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

———————

Peter Warren’s Picks

Up
Adventureland
Bronson
Coraline
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
A Serious Man
Sugar
Tyson
Up In The Air

———————

Giampaolo Bianconi’s Picks

The Road
Police, Adjective
Up
The Limits of Control
Summer Hours
Beaches of Agnes
24 City
Lorna’s Silence
Two Lovers
2012

———————

Brian Barth’s Picks

A Serious Man
The Road
Up in the Air
Crank 2: High Voltage
Sugar
The Princess and the Frog
The Hurt Locker
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Girlfriend Experience
An Education

———————

Matt Paley’s Picks

Up
A Serious Man
A Single Man
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Bright Star
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Lorna’s Silence
Where The Wild Things Are
The Hurt Locker

———————

Jake Teresi’s Picks

Up
The Hurt Locker
A Serious Man
Adventureland
Funny People
Avatar
The Cove
Food, Inc.
An Education
Precious

———————

Adam Hirsch’s Picks

The Hurt Locker
Up
Where The Wild Things Are
Fantastic Mr. Fox
White Ribbon
Tetro
In The Loop
Star Trek
Up In The Air
Inglorious Basterds

———————

]]> http://sainteliotandco.com/round-up/the-best-of-2009/feed/ 1 http://sainteliotandco.com/blog/sizing-up-a-single-man/ http://sainteliotandco.com/blog/sizing-up-a-single-man/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:44:51 +0000 Matt Paley http://sainteliotandco.com/?p=713

The trailer for the Tom-Ford-directed-gay-period-suspense-drama, A Single Man, is up on youtube.

Tom Ford–formerly of Gucci, then of, well, Tom Ford–explained to the press during the Venice Film Festival (where the film made its debut) that cinema has been a direction he’s wanted to move in “forever,” and called A Single Man is “the most personal thing I’ve ever done; a pure expression.”

Ms. Longworth, for whom I’ve previously professed my love, gave the film an A- at Toronto, calling it both gorgeous and affecting.

I’m skeptical, mostly because the film looks so much like the very best pages of Vanity Fair (which is much like being skeptical because Fantastic Mr. Fox looks as carefully designed as The Royal Tenenbaums; it shouldn’t be a deterrent, but it makes me nervous that that’s all it is).  But Colin Firth is getting quite a buzz for what some are calling his best role on screen to date–and, certainly, you can’t have much of a higher pedigree than Christopher Isherwood (although I haven’t read the original novel).  I am a big fan, as well, of Matthew Goode (excepting that lamentable Brideshead travesty) and Nicholas Hoult (from About A Boy).

The question I’ve been turning over in my head for the past few hours, though, is whether I should be skeptical, in the first place, about any visual artist turning to film.  Shouldn’t the example of former painters–Julian Schnabel, Robert Breer, David Lynch, Peter Hutton–prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that those artists, trained in a purely visual medium (be it painting, sculpture, or, more to the point, fashion), who do make it to film often bring with them extraordinarily cinematic vision?  Don’t I prefer them, as a matter of fact, to the theater-director-turned-filmmakers? With the exception of the very best (Mike Nichols), I do.

I suppose I should wait and see, then, what Tom Ford can do.