And the Envelope Goes To...
It's award season!
The Coveted Outie Awards are up at my new Out of the Box column! Congratulations to all the winners.
As a bonus award ceremony, here are the Ten Best Movies I Didn't See In 2004.
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen): A documentary about the history of LA as seen through the movies; this would so beautifully combine my cinemaphile and urban-history joneses as to be unmanageable. I missed it on its way through, thanks to the New Austerity, which means I stop scanning the listings for the Siskel Center. Hopefully it will show up on IFC so I can TiVo it, or get back around some time when I can scrape together a roll of nickels from the nightstand coin basket.
Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Sam Fuller): A restored version of Fuller's masterpiece, about the First Infantry Division in WWII. Played the Film Festival, but was a victim of my austerity and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
his_regard's timing issues.
Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha): Aishwarya Rai plays Jane Austen's Liza Bennett, or rather "Lalita Bakshi"? In a Bollywood musical? Sign me up. This hasn't hit Chicago yet, but mollpeartree and I are so there. My only worry is that their Darcy will simply vanish into air, into thin air, next to Ash.
Merchant of Venice (Michael Radford): Although the reviews have been mixed, it's Pacino playing Shakespeare. Hasn't hit Chicago yet.
Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano): A 2003 film, but it didn't hit Chicago until 2004, so it still counts. It'll be fun to see Beat Takeshi's take on this classic. I'll see it at Doc this quarter, if I'm in town then.
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood): Would be rated higher, but I was burned by the over-praise for Mystic River, which was very, very good but not a masterpiece. I may see it first run, or wait until Doc.
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater): Another film combining film and urban genius loci, and Linklater to boot. his_regard saw it two or three times without me during its Chicago run, which means I can beat him up about it for another decade. I'll probably see it at Doc.
Hotel Rwanda (Terry George): I'm surprised I haven't seen this yet, given mollpeartree's Don Cheadle issues. I'm sure I'll get around to it some time, though.
House of Flying Daggers (Yimou Zhang): A victim of austerity, and worse yet, one that gnosticpi, lhn, and kaynorr have already somehow seen without me. I'll figure something out.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore): A mendacious compendium of balderdash and flim-flam, but by all accounts (including that of robin_d_laws, whose word is worth weighing like sapphires) a masterfully-assembled one. I'll catch this in 30 years, when I can appreciate it on its merits, much as I did JFK.
And finally, the Ten Best Movies of 2004 That I Actually Saw: The Incredibles, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Primer, The Saddest Music In The World, Kill Bill 2, The Passion of the Christ, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, Collateral, Sky Captain And The World of Tomorrow. Honorable Mentions to The Ladykillers, Kontroll, and Coffee and Cigarettes, which could easily be swapped out for anything in the bottom six. And yes, I'm apparently too old for Garden State and too young for Sideways, since neither hit me anywhere like they seem to have hit their target audience.
