Lists and awards, 12/17.

Lev Grossman explains how you landed on the cover of Time: "It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.... [F]or seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is you."

"This year may be remembered as one that blurred the lines between reality and fiction," writes Newsweek's David Ansen, introducing his big list of the best movies of the year.

IndieWIRE's announced that Susan Buice and Arin Crumley's Four Eyed Monsters is the winner of the 2006 Sundance Channel Audience Award for the eight-month-long "indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems" Film Series.

Jonathan Marlow's got 20 at the main site: "These titles join Abel Raises Cain, an exceptional documentary from 2005, as excellent films still without a distributor in the US."

This year's Human Rights Film Award, a collaborative effort of 16 organizers, including Amnesty International and the German branch of UNESCO, goes to Death in the Cell: Why Did Oury Jalloh Die?, reports Markus Westphal for Deutsche Welle.

More awarding from the Women Film Critics Circle and a round of nominations from the London Film Critics.

"This isn't just another list of great movies," announces Philip French, introducing a collection in the Observer of 50 films chosen by a panel of critics and filmmakers. "It's a rallying cry for films that for a variety of reasons - fashion, perhaps, or the absence of an influential advocate, or just pure bad luck - have been unduly neglected and should be more widely available."

That Little Round-Headed Boy: "I've decided to just list some films, performances, cinematic moments, etc. Of the movies that I saw, this is what spoke to me. This list should be construed as nothing more, nothing less." But it's big and it's highly readable.

Guardian arts critics look back, with Peter Bradshaw noting that it was "a very good year for British films and filmmakers." Chiming in on the same page: Ken Loach, Michael Sheen, Lorraine Stanley and Jason Isaacs.

"[T]here was no need to sound the usual knell for British cinema," agrees Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman: "After we'd waited years for a suspenseful home-grown thriller, two came along at once, released within a month of each other. Andrea Arnold's Red Road and Paul Andrew Williams's London to Brighton lifted the spirits of anyone who felt passionately about cinema, even as the characters plumbed the depths of human behaviour." On the downside, "There were steep declines... for Martin Scorsese (The Departed), Pedro Almodóvar (Volver) and Ken Loach, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for The Wind That Shakes the Barley, demonstrating that it's not only the Oscars which reward the wrong films."

Disagreeing, Dave Micevic writes, "The opening shot of Almodóvar's latest film Volver is without contest the best opening shot of 2006."

AJ Schnack fires up a list of all the honors this year's nonfiction features have racked up so far "in honor of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's decision to add an award for Animated Feature and yet still not have an award for Nonfiction Feature."

"I may have been too hasty choosing my 10 favorite interviews of 2006," writes Michael Guillén. "Meeting Guillermo Del Toro at the Ritz Carlton for a brief chat about his latest film Pan's Labyrinth has rendered that list obsolete." Particularly since it's his favorite movie of the year, too; he follows up with notes taken during a Q&A. Related: Matt Riviera writes, "One tends to forget, as an adult, how dark and cruel traditional fairy tales really are, how scary these stories seemed to us as children. Guillermo Del Toro hasn't forgotten."

Ryan Stewart presents his top ten films of the year at Cinematical.

"How have the Academy's picks stood up over time?" For Variety, Andrew Barker asks Joe Morgenstern, Molly Haskell, Richard Schickel and John Anderson. Via Karina Longworth.

Dave White's list: "All the Wasted Hours of My Life: The Rock-Bottom Worst, Most Despicably Stupid and Wrong Movies of 2006."

Jay Coyle's got the AP's top ten YouTube videos of 2006.

Online viewing tips, round 1. The "hive-selected nominees for the official antville Music Video Awards 2006." Via Waxy.org.

Online viewing tips, round 2. The NYT's Virginia Heffernan points to and comments on Lulu TV's bests.

Posted by dwhudson at December 17, 2006 6:33 AM