2009 marks my worst death list performance ever, only 2--Carl Pohlad and Robert McNamara. Any Twins fan can tell you which was more evil.
Ernest Borgnine and Andy Rooney replace them.
So I assume 2010 will be a banner year. Watch out!
1. Al Haig
2. John Wooden
3. Margaret Thatcher
4. Floyd Dominy
5. Fidel Castro
6. Luis Echeverria
7. Ernest Borgnine
8. Andy Rooney
9. Clark Terry
10. Stewart Udall
Here are my top 50 albums of the 2000s, with random comments. This was actually a really hard list to make, and I limited myself mostly to the rock-ish genre (with a couple exceptions). I could do an entire other lists of best re-issues, best non-Western music, and best "things I 'discovered' in the 2000s" but I probably won't. Basically, there was a lot of great music, old and new, that came out last decade, and so I limited myself to the genre I'm most familiar with/capable of talking about here. And while I feel fairly safe about #s 21-50, I think that, excepting my top choice, #s 2-19 could really shift around on any given day.
1. Joanna Newsom, Ys - I just keep coming back to this album, and every time, it blows me away. So much I could say, but I'll limit myself to saying it's the first album I've ever heard where lyrics felt like their own instrument, and I get goosebumps everytime I hit the 14-minute mark of "Only Skin" (along with several other moments throughout).
2. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam/Merriweather Post Pavilion - Don't ask me to pick one. I can't (not with conviction, at least). I fully and strenuously disagree with Erik, and think that from Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished to Merriweather, AC has been the most interesting band of the decade.
3. Liars, Drum's Not Dead
4. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
5. Sleater-Kinney, The Woods - The best album from the most consistently great band of the late-90s. I hope they return someday, but if they don't, they went out on the top of their game.
6. Los Campesinos, Hold On Now, Youngster.../We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed -Music rarely has any right to be this energetic, thrilling, and complicated and mature at the same time; that it comes from a bunch of young 20-somethings is all the more remarkable.
7. Interpol, Turn On the Bright Lights - When a friend first played this for me and asked what I thought, my retort was, "I liked Joy Division better the first time around." However, that was pretty unfair in retrospect - Ian Curtis et al did not invent moodiness, and this was some of the best moody ambient-yet-rocking stuff of the decade.
8. Beck, Sea Change - I'm one of those "lyric people" Erik complained about. Still, this album hits heartbreak about as well as anything from the decade.
9. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois - Many complain it's too long, but I don't know what you get rid of; the full songs are essential, and if you take out the little interludes, you still have a 70-minute album (plus, the little interludes perfectly separate the bigger pieces, and are beautiful themselves, save for the 8-second bit before "Chicago," but again - does taking out 8 whole seconds make the album feel "shorter"?)
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows - Kid A may have been more of a watershed, more of an awakening, for many (though I was into Autechre and Aphex Twin before Kid A came out), but I just like In Rainbows a little more.
11. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
12. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
13. Arcade Fire, Funeral
14. Silver Mt. Zion, 13 Blues for 13 Moons - A live-in-studio sound + all the build up and bombast of Godspeed You Black Emperor + Earnest emotional and political lyrics = one of the most unappreciated albums of the decade.
15. Sigur Ros, Agaetis Byrjun
16. John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls - For all the talk of Springsteen's The Rising as "the" 9/11 album, it's nowhere near as good, heartbreaking, beautiful, or daring across its 70 minutes as Adams' 28-minute composition is.
17. Cat Power, You Are Free
18. Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica
19. Boredoms, Vision Creation Newsun - Still the best "wake up and get going" album.
20. White Stripes, Elephant - White Blood Cells is great, but this is the one that had all the rocking potential on full display.
21. Burial, Untrue
22. Bat for Lashes, Two Suns
23. Black Angels, Directions to See a Ghost
24. Tom Waits, Real Gone - In the "early stuff/crazy old-man-growling stuff" debate over Tom Waits, I firmly fall in the latter category.
25. Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - Erik and I will disagree on her until the day we die.
26. Menomena, Friend and Foe - A few stickout songs ("Boyscout'n"), but really, it's best as a top-to-bottom album, and more and more interesting with every listen.
27. Bjork, Vespertine - She's always interesting, but this is her best album ever.
28. Gorillaz, Demon Days
29. Libertines, Up the Bracket - They burned out quickly, and the new bands aren't very interesting or good. But for one album, they captured lightning in a bottle.
30. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
31. Atlas Sound, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel
32. Flying Lotus, Los Angeles - Steven Ellison somehow combined hip-hop beats, funky rhythms, and Aphex Twin-like ambience into a coherent sound.
33. The Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
34. DJ/Rupture, Uproot
35. PJ Harvey, White Chalk - Every album is different, but her piano-ballads-with-fragile-soprano album is her most haunting and one of her best, with an emotional core that rivals 4-Track Demos.
36. Vivian Girls, Everything Goes Wrong - The unfortunate backlash against Williamsburg diminished how great and dark this album is. Time will vindicate it.
37. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver - Each album has a couple songs I could do without, but when you write things like "All My Friends," it's hard to go wrong.
38. The Black Keys, Rubber Factory - Akron's finest's finest album (so far).
39. Crystal Stilts, Alight of Night
40. The Knife, Silent Shout
41. M.I.A., Kala
42. Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse - A very, very solid album, and their best of the decade.
43. Walkmen, Bows + Arrows
44. Deerhunter, Microcastle/Weird Era Continued
45. Portishead, Third - Forget Chinese Democracy (you already did? Oh, sorry) - this was the "comeback" album of the 2000s.
46. Alela Diane, To Be Still
47. Gillian Welch, Time the Revelator
48. Sun Kil Moon, Tiny Cities - Probably the best covers album of the decade, gives a new haunting sadness and beauty to Modest Mouse's songs.
49. CSS, Cansei de Ser Sexy - Yes, the lyrics can be silly, but A) English isn't their first language, and B) when your tunes are that grooving and catchy, who cares?
50. Bruce Springsteen, The Seeger Sessions - Another great covers album, but with a very un-Springsteen sound. You can tell it was just recorded live in a home in a few days, and that's a very good thing.
In spite of the numerous famous people who died in 2009, I managed to only divine the deaths of two, and two of my three centenarians lived while the likes of Michael Jackson, Natasha Richardson, and Brittany Murphy died (as I always say, "they got out while the getting was good"). Maybe 2010 will bode differently. Here are my candidates for this year.
1. Elliott Carter
2. Oscar Niemeyer
3. Billy Graham
4. Zsa-Zsa Gabor
5. Luis Echeverria
6. John Wooden
7. Jorge Videla
8. Jose Alencar
9. J.D. Salinger
10. Abe Vigoda
I was going to do a lengthy discussion of my top 50 albums from the 2000s, but I don't have time before the end of the year. So I'm just going to list them.
A few notes:
1. This list is not hip in any way. See, unlike hipsters, I actually think lyrics are valuable. Stupid lyrics are the equivalent of a kazoo solo in the middle of a rock song. Also, there's a zillion good things I've never heard. You only have so much time in your life. No doubt that some of the rock selections make those with greater facial hair, asymmetrical hair, or square glasses cringe. But I don't care.
2. All genres are mixed up in here--I'm just listing them in the order that I have them in right now.
3. The Drive-by Truckers are clearly the band of the 2000s.
4. It's been an interesting decade for music--unlike other decades, it doesn't seem easily summed up with 1 or 2 bands (say, Nirvana for the 90s or hippie bands for the 60s). A lot going on but nothing that says, THIS IS THE 2000s! This might be a good thing.
5. Generally a solid decade for jazz, bluegrass, and other less popular musical genres.
Anyway, here's the list. We can discuss in comments:
1. Drive-By Truckers, Decoration Day
2. Hacienda Brothers, Hacienda Brothers
3. Tom Russell, Borderland
4. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
5. Cat Power, You Are Free
6. Robbie Fulks, Georgia Hard
7. Alejandro Escovedo, A Man Under the Influence
8. The Postal Service, The Postal Service
9. Don Rigsby, The Midnight Call
10. Joanna Newsom, Ys
11. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose
12. Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South
13. Iron and Wine, The Shepherd's Dog
14. The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
15. Beck, Sea Change
16. Billy Bang, Vietnam: The Aftermath
17. Buddy Tabor, Abandoned Cars and Broken Hearts
18. Tom Ze, Estuando o Pagode
19. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
20. Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck
21. Death Cab for Cutie, Plans
22. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
23. James McMurtry, Childish Things
24. Midlake, The Trial of Van Occupanther
25. Wayne Horvitz, Way Out East
26. Eels, Blinking Lights and Other Revelation
27. Emiliana Torrini, Fisherman's Woman
28. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
29. Bill Frisell, Unspeakable
30. The Gibson Brothers, Bona Fide
31. Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight
32. The Blue Series Continuum, The Good and Evil Sessions
33. Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy, Superwolf
34. William Parker, William Parker Violin Trio
35. Buddy Tabor, Earth and the Sky
36. Bill Callahan, Woke on a Whaleheart
37. Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career
38. The Gourds, Cow Fish Fowl or Pig
39. David Budbill, Songs for a Suffering World
40. Sun Kil Moon, Tiny Cities
41. The White Stripes, Elephant
42. Matthew Shipp, Equilibrium
43. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
44. John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls
45. Irving Fields & Roberto Rodriguez, Oy Vey Ole!
46. Catherine Irwin, Cut Yourself a Switch
47. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
48. Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator)
49. Bradley Walker, Highway of Dreams
50. The Decembrists, The Crane Wife
Laker-partisan Marc Stein thinks playing basketball is the same thing as pitching in baseball:
Monta has played all 48 minutes six times this season ... after 20 of 30 MLB teams got fewer than six complete games from their starting staffs last season.Yes - because nothing says "exact same thing" as running back and forth for 48 minutes, and throwing a ball 92-98 mph 100-120 times. Strain on the legs is the same; effects on the shoulder and elbows is the same; even the time to play each game is the same! It's a perfect analogy!!!
Given what almost happened in Detroit, I sure am glad Jim DeMint is holding up Obama's head of TSA nominee because he fears TSA could join unions!
This kind of thing is the real threat the collapse of the Senate as a functioning democratic institution presents to the nation. Filibusters and nominee holds prevents the government from functioning as smoothly as it should, thwarts democratic will, and could endanger national security.
But hey, TSA workers joining unions is a far greater threat than terrorism! And really, aren't union members and terrorists more or less the same thing....
In recapping the Lakers' loss to the Suns last night, the Game notes included the following little item: "Phoenix has a victory over the teams with the three best records in the league -- the Lakers, Boston and Orlando." Incidentally, L.A. is 24-6 (.800 winning percentage), Boston is 23-7 (.767), and Orlando is 22-8 (.733). Funnily enough, though, Cleveland is 24-8 (.750), a full game better than Orlando (and neither team played last night, so it's not like that is a sudden shift). I guess that would mean that the three best teams in the league are L.A., Boston, and Cleveland, not Orlando. And in the two (and only) games Cleveland and Phoenix have already played this year, Cleveland handily won both games. So I guess Phoenix hasn't won games over the top three teams in the league this year, and I guess Cleveland has once again been overlooked.
Amazing what a little research can do.
...Dead on arrival.
Barring blowing up the filibuster (which must happen), there's no way the Senate is going to get 60 votes here. Between Republicans and coal state producing Democrats, we can forget about it. I imagine a decent climate change package could get about 52 votes in the current Senate.
Something might get passed, and as we see with health care, something is better than nothing. But for a crisis situation where every day makes the problem permanently harder to fix, this underwhelming response will fall far short of making a difference.
I know I've said it before, but at this stage of the game, I just don't really think polls on next year's presidential elections in Brazil are useful. There's still too much time between now and October 2010. And as this report on the latest poll numbers points out, the four candidates it has numbers for aren't even official. Why not? Because "so far none of the Brazilian political parties has formalized its presidential candidates." And it's not because primaries haven't occurred yet; there really aren't primaries in Brazil in the way they operate in the U.S. Imagine that - presidential campaigns that only begin in earnest in the year of the elections, rather than 16 months before the elections. What a novel idea....
Forty-five years ago yesterday, the Cleveland Browns won the last professional sports title the city has seen. That's the longest drought (and has been for quite some time) in cities with three or more professional sports teams. And looking at the Indians' and Browns' current state, unless the Cavs get it this year, that number will continue to grow for a few years. Ah, the joys of growing up a Cleveland fan. But I guess beating the Raiders is a decent start....
Via Duss, Jim DeMint keeps it classy, even compared to his own standards.
Chris, I am concerned, because it’s related to another issue that we’re dealing with now in the Senate. The administration is intent on unionizing and submitting our airport security to union bosses’ collective bargaining. And this is at a time, as Senator Lieberman said, that we’ve got to use our imaginations, we’ve got to be constantly flexible, we have to out-think the terrorists. And when we formed the airport security system, we realized we could not use collective bargaining because of that need to be flexible. Yet that appears now to be the top priority of the administration. And this whole thing should remind us, Chris, that the soft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not gonna appease the terrorists. They’re gonna keep coming after us, and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security.
One additional film list--a brief look at some great documentaries. Certainly I haven't seen all I need to, but here are 20 I was very impressed with.
1. When the Levees Broke--Spike Lee's film on Hurricane Katrina. Made top 50 films list.
2. Grizzly Man--Werner Herzog's film on Timothy Treadwell, also a top 50 film. 3
3. The Order of Myths--fantastic doc on Mardi Gras and segregation in Mobile.
4. Capturing the Friedmans--disturbing film on child abuse, so-called "recaptured memory" and the justice system.
5. The Fog of War--Errol Morris' profile of Robert McNamara.
6. Sicko--Michael Moore's film on the failures of American health care. Clearly his best film.
7. Manufactured Landscapes--great doc about the photographer Edward Burtynsky and his photos of new industrial nature.
8. China Blue--great doc about a Chinese textile factory. Still wondering how the filmmaker received this level of access.
9. Jesus Camp--about evangelicals, focusing on an evangelical summer camp in North Dakota. The best horror film of the decade. Deeply disturbing, but also very good in that the lead woman was quite pleased with how she and other evangelicals were portrayed. Also, Ted Haggard before he got caught doing meth and having gay sex. He comes across as a real condescending bastard.
10. No End in Sight--Probably the best documentary on Iraq. The 2000s--what a shitty decade.
11. Rivers and Tides--superb documentary on the British nature artist Andy Goldsworthy.
12. The Garden--about an urban garden in south central Los Angeles and how the city steals it from them. Possibly the best look at how power operates on a local scale that I've seen.
13. Up the Yangtze--China, the Three Gorges Dam, rapid modernization, all key themes of the early 21st century. Quite solid.
14. An Unreasonable Man--Fine documentary on Ralph Nader. Presents both sides very well. Reminds us how important he was to late 20th century American history before he gave into his own ego.
15. Crossing the Line--focuses on one of the American soldiers to cross into North Korea. Fascinating stuff.
16. One Bright Shining Moment--the George McGovern campaign. A complex story, though I'd like to see more of a discussion of McGovern's own problems with labor.
17. Our Brand is Crisis--political advisers are scum. James Carville's firm advises a neoliberal candidate for the presidency of Bolivia. Made me want to puke.
18. Street Fight--the Newark mayoral election and a battle between generations of black politics. Think of the differences between Al Sharpton and Barack Obama on a local scale with lots of corruption from the long-standing mayor. Quite interesting.
19. The Agronomist--Jonathan Demme's film on a Haitian reformer and his eventual death. Poor Haiti. Will it ever get better?
20. The Kid Stays in the Picture--totally self-serving look at film producer Robert Evans, but also tremendously entertaining.
While I suppose there is a psychological need to see the government doing something about terrorist attacks, the response to the attempted Detroit bomber is totally stupid.
Particularly worthless are the rules on international flights saying you can't get out of your seat for the last hour of the flight. Why? What is this possibly going to accomplish? Couldn't a similar bomber just detonate the plane after takeoff? Or in mid-flight? And what's going to happen when babies need their diapers changed? When someone needs to vomit? When someone has continence issues?
The only way to make flights totally safe is to strip-search passengers and to ban them from taking anything at all on the plane. And this is not going to happen. It wouldn't work politically and it wouldn't work for the airline industry.
The real lesson to take from Detroit is that passengers are simply not going to allow a terrorist attack to take place. No one has successfully used an airplane for terror in over eight years. There are several reasons for this of course, and increased airport security probably has made a difference. But the biggest reason is because passengers are going to subdue anyone suspicious. This is one case where we can count on the people to do the right thing--as they did with Richard Reid and as they did this week.
Instead of relying on this, now I have to get to the airport even earlier and be subjected to indignities so that the government can show it's doing something.
What everyone needs to know about supposed eco-friendly technology, much of which is horribly damaging to the environment.
In Washington, Congress is fretting about the United States military’s dependence on Chinese rare earths, and has just ordered a study of potential alternatives.
Here in Guyun Village, a small community in southeastern China fringed by lush bamboo groves and banana trees, the environmental damage can be seen in the red-brown scars of barren clay that run down narrow valleys and the dead lands below, where emerald rice fields once grew.
Miners scrape off the topsoil and shovel golden-flecked clay into dirt pits, using acids to extract the rare earths. The acids ultimately wash into streams and rivers, destroying rice paddies and fish farms and tainting water supplies.
There are 17 rare-earth elements — some of which, despite the name, are not particularly rare — but two heavy rare earths, dysprosium and terbium, are in especially short supply, mainly because they have emerged as the miracle ingredients of green energy products. Tiny quantities of dysprosium can make magnets in electric motors lighter by 90 percent, while terbium can help cut the electricity usage of lights by 80 percent. Dysprosium prices have climbed nearly sevenfold since 2003, to $53 a pound. Terbium prices quadrupled from 2003 to 2008, peaking at $407 a pound, before slumping in the global economic crisis to $205 a pound.The biggest user of heavy rare earths in the years ahead could be large wind turbines, which need much lighter magnets for the five-ton generators at the top of ever-taller towers. Vestas, a Danish company that has become the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, said that prototypes for its next generation used dysprosium, and that the company was studying the sustainability of the supply. Goldwind, the biggest Chinese turbine maker, has switched from conventional magnets to rare-earth magnets.
Executives in the $1.3 billion rare-earths mining industry say that less environmentally damaging mining is needed, given the importance of their product for green energy technologies. Developers hope to open mines in Canada, South Africa and Australia, but all are years from large-scale production and will produce sizable quantities of light rare earths. Their output of heavy rare earths will most likely be snapped up to meet rising demand from the wind turbine industry.
10. Tell No One (2006)
The decade's best thriller. Guillaume Canet's film of a man who discovers his wife is still alive after a decade, an unsolved murder for which he is a prime suspect, we can properly describe as Hitchcockian. That's an overused comparison, but this film just takes you along in a rush of adrenaline. Eventually, you just stop figuring it out and allow it to carry you along. I guess a movie like The Usual Suspects might be a useful comparison, but Tell No One is better.
9. Vera Drake (2004)
Mike Leigh's tour de force on an illegal abortion provider in 1950s England who eventually gets caught and sentenced to a prison when a procedure goes wrong. Imelda Staunton plays a character who only wants to help people and is absolutely devastated when her life is destroyed. The opening scene of a rich girl getting an abortion from a real doctor and a poor girl forced into coathanger land is a devastating critique of the connections between class and control over women's bodies, something anti-abortion fanatics never want to talk about. Mike Leigh is a wonderful director and this is his best film.
8. Tony Takitani (2004)
Arguably the most obscure film on this entire list. Jun Ichikawa's adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story is the best film on loneliness I have ever seen. Simple and barely long enough to be considered a feature film, it's 75 minutes leave you absolutely heartbroken and devastated. For the lonely, shy man, could there be something worse than finally leaving your isolation behind, only to have your new life ripped from you by tragedy?
7. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Paul Thomas Anderson's fantastic film about oil, There Will Be Blood is probably the best film about America writ large of the decade. Its historical arc, its examination of a core American character, its dissection of greed, resource use, religion, and the growth of the nation--all of this makes it one of the most important pictures of recent years. Daniel Day-Lewis is utterly fantastic in his second role taking on an American archetype (with his role as Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York being the other).
6. 2046 (2004)
Wong Kar-Wai's follow up to In the Mood for Love, Tony Leung continues his character from the previous film, floating through life as a man with a broken heart who is unwilling to make any kind of emotional commitment as a result. The filming of his science fiction story only strengthens the great sadness of this film. Utterly wonderful.
5. Yi Yi (2000)
Edward Yang's final film was a huge sprawling movie following an extended family through a year of marriage, affairs rekindled, coma and death, and a young boy learning about the world. The perfect film. The scenes where the father meets his ex-lover in Tokyo and you hear their conversations about the past with the camera following his daughter on her first date may be the single best scene of the 2000s. Absolutely brilliant, one of the must watch films in the genre's history.
4. Talk to Her (2002)
I'm kind of surprised that Pedro Almodovar only has one film on my list--Bad Education and Volver were both quite excellent; had this list extended to 60, the former almost certainly have made the cut. But Talk to Her is Almodovar's crowning achievement. If the scene from Yi Yi described above is the decade's best, I'd probably rank the silent film inside the film, with the man entering the woman's vagina and living there, a scene that both represents unbridled love and the violation of a helpless young woman, as second.
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Michael Gondry's adaptation of a Charlie Kaufman script deserves the widespread love it receives. Jim Carrey (who is actually good) and Kate Winslet's failed relationship combines with the use of technology and computer graphics to create a true love film for the 21st century. Never has a film used computer graphics to such a powerful effect--instead of a cheap way to cut corners or visuals for visuals sake, here is a film that takes the new possibilities of technology and uses them to strengthen a story, creating a terrifically powerful piece of art.
2. In the Mood for Love (2000)
Wong Kar-Wai's film of neighbors who realize their spouses (never seen) are cheating with each other is a tour de force of love unfulfilled. The two being cheated upon fall in love themselves, but for reasons of guilt, honor, shyness, etc., refuse to consummate the relationship. Beautifully shot, with more images of women in tight early 60s dresses than I've ever seen. After the failure of My Blueberry Nights, Wong's first film in English, some critics questioned whether Wong had fooled us with his Chinese films and whether his whole body of work was superficial. This is absurd--My Blueberry Nights just isn't good. All directors drop stinkers every now and again. While not every early Wong film works that well, the majority are fine pieces of work, culminating in In the Mood for Love and 2046.
1. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The best film of the 2000s. An absolutely devastating love story in 1960s and 70s Wyoming. Heath Ledger's performance will be remembered forever, while Michelle Williams and Jake Gyllenhall both provide fantastic supporting roles. It's a great film partially because it takes on a taboo-form of love (especially in that time and place), but more because it creates the single greatest love story of the decade.
Another word about Ledger's performance. I talked to people who didn't find it believable, particularly his way of talking and his lack of emotion. I openly scoffed, because I know these people. I'm related to western cowboys. I have an uncle for instance who talks exactly like this. For him, words are something to be avoided at all costs; to speak is a real chore and you'd better listen because he is just going to mumble out the minimum. Ledger nails this type of American and what it must be like for one of them to discover he is a homosexual, deeply in love but unable to follow through with a meaningful long-term, emotionally satisfying relationship.
That Brokeback Mountain lost the Oscar for best picture to Crash, an utterly loathsome movie, is the greatest award show ripoff of the decade. Not only was it the best picture of that year, it is the best picture of the entire decade. One of the great films in history, everyone involved should remain deeply proud of their work until the day they die. If the 2010s bring us to a film this great, this emotionally draining, this honest, and containing this level of performances, I'll be awfully surprised.
That the top 6 films all revolve around failed relationships may be coincidental, or it may say a lot about me.
Sad to see such a talented songwriter die like this, even if it happens all the time. He overcame a lot to make it this far. One has to wonder why a quadriplegic would need muscle relaxers, but that suggests he probably wasn't taking them for prescribed purposes.
What you all really wanted for Christmas--the next installment of this list!
20. All the Real Girls (2003)
David Gordon Green's excellent story of a relationship in an Appalachian textile town. A simple story, but a very good one. Really one of the most underrated films of the decade.
19. The 25th Hour (2002)
Spike Lee's second finest hour in the 2000s. While not every scene works, and a few are kind of bad, it's Lee at his best, with a great lead character (Edward Norton) and a great secondary character (New York City). The relationship of the film to 9/11 is not strictly necessary but only makes the film richer, capturing a place and time while also capturing a very non-political character within that space.
18. Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
Alfono Cuaron's breakthrough movie of 2 men and a woman on a trip through Mexico. While I wonder what I'll think of the somewhat over the top narration the next time I watch this, the story is first rate, particularly in its examination of modern Mexican gender roles.
17. You Can Count on Me (2000)
Laura Linney at her finest, in this Kenneth Lonergan film about a single mother who struggles when her fuck up brother comes to town. Mark Ruffalo's performance as the brother almost matches Linney, creating one of the decade's best family drama.
16. Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Stephen Frears' fantastic film about immigrants in London. Scary as hell, great writing, solid acting. In fact, I feel that this is the first of the truly great films of the decade. I love all the films below this, but Dirty Pretty Things reaches another level--that rare 10 out of 10 I give movies on IMDB. Literally flawless
15. Grizzly Man (2005)
Werner Herzog's fascinating documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the lunatic self-proclaimed bear protector eaten by grizzlies. How much of it is true or not remains debatable, but its certainly a great story and one of the best films about environmentalism ever made.
14. Juno (2007)
Jason Reitman's film. Or should I say Diablo Cody's. There's been a huge backlash against Cody after the (supposedly though I didn't see it) Jennifer's Body. Regardless of the qualities of that film, I don't think any backlash should affect how people perceive her work here. It's a great script, accepted without revision, arguably for the first time in film history. Some might say the language is too mannered, and it will be interesting to watch how the film ages. Others criticized Juno at the time for not presenting abortion as a more appealing option, but whatever. She has an abortion and there's no film. Anyway, both Ellen Page and Michael Cera are really great, as are Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner. I think the best part of the film might be that whereas most films would paint Garner as a boring woman keeping her man down, here she's the hero in the end.
13. When the Levees Broke (2006)
Spike Lee's tour de force on Hurricane Katrina. One of the best documentaries I have ever seen. Tremendously powerful. Some criticized it for allowing conspiracy theories about the government intentionally making black people suffer to gain credence, but given the history of African-Americans in New Orleans, can't we all see why they might think this, even if it's not true. This is the singular document not only of Katrina but of the Bush Administration, highlighting the utter incompetence, indifference, and negligence of the worst president since Andrew Johnson. Utterly brilliant.
12. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007)
One of the finest films of the best yearly crop of movies since the 1970s, Cristian Mungiu's film is also the finest yet made in the Romanian film renaissance of the last several years. A great late communist companion to The Lives of Others, 4 Months is the tale of a woman trying to get an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania. Powerful and often deeply frightening, it reminds us of how much life sucked behind the Iron Curtain and how tenuous women's control over their own bodies remain today.
11. No Country for Old Men (2007)
The Coen brothers' finest film of the decade. A lot of hipster critics have pushed The Man Who Wasn't There in their top of the decade lists, but this makes little sense to me. I called it The Film That Wasn't There at the time, and in fact it ranks well below O Brother Where Art Thou and Intolerable Cruelty in the Coen brothers oeuvre. But No County outranks them all. Interestingly, it's probably Cormac McCarthy's worst book, but in part because of that it makes the most sense to turn into a film. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is probably the decade's best personification of evil, an issue that was a real problem in the book. But Bardem's cold-hearted malice humanizes that a little bit and brings the film together.
30. The Lives of Others (2006)
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck brilliant film about late communist East Germany. Probably the best film about the end of communism, an interesting subgenre. Scary as hell, featuring the late great Ulrich Muhe as a Stasi agent who suddenly gets a conscious.
29. Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuaron's dystopian masterpiece. I'm not usually a fan of this type of film, but it's so well-executed and features excellent performances from Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Danny Huston, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
28. 3-Iron (2004)
Kim Ki-Duk's bizarre film about a guy who breaks into people's homes to live there while they are on vacation takes on weird Buddhist aspects that I don't necessarily understand, but create a really fantastic movie.
27. American Splendor (2003)
Biopics usually suck. Oscar voters jump all over them because they are lazy and like to see actors do imitations of people they already love (see Morgan Freeman's likely Oscar nomination for Invictus). But this film about Harvey Pekar captures his spirit, his crabbiness, and how he represents a segment of American alternate culture. The use of animation works great and Paul Giamatti was a perfect casting choice. A really enjoyable film.
26. A History of Violence (2005)
David Cronenberg's fantastic film about an ex-gangster who can't leave his old life behind. Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, and Maria Bello are all great, though by the time I saw it, I had heard so much about William Hurt's performance that I found it underwhelming. This could be Cronenberg's finest work.
25. District 9 (2009)
This allegory of immigration to South Africa is the decade's best science fiction movie. Like the peak of the genre, it uses science fiction as a barely veiled attack on current issues. However, I do not recommend eating during the film, as I did.
24. The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
The first Apatow film and probably the best. Steve Carrell is utterly hilarious. This film contains all the good and bad parts of the Apatow films--both hilarious off-color jokes, drug humor, and witty dialogue along with a lack of editing and a lot of moralizing. But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Of all the performances in the film, Jane Lynch's might be the funniest. She rarely gets talked about, but she is a brilliant comedian.
23. Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Guillermo Del Toro's fantasy movie taking place during late 30s Spain, when Franco is putting the hammer down on resistance forces. The fascists only make this movie scarier and the fantasy bits are both visually arresting and emotionally arousing. Really first rate film.
22. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Connoisseurs of martial arts films might scoff at this, but Ang Lee's foray into the genre is close to a perfect film. That it brought a sky-high budget to this often underfunded genre is no bad thing and expanding the genre's international audience should be commended, not scoffed at by snobs. Plus, it's just a great film.
21. The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Noah Baumbach's tale of a family falling apart. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney are both wonderful as the parents. The movie is touching, sometimes gross, often very funny, and frequently painful to watch. One of the best domestic films of the decade.
Lincoln Gordon, former U.S. ambassador to Brazil, has died at 96. Gordon is one of the early "villains" in the rise of Brazil's military dictatorship. Gordon had made clear throughout the 1963-1964 period that the U.S. was strongly opposed to leftist Joao Goulart, and that it would support a return to "democracy," even if that meant an overthrow of Goulart. When the military began moving against Goulart (whose rise to the presidency was complex), Gordon immediately made clear his support of the movement, and was in communication with the generals who led the initial coup and those who established control after the coup. Fearing popular resistance to the military, Gordon had even convinced Lyndon Johnson to begin sending U.S. ships towards Brazil to support the government. Unfortunately for Brazil, the military set up power with popular support so quickly (and Goulart's administration and support collapsed so rapidly) that the ships never even made it to Brazil; before they were even halfway to Brazil, they were able to turn around, as the military had already established a control that it would not relinquish for 21 years, during which hundreds and even thousands were tortured, and hundreds more "disappeared."
While the U.S. was not directly involved in the Brazilian coup in the way it would be in Chile in 1973 and in Argentina in the late-1970s, its rapid support for the military hinted at the policies that would overlook democracy in the name of anti-Communism in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and Lincoln Gordon was at the epicenter of these policies in Brazil. Gordon himself openly admitted his role in quickly supporting the generals in 1964 (see here, with thanks to Greg). As a result, while you cannot blame the U.S. for its role in overthrowing a democratic government in Brazil to the same extent that you can in other places, Gordon did play the key role among U.S. actors in supporting that process, and is definitely one of the more villainous characters in the opening act of Brazil's dictatorship.
So the latest kerfuffle is over whether we should kill the bill or pass it and work on improving it. I honestly haven't had the time to do the poring-over of the Senate bill that I'd like, so I'm not going to stake out hard and fast turf on either side. I will say that mandates and no public option were a huge part of the reason I liked Obama's health care plan better than Hillary Clinton's, and it was an opinion that I fine-tuned for months arguing it on the campaign trail against much louder and better-trained voices like, oh, Paul Krugman's. It's what they have in Massachusetts, and it hasn't worked. David Sirota, on Twitter, called it a Giuliani move: making having no health insurance illegal is sort of like making being homeless illegal--and I agree.
ANYWAY. What is good is that the debate is now squarely between us on the left, and you can't tell who's going to say what based on their supposed position on the bar between ZOMG SOCIALISTS and milquetoast slightly-further-left-than-Ben-Nelson centrists.
And just like the primaries, shit has descended into some nasty personal attacks. Thankfully, since my primary exposure to that shit is on Twitter, and I don't follow too many assholes anymore, I haven't seen so much of it. Instead, it filters through on the sidelines.
I think the bill will probably be passed. I think we have to think long and hard about this, because while we have to fight to get everything good out of the House bill we can into the final bill (which is why the staking out of intransigent positions on the left is GOOD STRATEGY, among other things) we do have to take an honest look at the Senate bill and say: if this is the best it ever gets, is this worth passage? Kind of like getting married--you can't marry the person you hope someone turns into, you have to marry the person they are. (OK, enough folksy analogies from me. Palin I ain't.)
Over recent weeks I've been having this argument/discussion with coworkers and other Really Smart People on the left about what's going on with teabaggers and others. I'm firmly of the camp that says that the left is once again getting out-organized. If we had a solid union movement that educated its members and contextualized issues for them along some sort of class basis, I firmly believe that we'd have less angry incoherent teabag signs and much more protests of the people that deserve it: Wall Street.
So. Jane Hamsher is apparently making common cause with teabagger types in her quest to kill the bill. While I shudder at the thought of trying to make ANY common cause with someone like Grover "drown-government-in-the-bathtub" Norquist, I think that acknowledging the populist anger behind the teabaggers is worthwhile.
For instance. Sure, they're astroturfed. They are also real people who are really pissed off.
So this post this morning, from my otherwise-friend Matttbastard (who also has the luxury of Canadian health care and so has far less a horse in this race than I do) kind of ticked me off.
Ok, so: We have an astroturfed right-wing social movement of sorts (almost singlehandedly keeping the polyester lobby and Lee Greenwood from starving) that, following a TOTALLY SPONTANEOUS RANT on CNBC from Rick Santelli, decided to utilize the angry-shouty bits of Saul Alinsky to get their ugly red state mugs on Hardball every fucking night for several months straight. And this is the (bipartisan) model that Hamsher apparently wants to emulate (nearly 8 weeks after the mission accomplished moment that was NY-23) because “the only difference [between wingnuts and progressives] is the messaging”?
