Lists, 12/27.

Critics are forever prefacing their top tens with disclaimers and precautions: Ask me on another day, and I'll give you a different list altogether. Well, they're not kidding. Case in point. Compare and contrast Dennis Lim's ballot for the indieWIRE Critics' Poll and his annotated "Best of 2006" just posted at the main site. Interesting, yes? Maybe more critics should float a top ten towards the end of December and then again in early January, once the year-end storm has calmed.

At any rate, two more lists at the main site: Iraq docs, listed by GCers' ratings, and Calvin Souther and Tiffany Harker list the top seven most F*d-up films to hit DVD in 2006.

If you're still working your way through the iW Critics' Poll, brace yourself. Here comes indieWIRE again with top tens from iW editors, writers and contributors. Also: Jonny Leahan: "2006 spawned a wealth of excellent documentary films, a high percentage of which dealt with either matters of music or politics - and many even combined the two themes."

These are the days when the jostling for position on the Top Tens chart and Awards Scoreboard at Movie City News begins to suggest something like consensus. List junkies: you know where to keep an eye.

Dave Kehr: "Here are the 25 films named by the Librarian of Congress, James Billington, to the National Film Registry for 2006."

"Some of the most interesting art/indie movies that I saw or heard about this year were self-distributed movies," writes Sujewa Ekanayake. "In celebration, here are some lists."

"There's such an uneasy, nervous collection of films, with all sorts of wartime anger and confusion spilling outside the frame," writes Sean Burns, introducing his top ten for the Philadelphia Weekly. "On the surface these pictures might seem an eclectic bunch, but underneath the hood they've all got moving parts date-stamped with the year 2006." His #1: Children of Men.

Cinematical editor James Rocchi also has Children up there; and Cinematical's Christopher Campbell 'fesses up to his "Top 10 Guilty Pleasures of 2006."

With none of last year's fanfare or introductory warm-ups, Time's Richards Corliss and Schickel post a curt top ten. Their #1: Letters From Iwo Jima.

Bad Lit's "Movie of the Year": Waiting for NESARA: "The NESARA referred to in the title is a bizarre cult that believes that George W Bush is a space alien preventing the return of Jesus Christ in his spaceship to save us all."

You'll have to scroll down a bit, but when you do, you'll see that Howl's Moving Castle tops Anime Talk's 10 at DVD Talk.

Among City Pages' "Artists of the Year": Sweet Land director Ali Selim, television writer David Simon (The Wire), Friends with Money director Nicole Holofcener, David Lynch, Neil Young and Robert Altman.

Posted by dwhudson at December 27, 2006 10:26 AM