Some Kind of Mazzaro World

Ok everyone (all five of you) so begins the countdown of my favorite flicks from 2000-2009. A couple of quick housekeeping notes before we go on.

• These are nothing but what I feel the best films are from 2000-2009. The films I feel are the most relevant, lasting, entertaining, and valuable films of the last ten years. What I think is merely the funniest film of the last 10 years is probably not on this list. The film I’ve watched more than any from the last 10 years might not be on this list. But these represent what I feel the BEST 25 films of the last 10 years are.
• Andrew Brenner should be counting his down too. Definitely check his out. He has taste, ours just doesn’t always overlap. Check his out as well if you are so inclined.
• We (as in Andrew and I) will be counting down five each Wednesday, with the final five on Wednesday Dec 30, 2009.
• I still plan to return to my countdown of my top 100 favorites of all time at some point in the next decade. Be on the lookout.
• These posts are written with the intent to preserve the key aspects of the story of the films as spoiler-free if you’ve not seen them. Feel free to read if you haven’t.

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Continuing with “the list” here are numbers 80-61.

And don’t forget to check out Andrew Brenner’s list. He’s getting prolific with this stuff.

No more ado. Here we go.

NUMBER 80 – L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997)

Here’s another film like The Royal Tenenbaums that is just perfectly put together. The casting is almost a dream, and the performances are fantastic (Kim Basinger in an Academy Award winning role, plus Russell Crowe, Guy Peace AND Kevin Spacey all shine.) Director Curtis Hanson must be independently wealthy—he’s only made 4 films in the decade since L.A. Confidential. Either that or he put all he had creatively into this one. Either way, this film is alive. The sets and set decoration capture a vibe of 1950’s L.A. leaping right out of stock footage and the pages of pulp magazines and tabloids (it should come as no surprise that Hanson based a ton of what he did visually on old videos, photographs, and postcards.) But seeing those scenes come to life with actual, three-dimensional characters, and one heck of a well-imagined thrilling story, is just icing on the visual cake. To me this film is a masterpiece because the story works so well you don’t even notice everything else that went into the film technically, and yet you can really appreciate it merely for the technical aspects as well if you choose to (the DVD notably has a “music only” audio track, the only such track I’ve seen on a DVD.)

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Bored with our final semester of law school, Andrew Brenner and I decided we’d create, and post, our top 100 films of all time lists.

Our undertakings will be different, though the goal is the same–amass a list of the 100 films that mean the most to us. I won’t speak for the criteria Andrew is using to make his list, but I can speak the criteria I’ve used.

-These are the films that mean the most to me.

-These are the films I find the most impactful-both on cinema and my life.

Good Film/Movies/Cinema is a rewarding experience for me.  I get just as much entertainment from a well-written, well-made drama as I do from laughing the entire time at Will Ferrell movie. So this list isn’t necessarily full of movies I enjoy on a sheer entertainment level. A movie is just as likely to be on this list for messing with my head for weeks after seeing it, challenging the way I view the world, or being one of the best in a genre as it is just for making me smile. Not every legendary film is going to make my list because some of them just don’t mean as much to me. This whole exercise is subjective.

All this is to say, Anchorman just missed the list. Sorry.

So without further ado, here’s numbers 100-81. The rest will be revealed, 20 at a time, in four additional posts. Don’t forget to view Andrew’s list as well. I think you’ll get a glimpse of how two people with very similar tastes can sometimes view things very differently.

The list begins after the jump…

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MyHeritage face recognition – celebrity matches – MyHeritage.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

YouTube – Danny Boy.

Note to Vince Offer. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape…

PITCH OFF!

YouTube – Billy Mays calls out Vince on the Adam Corolla Show.

Testing Video Embed

YouTube – M. Ward Chinese Translation.

Took these notes stream of consciousness as the brackets were announced. I reserve the right to change my mind, probably at least 45 times between now and Thursday at noon.

-A gift to Arizona to keep their streak. Awful road team. No really big time wins. Playing horribly. KY is probably in based on this bullshit.

-BC’s gotta be hating seeing USC there. You’d much rather see a sinking 10 than a rising one.

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I’ll be updating a lot more frequently. Carry on.

(contains spoilers)

Somewhere around the midpoint of the newly-released second installment in Director Christopher Nolan’s brilliant reimaging of the Batman film series, Gotham City DA Harvey Dent urges Gotham citizens to look at the chaos and despair around them with the mindset that it’s darkest before dawn. If this is true, even as dark as this film is, there’s probably more darkness in store for the caped crusader in chapters to come.

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