Edited by Adam Cook
- Above: One of the best short films of the year, Person to Person, directed by Dustin Guy Defa for The New Yorker.
- The surprise trailer for Terrence Malick's new film, Knight of Cups, dropped this week, as did news it would premiere at the Berlinale in 2015.
- Above: no, Godard's Goodbye to Language didn't top Film Comment's Best of 2014 list, it finished 2nd to Richard Linklater's Boyhood, but at this rate we'll be leading with pictures from Boyhood every week with how many lists it's topping. Below are Film Comment's Top 10 of 2014 as well as their Top 10 Undistributed films of 2014. They have larger lists for your perusal here and here.
"1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, USA)
2. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
3. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, USA)
4. Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland)
5. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, UK)
6. Stranger By the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, France)
7. CITIZENFOUR (Laura Poitras, USA)
8. Birdman (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, USA)
9. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
10. The Immigrant (James Gray, USA)
Undistributed:
1. The Wonders (Alice Rohrwacher, Italy)
2. Hill of Freedom (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
3. Pasolini (Abel Ferrara, USA)
4. The Iron Ministry (J.P. Sniadecki, USA)
5. From What is Before (Lav Diaz, Philippines)
6. Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (Ossama Mohammed & Wiam Bedirxan, Syria/France)
7. Approaching the Elephant (Amanda Wilder, U.S.)
8. The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid, Israel)
9. Stray Dog (Debra Granik, U.S.)
10. Socialism (Peter von Bagh, Finland)
- Indiewire's massive annual poll has come to similar conclusions here.
- What? You want more lists? OK, here's Slant Magazine's Top 25 topped by everyone's favorite dozen-year spanning coming-of-age film, as well as Richard Brody's personal top 30 for The New Yorker. Here's a little of what Brody has to say about the the contents therein:
"These filmmakers have uninhibited confidence in the power of the image, which is why they can knock it about and work it over with such uninhibited vigor. They shatter the realistic, dramatic image with operatic fury, implode it with frozen stillness, accelerate it with hallucinatory frenzy, overwhelm it with obsessional multiplicity, submerge it with mythological anguish. They are creators of the image who risk the image, creators of experience who provoke the very notion of experience, creators of worlds who fill them with divergences rather than unities, questions rather than verities. The films on this years’s list are—in spirit, in flair, in audacity—akin to their studio predecessors, which, for their part, looked not back but ahead."
- Above: as usual, to celebrate the wrapping up of the year in movies, The Hollywood Reporter brings together an unlikely and uncomfortable group of filmmakers.
- Splendid news: more pieces have gone up as part of the 5th issue of LOLA, including interviews with Mike Hoolboom by Notebook pals Cristina Álvarez López (who also contributes a video essay on Claire Denis' Bastards!) and Adrian Martin and James Benning by Alison Butler—and more.
- Let's not forget Manohla Dargis, who lists her preferred movie fare of 2014 along with some thoughtful words on her/the year in film.
- Patton Oswalt recalls the day the clown didn't cry, via Vulture.
- Above: In case you missed it, the glorious trailer for George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road.
- Via Grantland, an oral history of Boogie Nights by Alex French and Howie Kahn:
"Boogie Nights began as a teenage boy’s wet dream. Nearly a decade before its 1997 release, it was a fantasy to chase. The year was 1988. The boy was a precocious, plotting 17-year-old named Paul Thomas Anderson. He was growing up in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley, obsessed with the studios all around him. He wanted in and hustled plenty — sneaking onto sets, working a Betamax camera from the age of 12, filming everything — but he also gained entrée from his father, Ernie, who was famous from his voice-over work for ABC on shows like The Love Boat. The Andersons had a pool — where funny-guy actors like Tim Conway and Robert Ridgely frequently lounged, cracking jokes and pouring drinks — and their own Shetland pony. The absurd and the domestic were one and the same."
- We've yet to find an official report, but it sounds like Mark Adams will be taking over as Artistic Director for the Edinburgh Film Festival.
- Lastly, those pesky Golden Globes have announced this year's nominations.