The Conical Glass: Fiascos & favorites

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Fiascos & favorites

I had forgotten that January is National Just Read More Novels Month and started off the year by reading a nonfiction title, Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops, a Christmas gift from James. In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to kick off a brand new year by curling up with a book called Fiasco. I probably should have found something titled Amazing Success! instead. To make matters worse, the University of Michigan crashed & burned in the Rose Bowl yesterday.

Anyway, now that we're in 2007, let's look back at 2006, shall we? (Is it too soon for VH1 to do a special on "We Love the Mid-2000s"?) I begin with my top five movies of the year:

1. "Inside Man" - The only film I saw last year that I truly thought was brilliant. I loved it from the kinetic opening credit sequence on. Much more than your run of the mill bank heist flick.

2. "The Illusionist" - A sentimental favorite; Joe and I argued half a dozen times about whether the ending worked or not (I loved it, he didn't).

3. "The Queen" - In lesser hands, this could just have been a big screen equivalent of all those movies-of-the-week about Charles & Diana. Even the most hardened anti-monarchist couldn't help but sympathize with Helen Mirren's Elizabeth.

4. "Stranger Than Fiction" - Wreckless Eric's "The Whole Wide World" provided the best musical moment in any movie this year.

5. "Little Children" - Between this and "Election," Tom Perrotta's batting .1000 in terms of having his books made into extraordinary movies. Now will somebody please film "The Wishbones"?

Most overrated film of the year, comedy division: "Borat"
Drama division: "The Departed," but I still hope Martin Scorsese finally wins that Oscar.

posted by 125records @ 11:01 AM

1 Comments:

At 5:22 PM, yellojkt said…

Thanks for the plug. I need to start pimping NaJuReMoNoMo earlier in December before people get their New Year reading list in order.