Lists. NCTATNY.

Lovely design again from Not Coming to a Theater Near You, this time on the occasion of their "2006 in Review" special.

"No matter how long we live, we will never see one-tenth of one percent of all the films ever made," Adam Balz reminds us before presenting, instead of a list, a "hodgepodge of miscellany, all of which I truly enjoyed."

"On the big screen, so many films I wanted to love love love have turned out to be merely okay," laments Matt Bailey. But he does find "ten things I watched this year that were pretty darn awesome."

"By far and away the richest movie experiences I had this past year were in repertory houses, watching masterpieces by Michelangelo Antonioni, B�la Tarr, Billy Wilder, Jean-Pierre Melville and Jean-Luc Godard flicker before me," writes Beth Gilligan.

Leo Goldsmith opens with a terrific quote from Simon Winder's The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond: "Not for the obvious reason - Casino Royale doesn't really figure in my personal best of 2006, as much as I fretted over and ultimately relished it - but for the questions it raises, first, about the reasons people see films, and second, about what they might see of 2006 should they bother to revisit any of this year's (mostly rote) movies."

Chiranjit Goswami opens by recalling the highs and lows of the Toronto International Film Festival, where he saw his #1, Still Life.

Tom Huddleston also finds 2006 "underwhelming." So: "Unable to actually put together a list of ten (or even six) great new films, I've made a list of people who have brightened my moviegoing world in 2006. And for the sake of balance, another list of those who've darkened it."

For Jenny Jediny, "2006 began and ended with David Lynch taking unexpected residence in my brain."

"Scorsese is no longer central to my own experience of film culture in the way that he once was, and perhaps that's endemic of the position of American cinema too." And there's not a single American film on Ian Johnston's top ten list.

And there are no new films at all among Rumsey Taylor's "most cherished viewing experiences during the past year." He watched Beyond the Valley of the Dolls quite a bit, since "as enjoyable an experience as this film is, it is almost bettered by describing it to those who've yet to see it - even the most literal and objective descriptions retain the film's ridiculousness. It cannot be underrated."

Posted by dwhudson at January 1, 2007 6:46 AM