Shorts, 12/31.

"The politics saddens me - I hate ranking performances against one another - but I never tire of singing the praises of great actors." So David Edelstein chooses five male performances of the year and lets loose. In a note at the end, we get a sneak peek at this year's "Movie Club," which'll be in session Tuesday, January 4, through Friday the 7th: "Two of my favorite critics - Stephanie Zacharek and Charles Taylor - will appear in what I believe is an unprecedented Slate-Salon hands-across-the-Internet exchange. I have also invited Armond White from the New York Press. Yes, Armond White. If no critic infuriates me as much as Armond, none inspires me as much, either."

In the meantime, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tops his own "13 Best Movies of 2004," which is more than just a list; surveying the year at length, Edelstein suggests at least one reason he's far happier at Slate than he must have been at the Village Voice: He simply despises Dogville, which came in third in the alt.weekly's Take 6 poll.

Also in Slate: For years now and on countless fronts, Christopher Hitchens has been one of the most infuriating ranters out there, but no one can deny he's written a very fine appreciation of Susan Sontag. The Guardian's also running a collection of remembrances.

Million Dollar Baby heads up this years Seattle Film Critics Awards. I haven't seen the list anywhere, so I'll post the full press release as a comment below.

The Advocate has selected its top ten and Kinsey's the top top. Which is a fine reason to remind you of editor Bill Steele's excellent November interview with director Bill Condon.

Getting that whole Passion vs Fahrenheit thing out of his system first, Steve Erickson introduces his top ten, leading with Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder.

"With American authority at a low ebb, the movies were full of damaged men struggling to define themselves in a world that seemed to have no use for them. Whether you're an unpublished novelist or an out-of-work superhero, you're nobody 'til somebody loves you." The Philadelphia City Paper's Sam Adams looks back on the year and unveils his top ten. #1: Eternal Sunshine; surprise entry: The Brown Bunny at #2.

For the LA CityBEAT's Andy Klein, the SCTV disc sets were the DVD event of the year. And, as he reiterates, it was a very eventful year for the DVD.

Vince Keenan, still insisting that Spartan is the best movie of the year, considers several other noteworthies.

Scott Foundas: "[I]n a year that was widely hailed (as was 2003) as the Year of the Documentary, with nonfiction films playing in record numbers of theaters and to record attendance, the Academy's recently published list of the 12 semifinalists for 2004's best-documentary statuette suggests that all is still not well in the house of Oscar." Also in the LA Weekly: Steve Mikulan checks up on the Robert Blake trial and Peter Gilstrap visits the LAPD's archives on the occasion of the publication of Scene of the Crime (more from NPR).

Having recalled the "Movies You Should Have Seen But Didn't," David Poland introduces his list of the worst films of the year.

Speaking of worsts, Joe Leydon stomps on ten for Houston's Examiner group of papers.

The list at Democracy's Blooper Reel goes to 61.

Matt Dentler expands his original top ten to a top twenty,

"In the year 2004 the DVD came of age," writes Dave Kehr in a big healthy wrap-up of the year's most notable releases.

Also in the New York Times:

• Stephen Holden agrees with the SFBG's Cheryl Eddy: "2004 was the Year of the Man in movies. Rehabilitated if not sanctified, that quaint bogeyman, the Male Chauvinist Pig, crawled out from his cave to beat his chest, grab his crotch and preen discreetly in upscale art films."

• Michael Wilson remembers Jerry Orbach, whose "death on Tuesday night felt to many in the New York City Police Department like a loss of one of their own."

• Wendy Moonan on the Alexander the Great: Treasures From an Epic Era of Hellenism" exhibition at the Onassis Cultural Center through April 16.

Don Quixote turns 400 in 2005, and Spain's throwing a fiesta, reports Ben Sills. Also in the Guardian: Xan Brooks previews a few top 2005 releases in the UK.

In the Independent:

• How do you play Adolf Hitler? is a question Bruno Ganz has been answering all year long. Now James Rampton asks Ken Stott.

• "The serial-killer film is bleeding its last in the dank basement of cinematic inspiration," argues Simon Busch.

• Christina Patterson interviews Mike Leigh.

"Now that's a pan!" The Metafilterers are collecting their favorite scathing reviews. Via the cinetrix.

"Japan's animators are full of gloom," writes Colin Joyce in the Telegraph: "They fear that the future is bleak and that the success enjoyed by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, which makes his films, is actually masking a sad decline."

Nearly 40 filmmakers and actors are threatening to boycott the Puchon International Film Festival if exec director Kim Hong-joon is ousted. Mack at Twitch has the details.

Meanwhile, at Koreanfilm.org: Kyu Hyun Kim on Song Il-gon's Spider Forest and Yu Sang-gon's Face and Adam Hartzell on Park Han-joon's Spy Girl.

For the Los Angeles Times, Mary McNamara asks Chuck Mitchell, president of Voices in the Arts, a dubbing company, about the challenges of creating effective foreign-language versions of Hollywood blockbusters.

Mike Chopra-Gant takes a critical look at Martha P Nochimson's Screen Couple Chemistry: The Power of 2 in Film-Philosophy; Nochimson replies, arguing that Chopra-Gant "he has overlooked a few of my major points, and this may account for his mistaken impression that I have wishfully impressed my ideas on an unwilling reality."

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, you have a unique opportunity to catch The Century of the Self, a series directed by Adam Curtis, who's most recently made the widely praised The Power of Nightmares, at the Roxie. Just a few days left. Via the SF IndieBlog.

Wiley Wiggins points to a BBC piece on the restored version of Battleship Potemkin screening as part of the Berlinale's Retrospective in mid-February. From the original press release: "This new reconstruction of the Russian premiere version includes, for the first time, the Russian intertitles with their original graphics as well as Leo Trotsky’s opening words. What is more, the changes and cuts carried out, for instance, on the famous staircase sequence as a result of the film’s reworking and censorship have been corrected."

Reel Identities, the New Orleans LGBT fest, has issued a call for entries.

Online listening tip. Max Avery Lichtenstein's original music for Tarnation. Via Eugene Hernandez.

Online viewing tip #1. "A-Clip plays with the aesthetics of cinema commercials, which are reproduced, satirized or subverted. Each of them has a length of approximately 50 seconds and will be shown on 35mm film among the commercials at movie theatres, with the illicit co-operation of the projectionists and management of individual cinemas." Via Greg Allen, who's going to be presenting, as part of the Reel Roundtable's "Film and Blogs" series, an intriguing program of shorts, video art and clips: "I'm interested in seeing how a weblog functions over time as a programming/editorial/curatorial venue. The program re-imagines the weblog as a movie, or as movie-like, an event that you experience in a movie theater." January 10.

Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for Colour Me Kubrick. Via Chuck Olsen.

Online browsing tip #1. Lev Manovich's Soft Cinema now has a new chapter, "Mission to Earth."

Online browsing tip #2. Vintage Masterpiece Theatre posters. Via Rashomon.

Posted by dwhudson at December 31, 2004 9:05 AM