My Trousers Are Closed For Business

.

My god you guys I am so fucking tired of talking about last year's movies right now! I am so happy I'm done. I might've made myself never want to watch any of these things I loved so much again if I'd gone any further with these awards. Finished! Done. Ka-fuckin-put.

But for the sake of finality, here's a round-up of all what went into my Golden Trousers - aka The Pantys! - this year. You can click here for everything, or here are the individuals...

DAY ONE
* the greatest male gratuities *
* try harder next time, stud(s) *
* The Tattered Trousers - too much damn hype! *

DAY TWO
* the actresses *
* you are mine now *
* most viewings so far *

DAY THREE
* the actors *
* finding flowers in shit *
* one more olive branch... *

DAY FOUR
* the indelible images *
* the horror films *

DAY FIVE
* the films *

---------------------------------------------

I hope y'all enjoyed it.
Now I'm going to go to read a damn book.
.

The Golden Trousers Best Films of '08

.

Well here it is. The big kahuna. My favorite movies of 2008. I could ramble on about what the year meant and so forth but to be honest I've written so much this week I'm beginning to resemble the Crazy Cat Lady from The Simpsons only instead of cats it's movie ticket stubs stuck all over me clawing at my eyes. So let's just let the movies speak for the year at this point, save my eyes and vital organs and what not. But first off, because I haven't clogged our brains with enough info already, here my #25-11, aka the fifteen runners-up to my Top 10:

25 - Reprise
24 - Frozen River
23 - Wendy & Lucy
22 - Doomsday
21 - Splinter
20 - Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired
19 - Teeth
18 - [REC] / Quarantine
17 - Vicky Christina Barcelona
16 - Happy-Go-Lucky
15 - A Christmas Tale
14 - The Dark Knight
13 - Revolutionary Road
12 - Encounters at the End of the World
11 - Fear(s) of the Dark

All fine films up there above, all worth checking out.
But let's get to the main course, shall we?

The Golden Trousers 10 Best Films of '08

10 - Heartbeat Detector - What to make of the troubling correlation made by this film between office culture and the dumbing down of language to fascism and the Holocaust? I'll be damned if I can decide if it's ballsy or offensive or just stupid or totally spot-on... hell, it's probably all of the above at once. It felt that way as the film went along, like I was being pulled in a dozen different directions at once... meanwhile the thing's sloughing along at a glacial pace. But I couldn't take my eyes off of it and it affected me deeply at the same time. And I think it's one I'll revisit and reconsider for a very long time.

09 - The Edge of Heaven - Take everything that Crash or Babel were trying to do, erase all the bullshit they ended up doing, multiply that worth by a dozen, and you've got this effortless film. You've got characters that span most of Europe and a story that slings between them from place to place but not one instant feels forced, not one relationship or event false. Everything feels natural and sprung from reality. And you watch everything fall apart only to be put back together through the common human decency of its characters. Decency! It does exist! This is a wonderful film.

08 - Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - It's a terrible cliche, I know, to say the sentence "I haven't had a better time in a movie theater all year!" but it rings true with this one. About a half an hour into the film a smile latched itself onto my face and didn't leave for hours after it was finished. Believe me when I tell you that I tend to be hermit-like in my real life, but this movie made me want to go out and roam around the streets and dance in a crappy bar to a crappy band and have adventures all night long. I mean... I thought about that as I took the subway home and didn't do it. But I thought it! Terrible but true cliche #2 - It makes you want to fall in love again!

07 - Mister Lonely - Oh sad sad sad. This movie wrapped me in a warm strange blanket of sad. There was something very dated about the film already - it felt like a movie that should've come out in 1996 or so, something amongst the arty movies I was falling in love with in college, the Todd Haynes and Todd Solondz films. It was just perfectly tailored to my tastes - bizarre people behaving badly - bad people behaving bizarrely - plus Werner Herzog as a priest!

06 - The Reader - Anchored by my favorite female performance of the year - you go gold with your bad self, Miss Winslet! I didn't have high expectations for Daldry's latest going in, for some reason I kept forgetting it was even coming out, but then I'm sitting there and realizing that I've found myself completely sucked in. Easily Daldry's best film (has anyone been able to sit through all of The Hours in years? Not fast-forwarding through Ed Harris' ham acting is like water torture) and one of my very favorite of all of Kate's performances, this is a film without a lot of answers but plenty of worthwhile yet difficult questions for mulling.

05 - The Wrestler - Who knew Darren Aronofsky had a movie like this in him? Lord knows I've worshipped his previous films, but this one is just so different, on the surface at least. All the trickery is sublimated for a focus on the performances - the trickery is still there of course, it's just much less in our face - and blessed be what a set of performances. Mickey Rourke gives the best male performance of the year, and his career, and he's backed up ably by Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. Speaking of the latter, it was her place in the story that made me realize how close this story was to pieces of my own life, and once again it was like Aronofsky had torn open a long-healed wound and rubbed salt into it. So thanks for that, Darren! Remind me to flick you off in public.

04 - Wall*E - I said last year when I was talking about my love for the film Once that there always tends to be (at least) one romance that knocks me out each year... who'd have thought this year's would come in the form of a cartoon about a speechless robot and his quest to save us from our own fat asses? This film is filled with magic and wonderment. Flat out, kill the sarcasm, it made me feel like a five year old learning what sunshine filtered through a spray of autumn leaves looks like.

03 - In Bruges - If The House Bunny hadn't been playing on a flight I took recently, this flick would've won the much coveted "Watched The Most Times This Year" award. I imagine it will end up winning in the end though, because there's not a single damned piece of this puzzle that's lacking. Farrell, Gleeson and Fiennes are the tragi-comediest bunch of lovable thugs in ages., and I won't quote a movie (except again possibly The House Bunny) more this year. They're filmin' midgets! Yes, yes they are.

02 - Let the Right One In - This deceptively simple film sneaks up on you, much like little Eli might if you found yourself walking through the woods at night in a barren patch of Stockholm. But once it sinks it's teeth into you... yeah yeah, I'll lose the silly metaphor. It's a keeper, man. This flick is hot shit and we're all just cold diarrhea. I'd cuddle up with it on on a cold night and let it rub its butchered nethers on me, too.

01 - Synecdoche, New York - Synecdoche is not a perfect movie. It's flawed and I can fully understand those that don't like it and call it self-indulgent and with its head fully crammed up its own behind. But it's Kaufman's behind that it's up, fully and totally his; it's the sort of idiosyncratic and personal film writ to this bizarre and bloated scale, and there's no film that affected me as deeply or lingered on my brain longer this year, and no film that I enjoyed and appreciated pondering for as long. I love thinking about this film. It made me laugh hysterically and it made the walls of my chest-cavity ache with loss. I want to watch this movie a thousand times and have a different thought or opinion each and every time about it. I want to talk about it forever, even if forever is only a single blotted instant staring at my poo in the toilet.

.

For Future Reference...

... the following has been made clear to me (thanks boyfriend):

.

The Golden Trousers Horror Films Of '08

.

Tis the time to look back at the Best Spooky Flicks of 2008. Mwah-ah-ah! Wrap yourself in a velvet cape and affect your best Vincent Price voice, y'all. As with every year 2008 was hit or miss - horror's such a difficult genre to be in love with sometimes - but there were some real humdingers that made their way onto screens this year, which I will gladly make love to now for all of you to watch.

Just... there will only be six of us, myself included, in this Horror Movie Orgy. It's a Top 5, that is. I have five runners-up but I have myriad issues with 6-10 so I'm not bothering ranking them specifically, but here they be:

Runners Up: Otto, or Up With Dead People;
Cloverfield; Rogue; The Strangers; Stuck

But beyond that, it's all good. So let's get it on with...

The Golden Trousers Horror Films Of '08

#5 - Splinter - This movie came out of nowhere, disappeared just as quickly, but left its mark. I don't think I'd heard anything about it until reading it was playing at a local theater. I went, saw it, enjoyed it, and then it was gone like a weird and unsettling dream that you'd rub out of your eyes in the morning. But it does what it wants to do so simply and straight-forwardly without trying to get away with any dopey bullshit that my admiration for the flick grew more and more. It takes some people, throws them into an enclosed space, and then just heaps some a load of unspeakable nightmare stuff on top of them and see whats sticks. It's a treat. It's out on DVD on January 27th so y'all should check it out then.

#4 - Teeth - One of the best times I had at the movies this year. I already gave credit to lead actress Jess Weixler the other day, but I really hope we hear bunches from the director Mitchell Lichtenstein in the future. Another flick that does what it sets out to do simply and with great humor.

#3 - [REC] & Quarantine - I don't feel guilty about putting both these films in the same spot - as far as I'm concerned it's the rare case of the remake being just as solid as the original. If we were talking immediate scare impact here, then this would be my #1 horror movie of the year - no movie made me more afraid of walking around my dark apartment after watching it than the Spanish version, and then when I saw the remake in theaters a few months later I found myself surprised to be just as tense as I'd been watching the Spanish version even though they are for all intents and purposes, save a couple moments, exactly the same film. Also, [REC] hasn't and probably won't get any release here in the States, but (thanks Sean) you can buy a DVD of it via here, so do that if you've been dying to catch it.

#2 - Fear(s) of the Dark - Beautiful and horrifying and utterly transfixing. I was worried going in that the segments might not flow well - it's directed and animated by several different artists and then edited together so some segments overlap - but it worked wonderfully, and every bit of it has stuck with me months after seeing it.

#1 - Let the Right One In - No question. A horror masterpiece. But you'll be hearing more on this one tomorrow.
.

The Golden Trousers "Indelibles" of '08

So here's the deal: if you've seen any of these films mentioned below, then the moments specified are what you'll probably recall with instant clarity. The images and scenes that smack you upside the head when the films are mentioned - basically, these are the indelible images of 2008 that are gonna haunt for a long time. Think of it this way - if this were a VH1 special, it would be titled 2008's Most Shocktasticariffic Movie Moments!!! (the three exclamation points would very important).

Most of them are horror-related because A) I am me, and B) horror has a way of etching itself under your closed eyelids, no? Plus, I don't know if you know this, but today is Horror Day in my Golden Trousers Awards. I mean, obviously you don't know that, only I know that, but now you do too because I have told you. Hooray complicity!

Also, some of the following aren't on DVD yet so I couldn't include images to go along with every single choice, but again, if you've seen the movie of which I speak then you know what I speak of. And so...

The Golden Trousers "Indelibles" of '08

Death of an Elemental, Hellboy II

The Joker's Magic Pencil Trick, The Dark Knight

Massacre at the swimming pool, Let the Right One In

Lotte finds the gun again, The Edge of Heaven

Every single frame of Tokyo Gore Police

Ye Olde Orphan Blindery, Slumdog Millionaire

Cannibal Barbeque, Doomsday

The "Girl" In The Attic, [REC] / Quarantine

The Scuttling Half-Hand Is Thirsty, Splinter

Sunburn Betrayal, Mister Lonely

Cute Kitten Meltdown, The Spirit

Intestinal Intimacy, Otto, or Up With Dead People

Steve Coogan giving Ben Stiller head, Tropic Thunder

Dawn's Not-So-Sweet Lady Surprise, Teeth

The Security Guard, Paranoid Park

-------------------

This is probably my favorite list of the year,
and I'd love to hear from y'all what moments of '08
have scarred and seared themselves into your brains.

.

The Golden Trousers Award For "One More..."

"... Olive Branch Offered Up To Slumdog Millionaire"
goes to:

Slumdog Millionaire

As long as I'm fessing up a wealth of positive thoughts this afternoon, I remembered one more happy thought that Slumdog gives me that I accidentally left off the previous post but figured what the hey I'll give it it's own award.

When I was waiting in line to see Slumdog at the theater in Lincoln Center, Frances McDormand and her hubby Joel Coen walked by me. Frances effin' McDormand!

So if I hadn't gone to see Slumdog, I might never have been in the presence of that divine creature. Thank you, Slumdog!
.

5 Off My Head - Finding Flowers In Shit

.

Here's where I pretend that I am a positive and optimistic "glass half full" kinda guy - where I spritz on some Eau d' Poppy by Sally Hawkins - and give some love to the flicks that severely disappointed me this year. There are five big time awards contenders that came out towards the end of 2008 that left a very very bitter taste in my mouth, but instead of bitching them out (again) I'm gonna pinpoint a single thing about each that I did like. Because even if they didn't float my boat each of these films were made by a heap of admirable craftsmen and women, and just because the final product isn't doing it for me it doesn't mean there's not nothing I can't admire.

Australia - Okay, nobody's maintaining that Baz's flick is a "big time awards contender" anymore. Even Nicole Kidman is a hater! But the actual other "big time awards contenders" are movies which I would've deep-throated a hot poker before allowing myself to be dragged into the theater to see - I don't do Ron Howard or Clint Eastwood if I can manage escaping them, so suck it Frost/Nixon, The Changeling and Gran Torino - so that leaves Australia. Poor ignored Australia that I thought was a little better than everybody was saying it was. And since I already gave love to the best thing about it, I'll have to seek something else out. Hrm, I could say that kid Brandon Walters was fine, which he was, but blurgh, boring. So I will take this moment to give love to Australia itself.


The country, the locales that Baz shot so lovingly. You rock, Australia. Take a bow, former prison colony of my dreams!

Rachel Getting Married - Like I said in my review, Debra Winger is fantastic. And my beloved Annie is great too. Too bad it's all in service of such unbearable dreck... happy thoughts!

Slumdog Millionaire - The first forty-five minutes was captivating enough, and got the tone right for the fairytale they were trying to make. And as always Danny Boyle's eye for color and rhythm was impeccable.

Milk - I already gave some explicit love to Diego Luna's performance, and a shout-out to Josh Brolin, and a loving appreciation of James Franco's beautiful bare ass. So what the hell else is left for me to love? I'm on the record as not being that big a fan of Sean Penn or Emile Hirsch's performances. Allison Pill was good. And the costumes, the sense of place and time, seemed spot on. I liked the fact that a lot of the hairstyles and clothes were unflattering, which seems wholly true to the period. Usually actors pick the cute styles for themselves in their jaunts to olden days, but, for example, that fro and glasses ensemble that Emile was rocking wasn't doing him any favors. But mostly, I am thankful for the visual of Joseph Cross and Emile making friendly in the darkroom. That certainly lingers.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Visually, it's a very pretty movie. That is all I will say about that. Done.
.

The Golden Trousers Actors of '08

.

Once again, like with my recognition of the actresses yesterday, I'm throwing some fine performances out the airlock because everybody's already talked them to death and while I do love them, I wanna keep things hopping and fresh like babies bottoms. Here are the poor fellows left behind:

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Josh Brolin, Milk

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Colin Farrell, In Bruges

Again, bear in mind, I love those five performances above and think these guys are worthy of any and all recognition they might get from the respectable awards bodies this year (my especiallys go to Heath of course and to Colin Farrell who reignited my adoration of him with that performance). But for me, for here, let's recognize some less-saluted work.

The Golden Trousers Actors of '08

Phillip Seymour Hoffman - Synecdoche, New York / Doubt - If you know the unnatural, hysterical, totally ridiculous aversion to Phillip Seymour Hoffman that I developed in the wake of his "theft" of Heath Ledger's deserved Oscar for Brokeback Mountain (I know it's not PSH's fault, but I thought his performance in Capote was terribly overrated), than you'll get why my re-embracing him feels like a big deal to me. And the big lug deserves it. He straddles what could've been an impossible character in Synecdoche with humor and warmth and an infuriating off-putting nature that could only have been concocted by PSH. And all the ladies in Doubt are reaping the props but I found his performance there terrific as well. Welcome back into the MNPP fold, Phillip!

Ralph Fiennes, In Bruges / The Reader - This is the year I finally got fed up with Ralph going continually udnerappreaciated. He is always, always great, and nobody gives the man love. Until they do, I... I am gonna sulk, I swear it. His quiet performance in The Reader is the imperative anchor that the story needs to work and he manages it with sad grace, and his fiery fuck-laced turn in In Bruges is the funniest male performance of the year. If the latest Harry Potter installment had come out on time, we'd have had another terrifying turn aof his s The Dark Lord out here too reminding us that this man can do fucking anything.

Michael Cera, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - Like Ralph, I simply believe everything that comes out of Michael Cera's mouth. Unlike Ralph, it never terrifies me, but rather makes me feel wonderful and happy like I want to go dance like a moron and run through the streets all night long. I want to watch Michael Cera for hours, just sitting there, smirking and being awesome.

Gary Oldman, The Dark Knight - Heath and Aaron Eckhart got the showier parts (and both wowed to varying degrees), but Gary Oldman's turn as the human-sized policeman standing up in the middle of the chaos was a remarkable acheivement without the benefit of any make-up or wild theatrics. He was just a guy struggling to do the right thing in a world of wrongs and showing us how noble that could be.

David Kross, The Reader - I'm sort of surprised that Kross hasn't gotten any Oscar talk, but I suppose like Leo DiCaprio he's been stampeded in the wake of It's Finally Kate Winslet's Year (bless her). Plus he's new, and there are all these Big Names vying for their shifty-mimicry prizes (I'm talking to you, Sean Penn) edging him out of the way. But Kross gives a lovely performance in the film, aging from boy to man before our eyes with all the weight put upon his eyes that that transformation always entails.

Diego Luna, Milk / Mister Lonely - Nobody gots no love for Mr. Luna in Milk but me. That's okay. I have enough. An unjustly maligned hate-him-because-he's-insufferable performance that reminds me of what I went through telling everyone that Christina Ricci was doing fantastic work in Monster. I survived that debacle, I'll weather this. As for Mister Lonely, what a weird fucking performance! In a weird fucking movie. Luna's Michael Jackson impersonator with a heart of confused gold has etched itself into my brain and I'm not totally comfortable with that but I am kinda fascinated all the same.

Tim Roth, Funny Games U.S. - Like with Naomi Watts' work in this same film, it's great work that I do feel gets overshadowed by the actors in the original (Roth had to live up to the great Ulrich Mühe) but deserves recognition all the same.

Richard Jenkins, The Visitor / Burn After Reading - I don't follow the Oscar forecasting closely enough to be sure whether Jenkins is still in the running for his terrific performance in The Visitor or not (even though I wasn't totally sold on the film itself - isn't the "white man learns rhtyhm and How To Live from darker skinned people" story a little played out at this point? - he is very very good in it), but this award is more for his work in Burn After Reading so I don't feel guilty including him while excluding the other Oscar-possibles. And yes, Brad Pitt was also wonderful in BAT, but then he went and did The Movie That Shall Remain Nameless and my current enthusiasm for him dwindled a bit. Anyway, nobody does sad-sack better than Jenkins, and I love me a good sad-sack.

Peter Macdissi, Towelhead - I liked this movie more than I thought I would, and I liked Macdissi's off-putting creep of a father the most. His every single line reading was gold.

David Harbour, Revolutionary Road - This movie hit me pretty hard - harder than the general consensus seems to be for most, it seems - and Harbour's deeply wounded performance stands up there in my estimation with anybody else in the film (yes, even Kate). I think it's because it came to me unexpected - I didn't expect his character to be so vital to the story being told, and for his reaction to the goings-on of the plot to have such weight. But they did, and Harbour knocked me out. (Bonus points for the moment I realized he played Jack Twist's Ennis rebound.)

.