He Knew All The Words

On the day after Christmas, my cumare Diane asked me on the phone if I could give an opinion about the best movie of the decade. Little old me? I’ve never had an opinion in my life!

Okay, here goes, my Top Ten movies of the Aughts. Starting with #11. I know, sorry. This is complicated. It’s actually my #1 choice, but it was made in 1999. But it wasn’t released in the US until 2000. In fact, although it played a couple festivals in ’99, it opened in France in 2000 as well. And it’s been included on many best-of-the-decade lists so far. So I’m including it too as Special Prize outside of my top ten for the decade. If it were more clear-cut I’d include it here as #1, and it would certainly be in my top ten for all time anyway:

#1 aka #11: Beau Travail (2000) directed by Claire Denis

Claire Denis’s loose riff on Melville’s Billy Budd is a tension-filled exercise in dance, visual poetry, homoeroticism, and music. It’s slow and wonderful. It’s available on DVD. Rent it for sure.

Okay, the list proper, in reverse order:
#10: Kill Bill, Vols. 1 & 2 (2003, 2004), directed by Quentin Tarantino

The first one made me appreciate graphic movie violence for the first time in my life. It’s a wild cartoonish ride — and with clever, funny dialogue and beautifully choreographed fight scenes. The soundtrack is smart, sassy, and perfectly measured. The second film is more focused on Tarantino’s notable abilities with dialogue, though the fight scenes are also great. And the second one even has its moments of real emotion.

#9: Ratatouille (2007), directed by Brad Bird

A film about an artist. A film about food. A film about Paris. It changed the history of animation.

#8: Far From Heaven (2002), directed by Todd Haynes

Todd Haynes channels Douglas Sirk, and in doing so reaches new heights in his efforts to reveal human frailties, family secrets, the cultural impact of AIDS, and the grotesque humor of societal mirrors.

#7: Lost In Translation (2003), directed by Sofia Coppola

Sad and funny, lost and found. Bill Murray in his quiet mode, Scarlett Johansson in her beautiful mode (always). The whole thing is a whisper, not just the ending.

#6: Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003), Last Days (2005), directed by Gus Van Sant



Yes, I’m cheating. These are three separate films. The 2000s brought Gus Van Sant home to auteur cinema, and these three films — dubbed by Van Sant the “Death Trilogy” — are visual tableaux that eschew plot for mood and character for human presence. Each has amazingly intricate and effective sound design. Gerry shows two men lost in a desert. Elephant fictionalizes the Columbine school shootings, and Last Days fictionalizes the final three days of Kurt Cobain’s life. I recommend all three films highly, but you’re going to need a large screen, a good sound system, a dark room, and some mental silence.

#5: Moulin Rouge! (2001), directed by Baz Luhrmann

You can tell everybody that this is your song. It’s a magnificent opulent tremendous stupendous gargantuan bedazzlement, a sensual ravishment! Ewan McGregor, in a clothed role, made me fall in love with him all over again. And any musical that can use The Sound of Music, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Roxanne, and Your Song in the same movie has my vote. This is a DVD that I’ve watched over and over and over.

#4: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), directed by Wes Anderson

Oh Wes Anderson, how I love you so. This film features a number of actors I love — Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston — and a couple I generally hate — Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller — but I love them all equally in this quirky, dialogue-driven drama that acts like a comedy the whole way. Anderson’s rich, formal visual style makes me want to make movies.

#3: The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007), directed by Julian Schnabel

I missed this one in the theater, and I’m glad of it. When I watched it at home, I cried so hard I had to pause the DVD so I wouldn’t miss parts of it. It’s devastatingly beautiful.

#2: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), directed by Michel Gondry

Finally, a Charlie Kaufman script that doesn’t get bogged down under its own weight! Kate Winslet is perfect in every single movie, and none more than this one! Jim Carrey pulls off a serious role with dignity! And visually, Gondry makes old-fashioned effects seem like CGI. It’s so romantic, so weird, and has just the right touch of sadness to make it affecting.

#1: In The Mood For Love (2000), directed by Wong Kar-Wai

It’s true that I’m in love with Tony Leung. It’s true that Maggie Cheung is one of the most perfect creatures ever to walk this earth. It’s true that Wong Kar-Wai has made a movie that takes us out of our time and out of our heads and sets us down in a slow-motion spiral of color and desire. The movie is perfect.

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So let me make a final nod to 13 more films that made my shortlist, before getting cut in favor of the ten above. In no particular order, the films below might replace some of the films above if you asked me to remake the list another day:

Waking Life (2001), directed by Richard Linklater
The Bourne Trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007), directed by Doug Liman (I), and by Paul Greengrass (II, III)
Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore
Syriana (2005), directed by Stephen Gaghan
City of God (2002), directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
Punch Drunk Love (2002), directed by P.T. Anderson
Before Sunset (2004), directed by Richard Linklater
Once (2007), directed by John Carney
Billy Elliot (2000), directed by Stephen Daldry
The Son (2003), directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
Under The Sand (2001), directed by François Ozon
Russian Ark (2002), directed by Alexander Sokurov
35 Shots of Rum (2009), directed by Claire Denis

At the beginning of 2009 London received a two-foot covering of snow. In the middle of Summer 2009 Jennifer Whitehead sent me this picture. And she saved me the task of writing about this one. In her email she writes:

I keep thinking about Snow Day. Even though it’s the middle of summer and sometimes it’s actually quite hot and sunny, I suddenly remember the brilliance of Snow Day.

England is supposedly a cold country, but it really hardly ever snows — especially here in London. Whenever it does, it’s always pretty exciting, waking up and seeing your street suddenly unrecognisable with its overnight whitewashing. Then the snow quickly melts away, life carries on.

But not this year. We had a proper day of snow. Heavy, blanketing, lovely snow. The buses stopped, so did most of the Tubes. Work and school were off for most people, and it was the most exciting day of the year.

I’d started walking to work when I got a phone call saying I didn’t have to come in. But already in town and with my camera, I decided to keep walking. I saw so many places I’d seen thousands of times but
they were all new and amazing.

The last time it snowed like this in London was 18 years ago. Not exactly a once-in-a-lifetime event (I hope!) but a lovely and memorable day that is one of my favourite EVER.

There is something so London about this streetscape, even though it’s Chinatown, even though it’s snowy, and even though it’s almost completely devoid of people. We see the curved street and those little storefronts and know exactly where we are. I wanted to pair all of these Favorite Picture images with a poem — but no poet ever wrote about snow more poetically than James Joyce did at the end of his story “The Dead.” Here’s the final paragraph of that marvelous story:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

This is the third in the Favorite Picture Project series. The entire series can be seen here.

I just haven’t had a chance yet to blog about our awesome family vacation to Puerto Rico. Mom’s birthday was a special event, and this was a special trip. It’s been seven years since the five of us flew away alone together. I’ll post the details soon, but for now, my pictures are posted. Suffice it to say that Puerto Rico is a very colorful place, and that’s reflected in these pix. Check them all out here.

Marriage equality was defeated one minute ago by a body of legislators who cannot even pass a budget competently. Fuck each and every one of them who voted no, especially the asshole Democrats who have no business in our big tent.

My senator, Sen. Daniel Squadron, voted for it, and spoke eloquently about it. Thank you, Senator. Please reintroduce the bill next year, and every year after that until equality for all New Yorkers is achieved.

UPDATED TO ADD THIS ASSHOLE:

Senator Onorato, representing big gay Astoria is a Democrat and an asshole, who voted against equality. He will be primaried out of a job.