i tossed this list together pretty quick-like, but i think it's pretty thorough and includes a handful of albums that got passed over, as well as trimming some of the obvious, overrated ones everyone knows about (kid a, cough cough) by the bazillions of other shitty lists out there.
if you wanna check anything you've never heard of, head over to lala and give em a listen-through. setting up an acct over there was seriously one of the best things i did this past year.
sufjan: illinois avalanches: since i left you joanna newsom: milk eyed mender white stripes: elephant/white blood cells (tie) godspeed: lift your skinny fists of montreal: hissing fauna boards of canada: in a beautiful place ep charizma & peanut butter wolf: big shots exploding hearts: guitar romantic dirty projectors: rise above daft punk: discovery menomena: friend and foe akron/family: s/t prefuse 73: extinguished/on word extinguisher arthur russell: love is overtaking me jason forrest: unrelenting songs of the 1979 post disco crash edan: sprain your tape deck ep animal collective: strawberry jam madvilian: madvilliany tv on the radio: young liars ep battles: mirrored jim o'rourke: insignificance bonnie "whatever" billy/matt sweeney: superwolf max tundra: mastered by... les savy fav: rome written upside down ep neko case: fox confessor brings the flood nina nastasia & jim white: you follow me mc paul barman: very stimulating ep explosions in the sky: earth is not a cold dead place dj shadow: private press tom waits: real gone strokes: is this it thurston moore: trees outside the academy panda bear: person pitch lcd soundsystem: sounds of silver
as promised, here's movies of the decade list part deux. the secondest installment. the revenge, if you will.
KISS KISS BANG BANG
like 25th hour, which coincidentally started off yesterdays list, kiss kiss bang bang was something i watched recently after seeing it on a couple of other decade spanning lists, but don't let the newness of my discovering it water down my passion for the film. this was one of the proving ground films where robert downey junior had to show he still had what it took to carry a movie, and he comes out swinging for the fences, as does perpetual oddball val kilmer. if you haven't seen this before, i really recommend you check it out.
LITTLE OTIK
svankmajer!
MAN WHO WASN'T THERE
don't get me wrong, i like no country as much as the next guy, but this just comes down to personal preference. absolutely perfect b&w noir made by two of the best filmmakers out there. also: scarlett johansson.
MY WINNIPEG
what feels like a dreamlike documentary at first, quickly reveals itself to be a masterful work of truly magical fiction. this is a perfectly strange little fantasy world version of winnipeg that manages to feel terrifically genuine in all the right ways.
OLDBOY
a tremendous film here, full of twists and turns that keep you guessing throughout. that yellow hammer scene is unforgettable. if you've seen it you know exactly what's to love about it, and if you haven't then i'm revealing an oldboy sized void in your life that demands to be filled.
PAN'S LABYRINTH
as if you would have guessed it, a "hard r" rated fairy tale but with a child protagonist set in the brutally real world of 1944 fascist spain is such a great playground for del toro's perfectly suited and genuinely amazing visuals.
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE
though this was the offbeat indie that introduced the world to "dramatic" adam sandler, i can forgive it for leading to all the terds that have come out between this and funny people. like i said above with the coens, this is just a personal preference and arguably there will be blood was indeed a better capital F film, but really it all comes down to flat-out liking this movie so much more than twbb.
ROYAL TENENBAUMS
every time i watch this movie i get closer and closer to tearing up at the end. my chest gets heavier and heavier and i always think "this is gonna be the time..." but i never quite cross that line. wes anderson has been one of my favorite directors since i laid eyes on rushmore, and even though that film's title references a mountain, tenenbaums is so far his peak (ba-zing!).
SCHOOL OF ROCK
when you get a group of talented people together who are obviously passionate about what they are doing, the results are going to be incredible. you can feel the absolute balls out LOVE of rock n roll and the desire to pass that torch on to this current molly coddled (myself included) generation in every frame of film of this movie. each time i watched this thing in the theater i ended up walking around punching the air for about a half hour.
SYNECHDOCE, NEW YORK
this is eternal sunshine taken to the next level. this is charlie kaufman without michel gondry's whimsy to temper him. this is a horror movie where the antagonist is the fact that we all die alone. g'head and disagree (tons of people do), but for my money, this is the best film of the past ten years.
WAKING LIFE
i'm breaking my one director rule for this film, but this and school of rock simply had to be on here. it's something of a shame that kids are gonna go see this film in the future and say "is this a movie or an insurance commercial?" but whatever. like eternal sunshine and synechdoche, ny, this film created a complete environment to roam around in that was perfectly supportive to the narrative.
today is the first part of my personal films of the decade list. arriving tomorrow will be the second installment. it was a complicated enough sophie's choice sort of scenario getting these all in one place, so i'm not even gonna bother trying to put them in any order from best to least best. you'll get alphabetical and you'll like it, by gum.
25TH HOUR
i'm not gonna get up here and say i saw this thing in theaters or anything. i watched it the other day for the first time, but you can just feel the heart of this thing in each and every scene. at its core, it's spike lee trying to work out his obviously complex feelings about post 9/11 new york, and just fucking nailing it in such a truly personal way.
ALL THE REAL GIRLS
i was really shocked at how much i liked this movie and completely taken by surprise at how well david gordon green was able to present the arc of a romance, from the the endearing idiosyncrasies, to the deep seated insecurities, all strung along with such a subtle sense of humor and lightness.
AMELIE
you've seen this. we all know why this is on here (chicks LOVE it). i think we can move along.
CITY OF GOD
this is the most often rented dvd of the past ten years from the video spot i work at, and i think that's one of the greatest compliments that the city of madison can pay itself.
DARK KNIGHT
the greatest comic book movie of all time, and a flat out perfect action film from start to finish. you know all this. keep scrolling down.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
the ease with which this film seamlessly marries the plot with such astoundingly innovative visual technique is truly incredible. that the result of all this magnifies the emotional intensity of the movie in ways that few other films i've seen have managed to achieve puts it in a league all its own.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
i'm a super-secret sucker for sports movies and this is a really, really good one. if you haven't seen it cause you think it's about football, you should check it out cause it's about football... and a dozen other things too that you'll relate to. seriously this is so good. all you artsy fart types shouldn't get so scared of a little testosterone and check it out.
GHOST WORLD
here's a movie that captures the essence of that fleeting growing up moment. if you need real reasons, how about steve buscemi's shoulda-got-a-oscar performance! hey look everyone, let's all meet scarlet johansson! the "that guy's amazing" guy with the nun chucks! maybe the indian song played over the intro credits did it for you. regardless, this is pretty crucial.
GRINDHOUSE (THEATRICAL RELEASE)
why in the fuck is there not a megaa-wesome two disc set of this with ALL THE TRAILERS, awesome packaging, and a coupon to get in free to machete when it hits theaters? the whole value of the thing is in putting the two films together and letting the entirety of the grindhouse experience wash over you.
HIGH FIDELITY
i'm a music nerd. this is a movie about a music nerd who gets to have theoretical sex with catherine zeta jones. also he owns a record store. i don't know which is more of a win. walk into a room with this movie on and try not to watch the remainder of it.
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
here's some great film making from front to back, with every character fighting for your attention. the only thing this film needs is a some little words on the box that say "academy award winner, best supporting actor, william hurt."
HOT FUZZ
between this and shaun of the dead, i'll always take this. not to poop on shaun of the dead (respect is more than paid), but this is just a slightly better crafted movie. one of the closest things to perfection as we're likely gonna get. until they pop out another flick.
JACKASS
maybe it's because the whole thing gets by on the sheer charisma of johnny knoxville and company, but this and its sequel make me so happy.
KILL BILL (VOLS. 1 & 2)
this one's another no brainer. i won't waste your time telling you how awesome these two movies are. same here as with grindhouse: the hell is wrong with the weinsteins and their dvd releases. why is there not a raging boner of a box set available for me to drop some good money on?
check back tomorrow for the second half of this odyssey through ten years of crap i watched and really liked!
like every self-loathing media-phile out there i'm fan enough of making lists to actually throw a handful together and post them here with applicable youtubery and personal comments and whatever other odds n ends i can scrape together.
starting things off, in no particular order whatsoever, are some the best documentaries i've managed to put eyeballs on over the past ten years or so. there are a ton that i still need to see and please feel free to make some recommendations in the comments.
a list of music documentaries is coming up shortly followed by music, movies and favorite hot dogs i ate.
MAN ON WIRE
making wisconsin death trip prepared james marsh in how to maintain a quality of tone in the faceless reenactments reenactments that go on here, and it really shows. the subject matter is so interesting and the payoff is so compelling (some crazy frenchman straddling a tightrope strung between the two towers!) that this could have been just another documentary in someone else hands, but here it's endlessly valuable as an objective document of what happened as well as a subtle yet invaluable remembrance of the birth of the twin towers.
LAKE OF FIRE
i've always valued the admitted myth of objectivity, in the realm of news reporting as well as the world of the documentary, and this is easily one of the most objective documents of a ceaselessly complex debater as we're ever going to get. this is really something that i cannot recommend highly enough to everyone and everyone out there to find and watch, however difficult it might be to make it through.
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE
bowling for columbine, more than his other great documentary fahrenheit 9/11, thoroughly captured the zeitgeist of what was happening in american popular media in the late 90s and early 00s and introduced us to michael moore warts and all. yes there's that garishly awkward and ultimately pointless gesture of placing the picture of the dead kid in charleton heston's driveway, but the vast amount of subject matter covered and wound together so tightly more than makes up for moore's occasionally ham handed attempts at tugging at the audiences emotions.
JESUS CAMP
like lake of fire, this documentary did a fantastic job of presenting its subject matter in such a well rounded way that it was (if i remember correctly) championed by a number of evangelical christian groups while being seen as a true-life horror film by a number of liberals (myself included). this is not terribly far from some of the things that i saw and experienced in my youth, so it hit pretty close to home. having said that, the film never made a mockery of its subject matter nor passed judgments on them.
WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE
while this was certainly not the spike lee decade, he was one of the deftest directors to touch on the two worst events of the past ten years, here with katrina, and in the 25th hour with the 9/11 attacks.
HELVETICA
a feature length documentary about a font. and it's awesome. i was raised by a work-at-home graphic designer of a mother and made middle school reports using quark xpress back when that actually meant something, so this design-porn posing as a documentary had me at the first frame. sadly the objectified doc they made a last year (?) wasn't nearly as compelling.
HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY
ray johnson was by no means a a well known artists from his generation, but this documentary thrusts him into the limelight in the wake his suicide with a number of interviews with his contemporaries and copious amounts of glimpses at his life-as-art masterpiece.
KING OF KONG: FIST FULL OF QUARTERS
such an excellent example of filmmakers taking such an esoteric pastime as old school arcade game world records and finding such idiosyncratic characters and an unbelievably perfectly story. apparently the bad guy in the film isn't nearly as bad a dude as he's made out to be if imdb forums are to be believed.
STARTUP.COM
this is the entirety of the dot com bubble presented in the microcosmic rise and fall of one company.
CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS
i hesitated putting this on here because it's been a really long time since i've seen it, but i remembered it being really really good and just a crazy fucked up trip down a twisty turny rabbit hole of this family and that it kept drastically altering the viewers expectations all along the way.
GRIZZLY MAN
herzog finds a subject in real life about as crazy as any of his characters and even himself and the results are frighteningly engrossing.
SLASHER
this is a great little film that puts director john landis in memphis examining the life of a used car salesman. there's nothing fancy going on here, just good old salt of the earth america. in any number of the odd manual labor jobs i've had in my life, i've worked with a number of variations on this guy, and the documentary does an excellent job of portraying the humanity that lies underneath the cigarette stained and leather-skinned exterior.
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