1953

1. Shane (George Stevens)
2. Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller)
3. Niagara (Henry Hathaway)
4. Roman Holiday (William Wyler)
5. Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
6. Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder)
7. From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann)
8. Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati)
9. Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
10. I Vietlloni (Federico Fellini)

Vitajex

Here is one of the most stunning sequences I’ve ever seen in a motion picture... the Vitajex commercial from Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. It’s a film I’ve been thinking about more and more as the political season rolls on.

2005

1. Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan)
2. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
3. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
4. A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
5. No Direction Home (Martin Scorsese)
6. Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney)
7. Caché (Michael Haneke)
8. Sin City (Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez)
9. L'Enfant (Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
10. Munich (Steven Spielberg)

I'm pretty sure I'm missing something.

2002

1. City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
2. Signs (M. Night Shyamalan)
3. Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese)
4. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson)
5. The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman)
6. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson)
7. Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes)
8. The Pianist (Roman Polanski)

9. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)

10. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)

Here is Ramses 2002 top ten list.

1960

1. La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini)
2. The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
3. Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
4. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
5. L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
6. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
7. The Time Machine (George Pal)
8. The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman)
9. The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges)
10. Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks)

I tried chosing a random year to do a top ten. I came up with 1960. I'm sure I'm missing some great titles.

Irvin's Top Ten

My friend Irvin has decieded to post his top ten starting from 1993 though 2007. Check it out.

I think I'm going to try a year.

High Times

Palin Time

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is far from qualified to be Vice President of the United Sates of America. McCain’s pick for VP is a cynical and insulting choice. It’s hilarious watching GOP foot soldiers on the cable networks bend over backwards defending her.

The Return

I’m going to start posting again on the old blog pretty soon.

Kon Ichikawa Has Died

Japanese director Kon Ichikawa has passed away at the age of 92. A long life well lived. Check out Tokyo Olympiad, The Burmese Harp, and his masterpiece Fires on the Plain if you haven't seen them yet.

Quick Notes: Lars and Charlie

Craig Gillespie's Lars and the Real Girl is a film that could have soared but by the end is only “pretty good” in my opinion. The film is sometimes maddening because you wish they would have fleshed out certain scenes and sequences… play them out for all their worth. Still, the film very much worth seeing.

Ryan Gosling continues to prove that he’s one of the best actor’s of his generation with a performance that truly carries the film. Casting any other actor other than Gosling in the role of Lars might have been devastating to the picture. Gosling brings a certain weight and sweetness to the role than could have been turned into a stereotypical lunatic.

I also had the opportunity yesterday to watch Charlie Bartlett. The film starts out pretty fine but quickly beings to wallow in sloppy writing and fucking awful characters. The suicide of one particular character is handled so badly that you wonder if the scene wasn’t shot by a child.

It can be missed.

Roy Scheider Has Died

One actor I’ve always looked forward seeing in movies, Roy Scheider has passed away from cancer. You’ll of course remember him from The French Connection, All That Jazz, and Jaws.

The world seems a little less cooler now.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Roy Scheider, a two-time Oscar nominee best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie "Jaws," died Sunday. He was 75.

Scheider died at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said. The hospital did not release a cause of death.

However, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.

He was nominated for a best-supporting actor Oscar in 1971's "The French Connection" in which he played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman and for best-actor for 1979's "All That Jazz," the autobiographical Bob Fosse film.

However, he was best known for his role in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film, "Jaws," the enduring classic about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers and well as millions of moviegoers.

Widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, it was also the first movie to earn $100 million at the box office. Scheider starred with Richard Dreyfuss, who played an oceanographer.

"He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call 'a knockaround actor,'" Dreyfuss told The Associated Press on Sunday.

"A 'knockaround actor' to me is a compliment that means a professional that lives the life of a professional actor and doesn't' yell and scream at the fates and does his job and does it as well as he can," he said.

In 2005, one of Scheider's most famous lines in the movie _ "You're gonna need a bigger boat" _ was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from U.S. movies.

That year, some 30 years after "Jaws" premiered, hundreds of movie buffs flocked to Martha's Vineyard, off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, to celebrate the great white shark.

The island's JawsFest '05 also brought back some of the cast and crew, including screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel that inspired Spielberg's classic. Spielberg, Scheider and Dreyfuss were absent.

Dreyfuss recalled Sunday a time during the filming of 'Jaws' when Scheider disappeared from the set. As the filming was on hold because of the weather, Scheider "called me up and said, 'You don't know where I am if they call.'

"He'd gone to get a tan. He was really very tan-addicted. That was due to a childhood affliction where he was in bed for a long time. For him being tan was being healthy," Dreyfuss said.

He added that Scheider "was a pretty civilized human being _ you can't ask for much more than that."

Scheider was also politically active. He participated in rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a massive New York demonstration in March 2003 that police said drew 125,000 chanting activists.

Scheider had a home built for him and his family in 1994 in Sagaponack in the Hamptons, where he was active in community issues. The oceanfront house featured five bedrooms, four fireplaces and various decks and porches.

Last summer, Scheider announced that he was selling the home for about $18.75 million to singer-songwriter Billy Joel and was moving to the nearby village of Sag Harbor.

Daniel Day-Lewis: Classy Guy

Ice Cold

I love the cold weather of Michigan. It’s my zone, my playground. When I walk outside to get the mail, I feel like the Green Bay Packers playing on Lambeau Field. Don’t get me wrong, I look forward to warm weather in the spring and summer, but you get so used to breathing in ice cold air, it’s becomes a part of your everyday existence.

Casey Shot Jesse James

How did Casey Affleck got put into the supporting category during award season for his brilliant work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford? He is clearly the lead in the picture. At least they recognized him anyhow, I guess.

Heath Ledger Has Passed Away

MovieDan82: So young
Irvin Malcolm: I know.
Irvin Malcolm: I'm bummed out right now.
MovieDan82: depressing
Irvin Malcolm: He has his whole career ahead of him.
MovieDan82: the films he would have been in...
Irvin Malcolm: I know.
Irvin Malcolm: He's a great actor.
MovieDan82: unlike other actors who have died, he really did have a strong body of work
Irvin Malcolm: One of the best of his generation.
Irvin Malcolm: He might get a posthumous Oscar nomination next year for The Dark Knight.
MovieDan82: I wouldn't be surprised at all.
MovieDan82: his work in Brokeback Mountain will always be legendary

xzackbowerx: im just kinda in shock
MovieDan82: I know!
xzackbowerx: i cried dude
xzackbowerx: b.c it was like
xzackbowerx: the joker just died today

MovieWes99: Heath Ledger is dead
MovieDan82: I know
MovieDan82: so shocking
MovieWes99: yeah
MovieWes99: can't believe it

Your Daily Diablo

Lives of the Super Strong

I’m addicted to the new version of American Gladiators. Maybe it’s the campy warriors who defend foam pyramids week after week from villainous challengers hell bent on proving that God was wrong in creating the mighty gladiators that draws me in?

Titan

Lord Titan is easily the strongest of the gladiators. To even consider beating him is a hateful act. Titan only loses when told to by producers.



Crush

Undefeated in Joust, this smoking hot ex-cage fighter is only a few months younger that I am. She is also a Myspace friend.

Wolf

In promotional videos we’re told that Wolf has been fighting “men and animals” for his entire life. Rumor has it that before each match, Wolf is repeatedly kicked in the genitals by the other gladiators to charge him up.

Run Jason Run

Cinema is King on the Jason Bourne films.

"I felt out of the loop with the Bourne trilogy and all of the people who just love them. I saw the first film when it first came out on dvd and I thought it was just "ok" nothing more and nothing less. I remember that I tried to watch the 2nd film a couple of times on cable and I just couldn't get into it. I just couldn't get why people loved them so much.

So, after seeing The Bourne Ultimatum get so many rave reviews and get on so many peoples top ten lists, I became curious in checking them out. I wondered if I really was missing out on things and because of this I got all 3 films and decided to see them all over the course of 2 days. I can now happily jump on the bandwagon who love these films."

Hamburger Phone + Juno = Love

At the beginning of Jason Reitman’s Juno with all of it’s hip dialogue and quirky characters, you smell blood in the water. You’re thinking the film will be crushed by the weight of it all, but something happens as the seconds roll on… it becomes about something. Juno is one of the few films I know of that treats teen pregnancy, or just pregnancy in general in an honest fashion. I know it may be hard to see at first with all of is quirky artifice, but it’s there I tell you.

While everyone are on their A game in the film, the very best performances are by Ellen “Tiny Dynamo” Page and Jennifer Garner. Poor Garner is overlooked in the reviews I’ve read by Ellen Page, probably rightfully so (she‘s that good!), but she really deserves notice for a bringing alive a character that that we initially don’t like but come to really love as the picture progresses.

Ellen Page is on fire in the picture. By the end of the film you want to put her in your pocket and protect her from the cold. Cute as a bug!

Page sells Cody’s dialogue with ease. It could have turned into disaster in the hands of another actress with less talent for delivery. There is a fine line between hip and overindulgence. A much harder performance to pull of than Julie Christie’s very good performance in Away from Her.

The criticism I’ve often heard about Juno concerns the dialogue by screenwriter Diablo Cody.

“I am sick of people thinking they know what teenagers are. It's BS. For some reason, everyone now classifies teenagers as the jocks/preps or the social outcasts who are funny because they're quick witted. That's ridiculous! I am a teenager, so I do have a pretty good opinion on this. No one I have ever met talks like that. I wish people would stop writing these awful movies about people they don't understand. You really want to know the best teenager movie I've ever seen is? This is the point where you stop reading because you are going to go nuts over what I am about to say. Seriously, stop reading. You won't be able to handle the truth and will make a crack at my maturity...But the best teenager movie that actually does relate to people is Superbad. Yeah, I know...Superbad, but seriously that is how people talk. And guess what? They wrote that when they were teenagers. So, tell the whores to stop writing awful screen plays and let real writers do the work. I don't want any more crap from people who just don't understand what they're writing about.”

Some viewers point out like this one from IMDB that sixteen year-old girls don’t speak like the character Juno and certainly they’re right, but what they fail to grasp is that Juno obviously takes place in a hyper pop-reality much in the same way Charles Schultz approached his comic strip Peanuts. If you want reality rent a documentary. In no way is Reitman and Cody striving for teenage realism, but they are going for an emotional truth, and a lot of Juno rings true.

Juno is one of the best films of 2007 and deserves all of it’s accolades.

Lunch With David: Saoirse Ronan

Saoirse Ronan deserves a Best Supporting nomination for her work in Atonement.

Scopitone Rising

Punch-Drunk Love plays a lot better for me now than when I originally saw it when it came out. I was inspired to re-watch it because my friend Ramses sent me an interesting article about the film from Senses of Cinema. The other factor that inspired me to revisit Punch-Drunk Love is the hoopla over the release of Paul Thomas Anderson new film There Will Be Blood.

Punch-Drunk Love is flawed by it’s very nature. The flights of fancy and whimsical moments in the film still throw me off, though I admittedly enjoy them. It’s also rather strange to see Adam Sandler so vulnerable in a motion picture. It’s still his career best.

A worthy film in a great auteur’s filmography. Punch-Drunk Love is the first film where Paul Thomas Anderson has abandoned his homage’s to Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese and announces that he will only be influenced by himself.

Class Act

I’ll admit it, I’m very jealous of my friend Evan right now. He is taking an introduction to cinema class right now at college and gets to watch masterpieces like Stagecoach and Modern Times in a classroom setting.

David Lynch on the iPhone

Maybe the greatest thing I've ever seen.

End of the Spears

Irvin Malcolm: what is she on?
MovieDan82: no fucking clue
Irvin Malcolm: I think it's undiagnosed, out of control post-partum depression.
MovieDan82: Joker gas?

Go Iowa!

Today is the Iowa caucus for both the Democrats and the Republicans, the first shot in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. At this point it’s anyone but Mike Huckabee for me. I shudder at having a “Pastor-in-Chief” at the White House. While personally not a fan of organized religion, I could careless what a candidate’s beliefs are. I do have a problem though if your beliefs are all your running on.