"Boy, if life were only like this."

Screenwriters, here's an idea: A blogger inadvertently discovers an unattributable power to conjure the content he wants to see. What follows is great stuff, he types, but what we're really waiting for is Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Top Ten Films of 2004." And lo, like Woody Allen pulling Marshall McLuhan out from behind a sign in a movie theater lobby, there it is. Imagine the wonders that could be worked blogging CNN's site.

After all, as Rosenbaum writes, "It has been a bad year, but not for movies." He begins by wondering what in the world critics see in Sideways but doesn't completely buy into AO Scott's theory that they see themselves in Paul Giamatti: "I'm more prone to think it might be their way of saying, 'It's been a tough year. Let's get back under the blankets.'"

2004 may have been a good year for movies, and reading Rosenbaum's comments on docs and revivals, you may well be won over, but two of his top ten date way back, and his choice for the #1 film of the year, the "recasting and extension" of The Big Red One, isn't even Sam Fuller's best, as he sees it. Filmbrain and Charles Taylor will be disheartened (or simply bewildered) to see Million Dollar Baby in the #2 slot, but Rosenbaum's mention of the Village Voice's "Take 6" poll in his comments on Los Angeles Plays Itself (#4) will please those of us who've been surprised (and frankly, pissed off) by the silly and sour bashing it's received from Movie City News and Slate's "Movie Club."

Two that would've made the list had they played in Chicago in 04: Jia Zhangke's The World, "the best new film I saw anywhere," and Tsai Ming-liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn.

Of course, Jonathan Rosenbaum isn't the only critic at the Chicago Reader. JR Jones doesn't get nearly as worked up about Sideways, one way or the other (it comes in at #7 on his list): "[L]ike President Bush, it won not by being the best candidate but by getting the most votes." His #1: Zero Day.

Posted by dwhudson at January 7, 2005 5:25 AM