I wouldn’t say it has been an overwhelming year for music, but there have certainly been some highlights. Pretty mainstream, I know – but I’m not quite as on the ball as I’d like to be with new bands. Here is my top 10 with a few new discoveries on the list and a few albums from old faves. What do you think?

10. Fleet Foxes Just making it in under the wire, I have a feeling this album is going to continue to grow on me. At my live intro to them at Sasquatch last May I thought they were fine but didn’t fall in love. I’m glad to say their recording has some fever I didn’t catch at the vast open stage of the Gorge.

9. Duffy – Rockferry I like Adele and can get down with some Amy Winehouse, but when it comes to the British female vocalists, Duffy is just my speed and this album is a classic.

8. The Verve – Forth I continue to be impressed by this great band and it seems to me that this is their best album yet.

7. The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath Teh Volta is back and as strong as ever. The crashing cymbals and blaring guitar are still present but Cedric and co. take this album in a bit of a different direction from previous studio recordings. I was surprised by the new sound and very, very happy.

6. Lil Wayne – Tha Carter III I’ve lost track of hip hop a bit in the last few years but I was immediately blown away when I heard what Lil Wayne was doing on this album and his abundant mix tapes. This guy is taking rap music in a whole new direction and, love it or hate it, it is simply incredible to witness.

5. The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely Performers of the year honors go to The Raconteurs whose show at the Greek last fall was a barn burner (maybe only equaled by MIA). Every track on this album rocks.

4. Santogold Twisting and turning, Santogold rips it in every direction with her dancehall/hip-hop/reggae/jazz/rock/fill-in-the-blank inspired beats and awesome vocal stylings.

3. Kings of Leon – Only By The Night This album would make my top 10 if it just had Sex On Fire on it 11 times – but instead we’re lucky enough to get 10 other great tracks. A bit more radio friendly than past albums, perhaps, but I think it adds up to one solid rock album.

2. TV On The Radio – Dear Science I don’t know what to say about these guys but whatever they are doing I just hope they keep doing it. I love their out there sounds and this album’s infusion of a bit more melody only makes it stronger.

1. The Killers – Day & Age I already know I am gonna get a boatload of shit for this pick. It seems this album really polarizes people. I can’t get enough of it and I keep finding tracks I like more than the last. Waaah, you don’t like the lyrics to Human. I don’t care. The song’s synthesis of current rock and 80s electronica equals one of the coolest sounds I’ve heard in a long time. You don’t think they rock? Listen to the power chords in the chorus of Losing Touch. Because of this album, The Killers have just jumped to the very top of my list of bands I need to see live soon!

I did the Top 10 a bit different this year and went ahead and ranked them in order from 10 to 1. Since I have written about most of these in more detail over the last year, I’m just going to say a few words about why the film made the list. I’d love to hear why anyone agrees or disagrees with the choices.

10. Milk – Truly stellar performances by Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, and Emile Hirsch set this film as one of Gus Van Sant’s very best. The pacing was great and production design made the film a joy to watch.

9. The Bank Job – I loved the classic style of filmmaking on display from director Roger Donaldson. The story was intense and the resolution really worked for me.

8. The Fall – Tarsem’s imagery is just incredible and the story is odd but fun. I wanted to spend a week immersed in the fantasy world he created.

7. Frost/Nixon – Peter Morgan’s script is certainly one of the best of the year and an all around great cast lead by Sheen and Langella make this a definite top film.

6. Sugar – Hopefully this fantastic story of a Dominican baseball player’s immigrant struggle will get a theatrical release sometime soon. It is a very worthy follow-up to Half Nelson from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, one of the best filmmaking teams working today.

5. The Wrestler – Mickey Rourke’s stellar performance and brilliant filmmaking by Darren Aronofsky should allow this film to find a place in just about everyone’s top 10.

4. Reprise – Joachim Trier’s touching Norwegian film about two friends has the perfect mixture of comedy and drama and above all else, narrative innovation.

3. Rachel Getting Married – Anne Hathaway’s performance is definitely her best and probably the year’s best. Jenny Lumet’s script is also great. But what really impressed me above all else was the flawless direction by Jonathan Demme.

2. The Wackness – Yes it is aimed squarely at me with its 90s coming-of-age theme and amazing hip hop soundtrack, but it works better than I ever would have thought a film like this could work. Jonathan Levine has set the personal story bar for our generation of filmmakers and Olivia Thirlby will forever be the girl that got away. It is a true shame that more people didn’t see this film in the theaters – but as a consolation prize, it has been near the top of the pirated movie charts for months.

1. Let The Right One In – Very rarely does a film come along that crosses genre lines so well – horror, drama, emotional angst, love. Give it to Swedish director Tomas Alfredson and writer John Ajvide Lindqvist for leaving us all stunned.

There you have it. There are some notable films that didn’t make my list. Flicks that didn’t quite make the cut: Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight, The Visitor, Man On Wire, Benjamin Button, In Brouges, Iron Man, American Teen. I have yet to see Waltz With Bashir or The Reader. But all in all, with a bit of Scandinavian help, I feel like it was a rather solid year. More solid than last year? Here my 2007 Top 10. What do you think? 2007 or 2008?

I worked up this little animation in p.shop of some light effects on the HK skyline.

Click here to see it in motion

A few years ago Tom McCarthy made a fantastic and touching movie called The Station Agent that, unfortunately, very few people saw. His follow up, The Visitor, is just as fantastic and touching, though this time much more topical. Richard Jenkins stars (what a year for him) as widower college professor whose life receives a much needed spark from the discovery of two wonderfully portrayed illegal immigrants living in his rarely visited Manhattan apartment. Just as he is coming out of his shell, one of the two is detained and a legal battle ensues. McCarthy has seriously got his shit down. The script is perfectly paced and every role is superbly acted. The world of secret detention centers and midnight deportations provides a terrifying backdrop, yet the story never loses its glimmer of light. The characters’ visions of America and its limitless possibilities juxtapose so well with legalities of post 9/11 reality. This juxtaposition creates a texture rich enough to be explored much further. But McCarthy should be applauded for reigning in the desire to serve up more than we can chew – instead giving us this compact and intensely personal story of how anyone can be touched by such events.

Italy’s entry for best foreign language feature is the modern day crime drama Gomorra. Writer/director Matteo Garrone jumped on the Italian film scene a few years back with a movie called The Embalmer, and this film is almost identical in tone. Garrone’s contemporary-realism employs long single handheld shots, sparse dialog, and virtually no score. This makes for an interesting, though not all that entertaining look at a town completely controlled by mafia. The Camorra (the title comes from a mixture of that and the biblical Gomorrah I imagine) is the oldest criminal org in Italy and the film portrays their world as pretty intense. We are talking like the favela of City of God or Elite Squad. This film has far less action than those, though, and jumps around a lot as it follows 5 pretty separate storylines. I would have liked to see a more central focus as I felt a bit alienated from the characters, never getting to know them all that well. The film is not without its flaws, but is certainly well put together for what it is.

My photoset from Hong Kong is now up on Flickr.

I guess I was a bit bored by a number of the photos because I found myself doing a fair amount of heavy handed editing. I’ve grouped most of those shots towards the end of the photoset. Enjoy, and as always, please let me know what you think.

Mark the date folks – January 18. Oh glorious day.

Clint Eastwood’s second directorial foray this season is certainly a world away from the nicely polished Changeling. We are talking rough edges. Clint is fantastic as the grizzled old racist bastard – everyone else, not so much. The acting is truly atrocious. I have never been one for a movie being so bad it is good – but juxtaposing really amateur actors with a master like Clint was actually pretty entertaining. The script is one step better than awful, which kinda works with the super indie feel (I’d be shocked if the imdb budget number of a $35M is correct). I am interested in the way that the subjects of racism and specifically ethnic slurs are approached, but I’m not sure I totally agree with the basic message. Yes, I agree that it is dumb that taboos exist over certain words but that doesn’t make it okay to propagate stereotypes just because one disagrees with the taboos. Surprisingly, the tone of this film was pretty typical for Eastwood’s direction. I had hoped for a little more ass kicking and bit less morality. He is such a bad ass that you just want to see him let loose. But all in all I gotta admit I did enjoy it. Strange – but it is one of those rare cases where the whole is actually more than the sum of its parts.

The trailer and ad campaign for Gabriele Muccino’s Will Smith starrer is best described as enigmatic. The film is no different. Let this be a lesson in hierarchy of knowledge. If the characters know more than the audience, like in this case, then the film is a mystery. Mysteries need twists. If everything you expect to happen in a mystery happens exactly as you expect it to, you get an extremely disappointed audience. Consider me extremely disappointed. There is no reason to tell the story this way! It is actually a decent story with good acting and interesting characters. So why be so enigmatic? The decision to tell the story the way it is told in this film completely ruined the film. So ruined, in fact, that I would even go so far as to say this movie would have been better if it had been directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

What do you get when you spend 2 hours just kinda following around an especially happy preschool teacher? Meh, turns out you get a pretty boring movie. Writer/director Mike Leigh (Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy) seems to have just about completely forgotten to insert a plot. We just follow around the almost manically happy Poppy as she hangs with her friends, takes driving lessons, goes to the chiropractor, etc. etc. When the story is really in need of a love connection, whoop! a charming and handsome man appears. Wait we need an antagonist – okay make the driving instructor a real asshole. But WHY? What is the point of any of it? Polly’s character doesn’t change one iota from the beginning of the film to the end. Sure things happen to her, but the protagonist needs to grow. Sally Hawkins does a fine job as Polly but I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone in this film is just doing their shtick. That’s pretty much all their is here – a bunch of random scenes of English actors doing their shticks. Enjoy!

I have to admit I wasn’t in much of a hurry to see this movie based mainly on what I found to be a pretty average script. I am happy to say I loved this film. Penn is phenomenal for sure, but it is Josh Brolin who steals every scene he is in. Good thing there are no scenes with both Brolin and the hilarious Emile Hirsch, because the much great acting would just be overwhelming. Gus Van Sant’s direction is superb, the story moves, it doesn’t feel too long, and best of all, it is fun. To take such a serious story and make it such a joy to watch – now that is the mark of a great film. And one that is sure to rack up the noms as well.

Ed Zwick’s Defiance should have definitely been subtitled “A Bunch of Jews Walking in the Woods.” That is basically what you get for two hours of this 137 minute “war” movie. This is one of those true stories that sounds really interesting in a paragraph or two, but just can’t cut it for a whole movie (I haven’t seen Milk yet, but I am guessing it is the same way). Daniel Craig plays a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jew who leads a group of more traditional looking Jews out of the Belorussian ghetto and into the woods to escape Nazis. His brother is played by Liev Schreiber and most of the film’s drama centers around their conflict, and not the conflict with the Nazis. I can’t stand Liev Schreiber and this film did nothing to change that. Craig is alright but his (and everyone’s) horrible accent is incredibly annoying. One of the three or four actions sequences isn’t bad (the planes) but the others are weak – and in general they felt awkwardly placed (as I thought they did in Zwick’s Blood Diamond). On top of all that, I found Eduardo Serra’s cinematography to be pretty lackluster as well. Yikes, not a lot going for Ed Zwick here. It might be an interesting story, but you are better off dialing up the book on Amazon than wasting your $9.75 at the multiplex.

Speaking of wasting money, man am I glad I didn’t pay to see Revolutionary Road. Sam Mendes’s stinker feels like a two hour argument with your significant other (if only you two were as attractive as Leo and Kate). The real problem here is the writing. Justin Haythe’s script is bohooore-horing. Mid-century marital strife is done better in every episode of Mad Men, where the period plays as big of a role as any character. Here the period is pointless. So they don’t want to conform… who cares? Kate Winslet’s character doesn’t feel like a woman confined by her societal station, she is just bored. January Jones’s Betty Draper (again, Mad Men) seethes with the frustration of having to take care of her children while her husband swims in the secretarial pool, all the while maintaining the quiet demeanor of the Norman Rockwell’s mother of the year. Dynamic! What happens when Winslet’s character is prodded just a tiny bit? She screams and goes running into the woods. DiCaprio’s character is just as insipid. And whatever happened to subtext? It is too annoying how the characters just blurt out whatever it is that you are supposed to know and feel. The only interesting moment in the entire film (neighbor Shep’s reaction to the “incident”) comes at the end of the third act – too late to be developed! I can’t believe this is already racking up nominations. I really expected more from the director of as compelling of a film as American Beauty.

With awards offerings like these, no wonder Vantage is out of business.

At last (hey, only 2 months) I have my full Nepal photoset up on flickr. I have done my best to add details in the descriptions. Check it out and please comment. Which are your faves?

Also, I have compiled my 12 favorite photos from the set which you can view…
After the Jump

I rather enjoyed this pretty ordinary western directed and co-written by star Ed Harris (only his second directorial foray after 2000’s Pollock). While Harris is good, Viggo is great as his deputy in the law starved town of Appaloosa. When these two arrive in town the baddies skedaddle except ultra baddie Randall Bragg, played excellently by Jeremy Irons. Most of the film centers around trying to bring Bragg to justice, but there is a good deal of character work done in Harris’s relationship with a local woman played somewhat softly by Renee Zellwegger. For better or worse it is certainly more traditional feeling than last year’s great 3:10 to Yuma. While not everything here works and it can be a bit predictable, it is still a fun film and in a year short on Westerns (after last year’s heavy load), it isn’t a bad offering.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of good things to say about Woody Allen’s latest sex-filled yet completely un-sexy gabber. Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are both good, though they really don’t have a lot to work off of as Allen’s script is atrocious, both in dialog and plot. Scarlett Johansson is her normal uninspired self playing an uninspired woman who goes to Barcelona with a friend (don’t ask why) and gets involved with an artist and his estranged wife. The relationships are lamely unrealistic and not at all helped by the mountains of banal conversation. The acting in the smaller roles by Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, and Rebecca Hall (who I really liked in Frost/Nixon) was simply horrendous. If all that wasn’t enough, the voice-over narration and ridiculous ending seal the deal on this package of crap. Maybe I just don’t like Woody Allen, but the guy has got to take step into the present if his films are going to have any shred of relevance in the future.

Until this film I would have said Ron Howard’s best recent work was as narrator on Arrested Development. Actually I still would, but the point being, to find a decent movie the guy has directed you have to go back to 1989’s Parenthood. Well this incredibly interesting film breaks that streak. While Howard undoubtedly deserves some credit, the real success here is the script by Peter Morgan. If sharing the writer of The Queen weren’t enough, this film also shares its oft-overshadowed star Michael Sheen. After previously being overshadowed by Helen Mirren, he is again overshadowed here by Frank Langella. Unfair, I say! Sheen’s performance is spectacular as the complicated role of talk show host turned presidential prosecutor David Frost. This character is richly layered up to the million-dollar-smile mask that Sheen wears so brilliantly. Langella is great, no doubt, but in this crowded Best Actor field it seems a shame that Sheen will likely again be passed over for a co-star. Regardless, it is hard to fault a film for having too much good acting (the smaller parts are brilliantly played as well by the likes of Toby Jones, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Rockwell), so I highly recommend giving this a watch.

When I read the script for The Wrestler a year or so ago I didn’t really get it. The wrestling scenes read like comedy but the tragedy this poor guys goes through was way too sad. Well Darren Aronofsky got it – and his finished product is a challenging yet fantastically rewarding journey in one man’s knee high green imitation leather boots. Mickey Rourke has got an Oscar nom wrapped up and at this stage of the game I’m gonna go ahead and give him the crown (err, belt). I’m not afraid to say his performance is on par with Daniel Day Lewis’s Daniel Plainview. Marisa Tomei is fantastic as well as his stripper love interest. When prodded at the post screening Q&A, she was quick to point out that it is only a coincidence that she has shown so much skin in her last two roles. If that isn’t reason enough to go, Aronofsky and D.P. Maryse Alberti’s decision to go handheld adds an extra layer of depth with its docu feel (no surprise Alberti spends most of his time shooting docus including last year’s Oscar winning Taxi to the Darkside). As I said, this isn’t always the easiest film to sit through. It is filled with trauma – both physical and emotional. But it really works, and in the end you are left richer from the experience.

David Fincher’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story about a man who ages backwards is certainly a fantastic film. Best picture? Quite possibly. Fincher’s best film? I would say no. This is a very complicated story that filmmakers have tried to tackle for generations. Fincher took it on because technological advancements of digital video have made it possible to finally do these sort of aging effects justice. He succeeded and there is no doubt the effects are stunning. No one will be surprised if this cleans up in the visfx categories, but I do have to say that I was not a big fan of the digital cinematography. The most beautiful scenes are the ones shot by Tarsem on film during a travel interlude towards the end. They look gorgeously imperfect after watching the crisp digital throughout (I saw it on digital projection and would be interested to know how the film transfer differs). The acting is superb and both Swinton and Blanchett have shots at Oscar Noms. I would guess Pitt is a bit more of a long shot with such a crowded field this year for actor. Last year’s Zodiac may not have been the most entertaining film of the year, but I was so impressed by Fincher’s direction. I left the theater feeling he had not made a single misstep. I wish the same could be said here. The flashback narrative device is distracting (those fluorescent lights in the Hospital made me cringe) and the digital effects for the vignettes bothered me too. Why go so heavy handed with these techniques when you have such strong material? Take all those bells and whistles out and you have probably one of the best stories ever told on film… except, without the film.

The trailer for new snowboarding flick from Brain Farm, That’s It, That’s All makes the movie look more like Planet Earth than your typical Mack Dawg affair. Judging from the 2nd hardcore trailer on their site, it might just be clever editing. Regardless this flick looks ridiculously sick and the line up of riders is about as good as it gets. Ohh, I hope Santa brings me this bad boy.

Nice spot Oliver.

One donkey Xmas video deserves another. Hey how bout a sequel guys?