After a record-setting year at the box office, what can we expect in 2010? More of the same. Don’t expect Hollywood to surprise us when things are going so well. Expect more 3D, more talking CGI animals, more lame comedies/soft dramas starring Sandra Bullock.
Not that I’m cynical. (more…)
While my filmmaking brethren are location scouting up in the snowy land of Pickering, Ontario, I’m holding down the fort back here in the States and keeping warm in the nascent days of the new year.
The Round-Up Endorsements this month are leaner than they have been before, but never worry: come February, we’ll have more laid out for you.
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck – Short, sweet and sour stories from a master of style and form. Most people recall Steinbeck as a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, resigned to a high school senior’s reading list, but he’s at his best and grittiest when he’s spitting out short stories.
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis – Speaking of short stories, if you haven’t read Lydia Davis then you’re truly missing out on a modern pioneer of the form. She packs more into a single paragraph than anyone else out there.
Alka-Seltzer – Pop, pop, fizz, fizz, oh! what a relief it is! And, indeed, it is. Get the original kind, the two tablets that drop into a glass of water. Even though it seems just to be an ironic throwback (akin to, “Hey! Moxie soda isn’t just delicious, it’s nutritious too!” [actual advertising slogan]), we at the Company have found that Alka-Selter actually works wonders for both colds and hangovers.
Carrying Tea Packets in Your Coat – Why not chase the tablets with some hot tea? Everyone has more tea packets lying around their place than they would ever like to admit. Make use of them, especially in these chilly winter months, by carrying a few around in your coat pocket. Gas stations, cafes, and even Starbucks rarely charge for hot water, so keep your money and stay warm. Also, green tea helps your immune system. Hypochondriac or no, a little boost in flu season never hurt anyone.
Now, on this snowy New Year’s Eve, it’s a better time than ever to reflect back on the year and select our choices for the best cinematic efforts in 2009.
Myself, Peter Warren, Brian Barth, Giampaolo Bianconi, Jake Teresi and Matt Paley all wrote down our Top-10 lists (although Matt, in an uncharacteristically cynical move, declined to offer a full 10). There were ten films overlapping our choices, and, ranked by frequency, comprise the final top-10 list.
Best Films.
Up (Dir. Pete Doctor) — 5 Votes
The Hurt Locker (Dir. Kathryn Bigelow) — 5 Votes
A Serious Man (Dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen) — 4 Votes
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Dir. Wes Anderson) — 3 Votes
Up In The Air (Dir. Jason Reitman) — 3 Votes
Inglorious Basterds (Dir. Quentin Tarantino) — 2 Votes
Lorna’s Silence (Dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne) — 2 Votes
Where The Wild Things Are (Dir. Spike Jonze) — 2 Votes
The Road (Dir. John Hillcoat) — 2 Votes
Sugar (Dir. Anna Boden) — 2 Votes (more…)
We’ve just had our first substantial snow of the season here in Boston, and it looks like it’ll be a long haul (as usual) until it’s gone. With that in mind, here’s a list of four things I’ll be enjoying until I make my winterly migration south of the equator.
1. Friday Night Lights Season One — One of my professors recommended this when we were reading Don DeLillo’s football novel End Zone. There’s nothing more satisfying than the tribulations of small town Texas football, no actor more earnest than Kyle Chandler, and no bad-ass momma more fun to listen to than Liz Mikel.
2. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick — I’d never read Dick before I picked up this fast-reading and fascinating alternate history about a world in which the axis powers had won World War II. If you haven’t, do.
3. Hot Chocolate from L.A. Burdick — Burdick, as I understand it, has three outposts: one in Cambridge, MA, one in Walpole, NH, and one in New York City. If you live in those places, odds are you’re familiar with their mousse-thick hot chocolate. It’s unbeatable. If you’re not familiar with it–well, you can order some online.
4. Die Hard — Last but certainly not least is my favorite Christmas movie. Oliver Stone said that Bruce Willis was the Humphrey Bogart of our generation. I don’t know about that, but in Die Hard he proves to be just as compulsively watchable as Bogie in To Have and Have Not or The Big Sleep. Alan Rickman, too, is delightfully devilish as the leader of a German terrorist group (oddly similar to the Icelandic hockey players from The Mighty Ducks). As for John McTiernan being Howard Hawks–I’d like to say time will tell, but it doesn’t look good…
The ride’s over.
There went the decade, crawling to a slow halt in the station, and now we disembark. This decade had its ups (college, technology) and downs (war, hurricanes)–and the world of film was no exception. Filmmaking went in two directions: Hollywood films ballooned year by year with increasing budgets and frames, culminating with this month’s Avatar, James Cameron’s all-digital $700 million 3D action romp; Independent Cinema moved into inventive territory with uploads to YouTube and low-fi meditations in Neo-neorealism after many Studio Independent Branches that funded indies (for a period, c. 2003-2007) realized that there was no real market where they believed one to be and abandoned the cause. Still, large theater chains carried more independent films than ever before, and distribution for independent films was bigger than ever with the internet and VOD cable television bringing cinema to places it never could have travelled in the past.
We forget that in 1999, DVDs were seen as the luxury alternative to VHS tapes (as Blu-Ray is to DVD now) and the local video rental store was the general access point to the cinematic world. But with this decade came the domination of the disc, and Netflix rose with it along the way. No matter where you live, so long as you have access to the internet and a DVD player, you can watch nearly any film. Think about that.
This decade was the era of the superhero. Television rooted itself in its conception of reality, though gradually began to lose itself to the power of the immediacy of the internet. Just as the remote control killed the traditional nightly television schedule, so did TiVO and iTunes murder watching television on any predetermined schedule at all.
Here’s the Company List for the top films of the Noughties. (more…)
This is the time of the year when the big passion-projects come out–films that either soar (Lord of the Rings, Million Dollar Baby) or sorely disappoint (All the Pretty Horses, Ali, Alexander). It’s Oscar season, but you wouldn’t know it from the year-end mainstream releases, many of which hope to be THE hit Christmas movie. Don’t believe the hype: Sherlock Holmes will be mostly air, It’s Complicated won’t work out (just stop, Nancy Meyers) and were you actually going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel? There won’t be much to see for a while besides Avatar, unless you live in a town with an independent cinema, until some of the indies start to expand.
Here are a half dozen movies I GUARANTEE are worth seeking out: (more…)
My Thanksgiving.
It’s Thanksgiving–and I know, I know, you’ve got so many things to do–but here are some things to make your down-time that much sweeter.
1. The Top Ten Book Covers of the 00s. If you’re design inclined, it’s easy to chuck the maxim “never judge a book by its cover.” I do it all the time. It’s great to see some of the best covers of the decade in one place. Also the Book Cover Archive Blog just got added to my Googler Reader.
2. Speaking of Google, the great historian Robert Darnton has just written about “Google and the New Digital Future” for the New York Review of Books. It touches on the reasons why soon most books won’t even need covers.
3.Don DeLillo has a new story in this week’s New Yorker.
4. Look at this photo of Lauren Bacall before you eat. Think about it while you eat. Return to it after you eat.
5. Richard Brody talks about Pedo Almodóvar’s new film (thankfully staring Penelope Cruz), Broken Embraces. You can watch the trailer here.
6. You might want to consider following the turkey with a Camel.
Here are our humble endorsements.
Ordering a ‘Short’ Coffee at Starbucks
It’s kind of like ordering off the secret menu at In and Out Burger. They don’t offer it in the usual three choices, and since all of us here at the Company prefer good ol’drip coffee to an impressively verbose latte order, the Short is the ideal size for the afternoon kick you need, or if you just want to go and read in peace. Trust us: you’ll be cooler than Shackleton’s right hand. (In addition, thank you, History Channel, for the many late-night Shackleton documentaries.)
Collected Stories by Gabriel García Márquez.
Because great style never ages, and every story is a gem. Amazingly, Márquez’s short-story output is slim. Although the book only has just under 350 pages, it reads fast but goes to brave depths. Buy a copy and you’ll come back to it again and again for years. Also, he never uses adverbs — ever. The man considers them to be cheating. Go and try to find one. We dare you.
Eating Dinner Around 8:00 p.m.
And do it with a good group of friends. Don’t eat in front of the television, and don’t eat something that involves anything to do with a microwave oven. Crack open a bottle of wine and eat sandwiches for an hour. It makes life seem that much better.
Uni-Ball Signo 207 Medium Pens.
Black ink preferred. The ideal writing instrument for anything and everything. Unpretentious, quick, and easy.
Watching College Football on Saturday Afternoon.
Most people who watch football prefer the NFL to the NCAA (going by a completely unscientific poll). But there’s an earnestness and, yes, even an innocence that can be found in college football that lacks in the NFL; every single one of those players does it for free and gives their heart to the team simply out of a love for the game. Although the BCS system is extremely — read: extremely — flawed, most conference games and especially rivalries are worth watching. Lay on the couch, turn it on, and pick a side.
KitKat Bars.
Gimme a break. Do you really need a reason?
“Ruby My Dear” by Thelonious Monk
Listen to this song, performed by this man, if you ever wanted to know what falling in love sounds like.
Here’s the Company roundup of the extra-ordinary floating around the internet.
The Greatest News Story of the Decade That Must Be Made Into a Short Film [LINK]
(Opening sentence: A gay man tried to poison his lesbian neighbours by putting slug poison into their curry after he was accused of kidnapping three-legged cat.)
A Long-Awaited Collaboration Between T-Pain and Carl Sagan
Perhaps The Best Advertising Campaign of The Year
Things to do, things to see, things to read in these last weeks of summer:
For the month of August, we’d like to help you pick out what might help the most.