Rock's Greatest "Fuck You" Moments

Over on Facebook, I responded to Erik's Dylan question that the electric side was better, all because of Dylan's sneer on the live version of "Like a Rolling Stone" (after having somebody yell out "Judas!" and telling his band to "Play it fucking loud!"), which I suggested was one of the three greatest "fuck you" moments in rock and roll. He asked me what the other two were. I responded that they were (in no particular order): Donita Sparks of L7 reaching up between her legs, pulling out her used tampon, and throwing it into the audience after being pelted with mud at the Reading festival in 1992; Dylan's sneer in "Like a Rolling Stone"; and the "Fuck'em" bit in the Libertines' "I Get Along."

Given that we do apparently still have readers in spite of the dearth of posts, I open it up - the best "fuck you" moments in rock music?

The Sexiest Presidents, or, James Madison Is Kind of Hot

Nerve magazine ranks the presidents according to their sexiness.

The top 5:
1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. John F. Kennedy
3. Barack Obama
4. Thomas Jefferson
5. Franklin Pierce (which is kind of interesting I guess. It'll certainly be the only time Pierce is ranked in the top 5 of any presidential list). 

The bottom 5:

39. Grover Cleveland
40. Benjamin Harrison
41. Warren Harding (more on this in a second)
42. William Howard Taft
43. Richard Nixon (as if this wasn't totally self-evident)

Not to take this list too seriously, but the history is terrible. For one, Rutherford Hayes did not botch Reconstruction. OK, whatever.

But I do take umbrage at disparaging the sexiness of some of our presidents.

I can't believe I'm actually writing this.

Anyway, Warren Harding was a horrible president, but he was also a massive womanizer. Nerve claims, "He had a face like putty and a dour look only a banker could love. Also, his name was Warren. Unsexy"

The 1920 election marked the first time women could vote throughout the nation. And people openly wondered whether this hot young Warren Harding would win because of his sex appeal. They didn't use those words, but his attractiveness for the supposedly non-intellectual female voters made very serious commentators wonder whether American elections hadn't been permanently cheapened. 

Moreover, Nerve itself should know this, having placed Harding's affairs at #9 in the history of American political sex scandals:

Warren G. Harding (a.k.a. Warren G Unit) is the only president whose affairs led to the extortion of a major political party. To wit: his fifteen-year romance with Carrie Fulton Phillips, the wife of a friend, who the Republican National Committee reportedly paid on a monthly basis not to erupt, bimbo-style. Once in office, Harding allegedly took up with one Nan Britton, thirty years his junior. According to Britton, Harding introduced her to a small closet in the White House, where they exchanged kisses and made sweet presidential love. Britton claimed to have had an illegitimate child by Harding as well. In 1923, Harding died unexpectedly from ptomaine poisoning. Rumors ran rampant that his wife, Florence, had poisoned him.

Almost as egregious is slamming on James Madison, who comes in at #34 with a single sentence dismissal: 

Sure, he's the father of the Constitution, but he was only five-foot-four. 

 That's like saying, "Sure, Prince can play some mean licks, but he is only five-foot-one." 

No. James Madison totally overcame the short men can't be sexy hurdle. And he did it because he was a freaking genius. The guy could speak like 6 languages, was widely seen as one of the most intelligent men of an era of very intelligent men, and had strong leadership skills. Women don't like this? Also, Exhibit A is Dolley Madison, who was considered pretty hot in her day. 

Sure, Madison might be a tiny little dude, but he was also magnetic to those who knew him, both men and women. 

So I don't mind that we rank presidential sexiness, but let's get our facts straight. James Madison was the Prince of the late 18th century.

And I guess Warren Harding was basically a decent businessman type who sleeps with his secretaries--like a much dumber Don Draper.

Note: While Harding's election was not the American cultural apocalypse many predicted, this post might be.

Death List 2010

2009 marks my worst death list performance ever, only 2--Carl Pohlad and Robert McNamara. Any Twins fan can tell you which was more evil.

Ernest Borgnine and Andy Rooney replace them.

So I assume 2010 will be a banner year. Watch out!

1. Al Haig
2. John Wooden
3. Margaret Thatcher
4. Floyd Dominy
5. Fidel Castro
6. Luis Echeverria
7. Ernest Borgnine
8. Andy Rooney
9. Clark Terry
10. Stewart Udall

Mr. Trend's Top 50 Albums of the 2000s

Here are my top 50 albums of the 2000s, with random comments. This was actually a really hard list to make, and I limited myself mostly to the rock-ish genre (with a couple exceptions). I could do an entire other lists of best re-issues, best non-Western music, and best "things I 'discovered' in the 2000s" but I probably won't. Basically, there was a lot of great music, old and new, that came out last decade, and so I limited myself to the genre I'm most familiar with/capable of talking about here. And while I feel fairly safe about #s 21-50, I think that, excepting my top choice, #s 2-19 could really shift around on any given day.

1. Joanna Newsom, Ys - I just keep coming back to this album, and every time, it blows me away. So much I could say, but I'll limit myself to saying it's the first album I've ever heard where lyrics felt like their own instrument, and I get goosebumps everytime I hit the 14-minute mark of "Only Skin" (along with several other moments throughout).
2. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam/Merriweather Post Pavilion - Don't ask me to pick one. I can't (not with conviction, at least). I fully and strenuously disagree with Erik, and think that from Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished to Merriweather, AC has been the most interesting band of the decade.
3. Liars, Drum's Not Dead
4. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
5. Sleater-Kinney, The Woods - The best album from the most consistently great band of the late-90s. I hope they return someday, but if they don't, they went out on the top of their game.
6. Los Campesinos, Hold On Now, Youngster.../We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed -Music rarely has any right to be this energetic, thrilling, and complicated and mature at the same time; that it comes from a bunch of young 20-somethings is all the more remarkable.
7. Interpol, Turn On the Bright Lights - When a friend first played this for me and asked what I thought, my retort was, "I liked Joy Division better the first time around." However, that was pretty unfair in retrospect - Ian Curtis et al did not invent moodiness, and this was some of the best moody ambient-yet-rocking stuff of the decade.
8. Beck, Sea Change - I'm one of those "lyric people" Erik complained about. Still, this album hits heartbreak about as well as anything from the decade.
9. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois - Many complain it's too long, but I don't know what you get rid of; the full songs are essential, and if you take out the little interludes, you still have a 70-minute album (plus, the little interludes perfectly separate the bigger pieces, and are beautiful themselves, save for the 8-second bit before "Chicago," but again - does taking out 8 whole seconds make the album feel "shorter"?)
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows - Kid A may have been more of a watershed, more of an awakening, for many (though I was into Autechre and Aphex Twin before Kid A came out), but I just like In Rainbows a little more.
11. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
12. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
13. Arcade Fire, Funeral
14. Silver Mt. Zion, 13 Blues for 13 Moons - A live-in-studio sound + all the build up and bombast of Godspeed You Black Emperor + Earnest emotional and political lyrics = one of the most unappreciated albums of the decade.
15. Sigur Ros, Agaetis Byrjun
16. John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls - For all the talk of Springsteen's The Rising as "the" 9/11 album, it's nowhere near as good, heartbreaking, beautiful, or daring across its 70 minutes as Adams' 28-minute composition is.
17. Cat Power, You Are Free
18. Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica
19. Boredoms, Vision Creation Newsun - Still the best "wake up and get going" album.
20. White Stripes, Elephant - White Blood Cells is great, but this is the one that had all the rocking potential on full display.
21. Burial, Untrue
22. Bat for Lashes, Two Suns
23. Black Angels, Directions to See a Ghost
24. Tom Waits, Real Gone - In the "early stuff/crazy old-man-growling stuff" debate over Tom Waits, I firmly fall in the latter category.
25. Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - Erik and I will disagree on her until the day we die.
26. Menomena, Friend and Foe - A few stickout songs ("Boyscout'n"), but really, it's best as a top-to-bottom album, and more and more interesting with every listen.
27. Bjork, Vespertine - She's always interesting, but this is her best album ever.
28. Gorillaz, Demon Days
29. Libertines, Up the Bracket - They burned out quickly, and the new bands aren't very interesting or good. But for one album, they captured lightning in a bottle.
30. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
31. Atlas Sound, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel
32. Flying Lotus, Los Angeles - Steven Ellison somehow combined hip-hop beats, funky rhythms, and Aphex Twin-like ambience into a coherent sound.
33. The Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
34. DJ/Rupture, Uproot
35. PJ Harvey, White Chalk - Every album is different, but her piano-ballads-with-fragile-soprano album is her most haunting and one of her best, with an emotional core that rivals 4-Track Demos.
36. Vivian Girls, Everything Goes Wrong - The unfortunate backlash against Williamsburg diminished how great and dark this album is. Time will vindicate it.
37. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver - Each album has a couple songs I could do without, but when you write things like "All My Friends," it's hard to go wrong.
38. The Black Keys, Rubber Factory - Akron's finest's finest album (so far).
39. Crystal Stilts, Alight of Night
40. The Knife, Silent Shout
41. M.I.A., Kala
42. Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse - A very, very solid album, and their best of the decade.
43. Walkmen, Bows + Arrows
44. Deerhunter, Microcastle/Weird Era Continued
45. Portishead, Third - Forget Chinese Democracy (you already did? Oh, sorry) - this was the "comeback" album of the 2000s.
46. Alela Diane, To Be Still
47. Gillian Welch, Time the Revelator
48. Sun Kil Moon, Tiny Cities - Probably the best covers album of the decade, gives a new haunting sadness and beauty to Modest Mouse's songs.
49. CSS, Cansei de Ser Sexy - Yes, the lyrics can be silly, but A) English isn't their first language, and B) when your tunes are that grooving and catchy, who cares?
50. Bruce Springsteen, The Seeger Sessions - Another great covers album, but with a very un-Springsteen sound. You can tell it was just recorded live in a home in a few days, and that's a very good thing.

Top 50 Albums of the 2000s

I was going to do a lengthy discussion of my top 50 albums from the 2000s, but I don't have time before the end of the year. So I'm just going to list them.

A few notes:

1. This list is not hip in any way. See, unlike hipsters, I actually think lyrics are valuable. Stupid lyrics are the equivalent of a kazoo solo in the middle of a rock song. Also, there's a zillion good things I've never heard. You only have so much time in your life. No doubt that some of the rock selections make those with greater facial hair, asymmetrical hair, or square glasses cringe. But I don't care.

2. All genres are mixed up in here--I'm just listing them in the order that I have them in right now.

3. The Drive-by Truckers are clearly the band of the 2000s.

4. It's been an interesting decade for music--unlike other decades, it doesn't seem easily summed up with 1 or 2 bands (say, Nirvana for the 90s or hippie bands for the 60s). A lot going on but nothing that says, THIS IS THE 2000s! This might be a good thing.

5. Generally a solid decade for jazz, bluegrass, and other less popular musical genres.

Anyway, here's the list. We can discuss in comments:

1. Drive-By Truckers, Decoration Day
2. Hacienda Brothers, Hacienda Brothers
3. Tom Russell, Borderland
4. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
5. Cat Power, You Are Free
6. Robbie Fulks, Georgia Hard
7. Alejandro Escovedo, A Man Under the Influence
8. The Postal Service, The Postal Service
9. Don Rigsby, The Midnight Call
10. Joanna Newsom, Ys
11. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose
12. Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South
13. Iron and Wine, The Shepherd's Dog
14. The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
15. Beck, Sea Change
16. Billy Bang, Vietnam: The Aftermath
17. Buddy Tabor, Abandoned Cars and Broken Hearts
18. Tom Ze, Estuando o Pagode
19. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
20. Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck
21. Death Cab for Cutie, Plans
22. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
23. James McMurtry, Childish Things
24. Midlake, The Trial of Van Occupanther
25. Wayne Horvitz, Way Out East
26. Eels, Blinking Lights and Other Revelation
27. Emiliana Torrini, Fisherman's Woman
28. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
29. Bill Frisell, Unspeakable
30. The Gibson Brothers, Bona Fide
31. Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight
32. The Blue Series Continuum, The Good and Evil Sessions
33. Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy, Superwolf
34. William Parker, William Parker Violin Trio
35. Buddy Tabor, Earth and the Sky
36. Bill Callahan, Woke on a Whaleheart
37. Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career
38. The Gourds, Cow Fish Fowl or Pig
39. David Budbill, Songs for a Suffering World
40. Sun Kil Moon, Tiny Cities
41. The White Stripes, Elephant
42. Matthew Shipp, Equilibrium
43. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
44. John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls
45. Irving Fields & Roberto Rodriguez, Oy Vey Ole!
46. Catherine Irwin, Cut Yourself a Switch
47. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
48. Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator)
49. Bradley Walker, Highway of Dreams
50. The Decembrists, The Crane Wife

Top Films of the 2000s--10 to 1

10. Tell No One (2006)
The decade's best thriller. Guillaume Canet's film of a man who discovers his wife is still alive after a decade, an unsolved murder for which he is a prime suspect, we can properly describe as Hitchcockian. That's an overused comparison, but this film just takes you along in a rush of adrenaline. Eventually, you just stop figuring it out and allow it to carry you along. I guess a movie like The Usual Suspects might be a useful comparison, but Tell No One is better.

9. Vera Drake (2004)
Mike Leigh's tour de force on an illegal abortion provider in 1950s England who eventually gets caught and sentenced to a prison when a procedure goes wrong. Imelda Staunton plays a character who only wants to help people and is absolutely devastated when her life is destroyed. The opening scene of a rich girl getting an abortion from a real doctor and a poor girl forced into coathanger land is a devastating critique of the connections between class and control over women's bodies, something anti-abortion fanatics never want to talk about. Mike Leigh is a wonderful director and this is his best film.

8. Tony Takitani (2004)
Arguably the most obscure film on this entire list. Jun Ichikawa's adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story is the best film on loneliness I have ever seen. Simple and barely long enough to be considered a feature film, it's 75 minutes leave you absolutely heartbroken and devastated. For the lonely, shy man, could there be something worse than finally leaving your isolation behind, only to have your new life ripped from you by tragedy?

7. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Paul Thomas Anderson's fantastic film about oil, There Will Be Blood is probably the best film about America writ large of the decade. Its historical arc, its examination of a core American character, its dissection of greed, resource use, religion, and the growth of the nation--all of this makes it one of the most important pictures of recent years. Daniel Day-Lewis is utterly fantastic in his second role taking on an American archetype (with his role as Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York being the other).

6. 2046 (2004)
Wong Kar-Wai's follow up to In the Mood for Love, Tony Leung continues his character from the previous film, floating through life as a man with a broken heart who is unwilling to make any kind of emotional commitment as a result. The filming of his science fiction story only strengthens the great sadness of this film. Utterly wonderful.

5. Yi Yi (2000)
Edward Yang's final film was a huge sprawling movie following an extended family through a year of marriage, affairs rekindled, coma and death, and a young boy learning about the world. The perfect film. The scenes where the father meets his ex-lover in Tokyo and you hear their conversations about the past with the camera following his daughter on her first date may be the single best scene of the 2000s. Absolutely brilliant, one of the must watch films in the genre's history.

4. Talk to Her (2002)
I'm kind of surprised that Pedro Almodovar only has one film on my list--Bad Education and Volver were both quite excellent; had this list extended to 60, the former almost certainly have made the cut. But Talk to Her is Almodovar's crowning achievement. If the scene from Yi Yi described above is the decade's best, I'd probably rank the silent film inside the film, with the man entering the woman's vagina and living there, a scene that both represents unbridled love and the violation of a helpless young woman, as second.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Michael Gondry's adaptation of a Charlie Kaufman script deserves the widespread love it receives. Jim Carrey (who is actually good) and Kate Winslet's failed relationship combines with the use of technology and computer graphics to create a true love film for the 21st century. Never has a film used computer graphics to such a powerful effect--instead of a cheap way to cut corners or visuals for visuals sake, here is a film that takes the new possibilities of technology and uses them to strengthen a story, creating a terrifically powerful piece of art.

2. In the Mood for Love (2000)
Wong Kar-Wai's film of neighbors who realize their spouses (never seen) are cheating with each other is a tour de force of love unfulfilled. The two being cheated upon fall in love themselves, but for reasons of guilt, honor, shyness, etc., refuse to consummate the relationship. Beautifully shot, with more images of women in tight early 60s dresses than I've ever seen. After the failure of My Blueberry Nights, Wong's first film in English, some critics questioned whether Wong had fooled us with his Chinese films and whether his whole body of work was superficial. This is absurd--My Blueberry Nights just isn't good. All directors drop stinkers every now and again. While not every early Wong film works that well, the majority are fine pieces of work, culminating in In the Mood for Love and 2046.

1. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The best film of the 2000s. An absolutely devastating love story in 1960s and 70s Wyoming. Heath Ledger's performance will be remembered forever, while Michelle Williams and Jake Gyllenhall both provide fantastic supporting roles. It's a great film partially because it takes on a taboo-form of love (especially in that time and place), but more because it creates the single greatest love story of the decade.

Another word about Ledger's performance. I talked to people who didn't find it believable, particularly his way of talking and his lack of emotion. I openly scoffed, because I know these people. I'm related to western cowboys. I have an uncle for instance who talks exactly like this. For him, words are something to be avoided at all costs; to speak is a real chore and you'd better listen because he is just going to mumble out the minimum. Ledger nails this type of American and what it must be like for one of them to discover he is a homosexual, deeply in love but unable to follow through with a meaningful long-term, emotionally satisfying relationship.

That Brokeback Mountain lost the Oscar for best picture to Crash, an utterly loathsome movie, is the greatest award show ripoff of the decade. Not only was it the best picture of that year, it is the best picture of the entire decade. One of the great films in history, everyone involved should remain deeply proud of their work until the day they die. If the 2010s bring us to a film this great, this emotionally draining, this honest, and containing this level of performances, I'll be awfully surprised.


That the top 6 films all revolve around failed relationships may be coincidental, or it may say a lot about me.

Top Films of the 2000s--20 to 11

What you all really wanted for Christmas--the next installment of this list!

20. All the Real Girls (2003)
David Gordon Green's excellent story of a relationship in an Appalachian textile town. A simple story, but a very good one. Really one of the most underrated films of the decade.

19. The 25th Hour (2002)
Spike Lee's second finest hour in the 2000s. While not every scene works, and a few are kind of bad, it's Lee at his best, with a great lead character (Edward Norton) and a great secondary character (New York City). The relationship of the film to 9/11 is not strictly necessary but only makes the film richer, capturing a place and time while also capturing a very non-political character within that space.

18. Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
Alfono Cuaron's breakthrough movie of 2 men and a woman on a trip through Mexico. While I wonder what I'll think of the somewhat over the top narration the next time I watch this, the story is first rate, particularly in its examination of modern Mexican gender roles.

17. You Can Count on Me (2000)
Laura Linney at her finest, in this Kenneth Lonergan film about a single mother who struggles when her fuck up brother comes to town. Mark Ruffalo's performance as the brother almost matches Linney, creating one of the decade's best family drama.

16. Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Stephen Frears' fantastic film about immigrants in London. Scary as hell, great writing, solid acting. In fact, I feel that this is the first of the truly great films of the decade. I love all the films below this, but Dirty Pretty Things reaches another level--that rare 10 out of 10 I give movies on IMDB. Literally flawless

15. Grizzly Man (2005)
Werner Herzog's fascinating documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the lunatic self-proclaimed bear protector eaten by grizzlies. How much of it is true or not remains debatable, but its certainly a great story and one of the best films about environmentalism ever made.

14. Juno (2007)
Jason Reitman's film. Or should I say Diablo Cody's. There's been a huge backlash against Cody after the (supposedly though I didn't see it) Jennifer's Body. Regardless of the qualities of that film, I don't think any backlash should affect how people perceive her work here. It's a great script, accepted without revision, arguably for the first time in film history. Some might say the language is too mannered, and it will be interesting to watch how the film ages. Others criticized Juno at the time for not presenting abortion as a more appealing option, but whatever. She has an abortion and there's no film. Anyway, both Ellen Page and Michael Cera are really great, as are Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner. I think the best part of the film might be that whereas most films would paint Garner as a boring woman keeping her man down, here she's the hero in the end.

13. When the Levees Broke (2006)
Spike Lee's tour de force on Hurricane Katrina. One of the best documentaries I have ever seen. Tremendously powerful. Some criticized it for allowing conspiracy theories about the government intentionally making black people suffer to gain credence, but given the history of African-Americans in New Orleans, can't we all see why they might think this, even if it's not true. This is the singular document not only of Katrina but of the Bush Administration, highlighting the utter incompetence, indifference, and negligence of the worst president since Andrew Johnson. Utterly brilliant.

12. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007)
One of the finest films of the best yearly crop of movies since the 1970s, Cristian Mungiu's film is also the finest yet made in the Romanian film renaissance of the last several years. A great late communist companion to The Lives of Others, 4 Months is the tale of a woman trying to get an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania. Powerful and often deeply frightening, it reminds us of how much life sucked behind the Iron Curtain and how tenuous women's control over their own bodies remain today.

11. No Country for Old Men (2007)
The Coen brothers' finest film of the decade. A lot of hipster critics have pushed The Man Who Wasn't There in their top of the decade lists, but this makes little sense to me. I called it The Film That Wasn't There at the time, and in fact it ranks well below O Brother Where Art Thou and Intolerable Cruelty in the Coen brothers oeuvre. But No County outranks them all. Interestingly, it's probably Cormac McCarthy's worst book, but in part because of that it makes the most sense to turn into a film. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is probably the decade's best personification of evil, an issue that was a real problem in the book. But Bardem's cold-hearted malice humanizes that a little bit and brings the film together.

Top Films of the 2000s--30 to 21

30. The Lives of Others (2006)
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck brilliant film about late communist East Germany. Probably the best film about the end of communism, an interesting subgenre. Scary as hell, featuring the late great Ulrich Muhe as a Stasi agent who suddenly gets a conscious.

29. Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuaron's dystopian masterpiece. I'm not usually a fan of this type of film, but it's so well-executed and features excellent performances from Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Danny Huston, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

28. 3-Iron (2004)
Kim Ki-Duk's bizarre film about a guy who breaks into people's homes to live there while they are on vacation takes on weird Buddhist aspects that I don't necessarily understand, but create a really fantastic movie.

27. American Splendor (2003)
Biopics usually suck. Oscar voters jump all over them because they are lazy and like to see actors do imitations of people they already love (see Morgan Freeman's likely Oscar nomination for Invictus). But this film about Harvey Pekar captures his spirit, his crabbiness, and how he represents a segment of American alternate culture. The use of animation works great and Paul Giamatti was a perfect casting choice. A really enjoyable film.

26. A History of Violence (2005)
David Cronenberg's fantastic film about an ex-gangster who can't leave his old life behind. Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, and Maria Bello are all great, though by the time I saw it, I had heard so much about William Hurt's performance that I found it underwhelming. This could be Cronenberg's finest work.

25. District 9 (2009)
This allegory of immigration to South Africa is the decade's best science fiction movie. Like the peak of the genre, it uses science fiction as a barely veiled attack on current issues. However, I do not recommend eating during the film, as I did.

24. The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
The first Apatow film and probably the best. Steve Carrell is utterly hilarious. This film contains all the good and bad parts of the Apatow films--both hilarious off-color jokes, drug humor, and witty dialogue along with a lack of editing and a lot of moralizing. But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Of all the performances in the film, Jane Lynch's might be the funniest. She rarely gets talked about, but she is a brilliant comedian.

23. Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Guillermo Del Toro's fantasy movie taking place during late 30s Spain, when Franco is putting the hammer down on resistance forces. The fascists only make this movie scarier and the fantasy bits are both visually arresting and emotionally arousing. Really first rate film.

22. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Connoisseurs of martial arts films might scoff at this, but Ang Lee's foray into the genre is close to a perfect film. That it brought a sky-high budget to this often underfunded genre is no bad thing and expanding the genre's international audience should be commended, not scoffed at by snobs. Plus, it's just a great film.

21. The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Noah Baumbach's tale of a family falling apart. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney are both wonderful as the parents. The movie is touching, sometimes gross, often very funny, and frequently painful to watch. One of the best domestic films of the decade.

Least Essential Albums

As they do every year, the A.V. Club has spoken, and it is good. Or rather, the list is good; the music?.....well, Creed has a new album out. 'Nuff said.

Top Films of the 2000s--40 to 31

40. Swimming Pool (2003)

Francois Ozon's brilliant sexy mystery film. Charlotte Rampling is awesome as always. Ludivine Sagnier is incredibly hot. Almost a perfect film.

39. Sweet Sixteen (2002)

Arguably Ken Loach's masterpiece. Generally, Loach is better when focusing on the struggles of the working-class and avoiding the more directly political films. This story of a young man from a terrible family trying and failing to get his life together before he gets in real trouble in heartbreaking.

38. Silent Light (2007)

Carlos Reygadas' film about a Mennonite community in northern Mexico where a patriarch is cheating on his wife. Beautifully shot and the characters are respectfully portrayed despite their marginal religion. The opening sequence of the sun rising might be the best opening scene of any film during the decade.

37. Under the Sand (2000)

Another excellent Francois Ozon film, starring Charlotte Rampling as a woman whose husband walks into the sea and dies. Her inability to deal with the loss is one of the most powerful performances of the decade.

36. Persepolis (2007)

A good decade for animation, particularly from Pixar, but Persepolis is the best animated film from the 2000s. I think Pixar is fully capable of a truly great film, but I also don't think they have achieved that quite yet. Perhaps they are dealing with harder material because it is fantasy. But Persepolis' powerful portrayal of a girl escaping repression in Iran and her longing for home when in Europe created one of the best films from the decade's best year of film.

35. Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Clint Eastwood is a vastly overrated director, but he sometimes creates good films and this is his best of the 2000s. Far superior than its companion piece, Flags of Our Fathers, this is a fantastic character study of loyalty and a really sympathetic look at the men who killed so many Americans of Eastwood's generation.

34. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

Arguably the best film ever made on a disability, Julian Schnabel's movie, based on a true story, about a man who suffered a crippling physical disability that kept his mind 100% intact but allowed him to only move one eye is both a powerful story on the best of people and an incredibly sad tale of a unfair break.

33. George Washington (2000)

David Gordon Green's first film. Although Green has declined in recent years, his early films are fantastic. This superb character study of people in a North Carolina town was a great debut promising great potential. Some criticized this film for not talking about race enough, but this was completely unfair. Not every movie about the South has to address race directly, even if blacks and whites are hanging out all the time together.

32. Exiled (2006)

Possibly the decade's best gangster film, by the underrated Johnnie To, Exiled is about a gang and two sets of hitmen who are supposed to eliminate them. This film highlights the best of Hong Kong cinema--choreographed violence combined with a great story.

31. The Savages (2007)

Dealing with a dying parent is always difficult, particularly when you aren't close to that parent and the children are not so stable themselves. Tamara Jenkins tells this really depressing story with incredible humor, helped out tremendously by the great acting of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, with Philip Bosco as the father. First rate film in every aspect.

Top 50 Films of the 2000s--50 to 41

The end of a decade is always a great time for lists. And I love lists.

The next 5 days will have my top 50 movies of the decade. Of course, this list could change by the day. And there's some films that I haven't seen, especially from this year, but from all years. But it's the best I could do.

50. In the Valley of Elah (2007)

Paul Haggis' film was unjustly ignored by a public unwilling to think about the consequences of Iraq. While voters turned against the war because we weren't winning, the last thing a nation enamored of its own kickassitude wanted to think about was the horrors soldiers and their families faced. Clearly the best of the early Iraq War films, Tommy Lee Jones gives a fantastic performance as the father of a soldier killed after his return from Iraq. Also, it was shot in Albuquerque. Of course, so is every film these days, but I do like seeing good actors driving past my favorite restaurants.

49. Summer Hours (2008)

Oliver Assayas' film about a family dealing with the death of its matriarch and what the kids are going to do with her rural estate. Very French in all the good (great acting, good writing) and bad (oh poor France--look what globalization is doing to us!) ways, but also a very solid film.

48. Climates (2006)

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Turkish film about a sterile relationship. Very Bergmanesque, which definitely appeals to me. This is exactly the kind of film that separates people who like film and poseurs--its slow pacing and ambiguous ending really irritates those who don't want to think too hard about their films, even if they have reasonably good taste. Like anyone who is exclusionary, you can guess where I see myself.

47. The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006)

Ken Loach's best film of the decade. About the Irish independence movement and its fractures upon the limited success it achieved in 1920. Literally brother against brother. That Loach frames it this way gets at the less than subtle propaganda his critics accuse him of. They aren't really wrong and Loach is wildly inconsistent, but his commitment to the cause of freedom around the world buys him points. Plus he doesn't take the easy way out in this film, making it very difficult for the viewers to pick sides between the Irish factions--though we can all hate the British. That conservative Britons were pissed at Loach for this film also recommends it.

46. Samaritan Girl (2004)

Kim Ki-Duk might take the title of most interesting director of the decade. With widely varying films, some of which include great violence and other Buddhist meditations, Kim consistently challenges the viewer. Samaritan Girl is about a pair of girls--one of whom becomes a prostitute and the other serves as a sort of pimp. When the prostitute dies, her friend takes her place, but not in the ways you'd expect. A really interesting movie.

45. Kings and Queen (2004)

This is probably about 10 spots too low, but I'm going to go with it. Arnaud Desplechin's parallel story of 2 ex-lovers is just fantastic. Mathieu Amalric is one of my 5 favorite actors of the decade and he certainly shines here.

44. Goodbye Solo (2008)

Ramin Bahrani films about the immigrant experience have been a highlight of American film this decade (such as Chop Shop). His film about an African immigrant working as a tax driver and estranged from his Mexican wife trying to keep a cranky white guy from killing himself by throwing himself off a mountain might scream indie overwroughtness with a less sure director, but Bahrani makes it work.

43. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Perhaps a surprise, but this film holds up to repeated viewings better than most from the Apatow factory. There are some amazingly funny bits through this film. This has been a real strong decade for American comedy (particularly the Will Ferrell films from early in the decade and the Apatow-related films from late) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of the highlights.

42. Head-On (2004)

Another great immigration film Fatih Akin's masterpiece about Turkish immigrants in Germany does a great job getting at the divided identities so many immigrants face. He migrated 20 years ago and has become a drunk. She is the daughter of immigrants who wants to party and have sex but comes from a conservative family. Desperate she attempts suicide, they meet in the hospital, and a fitful and tragic relationship results. If it sounds like a good time, you're right!

41. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

Sidney Lumet's great comeback film (really one of the most underrated directors in American film history) features Philip Seymour Hoffman as a complete sleazeball who convinces his idiot brother (Ethan Hawke) to rob their parents' jewelry store. Mom dies as a result and complications set in. The end may not shock you, but it's a well-executed first-rate film.

Worst Americans Ever Revisited

I was messing around on the blog today, trying to find posts I'd written about Ulysses S. Grant in the past. I ran across a list of the top ten worst Americans I'd posted in 2006. I think all of these are still entirely defensible choices today. I'll repost them here, you can argue and disagree if you'd like. Certainly there are many good possibilities.

1. William Walker. Attempted to take over Nicaragua for the US slavery empire in the mid 1850s. Did so with the approval of southern politicians. In fact, he did briefly take control of the nation, though he soon failed and was killed in the swamps of eastern Honduras. Represents the worst of the American slavery tradition and American foreign policy. A completely irredeemable person.

2. Madison Grant. Friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Grant wrote The Passing of the Great Race in 1916. In this book, Grant feared for the decline of the Anglo-Saxon race in America due to immigration and "race suicide" practiced by Anglo-Saxon women who wanted to limit their pregnancies. Grant's book was a big influence on Hitler and the Nazis and his work was used in the Nuremberg Trials by Nazis to defend their actions. He worked closely with TR and other early conservationists on these issues as well as these men believed that the American West was a repository where Anglo-Saxon men could regain their manhood and virility. Theodore Roosevelt gets a free pass from a lot of people--the road between his beliefs and those of the Nazis is not long and it goes right through his associate Madison Grant.

3. J. Edgar Hoover. It's hard to get more despicable than Hoover. No need to go into his evil in great deal here. I presume most readers know enough. His unwillingness to inform Martin Luther King of assassination plots against him is enough to ensure his place here. But of course there are many more reasons.

4. Phyllis Schlafly. The woman who single handedly undermined the Equal Rights Amendment and galvanized the anti-woman plank of the New Right. The damage she has caused is spectacular. Rather unfortunately, she is still alive and working.

5. Robert Barnwell Rhett. Rhett was one of the leading South Carolina fireeaters who pushed the US toward the Civil War. For Rhett and others (and here is a case where Rhett represents several possibilities here), the only acceptable United States was one where slavery was the accepted practice of the nation.

6. James Buchanan. The worst president in US history, Buchanan did nothing to stop the dissolution of the United States after the election of Abraham Lincoln. He figured it was Lincoln's problem to deal with. That's what I call leadership!

7. Martin Dies. Dies could represent any one of several dozen virulently racist national legislators during the early 20th century. John Sparkman, Theodore Bilbo, Strom Thurmond, Harry Byrd, or several others could hold this spot. Dies gets it though because not only was he an ugly segregationist, but he also founded HUAC.

8. John Chivington. Again Chivington is representative of how 19th century westerners treated Native Americans. Chivington was the leader of the infamous Sand Creek Massacre in eastern Colorado in 1864. One of the great progressive myths about the American West is that the US military was to blame for killing Indians and destroying native cultures. This generally wasn't true--by far the bigger problem was local whites in the West happily killing any Indian they found, ignoring treaties and their own government, and forming militias to wipe out peaceful villages. Chivington led the most infamous of these.

9. Robert E. Lee. To me, Lee is worse than Jefferson Davis. Lee had the power to cripple the Confederacy by using his superior military mind to keep the union together. Chose to serve the interests of the slave states and helped lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Nothing that neo-Confederates and conservatives say will erase this fact.

10. George W. Bush. I don't even consider this a political statement. I think we can make a pretty good argument for his placement here. He has made the US significantly less safe through his foreign policy while compromising the nation's long-term economic stability, making the poor much poorer, and eviscerating environmental and labor regulations.

Special bonus #11 choice--John Foster Dulles. Eisenhower's Secretary of State. Supported the CIA overthrow of the Iran and Guatemala governments in the 1950s. The Iran operation led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 while the Guatemala action led to the civil wars that country endured during the 1980s. He gets a pretty free pass for his work, but few people in American history have caused such catastrophes as Dulles.

Top 5 Stage Names for Drummers

In totally random, pointless list-making, here are my five favorite stage names for drummers.

1. D.J. Bonebrake (X)
2. Tory Crimes (The Clash)
3. Ted (The Dead Kennedys)
4. Sreech Louder (The Long Blondes)
5. Brain (Tom Waits, Primus)

There Is No "Golden Age" of Film (Or, "Why Movies Now Are As Good As They Ever Were")

Last week, Erik and I were discussing a set of posts we're planning for the end of the year that offer our top albums, movies, and other "bests" of the decade. As should always be the case with pointless list-making, I have given it way more thought than the subject should ever have merited, and, looking back at the last 10 years, there have been some remarkably great movies (but I'm not going to say which ones - that's what the year-end list will be for, so you'll just have to wait). And I was thinking, "you know, for all the proclamations of great film-making in other decades, this decade arguably has been as good as any previous decade."

Apparently, I'm not alone in thinking this. While I certainly wouldn't go so far as to call the 2000s a "golden age" of cinema, it's not because I think other decades have been "better," but rather because any notion of a "golden age," contemporarily or in the past, just reinforces false nostalgia that tends to lead to people overlooking what's great presently. And I certainly wouldn't call Joel Schumacher a "popmeister" - "shitmeister" seems far more appropriate for his dreck. Movies can be silly and fun and popular and Hollywood driven, but still be excellent - just ask Sam Raimi or Judd Apatow.

All that notwithstanding, though, this decade has just reminded me why I hate when people look back to the 60s or 70s (or 40s) as when cinema was "really good." The only reason we've forgotten the "Transformers 2" of those eras was because, like any lowest-common-denominator crap, it has been flushed away over time. And when people harken to movies by Scorcese, Altman, Kubrick, Coppola, etc., fine - yes, they directed amazing, artistic, all-time great movies. But look at the last 10 years - Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Fernando Meirelles, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, Wes Anderson, Ang Lee, P.T. Anderson, Charlie Kaufman......and I'm undoubtedly forgetting many others, or haven't yet seen some movies that are almost certainly artistic masterpieces ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" springs immediately to mind).

All of this is to basically say, I wish people would acknowledge how great current cinema not only can be, but is. Among the many minor aggravations in life, the canonization of previous decades or eras at the expense of current artistic production, be it musical, film, photographic, literary, etc., is garbage. Thinking about how many all-time great films have come out of the last 10 years only reinforces that.

The Best Music of 2009 Thus Far

While all lists are superfluous, I really enjoy the particular superfluity of evaluating what's best when the year is only halfway over. Still, these past 6 months have seen some obscenely excellent releases, and 2009 is shaping up to be an excellent music year. So here are my top ten-plus-one, the best of 2009 so far:

1.) Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion - I understand the backlash, and I hate how hipster I come off looking on this. But the music.....regardless of where you stand on them, I think Animal Collective are one of the decade's most interesting bands, and this may be their highlight. I kind of miss Avery Tare's random, uncontainable screams of joy on this album, but with songs like "Brother Sport," "In the Flowers," "Summertime Clothes," and "Lion in a Coma," I can let go of some yelps.

2.) Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest - I realize I probably seem like I'm regurgitating Pitchfork talking points here, but sonofabitch if this isn't almost as good as the Animal Collective album. The first listen or two, I thought it would end up being one of the most overrated albums of the decade, but by about spin #3, it had started working its way into my head, and by the fifth listen, I couldn't stop. Not quite as good as the AC album, simply because there is a song or two that doesn't hit quite as strongly as the rest of the album. Still, it's a beautiful album that really works its way into your head over time.

3.) Rock Plaza Central, At the Moment of Our Most Needing, or If Only They Could Turn Aorund, They Would Know They Weren't Alone - When I hear people describe Bonnie "Prince" Billy, this is what I wish he sounded like.

4.) Japandroids, Post-Nothing - Best rock album of the year, without question (also, one of the better titles in awhile).

5.) Alela Diane, To Be Still - I openly admit a weakness for folksy female singer/songwriters (see: Joanna Newsom, Marissa Nadler, Neko Case, etc.). Diane's album is gorgeous, one of those rare albums that's equally perfect on a lazy sunny Saturday morning or a rainy cold night when you're all alone.

6.) Woods, Songs of Shame - More Brooklyn indie-hipster stuff, but the falsetto singing and the fuzzed-out-yet-accoustic sound are extremely satisfying, and offer a nice, more "organic" take on the "indie" scene that has come out of the Brooklyn area.

7.) Matt & Kim, Grand - A synthesizers-drums combo sounds like a terrible idea. But this is the happiest, funnest, most delightful album I've heard in awhile, a perfect "pop" album. And "Lessons Learned" very well may be the single of the year.

8.) White Rabbits, It's Frightening - One of those albums where you immediately think, "why didn't other bands think of this before?" Simple, straightforward rock, only with a heavy reliance on piano and two drummers (in addition to the guitars) - it could have been a disaster, or it could have been great. Fortunately, it ended up great.

9. ) Rural Alberta Advantage, Hometowns - Nils Edenloff's voice is not for everybody, but the music is infectious, and when his nasally tenor joins with drummer/singer Amy Cole's innocent-sounding voice, it's one of the oddest and most endearingly sweet sounds. And the music is pretty excellent, too.

10.) Lotus Plaza, The Floodlight Collective - Deerhunter member Lockett Pundt releases his solo album a year after Bradford Cox, and it's just as good. It's clear how much Pundt has influenced Cox and Deerhunter since he joined, and when I got Cox's Atlas Sound album last year, I thought, "I wish there were more albums like this." Fortunately, Pundt has provided such an album. Now, if only there were more albums like The Floodlight Collective....

11.) Charles Spearin, The Happiness Project - Hands down the most interesting album of the year. Spearin took interviews with seven people, ranging from children to the elderly, each of whom answered what happiness was to them. The album then takes their answers, with Spearin creating guitar (and keyboard) music lines that echo the vocal intonations of the answers, in what is a delightful concept that joins loops, edits, a particular notion of "music concrete," and guitars to make an album that won't grab you immediately, but that can bring you to tears both through the people's answers and the music built on their voices.

Honorable Mentions: Bat for Lashes, Two Suns; Neko Case, Middle Cyclone; Marissa Nadler, Little Hells; Here We Go Magic, Here We Go Magic

Most overrated album of the year (so far): Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - I just don't get the big deal - it's some of the most sterile "rock" I've heard, yet people seem to be absolutely swooning over this album. Comparisons to Spoon are apt - I definitely don't think either band is worth the fuss.

15 Books

You get out of internet touch, the blog suddenly has the best meme in the world.

My 15 indispensible books. Only literature. No particular order. Typing on a Guatemalan computer, forgive any spelling errors.

1. Jose Saramago, Baltisar and Blimunda. Most beautiful book ever. Sometimes the Nobel committee gets it wrong, but sometimes they get it very right.

2. Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain. Although the two people I have convinced to read this haven´t liked it nearly as much as I, this is another example of the Nobel Prize turning me on to an amazing author. The best book on personal freedom I have ever read.

3. Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing. Everyone loves The Road, and for good reason. But The Crossing is far and away McCarthy´s strongest work in my opinion, and certainly more so than All the Pretty Horses, its predecessor.

4. Alice Munro, Open Secrets. Though it could be any Munro book really, particularly because they are more or less the same. Arguably the most underrated author in the English language.

5. Philip Roth, Sabbath´s Theatre. Roth´s greatest book and somewhat underrated I think given the many other books of his that people love.

6. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon. Not sure why Trend hates Morrison so much and I do think she won the Nobel a bit early in her career, but Song of Solomon is a freaking fantastic piece of work.

7. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Love in the Time of Cholera. Though I could just as easily go with One Hundred Years of Solitude.

8. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man. Even if the novel goes on a bit long towards the end, I call it the Great American Novel, if in fact such a thing exists.

9. Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn. Although this is the other obvious choice for the honor.

10. Don DeLillo, Underworld. The best American novel of the 90s?

11. Mario Vargas Llosa, War at the End of the World. A great book on religious fantaticism, the growth of the state, and power. Really fantastic.

12. Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore. Wow.

13. V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas. Funny and fantastic.

14. John Dos Passos, U.S. A. Trilogy. It all went downhill for Dos Passos after this, but it doesn´t take away from the amazing power of these three books.

15. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms. I don´t care if Holden Caulfield was right and Hemingway is a phony, it´s still a great book. Not a bad film either.

As for Trend´s list of classic novels that suck, can we start the discussion with The Jungle?

Greatest Living Actor? Actress?

While trying to pass time at work yesterday, I came across a blog that said Robert DeNiro is the greatest living actor. (I unfortunately don't remember where I saw it - some down-home blog like this one. Nonetheless, here's a poll from 2004 that also said it was DeNiro, followed by Pacino). I didn't think much about it at the time, but it's an interesting question.

Is DeNiro really the best living actor? Certainly, his work at its peak (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Heat) is among the greatest ever, and he salvaged a lot of movies that had no business being anywhere near as decent as they were (Awakenings). But he's done a lot of crap, especially in the last 10 years (Righteous Kill, Godsend, The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle). I realize some of this is terrible script-writing and/or directing, but it's also terrible choices on his part and not exactly amazing acting. Ditto Pacino. Does that recent history take away from his status? Are there others out there who perhaps have a relatively smaller body of work, but of a higher overall quality, like Daniel Day Lewis or Philip Seymour Hoffman?

So - who is the greatest living actor?

And is Meryl Streep the greatest living actress? (I have a harder time coming up with a good alternative here, though I could just be tired).

Top 10 Films of 2008

It's Oscar Sunday and that means it is time for my list of 2008's top films.

First of all, what a bad year. I guess 2007 was so great that anything pales in comparison. But this is a pretty weak crop by any standards. I'm not even watching the Oscars tonight because I just don't care about any of the movies. Nonetheless, there were some good films this year. Of course, some of them I haven't been to able to see yet despite living in the Austin area. Wendy and Lucy just started playing Friday and even though I hoped to see it before I put the list up, it didn't happen. I haven't had a chance to see Waltz with Bashir yet either. But I did the best I could.

1. Tell No One. Far and away the best film of the year, this French thriller almost had me shaking in the theatre. Some have criticized it for being too complex and trying to do much but I really disagree. This was the only film I saw all year that left me fully satisfied. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

2. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. People have already forgotten about this film and I don't know why. It's really freaking hilarious. By far the funniest movie I saw this year. The scenes making fun of crime dramas with Billy Baldwin were incredibly hilarious. Almost everything about this movie works really well. Maybe it's forgotten as just another movie from the Apatow machine, but that's unfair.

3. The Edge of Heaven. This Turkish-German film is a very good meditation on immigration and belonging. I enjoyed this a great deal, though possibly not as director Fatih Akin's previous work, Head-On. Nonetheless, well acted and directed and very moving in many ways.

4. Rachel Getting Married. I don't even like Anne Hathaway, but she was really good as an utterly self-centered drug addict getting out of rehab to go to her sister's wedding. Acting was excellent throughout. The movie was mostly ignored by the Academy, which is too bad given that it was crazy enough to give Benjamin Button 13 freaking nominations. Yawn. Great music as well. I rarely expect too much from Jonathan Demme at this point, but this is a very strong film.

5. Reprise. Joachim Trier's film on two young writer friends and their ability/inability to deal with fame and life as successful writers. It would be absurd as an American film because fiction writers aren't famous. But in Norway, I'll believe things are different. These guys are jerks, but nonetheless not so loathsome that you don't somehow root for them to succeed and change their ways and learn to deal with the world. Trier is a very promising young director and I look forward to seeing his future work.

6. The Wrestler. This is just a great character study of two aging people whose live on their bodies. But their aging and they are being chewed up and spit out by society. My favorite scene is when Rourke and Tomei have a drink and talk about how awesome the 80s were. The good time 80s also led to a lot of people unable to put that aside. They've made some bad choices and now they have to live with it. I didn't know Darren Aronofsky had this kind of film in him. It makes me feel better about his future.

7. Gran Torino. People always want to attach messages to Eastwood films. Conservatives love it because it's about an old white guy kicking the asses of non-whites. Liberals say that it is about Eastwood renouncing violence in the end (which they also said about Unforgiven). I'm uncomfortable about all of this. Yes, I love to see old man Clint being a total bad-ass. That's awesome to watch. But the best part of the film is watching him and the young Hmong boy become friends and seeing Clint realize that his people are the working-class Hmong living next to him. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about this film. Eastwood's family are nothing but caricatures. There are weak moments in the film. The Hmongs in the film aren't the greatest actors in the world. Last year, this would have been an honorable mention film at best. But in a weak year, this stands out as a pretty satisfying film experience.

8. Wall-E. I was cold on this movie in the beginning, but I've warmed up to it a lot. The beginning is a homage to silent films, and while film critics love it, it also means that the film takes a while to gain momentum. I'd be curious to know how children received the film; it seems to appeal to smart adults more than kids. But the animation is great, the story comes together beautifully in the end, and the message is first-rate. Now, that it has a good environmental message is hardly a reason to recommend the film, but as our constant assault upon nature comes to bite us in the ass, it's going to be interesting to see how popular culture responds.

9. August Evening. This is really beautiful little film about a migrant Mexican-American family living in Texas. Dad and Mom live with their daughter-in-law. The son/husband was killed in a car crash some years before. The daughter-in-law has yet to recover. The parents have two other children who live in San Antonio. The daughter has tried to leave her life of poverty behind, marries a white guy and lives in the worst kind of suburban San Antonio subdivision you can imagine. The son has a family of his own and barely exists above the poverty line, but he's no closer to the parents. The mother dies and turmoil tears up the family. When they briefly move in with the son, they try and set up the daughter-in-law with a single friend of there's. Will she fall in love? What will happen with the father? This is the whole of the movie. Very simple, but also very much like an Ozu movie. The day to day life of the family is enough to keep the film going. There's no false tension and no explosive moments. This film might not be for anyone, but on its own limited terms, it's a beautiful testament to life.

10. Milk. The best of the Oscar nominated films. There's nothing really that special about Milk, but it is a very solid bio-pic, well-acted and with a powerful and timely story.

Honorable Mention:

Synecdoche, New York. I liked it when I saw it more than I do now. The more I think about, the less I care. Good enough, but not great.

Encounters at the End of the World. The Werner Herzog documentary about the Americans who work in Antarctica is quite interesting and intermittently beautiful. A little too much Werner talking about how much he hates humans though.

Still Life. An interesting and sad Zhang Ki Jia film about people who's lives are torn up by the Three Gorges Dam. Worth seeing for sure. Many people loved it. It didn't blow my mind, but I do recommend it.

Up the Yangtze. A documentary about similar subject matter. The film looks at 2 young people working on one of the boats taking people around the Yangtze. Probably the best documentary I saw this year. Some extremely powerful scenes about how the government doesn't care about the average person and about how young people react to the vast changes overtaking their society.

Paranoid Park. Actually a more interesting film by Gus Van Sant than Milk, but also a little film with some pretty poor acting. Still, it's good to get Van Sant looking at the underside of Portland again. It served him well 20 years ago and this serves him much better than much of his recent work.

Love Songs. A French musical about a threesome. It almost sounds like a joke. And it is very French. But it also works pretty well too. Plus how can you not love Ludivine Sagnier?

People Who Clearly Know Nothing About Films Should Avoid List-Making

There are so many easy things to pick apart on the movie-equivalent of this ridiculous music list a few years back. Let me just say that, no, The Dark Knight is not "conservative" - you clearly missed that entire bit about surveillance and "this is wrong" and "no man should have this much power". And Brazil's criticism and portrayal of "national-security scares, universal police surveillance, bureaucratic arrogance, a callous elite...and government use of torture" hardly renders it a paragon of conservative virtues. And just because people still discuss Red Dawn doesn't mean it's great - people still discuss Manos: Hands of Fate, after all...

Top 10 World Music Albums

To continue my lists of top 10 albums, I thought I'd go to world music. I want to stress of course that there is by no means a real list of the 10 best albums of world music ever. Who could listen to all of that stuff? There's so much! But here are 10 that I like an awful lot.

1. Tom Ze--Estuando o Pagode. I hate Mr. Trend for actually meeting Tom Ze. This strange and incredibly cool album by a man in his eighth decade is cooler than basically any other album ever. The lyrics, which I of course don't understand, are a paean to women's liberation, the music is kick ass, and as for the orgasmic donkey, well you judge that for yourself.

2. Buena Vista Social Club. Yes, this is a cliche. It's also a great album. Ferrer, Segundo, Portundo, Gonzalez--these are jawdropping musicians who were nearly lost to obscurity. God bless Ry Cooder for doing the work to bring their music back to the world. Also, a boo to the American government for fining Cooder for visiting Cuba illegally. Give me a break.

3. The Rough Guide to the Music of Ethiopia. I know the Ethiopiques series is more complete, but this is a great intro to the Ethiopian jazz movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. Combining jazz with traditional Ethiopian music, these musicians made some of the decade's music, regardless of country. Unfortunately, the arrival of the Stalinists in the mid 70s killed this scene dead. Why are communists so anti-music and creative expression? It's really a great weakness of these movements.

4. The Music of Islam series. I believe this runs to 16 volumes of music that Celestial Harmonies put out in the mid 90s. If you like traditional Islamic vocal music, this is the greatest music ever. If you don't, I guess you won't care for it at all. I think it's beautiful.

5. Tinariwen, Aman Iman: Water is Life. This band of Tourweg people from Mali is African blues at its best. Of the desert, this music goes straight to the soul. I feel like an idiot spewing cliches talking like this, but it's really kick ass.

6. Si Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba. After Castro took over, the Cuban tourist industry and the connections with the United States basically ended. But that doesn't mean Cubans weren't still making awesome music. This collection, the first of a promised series, highlights the great stuff played on Cuban radio stations during the late 60s and early 70s. It's still of traditional Cuban music but also infused with funk and psychedelia. Can you beat this? No.

7. Muzsikas, Maramoros--The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania. One of the first world music albums I ever bought. Made with the great Hungarian singer Marta Sebestyen, this album tries to recreate the beautiful pre-Holocaust Jewish music of Transylvania. I can't really say whether they succeeded or not; so much of that was lost forever. But they do make some really amazing and heartwrenching music.

8. Conjunto! Texas-Mexican Border Music. I don't even know how many volumes of this exist. Put out by Rounder in the early 90s, this is a great introduction to the music of the border. I know Trend hates this stuff. This makes me question his character. I was in New York last week. On the 7 Train to Queens, a couple of norteno guys came on and played a really fantastic song. How do people not like Mexican music? This is a great place to start for that awesome tradition.

9. The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru. More great 70s music. It seems that the 70s was the greatest decade for popular music around the world, not just in the US and England. Like the Cuban and Ethiopian albums listed above, this album of Peruvian music combines traditional musical forms with the amazing new music arriving from the North during these years. Wow.

10. The Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack. This is kind of a cop out. It's not really an artistic statement per se, and of course it includes a lot of western songs too. But it was a brilliant move for Wes Anderson to steal songs from those great old Satajit Ray and Merchant & Ivory Indian films. That was really freaking first rate music, probably some of the best soundtracks of all time. It still works for Anderson's film and it is worth mentioning here.