Friends

January 6th, 2010

11:40 pm - Distractions
Last night I properly christened my kitchen; that is to say, I set off the smoke detector, which I have now done in every apartment I've lived in in New York, with the exception of my first place, in which I ate nothing but leftover takeout and cereal for a year. I was cooking pork chops with "2 Tbsp. oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat... until browned, 3 to 4 minutes on each side." I'm a fundamentalist when it comes to recipes: I don't improvise, substitute or deviate. I CERTAINLY do not double, triple or halve. Cooking, for me, is like lab, or that wonderful field trip in middle school when we did a simulated space mission at the natural science museum in Houston and I got to carry out step-by-step directions on index cards. That was my favorite part.

I realize that for many people, cooking is an art, and they do it to relax. I do it to relax, too—I like following instructions, which is why I like Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft. They're quest-based. Shopping list, hit list—give it to me and I'll get it done. I'm a goal-oriented person, you see, and checking off a task is tremendously satisfying.

This is not to say that I'm organized or disciplined. It's ironic that I've wasted so much time playing Flash-based time management games (Carrie the Caregiver Crossroads Part 1: Carrie's Country Jam is my current obsession) and The Sims 2, where I micromanage every aspect of my little neighborhood. But I guess that's the nature of escapism. We crave what we lack, and sometimes we settle for minor, meaningless victories while avoiding the larger, thornier, less easily navigable mission of real life.
Current Location: United States, New York, W 76 St, 301-399
Current Mood: [mood icon]

weird
Current Music: "Reckoner [Nosaj Thing remix]" - Radiohead

Tags: frivolity

writergrl

08:30 am - Brrr.
19 degrees? In North Carolina? Really, Mother Nature?

It's been so cold here lately, I just can't even believe it. I know a lot of people love winter the way I love summer: they like sweaters and snow and wind chills and all that. Frankly, I just can't even imagine. I just look at our wireless indoor thermometer, which tells you more than you would ever want to know about what's happening, and will happen outside--the temp, what it actually feels like, what it will do tomorrow and the next day and the next---and I just close my eyes and think about this:

Five months from today, I'll be there. That's not so long, right?
*sigh*

In other news, although I've never been much of a Food Network person, we caught the first episode of Worst Cooks in America the other night, and I have a feeling we'll be watching the entire series. Not just because we've been more and more into cooking lately---I'm trying enchiladas from scratch for the first time tonight, wish me luck---but also because it makes me feel that much better about my own kitchen skills. I mean, I am no Top Chef. Last night I made a cook-in-bag meatloaf with a packet of seasoning mixed in, and potatoes and carrots scattered all around it. With bottled gravy. Hello, 1970 called: they want their dinner back. But at LEAST I can put together a meatloaf. Some of these folks couldn't do more than mix up a can of soup and put some cheese over the top. It's like when I used to watch My Super Sweet Sixteen to feel like I was a good, decent person, at least in comparison to some of the behavior showcased there. See, TV CAN be good for you!

Finally, today the guy is coming to hook up our internet and phones and stuff over at the new office. I can get a decent wireless signal from our modem, but I have to say, it's been REALLY nice to not have a phone over there. I mean, I have my cell if my babysitters or anyone needs me, but not having the hear the home phone ring, over and over, all afternoon....it's priceless. I'm thinking I might just get the line active, but then not put a phone in. At least not yet. For so long, my working/writing life has been completely intertwined with my home life: I write as dogs bark and babies cry and doors slam and UPS comes and goes, making dogs bark more. And it's a good thing, because I now know that I CAN write under just about any circumstances, even total chaos. But not having to? It's nice. I walk up those stairs, open the door, and....silence. Ahhhh. Yeah. I think I'll skip the phone. Because I can.

Have a great day, everyone!

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January 5th, 2010

05:48 pm - Psyched Ost
Being a wannabe writer in New York has its pros and cons. Inspiration really is everywhere: Beauty, comedy and tragedy are readily available, and eavesdropping is inevitable. There are plenty of bohemian cafés with free wi-fi to help you look the part. But living in a city with a disproportionate percentage of aspiring artists means that everyone falls into the bottleneck. Squeezing through it requires talent, quite a bit of luck, and an inordinate amount of will. One of my biggest obstacles is insecurity, because 1) I seek approval and hate disappointing others, 2) I'm still working on convincing myself that writing is a valid career choice and 3) hello, Asian. Actually, all of these things probably have to do with being Asian. On the one hand, being neurotic makes me feel more like a real writer. But it can also douse the ignition I desperately need to open up Final Draft and start typing. The reasonable part of me knows that no one is looking over my shoulder, but sometimes it's hard to believe that I can keep up with whatever's on all the Macbook screens around me.

anyway413 and I are resuming our mid-week coffeehouse meetings. Today we are at Ost Café, which Annie accurately describes as "a TV version of the East Village." Everyone here is wearing muted layers and staring intently at sleek white Macbooks or charmingly dog-eared Dostoyevsky books. As I entered in my giant brassy puffer from a Taiwan bargain bin, asked for an iced macchiato (which the barista gently corrected to "iced latte," since hot foamed milk + ice = does not compute), gingerly picked my way past the Nicks and Norahs to the lone available lounge seat in the corner and pulled out my 2007 Dell Inspiron (They're Boxy, But They're Good!), I could ~~imagine~~ feel the silent judgment and disapproval. -1,000 HP (Hipster Points)

I temporarily switched to a Plus account so that I could add a customized mood theme, so now there are ads on my LJ. Valerie Bertinelli is grinning at me. It's bolstering to know that if the indie kids don't want me, someone's got my back!
Current Location: United States, New York, E 12th St, 441
Current Mood: [mood icon]

intimidated
Current Music: Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes | Powered by Last.fm

Tags: autobiography, ohsoemo

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02:42 pm - Ten years in the making
I see a lot of bad movies. More than a lot of people; not as many as someone who gets excited about Richard Gere movies or romantic comedies with Kate Hudson. If you think in terms of percentages, I think I actually do pretty well. But to me, as a part-time critic, a willingness to see bad movies is important, because if you're afraid to spend the time to see something that you might not enjoy, you start to shut yourself off from a range of experiences. You can learn a lot by disliking a movie and figuring out why that's happening.

Even movies I dislike tend to fall more into the category of mediocrity of disappointment than outright awfulness. I think about the last few movies I saw and didn't much like -- Crazy Heart, The Lovely Bones, Nine -- and realize that despite their many, many flaws, they at least had performances or ideas that I found somewhat entertaining or interesting, enough to keep them off of worst-of-year lists or, worse, a list like the one below.

Sometimes lists like this are pure, unproductive snarkiness, often aimed at pretty obvious targets. One of my least favorite types of criticism to read is the negative review that simply conjures up elaborate (yet for the purposes of criticism, vague) metaphors describing not the movie, but its degree of badness. My purpose in sitting down and figuring this stuff out is twofold: to figure out why I hated these particular movies when so many bad ones merely inspire a shrug, and to exact a sort of petty revenge on some movies where I didn't just feel disappointed or let down by trying to explain, however briefly, why you should probably not even watch them while channel surfing on a Sunday afternoon.

The 50 Worst Movies of the Aughts

1. Dirty
It feels a little silly to pick a movie that I'm pretty sure no one else I know has ever seen, but I saw this wannabe Training Day indie (with Cuba Gooding in the Denzel Washington role!) at a screening and I can't recall ever wanting to leave a movie more than I did that day. I wrote a scathing capsule review for the L, but it couldn't quite capture the depth of this movie's empty, obnoxious, faux-nihilist posturing about corrupt cops and life on the streets. I would honestly rather watch any of Gooding's horrible-looking slapstick freak-outs than see any part of this movie ever again.

2. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
Ah, the early aughts, when marketing departments firmly believed that no movie's problems couldn't be solved by a convoluted title featuring a colon. I saw this by myself at the Virgin Megastore when its basement movie theater (anyone else remember that?) was second-run instead of closed; it seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to enjoy a movie where Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu played Spy vs. Spy. I still felt ripped off. Ballistically ripped off!

3. 88 Minutes
I've written a bit about this awful, awful Pacino-led direct-to-video-level thriller.

4. Shark Tale
Future DreamWorks movies will forever get undeserved bonus points for not being Shark Tale, the most craven and ugly of their marketing strategies animated by computers. They still haven't laid off the time-and-money-wasting technique of packing their movies with pointless celebrity voices, but at least now they tend to get a lot of comedians, as opposed to assembling an all-star yet utterly mismatched and wan-sounding roster of Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, Renee Zellweger, and Jack Black for a dopey mob-comedy story that's nowhere near funny enough for adults, yet also probably completely boring for children.

5. Revolver
Here's my DVD review. If anything, my rating of two out of ten was too kind.

6. Transamerica
Granted, Felicity Huffman's Oscar-nominated performance as a transsexual is perfectly fine, especially given the awful material and that the character, as written, is not particularly interesting. But I hated just about every minute of this sitcom-ready road trip, and hated it more for wasting a good performance in a sea of cheap melodrama and cheaper comedy.

7. Trust the Man and The Holiday
Except for a few masochistically accepted review assignments, most of the movies on this list got me to see them because I legitimately though there might be something for me to enjoy. This is particularly true of a movie starring David Duchovny, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Billy Crudup, and Julianne Moore, but hopes for a simple Woody Allen knockoff get shot to hell when the characters open their mouths for some of the worst supposedly pithy casual-conversation dialogue I have ever heard. Julianne Moore is married to the writer-director; I can't fathom why the other three are there. Similarly, the unwittingly poisoned pen of Nancy Meyers stabs Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Jack Black, and Kate Winslet straight through the heart in the interminable soft-focus nightmare of The Holiday.

8. Pearl Harbor
No worst-of list is really complete without Michael Bay, but the sheer wonton destruction he's brought to movies like Transformers or even Bad Boys II assures that I can't in good conscience claim not to have enjoyed parts of them, as awful as they are. However: no such problems with Pearl Harbor, a hilariously misguided attempt to remake Titanic in his own witless, racist, flag-waving, sniggering image.

9. The Order
Marisa was afraid that this list would be stocked with movies she wanted to see; that's so not the case, and her worst-of-whenever list is probably way more stocked with crap I insisted that we check out. But her fears were founded mainly on her wanting to see The Order, a supernatural thriller starring Heath Ledger from 2003 that I've long held as one of the most boring movies I've seen in a theater. After Ledger's death, it seems worse, because in retrospect it wasted an even greater percentage of his time and talent. But hey, at least I got a review out of it, in which I successfully peg Ledger as more of a serious actor than a matinee idol, but underrate his talent. I blame the latter on the movie, though.

10. From Justin to Kelly
OK, no one thought this movie was going to be good, but it's kind of amazing just how bargain-basement lousy it turned out to be, or that they actually went ahead and released it into theaters, where Marisa and I totally saw it, using some movie cash that I, no joke, found on the ground on the way to the subway.

11. Amy's Orgasm
Not porn! I'd wager a lot of porn is more entertaining than this indie movie, another one probably no one has seen. I'm pretty sure there were writers on Ain't It Cool News claiming this was a cute, observant little sex-centric romantic comedy, which sounds like a good idea, a much better idea than listening to an Ain't It Cool News writer. There's little that grates on me more than a poorly written dialogue-and-relationship-based comedy, and this one is pretty fucking poor (pun would be intended if this movie was pretty or had fucking).

12. Pathfinder
Another DVD review for PopMatters yields another beyond-crappy B-movie that I incorrectly thought might've been worth a larf.

13. New York, I Love You
I've gone into this several times as it's one of the most recent movies on this list, but I think it's worth pointing out that while a few segments kinda work, few movies have disappointed me more than this one.

14. Downloading Nancy
As I said in my review way back in '09, no one even downloads anything in this movie. These awful indie sex movies go a long way toward explaining why I liked 9 Song so much.

15. The Musketeer
I definitely didn't see this one alone, and Box Office Mojo tells me it made like $27 million, so I know other people saw The Musketeer, but I barely knew that I saw it until I looked over my records for the decade and remembered, oh yeah, I think this was my most hated movie of 2001. It's a Three Musketeers riff/expansion/reimagining/whatever that tried to bring in Matrix-y fight choreography into things and instead made me think about how that Charlie Sheen version with the Bryan Adams song isn't so bad, probably.

16. Stealth
There are a lot of mediocre summer blockbusters every year; this is the kind that makes me think about how much of something like Jurassic Park III or Van Helsing was really quite enjoyable; basically, it's the G.I. Joe of its time, but at least the latter has Sienna Miller and Joseph Gordon-Levitt instead of Jessica Biel and Josh Lucas (and Jamie Foxx, who is a good actor, but paradoxically a lot less fun in fun movie-star mode). I don't know if you remember, but Josh Lucas was sold to us as a replacement for Matthew McConaughey, which is a ridiculous concept that should get its own worst-of spot. Hollywood basically served us a huge helping of Matthew McConaughey that no one really asked for, and not that many people were eating it, but we were too polite to send it back, and then even though there was still plenty of McConaughey on the table, they came out and served us an equally large helping of Josh Lucas. Now Josh Lucas is sitting on the table getting cold, and they've just placed an order for a big helping of Bradley Cooper. We should really stop eating here.

17. Eragon and Dungeons & Dragons
The fact that Ergaon is basically a scene-by-scene remake of Star Wars isn't really the fault of the filmmakers, since it's based on a book that remakes Star Wars (which sounds even more hilariously awful, since Star Wars, you know, doesn't exactly scream to be experienced in book form). But it's someone's fault that this movie is such a tedious, cheap-looking remake of Star Wars. The D&D movie isn't quite so spectacularly terrible, but they both feature Jeremy Irons in performances that look like they were filmed on a separate soundstage in a single day -- possibly the same day, possibly even the exact same footage for all I remember.

18. Suspect Zero
Marisa and I were just trying to remember what this movie was about: was this the one about the serial killer who kills other serial killer? Or was it the serial killer who can't be profiled because he has no MO? Or was it about the former killing the latter? Or the latter killing the former? The mere fact that I don't remember and don't care to look it up points to how forgettable this movie is, but not how much more boring any movie with Ben Kingsley and Carrie-Ann Moss (remember her? She did Matrix movies and Memento close together, and then I guess she reached the cutoff age for getting good parts?) and Aaron Eckhart, I think, could be this boring.

19. Shrek the Third
Things were already getting pretty whorish by Shrek 2, but Shrek the Third seemed to say, OK, the cat's out of the bag about us not being very good, but we're gonna make $300 million no matter what, so let's not put much effort into this.

20. Chocolat
I understand that Chocolat isn't necessarily a poorly crafted film, and that Johnny Depp plays a gypsy in it, so it can't really seem all that terrible. But there's a sort of faux-confectionary tone to this particular type of "fable" that gets to me. I think it was the New Yorker review that said something to the effect of: this movie takes a bold stand in favor of such controversial issues as friendship and chocolate. That's exactly it: it's not a poorly made movie, but it's vacuous sometimes beyond comprehension. Why did anyone feel compelled to make it? This is also a helpful symbolic representative of every shit movie that Harvey Weinstein ever strong-armed into a Best Picture nomination.

21. House of 1000 Corpses
I see a lot of crummy horror movies, but it takes a true auteur to make one as self-indulgently lame and awful as House of 1000 Corpses and, indeed, Rob Zombie has gone on to make some better (if not quite all-the-way good) movies. But this one is a chore to sit through -- though I do have some nostalgia as it was one of my first semi-professional movie reviews and it generated actual reader feedback! My review, before the days of every website having a comment section, prompted an email from a lady who told me I didn't understand the horror genre or the surreal. I guess that was the problem. Not that this movie is a self-conscious, unscary, uneventful movie that's about 700 corpses short of living up to its title.

22. Kinky Boots and Death at a Funeral and Driving Lessons
Sweet Jesus have I learned to hate third-tier twinkly Britcoms while writing for the L Magazine, even when directed by Frank Oz, who should know better than Death at a Funeral. Sign that Funeral is particularly awful: the trailer for the Neil LaBute (?!) version with an all-African-American cast indicates that it's basically a scene-for-scene remake, yet it manages to somehow look a tiny bit funnier than the original simply by virtue of not being the original.

23. The Skulls
I also see a lot of teen movies, and by the early aughts those were already starting to turn from comedies and romances (which seemed to stem from the Scream retro-horror boom) back into low-grade teen thriller/horror movies. Nothing embodies Cinema Abercrombie more than this secret-society thriller with Joshua Jackson dueling with a fake skull and bones society. Have you ever see The Covenant, which is like The Craft with testosterone? In retrospect, The Skulls is like The Covenant without magic. I fear I may have just lapsed into a secret bad-movie language that only I can decode.

24. Traitor
I fell asleep during this movie despite Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce, and that was after staying totally alert throughout Bangkok Dangerous. I was pleased to hear that Maggie had the same reaction (the nodding off, not the watching Bangkok Dangerous).

25. Better Luck Tomorrow
Before Justin Lin was elected caretaker of the Fast and the Furious franchise, he made this allegedly promising, actually vacuous indie drama about privileged Asian-American kids getting caught up in some Reservoir Dogs type of shit. Unfortunately, the acting and writing is atrocious, leaving only Lin's showy over-directing and the subject matter itself, which I'll grant could be made into an interesting movie by someone who wasn't, well, so interested in Reservoir Dogs type of shit.

26. 2 Fast 2 Furious
Speaking of that misbegotten meathead franchise, none of the Fast/Furious movies are very good, but only one of them tried to make a star out of the charisma-free Tyrese Gibson, I guess by pairing him with the only member of the original cast without any competing charisma: Paul Walker, who says "bro" an awful lot of times for an allegedly serious action movie.

27. The Rules of Attraction
If anyone ever talks about how Quentin Tarantino is just a hack who stole his best ideas from his estranged Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, please, by all means, make him or her watch The Rules of Attraction, one of those movies (based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, natch) that's "about" vacuous youthful degenerates but is actually about the filmmaker's total failure (despite the occasional neat camera trick) to make vacuous youthful degenerates remotely interesting.

38. XXX
Again, not porn, but rather the franchise-starter that wasn't (though it's rumored to get another Diesel-led shot, because this one did do OK business). I actually kinda like Vin Diesel, but this film du Rob Cohen (director of Stealth! And the third Mummy movie!) is only entertaining in the sense that its James Bond TO THE XTREME!!! routine falls so spectacularly flat.

29. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
There are a lot of box office bombs that I think get a bad rap. Not this one, although I do take a perverse sense of pride in my $8 or so going towards its miniscule $4 million and change domestic gross, especially when there's any number of equally crappy-looking Eddie Murphy hits I never saw.

30. Red Dragon
This might be one of the best movies Brett Ratner has ever made; it's certainly among his least racist. But in resurrecting the Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lecter act, Ratner managed to sorta-remake a Michael Mann movie (which I haven't yet seen, which makes it even easier to like more than this one) and also squander maybe the single most talented cast of a bad aughts movie: not just Hopkins, but Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Kietel, Emily Watson, and Mary Louise-Parker. With these actors around but doing next to nothing, mere roteness becomes something worse.

31. Couples Retreat and Four Christmases
The worst thing about these Vince Vauhgn comedies is that not only does Vaughn's presence offer hope of something more in the realm of Wedding Crashers or Old School (both overrated, but at least he's funny in them), but he comes up with these relatable, promising premises himself and stocks them with excellent supporting actors. Collectively these movies sport Reese Witherspoon, Jon Favreau, Kristen Bell, Jason Bateman, Kristin Chenoweth, Robert Duvall, and about four laughs over the course of three hours.

32. The Life of David Gale
Kevin Spacey indulged in a lot of mediocrity-or-worse since American Beauty, but nothing as offensive as this potboiler disguised as an issue movie about the death penalty

33. Casanova
There are a couple of good Oliver Platt moments in this waste of Heath Ledger's time, but otherwise it's just Shakespeare in Love for nitwits.

34. In the Mix
Because filmcritic.com uses a five-star system, I rarely go all the way to the top or bottom: I've given plenty of 1.5 star reviews and a few 4.5, but rarely 1 or 5. In fact, In the Mix inspired my only one-star review so far. It also inspired my first angry email from a publicist when I turned out to be one of about five critics who had a review of the movie ready on opening day (supposedly the press screening I attended was so journalists could write about the movie, but not review it) (my theory: it wasn't supposed to screen for press at all, but then it accidentally did).

35. 3000 Miles to Graceland
Before he retreated into just doing the good ol' dude stuff he likes to do (westerns, baseball movies, etc.), Kevin Costner gave a what-the-hell-why-not performance in this mutant spawn of nineties crime dramas, though it is notable (at least amongst me and Andrew) for spawning the line "he is a couple of guys" (RE: Ice-T's character).

36. The Real Cancun
Maybe if this MTV knockoff that stumbled onto the big screen would have stronger worst-of bona fides if it really did lead to a spate of cinematic reality circuses (ironically, firmly TV-planted The Hills and The City look, at least, far more cinematic than this Real World imitation). But it bombed, sending this non-story of a bunch of college-aged kids on "spring break" (note: most, possibly none, of them are actual students, which means they are not so much on spring break as they are unemployed in a different country) back to footnote status. At least it provided early review fodder in my early PopMatters days.

37. Running with Scissors
I haven't read the book, but this movie, with some decent performances and a few laughs, has the distinction of getting me to hate it at the last possible minute (though it wasn't much good before then). The onscreen text-epilogue informs us that after the events of the movie, Augusten Burroughs "moved to New York City... and wrote a book." That "...and wrote a book," using faux understatement to imply that Burroughs' hardships were redeemed by the creation of this coyly unnamed world-famous masterpiece, might be the single most toxically self-regarding thing I've seen in a movie not written by Nancy Meyers. It turns the whole movie into a ridiculous, redundant origin story for a memoir.

38. Basic Instinct 2
Because the long-delayed sequel to Basic Instinct was finally coming out in 2006, Marisa and I sat down and watched the original, which we'd never seen, and then saw the sequel -- so that's two crap movies Basic Instinct 2 has to answer for. At least Basic Instinct has some nice directorial flourishes.

39. A Sound of Thunder
I have a special disdain for movies that cast Edward Burns as someone who is supposed to be desirable (though I did enjoy Confidence), so I suppose A Sound of Thunder should get automatic points for merely positioning him, awkwardly, as a leading man. I don't remember much about this Ray Bradbury bastardization, except that I'm pretty sure Ben Kingsley is in there somewhere (I assume he spent most of the aughts literally wandering from movie set to movie set on a backlot for days or possibly weeks at a time, and because of his knighthood, no one kicked him out or even cut him from the movie) and that it's one of those sci-fi movies that inverses the winning budgetary formula of District 9 -- A Sound of Thunder supposedly cost about $70 million and looks like it cost about $15 million.

40. A Guy Thing
I guess I shouldn't be so shocked that Jason Lee continues to participate in the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. When he has some facial hair and a decent writer, like Kevin Smith or Cameron Crowe, he can be quite valuable. But his clean-shaven roles have, more often than not, foretold doom in the form of the strained comedy you'll find in A Guy Thing, one of those supposedly good-natured romantic farces that strings together awful setpiece after awful setpiece.

And here are ten more that are less specifically awful and more just generically time-wasting, boring, or inept:

41. One Last Thing
42. Without a Paddle
43. The In Crowd
44. Boogeyman
45. The Great Raid
46. Friday the 13th
46. Mamma Mia!
48. The Replacements
49. Premonition
50. Firewall

Now, a little more number-crunching. Rob often complains, perhaps rightfully, that most of the truly awful movies he has seen were at my behest. However, a quick count of these titles shows the biggest sufferer, at least this decade, to be Marisa, at 24 lousy movies, proving once again that the only thing worse than being my best friend is being in a committed relationship with me. Rob is also outranked, albeit just barely, by Andrew, with four movies on this list to Rob's three. They're both trumped by "alone," which is how I saw eighteen of these non-gems, in case anyone thinks I hadn't been punished enough.

If any of you have movies from the past ten years that you particularly hated, or like movies from this list and want to defend them (I feel like I'm always the one doing the latter regarding other people's hated movies), feel free to chime in.

Tags: my years in lists

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January 4th, 2010

11:59 pm - Ars blogetica
Since I've returned to my normal life, the real challenge of not falling back into procrastinatory habits begins. Trying to develop the skill of self-discipline involves taking one day at a time, surrounding myself with inspiration (a lot of which is YOU, dear readers) and just doing it.

Not every post will be deep or insightful (hah! as you have seen), although I will try not to make them tedious. I write mostly for my own sake, but becoming self-indulgent is nobody's friend. I'm not assigning a mission statement to this blog; I'll log my daily activities if they warrant mentioning, chip in my two cents on political or cultural issues that get me heated, and absolutely use my tiny little Internet platform to fangirl my Obsessions of the Moment. As a matter of principle, as far as I can foresee I will be keeping this blog, and each post, public. This does not mean that I'll be "letting it all hang out." There are other fora, digital and otherwise, for me to talk about the subjects that are For Certain Eyes (and Ears) Only. But I think it's important for an aspiring "Real Writer" not to be afraid to release her work into the wild, where anyone with an opinion can offer an armchair psychoanalysis or a literary critique. I can't be nervous about what my friends will think if I hope someday to have complete strangers read me.

I'll also try not to be lazy on this blog. I'm not exactly slaving over revisions of each entry, but it'd be nice if keeping this blog not only made me a more consistent writer, but a better one. It's like the multiple benefits of fiber.
Current Location: United States, New York, West End Ave, 341
Current Mood: [mood icon]

determined
Current Music: Adam Lambert - For Your Entertainment

Tags: practicum

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03:44 pm - Your years are numbered
A little late with 2009 by the numbers, but here we go:

Movies seen theatrically: 150
And minus various repeat viewings that number would be: 133
Movies I saw as press of some sort: 19
Movies I snuck into: 8 (very disappointed in myself here)
Film and DVD reviews published: 57

Rock shows attended: 23
CDs bought or received: 76
Bruce Springsteen CDs bought: 10

LJ entries: 133
Average LJ entries per month: 11.1

Estimated miles walked: 981
Estimated average miles walked per day: 2.67

Income from writing: $660.00
Income from finding money on the ground: approx. $7.55
Income from selling stuff on half.com: $58.92

Tags: the numbers

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January 3rd, 2010

11:57 pm - Cleaving behind
Today's post is way late because I took a red-eye back to New York, as usual. After ten years I've had a lot of experience saying goodbye to my family at the airport. It's not a matter of tears, more like a slight sense of regret, tinged with guilt in recent times. Mostly I feel bad about putting my parents through the process two or three times a year.

Flying back east, especially in the winter, really slaps you in the face. This morning I sat at a freezing commuter gate for two hours while waiting for a crappy regional jet to de-ice or something (It never fully did. The lavatory was closed because there was no running water and there was no drink service because they were all frozen solid). While sitting there and thinking about the light cardigan weather back in California, I wondered: Why did our forefathers pick this part of the country to settle in?
Current Location: United States, New York, New York
Current Mood: [mood icon]

exhausted
Current Music: "Transatlanticism" (Death Cab for Cutie cover) - Sunday Radio

Tags: autobiography

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09:51 pm - Careful what you unpack
To catch up: after Christmas in Rochester, I came back to Saratoga, Marisa came up, and we hung out for a few days in small-city upstateland. It was nice and not especially eventful. We did a lot of sitting around in people's living rooms: Rob & Sabrina's, Jeff's parents', Chris's mom's. We ate chocolate and bagels and soup and we went to the good Friendly's. We played Bananagrams. We got to go see Avatar again... WITH JEFF (and also Rob and Sabrina). 2009 was a good year for seeing Rob, Jeff, and Chris with pleasing frequency, and for that matter, I saw plenty of Maddie and Stacy, too.

More pictures at the clicking, as usual.

When we got back into NYC, Marisa and Meg and I met up with Rayme and Amanda to see The Lovely Bones, which I vaguely imagined I would read before seeing the movie, but that didn't wind up happening. I was able to approximate the feelings of a fan of the book, though, because it's the type of movie where you can suss out what probably made more sense or worked better on the page (I have no idea if this book was actually good or not, but I'm certain its characters are better-developed, even if the really stupid plot turn late in the movie also happens in the book, which I guess it does). I don't mean to jump on the Peter Jackson hate bandwagon, because really, I love his King Kong remake (way more than those Lord of the Rings movies, which I respect but would feel way more OK about crabbing about) but watching Lovely Bones, it seems like he's really invested in the creepy serial killer stuff and the lush fantastical afterlife stuff. But the former, while creepy and effective, isn't a whole movie, and the latter isn't fully imagined. That second viewing of Avatar was fresh in my head, and Cameron's movie indulges in just as much dorky, borderline Lisa Frank lush imagery -- and without the possible excuse of dealing with a fourteen-year-old's psyche. Maybe it's an aging fantasy director thing, this interest in creating beautiful, brightly colored landscapes. In Avatar, I dug it -- I admired Cameron's total lack of concern in looking "cool" in the Matrix/Terminator sense, and going for the crazy color palette and unapologetic rainforest crunch. In Lovely Bones, though, the scene-painting feels more like digital playground dithering. There's not a sense of the rules of this "in between" afterlife, and it doesn't feel particularly spontaneous or mysterious, either, which makes the whole thing seem kind of generically dippy, with a lot of barely-symbolic, near-literal symbolism.

Not loving the fantasy side of Lovely Bones wouldn't matter if the rest of the movie -- the part about the grieving family, the part I'm not sure Jackson cares so much about -- didn't seem so perfunctory, disconnected, and just plain gutted. The actors all have their notes to play, but they don't really connect to one another; they all have their token scenes but nothing really flows particularly well. As Marisa mentioned, characters will get these showcase moments that don't mean anything, like the montage of Susan Sarandon's soused-grandma character doing wacky household chores. I'm sure that was more of a combination character development/running gag in the book, but in the movie it does not work. Not a lot in this movie works.

Our first moviegoing act of 2010, after the Felice Brothers show and finally attending Andrew's parents' New Year's Day mincemeat pie party now that it happens in Brooklyn, was catching up with Oscar hopeful Crazy Heart. Jeff Bridges is excellent, as usual, as are Maggie Gyllenhaal and Colin Farrell, as usual (Farrell has earned that "as usual" since he gave up on being a big-deal movie star). They give honest, believable performances, in a movie of almost no consequence whatsoever.

The comparisons to The Wrestler are ridiculous and sort of insulting to that movie, because while The Wrestler is known for its revelatory Mickey Rourke comeback performance, the movie itself is well-written and well-directed, funny and heartbreaking. True to the lame side of its milieu, Crazy Heart is the watered-down country cover of that sort of story: the Bridges character isn't nearly the has-been Rourke's is, nor is he saddled with flaws greater than being an alcoholic. Not to belittle the struggle of alcoholics, but -- spoiler alert? -- pretty much the entire movie comes down to whether he can, you know, stop being an alcoholic and continue to write good songs. This isn't the stuff of compelling drama to me, at least not with this rote telling.

Today the catch-up continued as Sara and I went to see Invictus, Clint Eastwood's Mandela/rugby movie. Eastwood's no-frills, straight-ahead directorial works best on a small scale, so his treatment of a momentous recent event is a little uneven, not in craft so much as development. He introduces a lot of characters and keeps cross-cutting between a lot of short, sometimes perfunctory, reasonably well-staged scenes. But the way the film comes at the underdog sports story from an interesting angle -- framing it as a shrewd bit of political engineering as well as a heartfelt sports victory -- is a canny use of Eastwood's talent for procedure and small moments. I especially dug the very Eastwoody subplot involving Mandela's new security team (with black and white South African members), and of course the emotional payoff is pretty strong, even if there's a few too many slow-mo reaction shots.

Now it's back to regular life. Cushioning the blow is how many January junk movies I'm pretty excited to see: Daybreakers, Youth in Revolt, The Book of Eli, Legion... even the romantic comedies have Kristen Bell and Amy Adams. I'm thinking this 2010 business might turn out OK. And with that, here's the Christmas card photo we'd send to you, world, if you were all our parents.

Current Music: They Might Be Giants - (She Was A) Hotel Detective In The Future

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urbaniak

05:47 pm - Exciting new blog!
Inspired by this post by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds. Ladies and Gentlemen of the internet, it's time to Analyze Glenn Reynolds' Body Language.

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writergrl

07:30 pm - New Year, new schedule?
Okay, so I'm updating on Sunday again, mostly because I have a bad case of...well, the Sundays. You know that dread you used to feel when you were a kid---or maybe it's not just kids, but that's what I remember it from---the night before a new school week began? Like, just kind of letdown and stressed. I think a LOT of people are feeling this way, and not just today, if the behavior I've seen around town the last couple of days is any indication. People just seem grumpy, over the holidays, and ready to move on. I was at a restaurant this weekend and my waitress was clearly in a mood, which for some reason made me be that much more effusive. (Hello, therapy!) Anyway, she plunked our drinks in front of us and I said, "Thanks so much!" and she just grunted and walked away. This was after someone beeped at us for no reason and another salesperson just saw us walk in, then let out this big sigh and went back to whatever she was doing on the computer.

People: I hear you. This is my least favorite time of year. I mean, it was sixteen degrees this morning, and it's not supposed to warm up for an entire week. It's been my experience that you just have to buckle down, endure, and things DO get better. But, um, usually not until late February. But don't think about that! I'm trying not to.

In other news, we had a very nice New Year's here, low-key with good friends and good food. I managed to stay up until midnight for the first time since Sasha was born, and of course totally regretted it the next morning when she was up bright and early at 5:50. Dear God.

Someone told me years ago that whatever you do on the first day of the year, you do all year long, so I've always been really careful about what I do on January 1st. Which means that normally, I make sure I write, work out, and eat well. This year....well, I just wanted to sleep. So 2010 might be a kind of slack year for me. But if the whole first-day-whole-year thing is true, it will also be a year where I slow down, stop worrying so much about getting ahead every second, and just try to BE. And that is not a bad thing.

Also this weekend, we finally watched The Hangover, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I expected it to be more...I don't know, crude or something, full of naked girls. But it was actually very funny and more high brow than I expected. (But not THAT high brow: it is not The Road, by any means.) Also, I have only before ever seen Bradley Cooper playing a bad guy (Wedding Crashers, He's Just Not That Into You) and while he was no paragon of virtue in this one either, he was awfully nice to look at. See, it's that whole scruffy, big hair thing again!

I'm honestly starting to think I might have a problem.

I hope that you all had a very safe and happy New Year's, and that 2010 is exactly the kind of year you need it to be, whether that's full of writing, or workouts, or naps. Or Bradley Cooper. As for me, I might start making updating on Sundays a habit. Just this little entry has kind of gotten right of my blues. Nice!

Have a good week, everyone!

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slightlyoffaxis

06:55 pm - First post of 2010!
So, I've been on vacation for the past two weeks, and it's been great. During my time off, I…

…checked out the new joint in the neighborhood with Jesse, and found out he was good at keeping a straight face when I said that I was sad about missing out on Vampire Weekend tickets when he had a pair waiting in my stocking.

…moved into my old bedroom for a week. My mom says she doesn't mind having me around the house, but I think she's probably happy to have her nest empty again. As is custom, we had the Feast of One Fish on Christmas Eve, went to the movies and ate Chinese food on Christmas, and tried to figure out how to use the self-timer on my camera, which takes a couple pictures in a row so you can get different poses (which, if anything, hurts the quality of our photos rather than helps).

…exchanged gifts, regifts, Secret Santa gifts, and more with the various branches of my family. There's lots of good news floating around there, and it's very exciting.

…jaunted up to Saratoga for home-cooked meals, Friendly's, Herzog/Nolan movies, Bananagrams, Rock Band, and Avatar the Second (…with Jeff). Also, it was very cold.

…celebrated New Year's Eve with a floor picnic of Cuban food and a trip to Southpaw to see the Felice Brothers. It was a fun show, because the band was jaunty and the crowd with super into it without being too obnoxious. It also ended in a on-stage love fest.

…ate mincemeat pies (and learned that they're made of fruit, not meat at all) and lobster rolls on New Year's Day, because I'm fancy.

…saw some movies, including The Princess and the Frog, Sherlock Holmes, The Lovely Bones, and Crazy Heart. I realized that I never posted what I thought about the movies from November or December of last year. Oops! I guess posting them now would be a good kind of wrap-up for 2009 movies. Here goes: The huge round-up of ( movies I saw in November and December. )

Tags: holidays, live music, movies

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January 2nd, 2010

05:48 am - Arresting development
Tonight my family went to the movies for the first time in a while. We went to the two-dollar cinema (just like the old days, adjusted for inflation) after a day that began with oatmeal at home, driving up to Newport Beach to hang out at Fashion Island, an early dinner at my parents' favorite Taiwanese eatery in Irvine and browsing comics and magazines at Barnes and Noble.

Just like the film we saw, Where the Wild Things Are, our first day of the new decade looked like kiddie stuff but was much better appreciated through the enlightened experience of adulthood. Instead of two parents trying to keep a lid on simmering tension while looking for activities to keep their kids entertained all day, our family outing was structured around looking for experiences to share: showing our parents the funhouse hilarity of Photo Booth in the Apple Store (naturally, my mom immediately asked if there was a "look younger" effect), pointing out a pretty sunset or holiday decoration to take pictures in front of, ordering food someone else would like. It may be normal to enjoy spending time with your folks less as you get older, but my family's never been functional. Today my parents were noticeably gracious to one another not for my brother's and my sake, but for their own, and for Christ's sake (literally). We're a family of late bloomers in practically every sense of the word, and I'm thankful for it.

To apologize for the Hallmark Sunday Night Movie, an anecdote from New Year's Eve:

Mom: Daniel, how much did you pay for these lobster tails?
Daniel: $3.99 each.
Mom: That's like four dollars per tail... you paid twelve dollars for four tails?!
Daniel: ...
Dad: ...
Me: It's a good thing you're pretty.
Current Location: United States, California, Carlsbad
Current Mood: [mood icon]

content
Current Music: "Sailing Home" - Karen O and the Kids

Tags: autobiography, ohsoemo

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January 1st, 2010

11:59 pm - Decadence
The number-crunching for my annual stats post will probably have to wait until next week. But good news, it's also a new decade, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, so there's all kinds of Best of Decade lists to keep you busy all month! December is really the month where most people seemed interested in discussing the best of the decade, but even though true perspective on the just-passed year doesn't necessarily materialize at 12:01AM on 1/1, there's something fun about waiting until the decade is really and truly over (unless you count the real and true end as 12/31/10, in which case good luck to you). However, this doesn't mean I wasn't working out my Best Movies of the Decade list for awhile now and won't present it at first opportunity. If you want the full blurbed-up version of the Top 25, that's posted up at the L Mag blog, ever patient with my 2,000-word posts on stuff I really like. I made a full Top 50 for my LJ.

We can fuss over the difference between "best" and "favorite" forever and ever. I'm not sure my number one is my favorite movie of the decade. In fact, when listing my ten favorite movies (unranked), it doesn't place, whereas numbers two, three, and four do. In a way, that made it easier to pick an entirely different number one movie; it felt more objective than deciding between three of my personal favorites. On the other side, there is certainly favoritism here -- towards certain filmmakers, towards certain material (yeah, if you make a really good movie about teenagers, I will probably adore it), toward certain entire teams named Pixar. But I also think highly enough of my taste to consider these movies are pretty fucking fantastic regardless of my personal hang-ups. If we want to talk arbitrary, though, I'll gladly cop to arbitrary rankings. This list is willfully inconsistent with my various best-of-the-year lists (and yet, in most cases I don't feel like those lists should be revised, except once in awhile I do). After the top ten or so, you could pretty much shuffle these around and maybe on different days I would even agree with the shuffled version moreso than I do with this. Also, I cheated a little and made a few combinations that make this more like a Top 52 or 53. But I've futzed with this enough.The short version, right here right now:

The Best Movies of the Aughts
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
2. Moulin Rouge! (2001)
3. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
4. Almost Famous (2000)
5. Zodiac (2007)
6. Ghost World (2001)
7. Brick (2006)
8. Superbad (2007)
9. The Incredibles (2004)
10. Minority Report (2002)
11. There Will Be Blood (2007)
12. Adaptation (2002)
13. Snow Angels (2008)
14. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
15. The Dark Knight (2008)
16. Up (2009)
17. 25th Hour (2002)
18. Children of Men (2006)
19. No Country for Old Men (2007)
20. Memento (2001)
21. Wall-E (2008)
22. The Departed (2006)
23. The Prestige (2006)
24. A.I. (2001)
25. Kill Bill (2003/2004)
26. Star Wars Episodes II and III (2002/2005)
27. The Brothers Bloom (2009)
28. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
29. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
30. The Squid and the Whale (2005)
31. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
32. Big Fish (2003)
33. High Fidelity (2000)
34. Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
35. Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
36. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
37. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
38. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
39. Millions (2005)
40. Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Batman Begins (2005)
41. Lilo & Stitch (2002) and The Emperor's New Groove (2000)
42. In Bruges (2008)
43. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
44. A Serious Man (2009)
45. Ratatouille (2007)
46. Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
47. About Schmidt (2002)
48. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
49. Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
50. American Psycho (2000)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go wish I was watching all of these at once. And work on my Worst of the Decade list, because that is totally coming.

05:32 am - The mother of all resolutions
We rang in the new year the same way we have the past few: the four of us, Martinelli's in hand, counting down in front of the TV before bowing our heads for a New Year's prayer.

A retirement, a layoff, a new hiring, a few roadtrips, a Parkinson's diagnosis (and misdiagnosis, and adjusted re-diagnosis) and several yelling matches later, we're all wearier but uncannily bolstered in the first few seconds of 2010. Life is tough but, with God's help, we're tougher. My dad's newly limited mobility is not a prison sentence, but a God-mandated sabbatical for personal renewal. My mom's inconceivable expansion of responsibility will not crush her, but instead will teach her the paradoxical freedom of surrendering completely to God's strength. My brother, now only technically the baby of the family, will continue to be a testament to God's ability to cultivate a stalwart anchor root in a silly, dysfunctional garden.

And I am going to be brave. I am going to (try to) do something (finally) about this dream inside me that won't die, this frightening compulsion to create stories and share them with people. To ignore the fear of failure, the doubts over success and, most importantly, the shame of choosing frivolity over practicum. To believe that I can ripple the waves.

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13b-14)
Current Location: United States, California, Carlsbad
Current Mood: [mood icon]

thankful
Current Music: "Each Year" - Ra Ra Riot

Tags: autobiography, ohsoemo

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02:37 am - Just a little red to paint the town
Our NYE plans had a little personnel change, but along with Amanda and Rayme subbing for Derrick and Rachel, Marisa and I and my sister hit Southpaw for the Felice Brothers New Decade's Eve show. It's not quite my ideal of a 12/31 Hold Steady show, but given their folky inclinations, the Felice boys sure come close, especially when the crowd is full of a New Year's level of drunken excitement. Unsurprisingly based on my first time seeing them, they turn out to be a pretty great party/hootenanny band, even if they didn't play "Penn Station." They did play:

The Big Surprise
The Greatest Show on Earth
Love Me Tenderly
Katie Dear
Whiskey in My Whiskey
something else sung by James Felice (real talent!)
River Jordan
Frankie's Gun!
My Only Son
What a Wonderful World
[Countdown!]
Auld Lang Syne
New York, New York
Run Chicken Run
Ballad of Lou the Welterweight
Take This Bread
Chicken Wire
White Limousine
---
Saint Stephen's End
Two Hands (cover of a song I don't know)
another song, probably a cover, about laying burdens down

I dug that little New Year sequence of covers in the middle, there. I also dug "Frankie's Gun!" with a major washboard part, although I think the one-two punch of "Greatest Show on Earth" and "Love Me Tenderly" was probably the show's high point.

So that was that, last rock and roll show of 2009, first post of 2010, happy everything everyone!

Tags: rock shows

December 31st, 2009

wmetoile

12:54 pm - My year in text messages
So. 2009. We hardly knew ye, eh? This year was hardly as momentous as last year, as there were no elections, no graduations, and no Olympics. But damn, did my friends have some babies and plan some weddings. And Usain Bolt set a bunch of new world records! That was great. So, to recap:

Welcome to the world, Evan, Carys, Reid, and Eleanor (both Eleanors. Yes, I know two infant Eleanors).

Congratulations on your love and commitment, Phil and Missy, Jesse and Marisa, Erin and Elliot, Andrea and Frank, Nikki and AJ, Becky and Brandon, Rami and Lisa, Katherine and Mike, Lee and Stu. (GOOD LORD.)

Well done, everyone who's still working in media in New York, despite our vanishing ad market, fickle customers, and miserable managers, because we love and believe in what we do.

Go Tribe. Way to be so much more awesome at sports than UVA and UMD. Please don't pick the pug.

I joined Twitter on Jan. 8 and posted 1,279 nonsensical blurts of 140 characters or fewer. Because that's what I needed, another way to communicate while intoxicated.

My roommate of five years struck out on her own, and I moved into the big, noisy bedroom. And immediately began daydreaming about throwing eggs at people who stand on the sidewalk outside my apartment at 3 a.m. and scream like they're being murdered, except that they are not being murdered.

I copyedited 17 books, four issues of the French magazine, and a whole bunch of Rodale SIPs and bookazines. I got a job blogging about celebrities in a particularly inane way, and also wrote for Sound & Vision, ESPN, and Time Out New York. And then I got this staff job, which ought to make my cousin/accountant much happier in March. Everyone who threw me work this year, I thank you from the bottom of my bank account (especially Kelly, Maggie, Anna, Neil, and Nicole).

And that appears to be it. It was a rough year. But like last year, here's an accounting of my twelve months in text messages.

March 1, 11:30 a.m.: "Woke up on my couch in my jacket & scarf, laying on (a) my phone and (b) my left shoe. Questions?" —Stickles

April 4, 7: 59 p.m.: "Hugh Jackman. On Bleeker. HOT." —Ali

April 12, 3:25 p.m.: "Lame! :) Happy easter, lush." —Stickles

April 24, 3:12 p.m.: "Tiger Woods did it, and everyone knows he's a pussy." —Ali, being strangely prophetic (she was talking about Lasik. Oh yeah, I got my eyes fixed this year. That was AWESOME. Gotham Lasik, friends. Go there.)

April 24, 11:37 p.m.: "I'm at king and queens and wonderful tonight is playing. 16 much?" —Erin

April 25, 8:28 p.m.: "Miami took Pat 44th overall, 2nd round. Really happy for him." —Phil

May 30, 8:51 p.m.: "It is funny because the squirrel is dead. Brilliant. Hope Harry was brilliant as well." —Amanda

July 23, 2:27 p.m.: "Ahhhh! Ahhhhh! Grossness!!" —Stickles (that one's really more about her year)

Nov. 7, 2:08 p.m.: "He is a chubb and he doesn't like to work out. He was always that way, and he's selfish. Must be trying to lead the nation in touchbacks." —Phil

Dec. 3, 11:06 p.m.: "Hey...gettin hitched...thought you'd like to know." (Yeah, that's how my brother told me.)

Dec. 6, 7:42 p.m.: "Heed my warning, Rob Lowe!" —Stickles

Dec. 25, 6:16 p.m.: "Sounds like a holiday movie waiting to happen." 6:18 p.m.: "Will expect the retelling to involve 3D then. Off to real movies now." —Annie, in reply to a mass text about how Ernesto from Roto-Rooter saved Christmas.

Dec. 31, 1:17 a.m.: "Ok...was avatar exactly like ferngully?" —Phil (In response: "Yes. And it is a work night for non teachers.")

I was obviously better at not deleting text messages last year. Maybe in 2010 I'll get a phone with more storage capacity.
Current Location: 19 E 34th St.
Current Mood:

resolve-y

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12:45 am - Last post of the decade
I'm going to try to post every day starting Jan. 1. Wish me luck!
Current Location: United States, California, Carlsbad
Current Mood: [mood icon]

determined
Current Music: Starflyer59 - Old

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12:57 am - A good year
I always have a little trouble sussing out how to unveil my (ultimately trivial) Best Movies of 2009 list; there's often a bit of an issue with version control, as my L Magazine deadline rarely matches up with the actual end of the year, and the actual end of the year rarely matches up with me seeing everything I want to see, which results in several slightly different lists. While there is the usual pile of haven't-seens in the corner, I feel pretty confident that the list I submitted to the L blog, online here, will stand more or less intact. Why? Because, actually, my top ten list has been more or less intact for the past month, as studios seem less intent on holding their best movies for the last few weeks of the year than usual. The blurbs are at the link, along with several runner-up categories for this quite decent year (though I forgot to mention Drag Me to Hell in my quick horror round-up). As with 2007 and 2002, the other stand-out years for this decade, I could've done a top twenty with relative ease.

The Ten Best Movies of 2009
1. Up
2. The Brothers Bloom
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. A Serious Man (review)
5. Where the Wild Things Are
6. Fantastic Mr. Fox
7. Adventureland
8. Observe and Report
9. Star Trek
10. Public Enemies

Ten More I Quite Liked, More or Less in Order
Funny People
Away We Go (review)
The Girlfriend Experience (review)
Mystery Team (review)
Zombieland
Coraline
Avatar
Thirst
Moon
Paranormal Activity

And none of that even includes a bunch of movies I thought were quite admirable in different ways, like Up in the Air or Big Fan or Sugar or Whip It or An Education or The Box or Humpday . This wasn't quite 1999, but it was pretty damn good.

Overrated
The Hangover
The Hurt Locker
Precious
State of Play (review)
Two Lovers

Underrated
Land of the Lost
Knowing
Jennifer's Body
A Perfect Getaway
Year One

The Worst Movies of 2009
Keeping in mind that if a movie looks like something I would truly despise, I tend to stay away from it unless offered a press screening, here are five movies I really disliked, from very worst to slightly less worst, starting with one that may not be a worse ninety minutes than some of its competitors, but squanders the most potential while still managing to be pretty fucking bad in its own right.

1. New York, I Love You(review)
2. Downloading Nancy (review)
3. Couples Retreat
4. Friday the 13th
5. What Goes Up (review)

The Haven't Yet Seen It Corner
This isn't everything I haven't seen, but it's everything I haven't seen, might see in the future (like maybe even this weekend), and therefore stands any kind of a chance with me (though if any of them were really hot tickets, I would've made it happen): Antichrist; Beeswax; Bright Star; Cold Souls; Crazy Heart; Crossing Over; Gigantic; The Great Buck Howard; The House of the Devil; Invictus; The Limits of Control; Management; Me and Orson Welles; The Merry Gentleman; The Messenger; Outlander; Ponyo; A Single Man; Spread; Tetro; A Town Called Panic; Trucker. I'm sure there are others I'm overlooking.

I'll have some decade talk up sometime soon, but it didn't seem right to tackle that without handling '09 first. I'd love to hear your own choices, arguments, dissents, hearty agreements, whatever.

Tags: my years in lists