/80s-era

Dividers

I really like doing these divider things!

Sleep well, dear butterflies

Is it Winter break already?
Time flies, it seemed just like yesterday when I stumbled upon this place, dazed and confused.
My mind has cleared up a little though. Have a great Winter break, and come back in the Spring refreshed and rejuvenated!

My 20 Favorite Actresses

In taking Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder up on his invitation for me to join the 20 Favorite Actresses meme started by Nathaniel at Film Experience, I tried hard to balance my love of these ladies' acting ability equally with my adoration of their feminine wiles. I also attempted to make my list an appreciation of actresses from all different eras--from the 1920s to now. I think I've done

My 2009 Academy Award Predictions: round one

NOTE: I originally had THE DARK KNIGHT as a winner of 10 noms, including Best Picture, but I have recently vascillated back to my pre-awards season conviction that it's not yet time for a superhero movie to win a best pic nod (this got me into a lot of hot water with some of the more vociferous lovers of the Batman, who often confuse fan favoritism with award-worthiness). I was once convinced by

Film #95: The Brown Bunny

2003's The Brown Bunny, written and directed by the inimitable Vincent Gallo, is an even more significant achievement that his late-90s cult-hit debut Buffalo '66, which left many viewers stricken with its quiet yet demanding quirkiness. Like The Brown Bunny, it too told a lonely, needy story. But Gallo's newest and more resplendent work engraves into our subconcious the overcast feeling of a

Film #94: Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man somehow wasn't even nominated for the Academy Award taken home that year by another nature-centric movie called March of the Penguins. While I like them tuxedoed, flightless, Morgan Freeman-endorsed birds as much as the average bear, it doesn’t take a film expert to clue you in that Grizzly Man is the far more complex and superior movie. Yeah, man,

Film #93: Vera Drake

I’ve been a fan of the UK’s Mike Leigh ever since he delivered an incisive look at a working class love affair with High Hopes, back in the late 1980s. (I would consider that film his US breakthrough, even though he’d been making films in Britain since 1971’s Bleak Moments.) His is a unique voice on the world film scene, since he has almost exclusively focused his camera on Britain’s