Lists, 12/20.

Critics get to wave their lists around in the spotlight at the end of each year, but why not also hear from those who've invested a bit more in finding good movies. The five-year-old Pioneer Theater in NYC, for example. A blogging arthouse? Good idea (e.g., the Enzian Theater at indieWIRE); and once an arthouse gets blogging, a year-in-review entry is all but inevitable.

But the Pioneer's steers clear of press release-speak and is, in fact, a collection of entries. Alex Daoundakis, "one of our most discerning and critical moviegoers," selects three of his favorite horror films, Jeffrey the Projectionist presents a top ten of the second half of 2005 (#1: A Night to Dismember) and the programmer writes up the highlights of each month.

Meanwhile. For Variety, Ian Mohr rounds up the titles and names pegged by critics' organizations in Las Vegas, Dallas-Ft Worth and San Diego. And you know what that means: Time to check the Awards Scoreboard at Movie City News; and while you're there, ten new top tens have been added to that scoreboard.

A fresh idea, and actually a pretty good one, from Matt Zoller Seitz: for the Star-Ledger (that's Newark), a list not of the best TV shows, but of the best individual episodes.

Update: At the Oscar Igloo (yes, Oscar Igloo), Johnatan Alba looks ahead to the potential statuette collectors in early 2007. Via Movie City News.

Another update: David Edelstein's top ten appears first on NPR rather than Slate. Nice thing about it is, of course, you can listen to him explain why Munich is his #1 film of the year.

Update #3: At Cinemarati, jeff_v is "forever catching up with the canon," and so, lists ten not-new-at-all films he's caught this year. The Cinemarati (and really, Cinemarati readers are cinemarati, too) leap right in and several excellent lists follow.

Posted by dwhudson at December 20, 2005 1:45 AM