Lists and shorts, 12/28.

I don't know anyone who can afford this luxury, and I certainly can't myself, but the ideal Sunday this week would be spent by the fire with a pot or kettle of something warm and delicious, maybe the smell of chestnuts roasting, too, just because it'd be a hoot, and today's issues of the two best English-language papers from either side of the Atlantic, the New York Times and The Observer. The arts sections of both papers are chock full of year-end lists and round-ups and explanations and disclaimers, and praise be, it's not all movies. The pages are full of painters and musicians and architects, and damn, it's just all so civilized.

"The number of good motion pictures released this year is less impressive - and harder to agree on - than their diversity," writes AO Scott in his intro to the contribution to the NYT parade from the movies department. True enough, but less stilted and far more entertaining is the chat he and his colleagues have about whatever films happen to pop to mind while the tape's rolling.

And then there are the lists, and while they are meant to be seen more for their ingenuity as a well-planted forest than for the peculiarity of any one tree, what counts most, of course, is who put what at #1. Stephen Holden's choice is a mild surprise of the admirable kind, Angels in America. The other two are genuine surprises. AO Scott on Master and Commander: "The best war movie in a year of war movies, and one of the best ever." Elvis Mitchell isn't particularly quotable when it comes to a justification for putting Pirates of the Caribbean at the top, but still, wow.

It's left to Dave Kehr to write what's emerging as the real story of 2003 from a long distance perspective: "Documentaries commanded an extraordinary amount of attention this year..." The sentence goes on, but that's it, right there. It is amazing in an era of wall-to-wall news streaming live from reporters embedded around the world and the rest of television programming dominated by reality programming that there is nonetheless a clear desire for quality nonfiction film ("as it is now fashionable to call it" - Kehr).

Via the Net, the Observer and its sister paper, the Guardian, have become enormously popular outside the UK for the sort of reporting and commentary no American daily would dare to print. So it's always a little odd that their coverage of film seems quaintly out-of-step simply because studios still stagger their releases around the world (though conventional wisdom holds that this won't last much longer). Philip French's year-end round-up and list, then, necessarily includes a few 2002 titles and I for one certainly have no argument with his decision to put Adaptation in that top slot.

Also in today's Observer, by the way, is Polly Vernon's profile of Scarlett Johansson on the occasion of the release in the UK of, first, Lost in Translation on January 9 (which is why it's on no UK top tens this year; look for it next year), and second, Girl with a Pearl Earring a week later, accompanied here by a piece from Tracy Chevalier, who wrote the novel.

One other UK event definitely worth mention is the Nicholas Ray season at the National Film Theatre in London, ushered in with two backgrounders on Ray by David Thomson in the Guardian and Geoffrey MacNab in the Independent.

Posted by dwhudson at December 28, 2003 6:50 AM