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I don’t know if he still does, but I remember David Letterman used to do top ten lists where the category would be two different things. The name of the list would be an either/or proposition, something like “Top Ten Weather Man or Dog Breed Names.” Anyway, this format occurred to me when I couldn’t decide which of two recent Twitter memes to post my favorites from.*

List items not authored by me are indicated by links to their creators. Yes, I did favor my own contributions heavily, and no, it’s not fair. Why? Because it’s my blog. Mine! Minemineminemine-mine! (…Er, not that anyone ever said it wasn’t. In other news, I am a very petty little man.)

Enough Prelude Already — To the List!

youngmrlingcod

  1. Seabasscuit
  2. Phlegmento (mcquickdraw)
  3. She’s Gotta Harelip (wongfilms)
  4. Dude, Where’s My Carp? (lbgilbert)
  5. Ten Things I Hake About You (stephiemalverns)
  6. Charlie’s Angels: Full Glottal (AmoebaStampede)
  7. The Name of the Roes (julieankerson)
  8. Young Mr. Lingcod
  9. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jeff Chen recently asked, “Since everybody else is making lists of their top ten films of the decade, does that mean I have to, too?” I wouldn’t presume to speak for him, but my own answer to the same rhetorical question is a sheepish “yes.” Jeff ended up making his list, too, although I don’t know how sheepish he felt about it.

Anyway, here are my top ten…nah, screw it—twelve favorite movies of the decade just completed, i.e., 2000-2009.

  1. dogville_thumb

    Dogville (2004)

    IMDB
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    REVIEW WITH WHICH I GENERALLY AGREE:

    Mike D'Angelo, The Man Who Viewed Too Much»

  2. lives of others

    Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006)

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    RWWIGA:
    Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times»

  3. capturing the friedmans

    Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

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    RWWIGA:
    Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader»

  4. Read the rest of this entry »

“Inevitably, [writer/director Lars] Von Trier’s spartan aesthetic has American critics citing Our Town, but in both method and spirit Dogville has much more in common with Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan (written in Denmark, ironically), another sorrowful disquisition on the mercenary aspects of human nature. Anything this ostentatiously artificial demands to be read as allegory, of course, and charges of anti-Americanism aren’t entirely groundless — certainly the film is very, very critical of the way that the U.S. treats its underclass, and to argue that Von Trier isn’t entitled to feel that disgust without having set foot in the continental 48 is patently absurd.”

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[Writer/director Florian Henckel] von Donnersmarck has set his film in the East Germany of 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall collapsed. It was a time when the terrifying Stasi, the secret police, made it their business to use an extensive network of spies and surveillance to know every secret thing about their citizens.

Unlike other German films, most notably 2004’s landmark Goodbye, Lenin, Lives is hardly an exercise in what’s called “Ostalgia”–nostalgia for the good old days of the East. Instead it is an inside look at how a surveillance society, set up to discover and prey upon human weakness, has the ability to make everyone a potential suspect and destroy everything it touches.

The Lives of Others does all this beautifully, but it is too well-acted a film, too meticulously plotted and carefully directed, to be satisfied with that alone. It’s also finally too smart to be content with telling anything like a familiar story.”

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“If Capturing the Friedmans were less shapely and less of a masterpiece, I’d find it less troubling. Both times I’ve seen it I’ve felt that by the end practically everyone associated with the film seems tarnished in one way or another: the ostensible subjects (the Friedmans, an upper-middle-class Jewish family in the Long Island town of Great Neck), the members of their community who helped destroy much of their lives, the filmmakers, and the audience. We’re all tainted by the graphic exposure of family wounds, diminished by what we think and feel–and by what we don’t think and don’t feel.”

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As promised, here’s a re-cap of my full top ten list. Click on any item to see the original post.

  1. Storm Large, “8 Miles Wide”
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  2. The Muppets, “Habanera”
    habanera-thumb
  3. The Onion, “Mexican Border Wall”
    mexican border wall-thumb
  4. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… my number one favorite web video of 2009. Some of you know of my affection for this video, and may therefore not be surprised that I gave it my #1 ranking. Others of you who have not seen it, well… you’re welcome. Read the rest of this entry »

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Do you have to have grown up with The Muppet Show, as I did, to fully appreciate this one? Whatever—it’s my list, dammit, and I say number two on my top ten videos of the year list sings for itself: Read the rest of this entry »

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