221 Top Ten lists tallied; 236 films; 89 films with just a single vote; both Wall-E and The Dark Knight are each listed 21 times at #1; Iron Man moves into the top 30; and Wall-E appears on almost 70% of all lists. Updated Top Ten Scoreboard The Top Ten Lists

Headlines, Awards, Top Tens, Features and Reviews at MCN's Awards Watch.

20 Weeks of Oscar
The Latest Whine
by David Poland

"Why aren't these Oscar movies in more theaters?!?!"

New York Times ... Variety ... LA Times ... yadda, yadda, yadda..

Worst of all, these are all veteran reporters who, if they don't know it like the back of their hand as factual detail, should at least be able to smell the absurdity reeking from these stories.

It's the marketing, stupid.

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Oscar Outsider
Which Men Should Get Oscar Nods ... And Which Men Shouldn't
by Kim Voynar

And just to clarify up front: this is a discussion of who I think most deserves to be nominated for the Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor categories, not who I think the Academy, in all its collective wisdom, is likely to put there. There are others who are far better at playing the Oscar ponies than I am, and I'll let them have at that game; meanwhile, I offer you the following thoughts on which actors most deserve a shot at going home on Oscar night with a naked golden man in their arms.

Frenzy On The Wall
The List
by Noah Forrest

I love reading top ten lists because I like to see the explanation of why that particular critic placed that particular film in that particular spot. I think it’s a great barroom discussion, and I encourage readers to please tell me why I’m a moron for my placement of certain films or why I’m brilliant. That’s why this is really one of my favorite columns to write; because those arguments, those discussions are so important to my enjoyment of film, I get to be -- hopefully -- awed by what I see on screen and then I have to find the words to express that feeling. It’s a beautiful thing.

Okay, enough, let’s go to the list!

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The Ultimate DVD Geek
The Top Ten DVDs and BDs
of 2008
by Doug Pratt

In assessing the best DVD releases of 2008, the BD format has been singled out only if it offers a significant programming or playback improvement over its DVD counterpart. When both formats are cited, the BD is preferable, but the DVD still offers essentially the same value and quality, particularly if you just want to watch the movie in your bedroom at night without disturbing the rest of the house. DVDs and BDs may well end up existing side by side until a scheme to download high-end video playback replaces them both.

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MCN DVD
Towelhead

If provocation could be measured, Alan Ball's shocking coming-of-age drama would rate 10 on a scale of 10. Towelhead is, at once, deeply empathetic, unabashedly exploitative and impossible to ignore. At its best, it forces viewers to balance their visceral and intellectual responses to depictions of overt racism, ethnic stereotyping, statutory rape, pedophilia, pornography, synthetic patriotism and parental rights.


Also .. Baghead, Eagle Eye, The Duchess, Surfer Dude, Ghost Town, Savage Grace, The Secret Life of the American Teenager: Season 1

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The Gurus look at Best Picture once more before the New Year, and the field narrows to only nine films. Gurus December 30 Gurus: December 12 Gurus: December 9 Gurus: December 2

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Digital Nation
'Tis the Oscar Season
by Gary Dretzka

By choosing the handsome Aussie leading man, Hugh Jackman, it's clear that TV-based celebrities no longer can be expected to reverse the negative tides. It also helps that he's popular with the theater community and readers of People magazine.

At ABC, though, I suspect executives are lighting candles at this very moment, summoning divine intervention. Their best-case scenario would find both Wall-E and The Dark Knight among the Best Picture finalists. It could happen. Both pictures were terrific entertainments, box-office smashes and critically acclaimed. The only thing not in their favor is tradition.

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Voynaristic
Taking a Wrong Turn on Revolutionary Road
by Kim Voynar

Revolutionary Road is not a story about suburban angst; it's a story about the illusions people create to sustain their belief in who they are and who they wish they were. Lee Siegel, writing for The Wall Street Journal, has a piece up titled "Why Does Hollywood Hate the Suburbs? America's Long Artistic Tradition of Claiming Spiritual Death By Station Wagon," which unfortunately completely misreads both the film Revolutionary Road and the book from which it was adapted.

Rush to Judgment
Eye of the Navel 2008
by Leonard Klady

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Compiling a “best of” list reflects one’s mood on the day of doing the deed. The films most recently seen are advantaged because one’s had less time to ruminate about their qualities.

Today I’m feeling more magnanimous than usual and have made a list that runs to a baker’s dozen. Ironically, only a handful are films that I consider truly distinguished but the rest fall a rung below and spill over the obligatory minion that has become the standard.

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Pride, Unprejudiced
The Reader, Benjamin Button, Seven Pounds and Gran Torino
by Ray Pride

Holy Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award! Gran Torino is a dark comedy, an engaged anecdote about class and race, a stripped-down example of palooka art, and Clint Eastwood, at 78, has made a modest, yet almost radical entertainment. It's a gleeful astonishment.

It's an "if-you-have-but-eyes-to-see" kind of movie: if you sense the genuine, glorious strengths of Gran Torino, you can appreciate its idiosyncratic carborundum grace. If not, you'll be asking your date, "And WTF was that ending?"

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Wilmington on Movies
Benjamin Button, Valkyrie, Bedtime Stories and The Spirit
by Michael Wilmington

What a refreshingly “uncommercial” big-budget project! And what a surprisingly enjoyable movie. David Fincher, working at full intensity, gives us the epic adaptation of an obscure (and much-changed) F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man named Benjamin Button, who lives his life backwards. Born as an old, wizened man, he progresses through maturity then back to boyhood and infancy -- leaving his lifelong sweetheart Daisy, trapped in real time.
Wilmington on DVDs

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button	-	-
Revolutionary Road	-	-	-		-
Valkyrie	-	-	-	-
The Spirit	-	-	-	-
Bedtime Stories	-	-	-	-
The Wrestler	-	-	-	-
Seven Pounds	-	-	-	-	-
Nothing But the Truth	-	-	-	-	-
Yes Man	-	-	-	-
Doubt	-			-	-
Gran Torino	-			-
The Reader				-	-
Che				-	-

DP/30
Ellen Kuras Netakhoon (The Betrayal)	Matteo Garrone Gomorrah	Elsa Zylberstein I've Loved You So Long
Man On Wire The Producers	Ari Folman Lunch With Bashir	Kristin Scott Thomas I've Loved You So Long
The Entire DP/30 Catalog

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Frenzy On The Podcast
Gomorrah's Matteo Garrone
by Noah Forrest

This week Noah talks Matteo Garrone, director of Gomorrah, about Italian mafia, Italian cinema and the conventions of the American gangster movie..

Noah also talks with ..
John Patrick Shanley
J. Michael Straczynski

A Chicago Reader Editor Recalls When He And Ebert Were Dueling High School Editors
And - Another Considers Ebert's Blog-Role As "Public Intellectual"

Fred Knittle, 83, Sang Climactic "Fix You" in Young@Heart

Liev Schreiber, Happily Ever After

Donald Westlake, Writer Of Stepfather And 90 Books, Including Source Novels Of Point Blank, The Hot Rock And The Grifters, Was 75

Lim Is On Time's Side And Fincher's, Too

The 10 Best Films Of 1918

London Mayor Quotes Col. Kilgore In New Year Message

Philip Egan, A Tucker Designer And Lucasfilm Sound Technologist, Was 88

Producer-Provocateur Ted Hope Asks, "What Do You Want Our Film Culture To Be?"

With Amy Adams As Spunky Amelia Earhart!
Fox Launches Its Night At The Museum II Trailer At… Wait… Wait… HappyMeal.Com

The Officially-Titled Inglourious Basterds Opens August 21 (Go, QT, Go!)

Pinter Directs Own Funeral

John Waters Explains Why To Lvoe Christmas In 5 Mnutes (audio)

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."
Chip McGrath Pages The Silent J. D. Salinger On His 90th

"Being nude was weird. And now I'm seeming like the actress who does that, which wasn't my intention."
Marisa Tomei Talks Hula-Hoop

A Blogger Synopsizes Two Movies, Or Are They The Same, Or Do They Just Share The Same Oscar-Winning Screenwriter?

"Woody Allen must continue his sexy success by directing a porn flick. Preferably starring Daniel Craig."
Lauren Wissot Wishes For A Wet, Wild 2009 At The Movies

"The act of live-blogging is almost entirely pointless. Those who can’t fathom watching something on television without another person’s witty commentary should just invite a friend over."

"I got a Google alert: 'This is to inform you that you're apparently no longer with us.'"
Scripter Larry Gelbart, 81, Laughs At His "Fatal Stroke"

Quel Knell Pell Mell!
"Nat Hentoff wrote liner notes for every great musician that I’ve ever loved, from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin, and that’s not even what he’s been writing about for the last 30 years."
Ringing In 2009, Troubled Village Voice Cashes Out Hentoff At Age Of "83 1/2," Staffer Since 1958; Also Lynn Yaeger, 30 Years On
And - In Current New Yorker, Louis Menand Considers The VOICE (complete only for subs)
While - At Bright Old Age of 92, New Republican Film Cricket Stanley Kaufmann, Also 50 Years Into Gig, Ought Wonder About Will Of Asper Family-CanWest Combine

"I now do not want to fight against the new stream. I just want to disappear calmly."
The Daily News On Kim's Video's Rental Collection Taking Slow Boat To Sicily
Earlier - 55,000 Vids Shipping Off To Ancient Sicilian Village Of Salemi

Toast The New Year With Your Fave Classic Movie Star Cocktail

Was This The Last Christmas For Retail CDs?

UK Gov't To Solicit For Private Firm To Track All Phone Calls, TXTs, Email And Internet Trails

Cincy Enquirer Feels The Shrinkage
And - OC Weekly Shakes Three Editors From The Tree

Daddy, What's A Strike?
Top SAG Big Sends Members Mixed Missive; Sez He Hopes Strike Won't Happen, But If It Did, It Wouldn't Shutter Industry

"This year's movie awards season has played out like Oscar night at Minsky's. At least a dozen of the supposedly hottest contenders are being teased out to the public in peekaboo release patterns."
The Big Cieper Comes Down With A Touch Of The Bagger (Why Not "Oscar Night At The Spearmint Rhino"?)

Hollywood & Fine Asks That You Kindly Shut The Hell Up

Leonard Maltin Lists "The 5 Best You Didn't See," Mixing A Couple Of Greats With Mehhhh...

FCC Chief Drops Porn Filtering From Fed Free Wireless Broadband Plan
And - Check Out "Save The Internet"

MSNBC's Conflicted Messages About Investing In Quality Docs Like Dear Zachary

Why Gatsby Will Be Baz's Honey Trap

Six New Coraline Featurettes

Considering The Non-Critics Who Want Clint On Deck For Oscar Batting

A Demand For A Different Sort Of Button Baby (Spoilers)

"The Terminators may be an army of unstoppable robots hellbent on the destruction of the human race, but they'll always be welcome in the Library of Congress."

The Softer Side Of Sam Peckinpah

Zeitchik On Hic!s And Hops On Oscar Path

"Your career provides testimony to my theory that 'innate talent' wins the day, but you're beginning to negate that talent by trying too g--d--- hard."
Pete Pious V Open-Letters Will Smith (Spoilers)

Gameshow-Wallah Anil Kapoor Talks Slumdog With Times Of India

Whipp Beat Down, But Up Again As LAT Freelancer; Sniff-Sniff-Whimpers Along With Marley

AJ Schnack Balances Argument For Man On Wire For Best Pic FYC

Popeye Hits Public Domain In EU On Thursday

Chicagoist Makes Excuses For Missing 10 Films They Really, Really Wanted To See

Warhol's Two Minutes With Spielberg

A. R. Rahman On Scoring Slumdog

Retailers May Close 73,000 Stores In First Half Of 2009

Hulu's Streaming The Times Of Harvey Milk

"The old model for compensating journalists is as obsolete as the telegraph. If anyone out there in the blogosphere can tell me what the new model is, I will pronounce him the first genius I've ever encountered on the Internet."

Fox Wants Watchmen Postponement; Warner Lawyer Sez Settlement Unlikely

Mark Cuban Buys 9.4% Of Fourth-Largest Theater Chain

Oscar Invites 281 Features To The 2009 Foodfight

Why You Should Know Who Michael Shannon Is
And - Shannon Does "The Hw'd Interview"

In Tribute To Tom, Great Moments In Eye Patches

Hot Docs' Sean Farnel On Why To Go To The Dubai Film Festival

How Therapeutic Was Waltz With Bashir For Director Ari Folman?

The Bagger Sez Globes Will Party Like It's 2007
And - Oscar-Pitching To Vacationing Members

Woody Allen Plays To 3,000 In Warsaw
And - Likely To Make Next Pic In The City Of Light (And Euros)

"You should discard ideology and partisanship. This is no time for playing to the crowd. That is all over with. This is the hour to seek what might lead us back from the brink."
Ebert Offers Message For Politicos As Things Fall Apart

Academic Claims Rap Music Originated In Medieval Taverns Of Scotland

"If you look back at the people who created the Internet, they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now."
Brit Red-Taper Wants To Corral Net
While - The Wizards In Oz Want To "Filter" The World

Chris McQuarrie Goes Long On The Construction Of Valkyrie

Ann Savage, Fatale-est Of Femmes In Detour, Most Fearsome Of Moms In My Winnipeg, Was 87
And - Savage Talks Detour (video)

"God, I hope we can recreate some of those crazy-ass costumes. Our version of Cleopatra will be like an Elvis musical in 3-D. It's a total rock'n'roll, 1966 aesthetic–like Viva Las Vegas meets Tommy."
Soderbergh Plays With Historical Figures

Considering Pinter As Primo Screenwriter
While - "There is a dark side to the human psyche, but there is also a lighter, more optimistic and appealing side to it that Pinter chose never to acknowledge."
Theater Critic Of Conservative Telegraph Fusses That Barbarian Pinter Will Not Be Remembered

Will Fantasy Pics Survive The Credit Crunch Chronicles?

The Sunday New York Times
"Wolff has the columnist’s tic of being far too struck by the fragrance of his own prose."
The Bagger Reviews The Murdoch Bio
And - Considering Charlton Heston
Plus - In The Kitchen With Kechiche For Secret Of The Grain
And - Why Amateur Bookselling Online Is Ravaging Publishers' Backlist
Plus - Ed Zwick Writes About "Tough Jews" And Defiance
And - An Album Of Keen-Eyed On-Set Photos By Mary Ellen Mark
Plus - Spacey And Mendes' Bridge Project Works Both Sides Of The Atlantic

Even After Being Blog-Blasted, Ben Lyons Given Too Much Space As Show's Ongoing Ratings Failure Matches Talent Level
And - Poland Sez The Column Inches Expended Are PointlezZ-Z-Z-Z

"So how did Suri deal with the eye patch?"
Is It Post-Meta-Ironic When You Write The Hack Lede As A Joke But It's Your Lede Nonetheless?

A Revolutionary Road Brunch
"Yates' novel, cherished by literary intellectuals and Paris Review interns to this day, expresses American suburban-phobia with crude explicitness. No literary critic that I know of has ever challenged Yates's puerile social perceptions."
The Journal Pulls Out A Richard Yates-Hater (Who Coined Phrase "Blogofascism") To Defend The Suburbs Against "Absurd" Critique
Plus - A Writers Colony Sort Of Writer Takes Up Cudgels For "Revolutionary Road"
And - Michael Shannon On The Classical Side Of His Character
With - Zoe Kazan On Fitting Into Family Tradition

Cutting The Title Sequence For Edward Scissorhands

Dale Wasserman, Adapted "Cuckoo's Nest"; Wrote "Man Of La Mancha," Almost 80 Other Plays, Was 94

Are These The Best Movie Posters Of 2008?

How Much Cash Will The NY Times Need To Survive? (Wanna Buy The Red Sox?)

Bill Landis, 49, Early Chronicler of Grindhouse Film

Jameson And Murphy Curl Up With Film "Moments Out Of Time 2008"

Media Has A Cheap Problem

Santa Baby Eartha Kitt Says Goodbye At 81
With - From 1962, Kitt Sings "C'est si bon"
And - Corliss Sez She's "The Original Material Girl"

Visiting With Bruno S., Muse Of Herzog, In His Berlin "Hole of Forgottenness"

"I've written 29 damn plays. Isn't that enough?'