A Large List Of Movies I Enjoyed This Year (Updated With Canyon's Picks So It's Even Larger!)

Happy New Year, denizens of the internet! The holiday season is over, unhappy workers are returning to their nasty offices, and I'm cleaning the house. But, before I get into the rest of it, here is an absurdly long list that has missed off a million things either because we've not seen certain films that stand a good chance of getting on here (Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Tekkon Kinkreet, Rescue Dawn, etc.), and because I'm forgetful. There was a supporting actor performance this year that I loved but I can't remember who it was now. That's as annoying as later remembering that I wanted to give music of the year shout-outs to Tenacious D's Master Exploder (song of the decade) and Steven Seagal's album Mojo Priest (not the hilarious hubristic disaster people expected it to be; I actually quite like it).

Anyway, here is as complete a list as I can make. Note that the worst film winner is not yet decided. Over the next few days I intend to decide who should win this coveted prize with a Worst Film of 2007 Face/Off special! So stay tuned. Also, I'm hoping that at some point Canyon will include her best and worsts of the year. I'm not 100% sure what her list will look like, though I get the feeling it will be fairly different. I look forward to reading it.

Favourite movies of the year:


1=: Zodiac - A perfect movie about an obsessive quest made by an obsessive perfectionist.
1=: Ratatouille - A perfect movie about a perfectionist and the obsessive quest for perfection.
2: The Bourne Ultimatum - Like being beaten up by a film. But in a good way. Best threequel ever, best action film of the decade.
3: Black Book - Moral quagmires, betrayal, sex, death, twists, violence, blonde women being mistreated by the world but keeping their dignity even when doused in shit. Hitchcock would have loved it.
4: Once - My favourite romantic movie in ooooh, aeons. Lovely soundtrack too.
5: The Darjeeling Limited - Wes Anderson triumphs again! Yeah, I said it.
6: Grindhouse - Sorry to say it, but only the full version gives you the full effect. Fuck you, Weinsteins.
7: Exiled - Johnnie To's gangster masterpiece. The most unpredictable film of the year (other than I'm Not There, but who knows what the hell Todd Haynes was thinking with that).
8: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Possibly the best ensemble cast of the year, certainly the best photographed. Hypnotic brilliance.
9: Paprika - A feast for the eyes, and featuring a heroine that I want to see return in a billion sequels.
10: The King of Kong - Best documentary I've seen since the magnificent Capturing the Friedmans. No other documentary I've seen has made me so angry and so overjoyed. Who'd have thought real life could be this interesting?

Honourable mentions:


I Am Legend
Jindabyne
Hot Fuzz
Superbad
3:10 to Yuma

Honourable honourable mentions (there were a lot of good films out this year):

Gone Baby Gone
The Mist
Sunshine
Transformers
Black Snake Moan

Honourable honourable honourable mentions (I mean, seriously, a lot):

The Lives of Others
Beowulf
Charlie Wilson's War
Knocked Up
The Lookout

Favourite movies released in the US in 2006 but then released in the UK in 2007 and were good enough to get a mention here anyway:

The Fountain, Curse of the Golden Flower

Movies that are not getting included because I need to see them a couple more times before I know whether I was crazy about them or not:

No Country For Old Men, I'm Not There

Movie that I didn't want to like because the director is an asshole but damn it's a lot of fun:


Apocalypto

Worst movie:

To be decided between I Know Who Killed Me and D-War (Runners-up: Bubble Fiction Boom or Bust, Spider-Man 3, Southland Tales, The Reaping, Next)

Most pointless movie:

Ocean's Thirteen

Best actor:

Chris Cooper - Breach / Casey Affleck - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Gone Baby Gone (Runner-up: Will Smith - I Am Legend, Kurt Russell - Death Proof, Viggo Mortenson - Eastern Promises)

Best actress:


Laura Linney - Jindabyne (Runner-up: Gong Li - Curse of the Golden Flower, Carice Van Houten - Black Book, Marketa Irglova - Once)

Best supporting actor:

John Carroll Lynch - Zodiac (Runner-up: Chris Evans - Sunshine / Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Sam Rockwell - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang - Exiled) (ETA: OMG how could I forget! James Marsden's hilarious performance in Enchanted! Easily the best thing about the movie.)

Best Supporting Actress:

Robin Wright Penn - Beowulf (Runner-up: Marcia Gay Harden - The Mist, Amara Karan - The Darjeeling Limited, Sairse Ronan - Atonement)

Most entertaining performance in a bad movie:

Nicholas Cage - Ghost Rider

Worst actor:

Patrick Dempsey - Enchanted (Runner-up: Jason Behr - D-War)

Worst actress:

Lindsay Lohan - I Know Who Killed Me (Runner-up: Amanda Brooks - D-War, Claire Danes - Stardust)

Best hero:

Remy the Rat - Ratatouille (Runner-up: Rachel Stein - Black Book, Paprika - Paprika, McLovin - Superbad, King Leonidas - 300)

Best villain:


Anton Chigurh - No Country for Old Men (Runner-up: Billy Mitchell - The King of Kong, Stuntman Mike - Death Proof, Anton Grubitz - The Lives of Others, Mrs. Carmody - The Mist)

Worst hero:

Ghost Rider - Ghost Rider (Runner-up: Elizabeth Swann - Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Ethan Kendrick - D-War, "Jack" - D-War)

Worst villain:

Thomas Gabriel - Die Hard 4.0 (Runner-up: Venom - Spider-Man 3, Doctor Doom - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Evil General - D-War)

Biggest badass of the year:

Zoe Bell - Death Proof

Best Director:

Brad Bird - Ratatouille (Runner up: Paul Greengrass - The Bourne Ultimatum, David Fincher - Zodiac)

Worst Director:

To be decided between Chris Sivertson - I Know Who Killed Me and Hyung-Rae Shim - D-War) (Runner-up: Mark Steven Johnson - Ghost Rider, Richard Kelly - Southland Tales, Lee Tamahori - Next)

"Stop perving, Grandad!" director of the year:

Mike Nichols - Charlie Wilson's War. We get it, Mike, Charlie Wilson was a big perv, but that doesn't excuse the leering shots of boobs and butts, nor does it even begin to explain why you cast Emily Blunt and then made her sit around in next to no clothes for five minutes and then not have her appear for the rest of the film. (Runner-up: Michael Bay - Tranformers. Megan Fox is not that hot, so please stop staring at her oiled midriff, kthx)

Best cinematographer:

Roger Deakins - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country For Old Men (Runner-up: Harris Savides - Zodiac, Robert Yeoman - The Darjeeling Limited)

Best sound design:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Runner-up: I Am Legend, Tranformers)

Best visual effects:

Transformers (Runner-up: The Fountain, Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End)

Most improved director:


Danny Boyle - Sunshine. I've always been frustrated by the lionisation of Boyle, whose movies feature pretty shots and no overall coherence or concept of how one shot has to link into another (Michael Bay gets accused of this yet I think he's much better at creating a whole movie than Boyle, and yes, I know that is considered heresy. Whatever!). Sunshine is the first film where he gets it totally right. The whole movie is an perfectly sustained audio-visual assault. He can be proud of it.

Runner-up: Len Wiseman - Die Hard 4.0. I've found Wiseman to be a hack with a bland visual style and little imagination, but even though Die Hard 4.0 shared the same monochrome look of his vampire movies, the action scenes featured some wonderfully imaginative moments, not counting the Jurassic Park 2 rip-off with the car in the elevator shaft. I was very pleasantly surprised. Still got a shit villain, though. Did Hans Gruber have no more brothers?

Most precipitous drop in directorial ability:

Sam Raimi - Spider-Man 3. Jaredan maintains Raimi purposely sabotaged the movie as a screw-you to Sony for making him include Venom, and I can't argue with him. I can't believe someone as talented and conscientious as Raimi could poop out something as dreadful as this. Let's hope he improves soon, as he's still top of the list of directors capable of pulling off The Hobbit.

Disappointment of the year:

Spider-Man 3 (Runner-up: Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End, Eastern Promises)

Most overrated film of the year:

Atonement. Stately, respectable, well-crafted, pretty. It's all of those. It's also empty, features some really dodgy acting, and makes no sense until the final twist comes into play. Then it's all very affecting, but for an hour, the movie is filled with head-scratchers and logical leaps. (Runner-up: 28 Weeks Later)

Most underrated film of the year:

Hot Fuzz. Has none of the respectable cachet of Atonement, but is possibly the most carefully crafted British film in decades. Repeat viewings unearth a wealth of detail and beautiful structure. If only critics loved Point Break and the films of Michael Bay the way they should, they would have appreciated its genius. (Runner-up: Curse of the Golden Flower)

Best comic adaptation of the year:

300. I don't even like it that much, but the competition (Spider-Man 3, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider) is pitiful. Persepolis is almost certainly going to be better, even though Marjane Satrapi is not really a comic writer/artist, more like a writer who draws the odd picture.

Best schadenfreude:

The Brothers Affleck prove to a sceptical world that they are awesome, to the massive happiness of myself.

Best comeback of the year:


Aaron Sorkin's screenplay for Charlie Wilson's War was his best in ages; smart, funny, irreverent, and only a bit pompous. It went a long way towards making up for Studio 60.

Best action scene of the year:

Jason Bourne vs. Desh - The Bourne Ultimatum (Runner-up: Autobots and humanity vs. Decepticons vs. a city - Transformers, motoring ladies vs. Stuntman Mike - Death Proof, Viggo's genitalia vs. hitmen - Eastern Promises)

Best non-action scene of the year:

Anton Ego eats a meal - Ratatouille (Runner-up: Cops interrogate John Carroll Lynch - Zodiac, every conversation between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz)

Best musical moment of the year:

Marketa Irglova sings on her way back home - Once (Runner-up: Samuel L. Jackson sings Stack-O-Lee to a writhing sweaty mass of people - Black Snake Moan, Justin Timberlake lipsynchs to All These Things That I've Done by The Killers - Southland Tales)

Most WTF ending of the year:

The Mist - I cannot spoil it, and am still not sure whether I liked it or not, but I will say this: once seen, never ever forgotten.

Most bullshit death of the year:

Jazz going out like a punk in Transformers. Okay, so Megatron is five times taller, but still, that was not acceptable. (Runner-up: the various "tragic" moments at the end of Spider-Man 3)

Most wasted actors of the year:

Chow Yun Fat - Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End (Runner-up: Emily Blunt - Charlie Wilson's War, Thomas Haden Church - Spider-Man 3)

Biggest jerks of the Year:

The Weinsteins' decision to block the international release of Grindhouse may have been borne of their fears of financial ruin, but the dismissive attitude they have towards international audiences, and the lack of understanding they have of the movie itself (individually hardly anyone likes the films, but together they are perfect entertainment) is notable. Just remember, next time they push for a film to win an Oscar with their bully tactics, it's got nothing to do with championing the film. They're only in it for themselves.

Best screw-you of the year:


Kurt Russell mouthing off against the Weinsteins at the Cannes Film Festival. Just like Snake Plissken would! Now go appear in a bunch of movies next year because you are so awesome, okay?

************

Canyon's Mostly Redundant End-of-Year List

Though you might have caught on that Admiral Neck is very fond of end-of-year list-making, I myself am not. I do love reading other people's lists, I have to admit, and I appreciate the opportunity to step back, think about the year as a whole, and organize your thoughts. The problem for me is that I often don't feel there are ten movies made every year that I will remember and really love as time goes on (the same goes with books and music and tv shows -- most years will produce maybe three or four of each). With most movies I enjoy in a given year, "Oh yeah, that's a good movie" is the first thought that springs to mind when I think about them later -- not "Wow, what a haunting, life-changing masterpiece that was."

I get that it's probably the same for everybody, but I feel wrong memorializing merely good movies in a top-ten list when they probably won't matter much to me in the long run. I guess this is kind of unfair to the very good movies I leave off, but it's my list and I'll do what I want. Also, Admiral Neck and I have very similar tastes, so I mostly have the same movies on as he does, and I liked all the other movies he mentioned mostly as much as he did (except The Darjeeling Limited, because I have been burned by Wes Anderson too many times and refused to see what was by all accounts another dollhouse whimsy-fest). Okay, enough clearing-of-throat preamble: my seven favorite movies of the year (I could stretch this to ten, but I feel a bit wrong doing it, so I won't).

Top Seven

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford -- One of the most gorgeous movies I've ever seen (the visuals in the train-robbery scene will stay with me a long time); the comparisons to Terrence Malick are apt, but this film is no rip-off (as if that would even be a bad thing). The narration was moving and elegiac and wonderfully literary, the pace was perfect, many scenes were incredibly haunting (especially the fantastic ending), and Casey Affleck needs awards shoved between his tiny Chiclet teeth immediately.

Ratatouille -- I adore The Iron Giant but was disappointed with The Incredibles (apparently I was the only person on earth who was), but this movie had Admiral Neck and I sobbing like little babies. I would have cried more if we hadn't been in public. Gorgeous animation, wonderfully funny, with a turn by Peter O'Toole that made me choke up over a discourse on the role of critics. That's some writin', Brad Bird! And damn you, by the way, for making me cry more at your movies than even one of Joss Whedon's.

Zodiac -- Another one that stayed with me for weeks afterward. A meta-comment on obsession that was scary, funny, thought-provoking, and ended perfectly.

(Note: All three of the movies above are what I'd consider the haunting-masterpiece variety.)

I Am Legend -- Yeah, I said it. I think the movie was very unfairly derided as being a typical Will Smith flashy blockbuster, a sci-fi FX-extravaganza with no brain and no heart. (And it almost was -- Admiral Neck got hold of the original script, and it's absolutely terrible, and the kind of movie you can imagine would have been perfect for Michael Bay [he was previously attached to direct].) Instead, it's a quiet, thoughtful, incredibly moving meditation on isolation and loneliness, and the main character's slow descent into madness. I don't often agree with Salon's Stephanie Zacharek (though I love reading her reviews), but I think she was mostly on the mark about this one. I don't agree with the complaint I've often heard about the ending -- I think it flows very well with what came before, and while I think the God stuff and the very end were missteps, those aren't the moments that stayed with me. The shots of a deserted New York are incredible, the action set-pieces are brilliant, and I haven't been able to get some scenes out of my mind since I saw it. There might have even been more sobbing during this than during Ratatouille (though I blame Admiral Neck for being a big crier himself and dragging me down with him).

Once -- My favorite musical of the year (though who knows if Sweeney Todd would have bested it; that doesn't come out here till January, thanks distributors!!!!!). Wonderful performances, beautiful songs -- I went on about it earlier this year so won't belabor it, but it was absolutely lovely.

3:10 to Yuma -- The second-best Western of the year -- perhaps a bit too neatly wrapped up at the end, but that's kind of what I liked about the ending, that even though Russell Crowe's actions are seemingly out of character, they make perfect sense in the context of the movie. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but I loved the symmetry of it.

Grindhouse -- Planet Terror was a perfect spoof -- mocking grindhouse movies with hilarious accuracy but incredibly clever in its own right. Death Proof wasn't a grindhouse spoof by any stretch of the imagination -- it was more of a Tarantino movie badly filmed and scratched up -- but it was brilliant in its own right (people moaned about it, but would they really want two back-to-back straight spoofs?).

Black Book -- Straight up Verhoevenly goodness. In Dutch!

Best Coen brothers movie I've seen, but which still left me a bit cold: No Country for Old Men

Movie I thought I'd hate and, much to Admiral Neck's gloating joy, I really, really liked: The Bourne Ultimatum

Favorite bad movie: Ghost Rider, mostly because of the weird character quirks Nicolas Cage adds to his performance

Biggest disappointment: Eastern Promises (I loved History of Violence and consider it one of those elusive masterpieces, so it was a huge disappointment to find that this barely felt like a movie)

Movies I liked but am a bit ashamed to admit to: Music and Lyrics, Hairspray, Transformers (and potentially Dan in Real Life, as it's supposed to be a lot better than the mawkish trailer makes it seem)

Movies that would probably be on my list if they came out in the UK in %#$($# December like they should have: Walk Hard, There Will Be Blood, Juno, Sweeney Todd, Into the Wild, Away From Her, National Treasure 2: Book of Seeeeeecrets, No End in Sight

Things I learnt today (Oct 16th 2007)

1. Michael Clayton opened in the US last Friday, and box office pundits are shocked and horrified to find that it failed to secure the number one spot. IMDb said:

Michael Clayton, which had been the odds-on favorite among movie pundits to win the weekend box-office crown, not only didn't finish in first place -- it didn't even make third place, as studio estimates had initially indicated. Clayton, it turns out, earned $10.37 million, putting it slightly behind the crime drama We Own the Night, which took in $10.83 million. Equally surprising to some writers was that the film that did top the box office charts was the low-budget Why Did I Get Married, from writer-producer-director Tyler Perry. The film raked in $21.35 million, about twice the earnings of The Game Plan, which placed second with $11.04 million.

Really? This is surprising? I'm psyched that Gorgeous George is committed to making challenging, intelligent, adulty films (not counting Danny Ocean's European Vacation and Danny Ocean and the Amazing Xeroxed Plot From Two Films Ago), and grateful to him for having that ambition, even when it doesn't quite work out: Good Night, and Good Luck was a terrific hour of cinema with an extra pointless 20 minutes bolted onto it. Wow, making even the mildest criticism of Clooney makes me feel like I'm kicking a handsome and debonair puppy. I'm sorry, George! Good Night looked beautiful! And it was really well cast! Please don't hate me! Anyway, Syriana was good enough for two films, so it evens up.

Sadly, his smart, liberal, humanist movies tend to make very little money, and even taking into account the often limited release, the audience for these films is large enough to make the odd small profit, but not big enough to make waves in the turbulent box office waters. Solaris only made $14,973,382 in the domestic market, and $30,002,758 overall. It would have to sell a shitload of DVDs to make up the rest of the budget. Syriana did a lot better, with a worldwide gross of $93,974,620, but it had an opening weekend of $11,737,143. Not earth-shattering. That said, it only opened on about 1500 screens, and Michael Clayton opened on 1000 screens more, but the fallacy is that the relative, small-scale success of his smart movies can be expanded when released on a larger scale remains.

I remember noticing this error years ago, when big and successful action movies (usually those produced by Joel Silver), would often gross around £100-120m, domestic box office. No matter what the budget, the final figure was often the same (and significantly less for the failures). No-brainer jokey action movies would often top out at the same number, but budgets were busted chasing a finite audience. Sure, there were variations from that; Lethal Weapon 2, 3 and 4 could top that (by about $30m), as could the Die Hard movies, and Terminator 2 broke that barrier and then some, but they had a wider appeal. Bog-standard action movies had a fixed audience, and trying to get bigger box office by spending more money was foolish.


You had to appeal to people outside that box to do it. It wasn't just spectacle that made Terminator 2 such a hit; it was the message of hope within it (and the CGI, which drew oohs and ahhs of amazement from the audience when I saw it. Ah, the 90s!). In today's money, the same holds true; Bad Boys II and The Rock, for example, both stopped at about $140m, and Con Air and Gone In Sixty Seconds made $100m each. In the end they're profitable, but the larger the budget, the smaller that profit. It's science. Or maths. Whatever.

So yeah, putting Michael Clayton on more screens and pushing it with more publicity was not going to work. SmartClooney has a fanbase, and they came out this weekend, probably grateful for the release of something meatier than family comedies starring a wasted The Rock. But that's the ceiling for these movies. So why did pundits miss this? And why the hell did they think the new Tyler Perry movie would make less money?


I know very very very little about these things, but right now that guy guarantees boffo box office (yeah, I went there). His films cost a few cents and make around $50-60m each time out. His opening weekends are between $20-30m. His last film opened bigger than this one, in fact, so why would this one not be a big hit? Did they really think the Tyler Perry bubble had burst? He's not going anywhere any time soon. So anyway, I have learnt that box office pundits can often make terrible gaffes, and I have also learnt that the international gross of Diary of a Mad Black Woman was $19,104. I doubt the new film will be appearing in our local Vue any time soon. I'm sure the studio would love to up their take by releasing his films internationally, but I get the feeling they have no idea what the hell Perry's appeal is, so how would they be able to market it? Best to just let it make the modest money it is, rather than admit his unusual shtick perplexes them. (Almost all of the figures here are from Box Office Mojo.)

2. I may love Institutionalised by Suicidal Tendencies (which I first heard on the stunning Repo Man soundtrack many years ago), but playing that shit on a plastic guitar while sleep-deprived like I did this morning can actually cause you to get so addled you might actually end up actually literally instititutionalised, for realsies. It may have snapped my brain right down the middle. Now all I can see when I close my eyes are the coloured dots of Guitar Hero II, relentlessly descending, forever falling, like day-glo blobs of concentrated hand-cramp juice dropping into my eyes. It's a miracle I can type anything other than "Bzzzzt", because of all the rhythm-game induced mind-static. But I cannot stop until I better my score. Is crack this addictive? I doubt it's as entertaining.

3. Two reports on immigration were published yesterday, and while the left wing press focussed on the positive, the right wing press, predictably, concentrated on the negative. This is, of course, nothing new, but yesterday I found out that the reason the paper prints such skewed garbage is that Paul Dacre and his vile minions know for a fact that the core readership of the Mail is obsessed with Anti-Logic. This letter is, I promise you, absolutely real.


I have it on good authority that the majority of letters sent to the Mail offices are even more insane than the ones that make it into the paper, but this one must have slipped through. Oddly, there is no evidence of this mountain of work on the internet. Someone should tell this guy that he can publish his staggering, world-changing work on the internet, where it will be lauded and coveted for the rest of time. I mean, what did Einstein ever do for us, other than pull that funny face they keep putting on posters? Screw you, Einstein. Go back to the patent office and shuffle your papers. Did you ever make all of life's intrinsic paradoxes perfectly rational? No, you made them worse! Overrated big-haired jerk.

4. ZOMG NEW LOST PHOTO!!!


What's going on? What does it mean? Is that the cockpit of Oceanic 815? Desmond has resurfaced? How did they get so far into the island since the season 3 finale? Where's Hurley and Jin? Is that writing above the windows of the plane? Why does the clapperboard guy look so pissed? Is he working for The Dharma Initiative? If not, why doesn't he realise he's a lucky son of a bitch to be working on the best show currently on TV, even though it's not actually on TV right now? And what's going to happen with new cast member Andrea "Rescue Me" Roth? She's just been hired to play a therapist, according to TV Guide. I guess she's situated off-island. If she was on the island she'd have been dealing with multiple daddy issues, which would be even less fun than being repeatedly slammed into the ground by Ol' Smokey.

5. Viggo Mortensen is a fascinating son of a bitch, and I can't wait to see Eastern Promises.

Mortensen plays a mobster working for a Russian gang in London, and to hone his portrayal he travelled to Moscow, St Petersburg and the mountain villages of the Urals.

He refused to take an interpreter, relying on gestures and his own facility for languages - he speaks Danish and Spanish fluently and can get by in four other languages.

“I know everyone was a little bit worried because I disappeared for two weeks,” he said. “They said I should have someone go with me into the underworld, but the whole point was not to get a filtered version of what Russians do and what they’re like.

“I just wanted to draw my own conclusions. I met a lot of people and talked to them. I met people who had experiences in prisons and understood more about street slang. They helped me tweak some of the dialogue.

“Then I found someone who had a car and he took me into the countryside and to these villages. There I saw how these mobsters looked at each other and how they lived. I also drank a lot of vodka.”

It was not until the last day of his trip that his cover was blown. “A little boy started staring at me, then he pointed and whispered, ‘Aragorn?’”

All this and his Amazing Flying Balls of Doom. Counting the days until it comes out.

6. The cook in the canteen where I work is the worst cook in the world. I ended up with a piece of peri-peri chicken that oozed blood when cut into, and after taking it back and having it cooked for a while longer (15 minutes), it had brown skin but pink flesh. I'm amazed I'm not doubled over in agony right now. A colleague bought some scrambled eggs, and they were off. Yesterday this guy made baguette halves with oily, droopy roast vegetables and nuclear-orange cheese. Just thinking about it is making me woozy. Time to start bringing sandwiches in again.

7. Studio 60 just arrived on UK terrestrial Channel 4, and I see that the oleaginous praise has continued. As we've said before, it's not so much the praise that bothers us (everyone is, of course, entitled to their own opinion) [Hold on there -- the praise definitely bothers me, and if you like the show, your opinion is wrong -- Canyon], it's the relentless carping that it failed because the audience (i.e. everyone who watches TV who isn't a fan of the show) killed it. They mean you, if you're not watching it. And if you are watching it, you're not watching it enough! You should be transformed by it like someone rising from their wheelchair at Lourdes, and then you should badger all of your friends and families into watching it. If you're not walking down the high street wearing a sandwich board showing a picture of Danny and Matt treating their womenfolk like teeny tiny toy people who should just damn well shut up and worship their glorious alpha male genitalia, then you are scum! SCUM!!! Much to our amusement/horror, we saw that Andrew Mueller was up to his old tricks at the weekend:

West Wing auteur Aaron Sorkin's series set in the milieu of a late-night chat show is possibly the greatest example of a show out-clevering itself. As well as being a superior soap opera, an intelligent comedy and a brilliantly acted ensemble piece, Studio 60 functions as an insidious critique of a televisual culture in which anything intelligent is hunted down and killed by the agents of mediocrity - as Studio 60 indeed was, cancelled by its network inside its debut season. These first two episodes, which have finally landed on terrestrial, are a tantalizing hint of what's to come.

If he thinks TV is so bad now, how about this 70s gem, from The Laurence Welk Show:



In comparison, I think we're doing okay nowadays. Yes, there is a lot of crap on TV now, and networks are run by craven cowards with no understanding of counter-cultural ideas. We get that. However, there's good stuff too. Someone please hand Mueller (and several other UK TV critics) a few boxsets. Veronica Mars, Friday Night Lights, Arrested Development, everything by Whedon. Then you have the shows on cable: Battlestar Galactica; The Daily Show; The Colbert Report; all of the shows on the HBO roster. There is a point to be made that there isn't enough biting satire on US (or UK) TV, or enough investigative journalism, but it's not like there is no important, worthy work on TV, and besides, Sorkin making obvious points in his risible Studio 60 sketches is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Plus, it was often as emptily jingoistic as a Fox News broadcast, which was either Sorkin speaking from the heart or an attempt to placate his network masters in order to get more "subversive" stuff into the show. Like Crazy Christians. So much for Sorkin's supposed moral courage.

Mueller and his ilk are right; the medium that is TV has an enormous hole in it, and Studio 60 tried to fill it. We will always need intelligent daring comedy and brave satire. But Studio 60 was. not. that. show. Which is why it was such a painful, frustrating, upsetting failure. Dear God, I have to let this go or I'll go crazy. It never seems to end!

ETA: I can't stop watching that Laurence Welk clip. Flap those arms in the xenon-rich air like you and your robot helper just don't care! Then kick, Bobby and Cissy! Kick! Kick! Spin! Flap! Kick! Interpretive brilliance. Why was Spielberg so eager to get an Oscar for all those years when this superb tribute was out there? That's just ungrateful.

Okkervil River Is My New Favorite Band (And A Rant About Studio 60)

The A.V. Club did an interview with Will Sheff, who, despite looking a bit (oh, how do I say this without being offensive? No chance, I’m going for it) special, seemed like an intelligent and interesting person (he used the word “quixotic”! And said he liked movies! That’s generally enough for me). I’d never heard of the band, but we promptly downloaded* their latest album, The Stage Names. It is excellent. Filled with references to pop culture and its effects on people’s lives, it’s incredibly catchy, melodic, mostly deceptively-upbeat-sounding stuff, indie folk/pop/rock done with intelligence and wit and a real ear for hooks that get stuck in your head. Of course, I wouldn’t be a real critic unless I dubbed it a new ridiculous sub-genre – let’s call it “meta-rock.”

That’s a crappy-sounding version of the first single, “Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe” – the sweeping sound references 80s pop songs with a discordant, desperate twist, though the genius of it is the racing heartbeat of the drum (though you can't hear it very well on that version) and the song’s frantic crescendo. The second track, “Unless It’s Kicks”, may be even better – a rollicking, uptempo kick in the gut. The lyrics again deal with the influence of pop culture on the characters’ lives – in this song, the narrator asserts, “What gives this mess some grace unless it’s kicks, man / unless it’s fiction / unless it’s sweat or it’s songs?” And later:

And on a seven-day high, that heavenly song
punches right through my mind
and just hums through my blood.
And I know it's a lie, but I'll still give it my love.

Ouch. But Sheff isn’t simply condemning the fact that we tend to view our lives as if they were movies or songs; he hits on the feeling of hearing a song you love and instantly feeling like the world has expanded into something joyful and glorious (even though it takes a song to [perhaps artificially] create that feeling, and it only lasts for four minutes). It’s incredibly odd to hear a song that talks about that feeling while actually giving you that feeling, and it makes my brain hurt, so I’m going to stop talking about it for the moment.

I suppose unsurprisingly, it turns out Sheff used to be a critic – this page has links to a bunch of his old articles. Looks like he’s got pretty good, if slightly pretentious, taste, though his attack on soft rock is a bit harsh – poor old Peter Cetera. Why pick on such an easy target? Does he have something against bouffants and soft-focus lenses? (And I’m sorry, but some of his songs are great, and I don’t mean that ironically – I get genuine pleasure from them, partly because they remind me of my childhood and how much I loved them then. “I am a knight who will fight for your honor”? How much of a curmudgeon do you have to be not to find that strangely wonderful? [And with that I realize I’ve now become a character in an Okkervil River song.])

I do find it a little disconcerting to read Sheff’s articles, though. When’s the last time you saw a critic rocking out on stage? It’s not right – they’re supposed to be detached and thoughtful, with their pipes and their monocles and their big books full of words, not hot-blooded and full of ketamine (with the exception of Michiko Kakutani, obviously). It’s a little embarrassing – like watching one of your teachers sing Grateful Dead songs on an acoustic guitar. I suppose I’ll have to get over it, though, because they’re playing in London in December and we’ve got tickets. I suppose to be really obnoxious, whenever they finish a song, I could shout out, “B plus! What it lacked in precision it made up for in enthusiasm! WOOOOOO!!”

*While trolling YouTube, I found a clip of Sheff talking about deciding to be a musician and saying that it was worth it even though he doesn’t have health insurance (!) and last year he didn’t have a place to live (!!!). Oh god, the guilt. I’m really tempted to go out and buy the album, though I will probably end up rationalizing the guilt away by convincing myself that buying the tickets gave them more money anyway (okay, 20 pounds, but, um, the exchange rate is really good). Usually, like any music fan, I’m happy for bands I like to stay obscure, but in this case I really hope they start getting more famous. They certainly deserve to.

+++++

And Now, A Rant

By now we all know that Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was poo. Where Aaron Sorkin was once clever and inspiring, writing fiercely intelligent and funny characters, he became hackneyed and insipid, recycling plotlines from his better days (badly, I might add) and writing characters who were either thinly-veiled versions of his crazy-for-Jesus ex-girlfriend (Harriet Hayes), supposedly ridiculously smart while never actually demonstrating this beyond being able to rattle off obscure statistics (um, everyone), or versions of himself (Matt Albie – I would say “slimy, massively arrogant, ridiculously unlikeable versions of himself,” but it appears this would be redundant) or his partner in crime, Tommy Schlamme (the absolutely odious Danny Tripp – and I cannot mention this without giving a shout-out to Television Without Pity, who said they were disappointed he hadn’t named the character Danny Schlanny, which made me laugh for half an hour [btw, Joe R.’s recaps were often the only reason we even bothered to watch, besides horrified fascination]). But I’m going to stop criticizing it now, because if I don’t, I will run out of internet.

Unfortunately for denizens of the UK, it’s time for them to be endlessly patronized about commedia dell’arte and Bush’s bad behavior during 9/11 (yes, the show actually goes back in time to lecture us. Thank god it didn’t get a second season, in which Matt and Danny would time-travel to Nazi Germany learn how evil Hitler was). It just started showing here a few weeks ago, to massive, slavish adoration from the journalists here, who apparently have never gone on the internet, because they are completely perplexed about why such a stunning example of show from infallible genius Aaron Sorkin would get cancelled by those awful money-hungry studios! They just didn’t understand his brilliance! To which I say, You lazy, incompetent little shits – it would take you two seconds of googling to find out exactly why it was cancelled – because it was shit.

It made me angry to read those articles, with their willful ignorance and their slavish devotion to Sorkin (they didn’t even bother to get anyone’s opinion other than his about why it was cancelled – I wonder if maybe he would be, I don’t know, biased?). This leads off into a subject for another day – the UK media’s shoddy reporting on American shows and movies, their simultaneous disdain for American media and the fact that they have to admit that it’s often better than what’s created here (at least in terms of TV shows and movies – though it will usually be with the tag “it’s good…in an American way”), and their love of anything coming out of it perceived to be intelligent (like Sorkin, which is why he is so ridiculously overpraised – he’s not like most Americans, because his show is about how bad American TV is!).

Aaaaanyway, I came downstairs this morning to find that the Admiral had scrawled a furious note in the Guardian Guide – the weekly TV guide from the Guardian, arguably the best paper in England (though notably filled with snobbery about American culture). Andrew Mueller, one of the reviewers, has been reviewing Studio 60 since it began six weeks ago – he praised the pilot, but foolishly we laughed and said that it would be funny to see his assessments get more negative as the show went on. Three episodes in and they were not – instead he was rambling about how mobs with pitchforks should have been storming the studios demanding that the show not be cancelled. Okay, we thought, well, the third episode wasn’t that bad, though alarm bells were starting to go off (notably with Danny’s rant about how cocaine addicts don’t hurt people [he was a former cocaine addict himself – I know, eerie coincidence!! Another eerie coincidence? Aaron Sorkin was a cocaine addict! OMG, this is freaky!] – no, only drunk drivers do that, and of course cocaine addicts are sedentary because we all know cocaine is a depressant).

We decided that the show didn’t become truly awful until the sixth episode – which has plotlines where the cast learns about how awful the blacklist was (really awful!), where we learn that the only black character on the show had a childhood straight out of Boyz N the Hood (this is after he rails against stereotypical “black people versus white people” comedy), and we learn that another character’s Midwestern parents are so ignorant of culture that they don’t even know who Abbott and Costello were (since when has the Midwest not been hooked up to electricity?), but they do know that their son is wasting his life on frivolous comedy while his brother, the war hero, is – get ready for it – STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN! It’s so incomprehensibly awful I can’t even express it.

But guess what Andrew Mueller’s reaction is?

The more of this we [we?? I sincerely hope he’s using the royal we] see, the more it seems appropriate to disdain from summarising the spectacular virtues of Studio 60 in favour of suggesting imaginative punishments to be visited on its American proprietors, who canned it. This week: feed them to hippopotamuses. [My suggestion: feed Andrew Mueller to Hiphopopotamus from Flight of the Conchords.] Anyway, tonight’s episode, with an Eli Wallach cameo, is another eruption of auteur Aaron Sorkin’s singular genius. In between adroitly perpetuating the internal soap operas, this thrillingly tours Sorkin’s signature obsessions [i.e., the things he writes about in a TV series about a COMEDY SKETCH SHOW]: American political, cultural and military history, and the clash between the country’s liberal and conservative impulses.

RAGE!!! And you thought I was exaggerating about the media’s circle-jerk of praise! I think the Admiral’s reaction sums it up best: he circled the review in pen and then wrote “FUCKING ANDREW MUELLER!!”

That’s about right.

CSI: Miami primer

I'm sure anyone following the CSI: Miami tags on this post will already know everything they need to know about this most unique of shows, but in case you're wandering through here without having experienced it, here is a quick runthrough of the main characters.

Horatio Caine - The Mighty Caruso.
To say there is no other character in modern TV like him is an understatement. He's not even a character. He's a mood. A state of mind. Justice personified. The yin to evil's yang. A one-man pose machine. An enigma. He is of course famous for wearing sunglasses, but does he wear the shades, or do they wear him? The way he stares at them, often from the rear of the frame while everyone else does the actual police work, it's as if he is in communion with them. Do they guide him? If he ever solved a case, we might have to give some credit to the sentient glasses, but as he never seems to actually do any crime-solving other than intimidating perps or blasting hostiles to pieces, it's immaterial.

Calleigh Duquesne - Emily Procter.
Procter's departure from The West Wing, where she was light and funny and likeable, was already saddening, before she decided to turn up here as a humourless, pinched caricature of herself. I always thought of her as a light comedic actress (in a good way), so imagine my dismay when she was cast as a ballistics expert who looks like she's trying her hardest not to break out in a inappropriate grin in every scene. ::sigh:: Whatever. She's getting a big payday, so it's not like it's the end of the world. Plus, every so often she gets to act opposite the excellent character actor John Heard, playing her feckless alcoholic father. Or Foghorn Leghorn in a big hat. It's hard to tell what effect he's aiming for.

Eric Delko - Adam Rodriguez.
Ah, the inept Delko, prone to losing evidence (in an episode that was obviously running 20 minutes short and filled that time with a panicky Delko trying to pretend nothing was wrong), getting caught buying dope for his dying sister, and having outdoor sex with strangers against walls in the middle of Miami. How he keeps his job is beyond me. Perhaps it's his command of Russian, always useful in Florida. Or perhaps it's his incredible knowledge of sports cars and swamp-diving. Whatever it is, it's a good thing he's around. By season 4 Horatio desperately needed someone to stalk, protect from the boogeyman, and/or love, and Delko's cancer-ridden sister fit the bill perfectly. Until the kingpin of a Brazilian drug cartel had her assassinated. Oh CSI: Miami, how I love thee!

Ryan Wolfe - Jonathan Togo.
Brought in to inflate the cast after the death of Tim Speedle (see below), the young man known to Horatio as Mr. Wolfe was promoted to CSI from traffic cop duty after finding a clue. That's a rigorous selection process right there. Perhaps Horatio thought he could mold the man into a copy of himself. It was not to be. Whereas everyone defers to Horatio and respects him (even though he never does any work), for at least a whole season everyone hated Wolfe. His arrogance, snottiness, and ineptitude certainly justified the treatment, not to mention the outrageously pompous way he dismisses Natalia Boa Vista (see below), though that might be a consequence of her not falling gratefully into his arms in season 4. His finest moment, though, has to be getting shot in the eye with a nail gun. I was torn between being sickened to my guts and wanting to write a thank you letter to the writers.

Alexx Woods - Khandi Alexander.
Another employee who really should be let go soon. Not that she's as inept as Delko, but seriously, hasn't someone thought it odd that the Miami Dade coroner has conversations with dead people, and not like in that scary episode of Buffy from season 7? Several corpses have been patronised by Alexx, who refers to the ones she likes as, "Sugah". Other than that, she does very little on the show. Notably, she is one of the few characters who seems able to tolerate Mr. Wolfe, and coincidentally she is the only character other than him to be regularly thanked by Horatio as he leaves the room/crime scene, even if there are other people there. Why be selective? Even hapless Delko deserves to be thanked from time to time, especially if he doesn't contaminate the crime scene, hump a random witness, or accidentally kick evidence into a swamp.

Tim Speedle - Rory Cochrane.
Yes, I know that's not a picture from the show. It's only fitting I choose his greatest onscreen moment to memorialise him now that he's gone to that swish, glass-walled laboratory in the sky. Speedle represented the slob nation on CSI: Miami for a couple of years, before getting into a shoot-out and biting the bullet. His death was caused by a build-up of what looked like Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in his gun, a character quirk that had been set up in a previous season when Calleigh told him off for not taking care of his firearm. Other than that, Cochrane's time on the show is memorable for seemingly being a very uncomfortable experience for him. He looked embarrassed every week, mumbling his dialogue and shiftily glancing off camera as if looking for Richard Linklater to come and save him. And he did! Cochrane then went on to appear in A Scanner Darkly, and in five nervy, rotoscoped minutes he completely erased the memory of his time in Miami Dade. Hooray! If only Aaron Sorkin would stop being crap so that he could save Emily Procter.

Frank Tripp - Rex Linn.
We watched an episode of CSI: Miami last night that was particularly absurd, featuring carbombs and zombies, but it was notable for featuring possibly the first instance of deductive work by Detective Tripp. He picked up a golf club and said it belonged to a man because it was large. It's not exactly Sherlock Holmes, but for the first time he wasn't just relaying obvious information to Horatio (information that Horatio already knows, usually). I was stunned. Poor Rex Linn. He's been a dependable movie tough guy for a few years now, livening up many dubious films, such as Cliffhanger and Cutthroat Island (time to stop taking Renny Harlin's calls, Rex), and now all he does is act as Horatio's secretary. His most bizarre moment on the show was when he suddenly, with absolutely no prior warning, became a racist NIMBY, ranting about floods of Cuban immigrants stealing American jobs, to the immense displeasure of Delko. After almost coming to blows, their differences were resolved in a memorable finale, with Tripp and Delko teaming up to help a Cuban shopkeeper fix up his mini-mart in super-meaningful slo-mo, with Horatio smiling beneficently from the touchlines. I cried!

Natalia Boa Vista - Eva La Rue.
The most recent addition to the team. Prior to that, Natalia was a hastily introduced lab tech who, in a shocking twist, had been planted on the team as a mole by the FBI. I know what you're thinking. Well, actually, you're either thinking you're hungry and Crunchy Nut Cornflakes would go down a treat, or you're thinking, "Why would anyone want to investigate our heroes?" If you're thinking the latter, the answer is that the CSI: Miami team are notoriously inept and corrupt, constantly bending the law while obnoxiously taking the moral high ground against every even vaguely criminal person they come across. Her totally believable transition into a CSI has been hindered by her rivalry with Mr. Wolfe at his most slimy, as well as the reappearance of her evil abusive ex-husband, hilariously released from jail and instantly hired as a crime-scene clean-up guy just so he can keep pestering her at work. The only other things to note about her are that she succumbed to Delko's lumpen sex-vibe, possibly due to temporary insanity brought on by the guilt of being a mole, and she has the biggest Bambi eyes on TV.

Maxine Valera - Boti Bliss.
Where to begin with Valera, played by the delightfully named Boti Bliss? Well, she's a lab tech. And... erm... Oh! There was that one time she accidentally contaminated a bunch of evidence, or something, and she took a leave of absence for a while. Of course, this had to happen during the aforementioned FBI investigation. The picture I've used is from a seemingly anti-glamorous Ultradent promotional gig attended by the cast, which probably accounts for the severely pissed off expression Miss Bliss is wearing. We're only part of the way through season 5, and I'm hoping she gets more to do soon. She's one of the more likeable actors on the show, and so far does little more than relay exposition.

Brendan Fehr - Dan Cooper.
I didn't even know his character's name until I just checked it out on IMDb. Dan is the lab tech responsible for pressing the notorious "Enhance" button when looking at videos (God bless the internet hero who came up with that concept; apologies for not attributing it properly). He can also isolate the sound of a flea farting in a recording of a Korn concert. I totally believe the technology exists to do this. Other than that, I think Wolfe threatened him once when he said something rude about Natalia. You'll have to forgive me for being vague. There has yet to be a point to Dan. I can only imagine he's there because the CSI: Miami producers were jealous of CSI: Original Flavour having Archie Kao as their tech guy. Either that or Adam Rodriguez was doing a solid for his Roswell buddy Fehr.

If you've never watched the show before, hopefully now you can jump in and enjoy the various thrilling shenanigans of our heroes. Truly there is nothing on TV like it. That may seem like an erroneous statement, what with it being a spin-off with its own spin-off, but the other shows are utterly different. It has plowed its own furrow, and as a result is the most watched show on the planet, a fact that never ceases to amaze me. Long may it reign.