Those are

Pink Floyd's "Dogs of War" which of course are the restraining elements preventing war in Julius Ceasar it also mentions webs being weaves, a chief preserve of spin doctors.

Second is a direct quote from the film.

Dreamboy refers to Peter Capaldi's old band and My Girl to Anna Chlumsky.

Nice...don't think anyone would have known about Capaldi without IMDB- a punk band with Colin Ferguson. Who knew? Ever heard em, Mitch?

I would never have figured out Dreamboy. Nice work Mitch.

No, never heard of them, I have read Capaldi discussing them in The Guardian on a couple of occasions.

"We breathe adrenaline, elevate organically"
















"And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,clinical, intellectual, cynical."








10. Star Trek
Directed By J.J. Abrams


Previous #10:

2005- Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
2006- The Prestige
2007- Grindhouse
2008- Milk




Memorable Quotes:

Lt. Nyota Uhura: I'm impressed. For a moment there, I thought you were just a dumb hick who only has sex with farm animals.
James T. Kirk: Well, not only.


Leonard 'Bones' McCoy: I may throw up on you.
James T. Kirk: I think these things are pretty safe.
Leonard 'Bones' McCoy: Don't pander to me, kid. One tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirteen seconds. Solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And wait till you're sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you're so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.
James T. Kirk: Well, I hate to break this to you, but Starfleet operates in space.
Leonard 'Bones' McCoy: Yeah. Well, I got nowhere else to go, the ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I got left is my bones.


Burly Cadet #1: Hey, you better mind your manners.
James T. Kirk: Oh relax, cupcake, it was a joke.
Burly Cadet #1: Hey farmboy. Maybe you can't count. But there are four of us and one of you.
James T. Kirk: So get some more guys and then it'll be an even fight.

Vulcan Council President: You have surpassed the expectations of your instructors. Your final record is flawless, with one exception: I see that you have applied to Starfleet as well.
Spock: It was logical to cultivate multiple options.
Vulcan Council President: Logical, but unnecessary. You are hereby accepted to the Vulcan Science Academy. It is truly remarkable, Spock, that you have achieved so much. Despite your disadvantage. All rise
[the Vulcan Council stands in honor of Spock, who now looks slightly pissed]
Spock: If you would clarify, Minister. To what disadvantage are you referring?
Vulcan Council President: Your human mother.
Spock: Council... Ministers, I must decline.
Vulcan Council President: No Vulcan has ever declined admission to this academy!
Spock: Then as I am half-human, your record remains untarnished.

James T. Kirk: Whoa... how do you know my name?
Spock Prime: I have been and always shall be, your friend.


James T. Kirk: [to Spock] The test itself is a cheat, isn't it? I mean you program it to be unwinnable.
Spock: Your argument precludes the possibility of a no-win scenario.
James T. Kirk: I don't believe in no-win scenarios.
Spock: Then not only did you violate the rules, you also fail to understand the principal lesson.
James T. Kirk: Please enlighten me.
Spock: You of all people should know, Cadet Kirk, a captain cannot cheat death.
James T. Kirk: [reminiscing] I of all people...
Spock: Your father, Lieutenant George Kirk, assumed command of his vessel before being killed in action, did he not?
James T. Kirk: I don't think you like the fact that I beat your test...
Spock: Furthermore, you have failed to define the purpose of the test.
James T. Kirk: Enlighten me again.
Spock: The purpose is to experience fear, fear in the face of certain death, to accept that fear, and maintain control of oneself and one's crew. This is the quality expected in every Starfleet captain.







Perhaps the best review of Star Trek this year wasn’t a review at all. It was a headline in The Onion: “Trekkies Bash New Star Trek film As ‘Fun, Watchable’”. Here came a new film without lessons of morality or long discussions in diplomatic meetings. How dare J.J. Abrams make a movie that people might actually enjoy with fight scenes that looked realistic? Oh, Onion…. you’re hilarious.

Abrams’ Star Trek is able to be surprising and interesting because he did the one thing the hard-core Star Trek fans probably hated him for: he pushed the “reset” button. Opening the film with a wormhole (which we later found out came from the future), Abrams and crew is able to throw away the gospel which was written by Gene Roddenberry and not just create his own past, but his own new future. Want to create a world where Spock and Uhara are getting it on? WORMHOLE! Want to create a world where Kirk’s actions are driven by the death of his father as an infant? WORMHOLE! Want to give Scotty a ridiculous sidekick? WORMHOLE!

The cast here is pitch perfect, from Zachary Quinto’s Spock to Zoe Saldana’s Uhara to Simon Pegg’s Scotty. I don’t think I’d ever heard of Chris Pine before this film, but he has cemented himself as the new James T. Kirk. And Abrams has staked his name as the new director of what could be a very successful franchise. By deleting the past, Abrams has invigorated the future.

Written By MattDrufke



spiritofeden's Best Film of 2009

Tracy Jacks, Matt Drufke and farawaysoclose- #2

Blonde Almond and blaze- #4

Nice Blurb, like the appropriate ending with one of the best lines in the movie.

RJD2 "Final Frontier" is where we might end up on this Star Trek. Spock would find it pretty Logical to include that Supertramp song as well.

Nicely blurbed, Matt. If I were to have had the assignment, I would have noted how much more "human" the characters we all know and love seemed to be in this go-around.

Amazon Customer Video Review
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2YTZ96W698Q9...=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Big RJD2 fan are you, aggie?!?

I would like to get into him more ever since I heard his "The Horror".

That's a good one- heard it's about "googling" answers.

I hope I am not reading too much ire in your posts, El. I do believe I have played this game fair and square, after all.

Just busting your balls, aggie...RJD2 surprised me. Well done.

Now I need to organically elevate myself out of here...too much comp time is making me dizzy.

I never saw 'Star Trek', as someone who doesn't consider himself much of a Star Trek fan, that's not surprising. I have a request at the library for it, so I should see it before the end of next year.

Caley, it's totally worth it. You can go in with just the scant knowledge about Trek that most regular folks have and enjoy it.

Yeah, the craziness! No one remembers those characters or that story. Phhhht!




It's awful. The deck of the Enterprise feels like a high end salon.

"Take me to a place they say the dreaming never ends
Open wide drive that mystery road
Walk through eden's garden and then wonder as you go"









"A different kind of tinsel
Decorates my tree"










"hold your mistake up,
before they turn the summer into dust....

You'd better look out below"








09. Avatar

Directed By James Cameron


Previous #09:

2005- Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room
2006- Thank You For Smoking
2007- Knocked Up
2008- Man On Wire




Memorable Quotes:

Col. Quaritch: This low gravity'll make you soft. When you get soft... Pandora'll shit you out dead with zero warning.

Col. Quaritch: Out there, beyond that fence, every living thing that crawls, flies or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes.


Dr. Grace Augustine: Don't shoot! Don't shoot. You'll piss him off.
Jake Sully: It's already pissed off.
Dr. Grace Augustine: Jake, that armor is too thick. Trust me. It's a territorial threat display. Do not run or he'll charge.
Jake Sully: What do I do? Dance with it?
Dr. Grace Augustine: Just hold your ground.
[the Hammerhead Titanothere charges and Jake run towards him and yells to scare him. It goes away]
Jake Sully: Ha, ha! Yeah, come on! Show what you've got! Oh yeah, who's bad? That's right. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about bitch. That's right, get your punk ass back to mommy. Yeah, you've got nothing. You keep running. Why don't you bring some of your friends, huh?
[Turns around and sees an angry Thanator standing in front of him]
Jake Sully: [to Grace] What about this one? Run? Don't run? What?
Dr. Grace Augustine: Run! Definitely run!


Moat: Learn well, "Jakesully", and we will see if your insanity can be cured.


Jake Sully: If Grace is there with you - look in her memories - she can show you the world we come from. There's no green there. They killed their Mother, and they're gonna do the same thing here.


Jake Sully: She said all energy is only borrowed, and one day you have to give it back.


Jake Sully: Sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move


Jake Sully: Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.



Jake Sully: They're not going to give up their home. They're not going to make a deal. Pff for what? A light beer and blue jeans? There's nothing that we have that they want. Everything they sent me out here to do is a waste of time. They're never going to leave hometree.





When I go see a movie, I want to see something different; I don’t want to be shown the suburbs or two guys talking in a cafe about sports or women. I can do that. And let’s be honest; how many of those scenes are really memorable? The only ones I can remember are about guys doing extraordinary things - like bank robbers, for instance. A good example of that is the film Reservoir Dogs. I remember them sitting around that café, talking about the heist. The group leader issued out names, deciding to call Steve Buscemi “Mr. Pink”, much to his dismay. That was a great café scene. I vividly remember him bitching about that name in a humorous fashion.

I don’t want to hear about long drawn out marital problems in the 1970’s, the backdrop carefully presented in painstakingly authentic detail overseen by the local antique club. I was alive in the 70’s, I know what it looks like. I can go into the neighboring town and see that if I want to; those exact styles still decorating the walls of certain homes. I’ve had girlfriends. I know what woman trouble is. This bores me. If I want girl trouble, I can be the starring role, center stage.

What’s that you say, friend? Bob is getting divorced? Well gosh-gee-wilkers color me tickled! That is exciting news. You say it’s well acted and the script is to die for? Wow, I’m impressed. So what’s it about? Oh…you say it’s about Bob getting divorced in the suburbs? Hmmm….yeah I think I’ll pass. Say friend, what else do you have? Do you offer any other recommendations for your buddy?

Avatar you say? What’s that about?

Hmm…it’s about a private corporation that flies to a far off planet, threatening the natives in order to remove them from a lucrative mineral deposit? And you say the planet “fights back” with vividly imagined, beautiful creatures? They even have their own language?

Now my friend that is something I must see! I can’t go over to the antique shop or the indie café down the block and do that myself. I can’t go to the beach, film it in black and white with mopey actors and call it a “masterpiece of minimalism”. No sir, I can’t do that.

Thank you my friend, for I appreciate your recommendation. I will bring the finest popcorn I can muster. You see for me, it is about entertainment, not a dissection of the creation.

Butter, anyone?

Written By Montana



Shackleton's Ghost and Montana's Best Film of 2009

Elemeno P.T. and theremin- #2

spiritofeden and petras- #3

Agrimorfee and jjh- #4

The XTC quote is perhaps in reference to someone who prefers the simple pleasures of nature to the challenge of fine art?

Edit: and also those weird animals that the blue people use their alien genitalia to make fly?

arcade fire wake up because jake sully is asleep in human form while awake in avatar form?

those colonel quaritch quotes are sweet. love that guy.

also, funny blurb by montana.

and ftr it's shackleton's great adventure, like in my avatar, which shows the embarkment of a great adventure.

Should have paid more attention to a scene in the warehouse in Reservoir Dogs where the characters are given their names before a jewel heist IMO.

huh, have to say the screenshots just aren't quite the same w/o the 3-D effects

Then why call it a Star Trek film at all? I liked this movie OK for what it was, but it seemed odd to even put the Star Trek brand on it.


This was easily the worst and least necessary element of the movie, and unfortunately the sort of thing that has replaced a lot of good storytelling in science fiction.

"How do we explain how this happened?"
"No need to, just say it was a wormhole."
"But it doesn't fit at all with the 40 years of storytelling that made people care about these characters and ideas in the first place."
"Who cares, just say it's an alternate timeline, then it doesn't have to make sense!"

Anyway most of that stuff could have been reasonably incorporated without conflicting with significant elements of Star Trek, and the stuff that couldn't, like when Vulcan gets blown up, didn't even have a clear purpose in the story.

I thought Drufke liked the movie? That's a funny play on the wormhole. Damn that movie was bad.

I never cared about any character until Spock showed up conveniently on that ice planet.

Well, at least we know why Montana didn't vote for Ordinary People or Kramer vs. Kramer.

Dreamworld lyrics from Midnight Oil, friends.

"My Bird Performs" from XTC also kind of apt for those pretty trees in Pandora that looked like Christmas decorations.

yeah

or maybe it's because Pandora is where the wild things are.

all nicely done...though I was simply referring to the mysterious trees and the next line in the song- "my bird performs", a connection to the most exhilirating scene in the movie when they hop on the 'birds'.


figured you'd bust this out, VD...so far only one this year...so far...


very nice

Bumping to get these freakin huge pics off my screen...takes forever to load.

God is that frustrating. My comp locked up and ultimately erased the next film- these things take about 20-25 minutes each to post. I'll have a few more up tonight after 8:30....including the best blurb yet, by ste.

Christ that's embarrassing.

Heck of a lot less embarrassing than the placement for Thank You For Smoking. That film is shit.

Matters of the past, however. Feh.

This countdown is agonizingly slow.

Not at all. It's much better as a slow countdown, gives people time to discuss the films. I have no gripes with the way Elemeno runs his countdowns.

A Heartbreaking Work OF Staggering Genius



"Until I heard my mother shouting through the fog
It turned out to be the howling of a dog
Or a wolf to be exact, the sound sent shivers down my back
But I was drawn into the pack and before long
They allowed me to join in and sing their song
So from the cliffs and highest hill, yeah
We would gladly get our fill
Howling endlessly and shrilly at the dawn"










"The loudest mouth will hail the new found way..."









"if I find you've been creepin' round my back stairs"











08. Where The Wild Things Are

Directed By Spike Jonze


Previous #08:

2005- Broken Flowers
2006- Casino Royale
2007- Hot Fuzz
2008- Happy-Go-Lucky




Memorable Quotes:

Carol: Hey King! What's your first order of business?
Max: Let the wild rumpus start!


Max: I'm Max. I'm an explorer. I traveled by sea. I used to travel by air.
KW: Obviously you have no home or family.
Max: Well, I had one of those but...
KW: But you ate 'em all?
Max: No! I have no plans to eat anyone.


KW: I don't want you to go, I'll eat you up, I love you so.

Judith: Happiness isn't always the best way to be happy.


Douglas: Will you keep out all the sadness?

Max: Carol, did you know the sun was gonna die?
Carol: What? I never heard that... Oh come on, that cant happen, I mean you're the king, and look at me I'm big! how can guys like us worry about a tiny little thing like the sun, hm?
Max: I have a sadness-shield that keeps out all the sadness, and it's big enough for all of us.









the first time i saw where the wild things are, i was with my then-girlfriend, her six-year old son, her aunt and her brother. only moments into the film, i could already sense the collective discomfort within my present company. my girlfriend, her aunt, they didn't want their child to repeat the behavior on screen. after the film, the boys of the group all felt moved, but the women were beyond appeal. j------, my girlfriend, talked the whole ride home about how much she disliked it. i tried to understand how something that summoned up old feelings so vividly, could instill such disgust. i was tempted to credit the division of preference to the gender divide. maybe the despair and the feelings of endless tedium are boyhood things. i've heard that boys are more prone to depression than girls, and i can believe it. not that there are valid excuses for gender divides; the argument that someone can't understand experiences beyond their own doesn't hold water, though. movies are meant to transport us, show us worlds beyond our own.

maybe that's what accounts for the disappointment that many people felt for the wild things. people saw the rolling dunes on the posters and expected to be taken to some far off fantasy world. instead the journey made is inwards, backwards, though id, ego and the steady revisions of memory, into past drafts of ourselves. j------ was not the type for introspection; the athletic daughter of a preacher, she was hardly the perfect match for a neurotic, sickly jew like me. i couldn't blame her for disliking the film, but her lack of willingness to express her feelings bothered me. i'm a pansy, prone to over-examination and redundancy. it took a movie about shifting perspectives, to make me recognize the disparity between our own. max, as king of the wild things, learns the burden of responsibility, the pain of dying to please the ones who love you least. max is a bastard, and young. but bastards exist, we're all one to someone. j------ was the parent, not me; i was ill-equipped to fathom her responsibility. watching the film, in the mostly empty theater, i felt like the mother's boyfriend, living only in the edges of the frame of someone else's story. i had no right to criticize her, but i felt distant, lost inside my own head, in the hours following the film.

spike jonze, like his former collaborator, made a movie which very nearly forces the viewer to confront the limitations of their own lives. i wouldn't have expected j------ to sit through synecdoche ny, and i probably shouldn't have expected her to sit through this either. but life, no matter how disappointing, is worth confronting. without that critical examination, what are we but a random accumulation of experience, a katamari ball absorbing everything we roll into and over? ultimately, our life's work, like that of caden cotard, is the de-and-reconstruction of our past experiences.

it wasn't long after that i finally embraced my own wild side. i ended the relationship unceremoniously, with a lack of gratitude and a coward's grace. she couldn't understand me, nor me her. i decided that it was better to float away to my own island, to roar and spit and kick dirt, rather than take out my disappointment to her. i think i've realized that no matter how old i grow, my adult size is like a padded costume that hides the eternal child inside. hurt feeling stay hurt, even cocooned inside the silk of time. no matter how old i get, i still wish that someone would hug me, bring me in from the wild, feed me cake and tell me everything is alright. it's a selfish desire, an unhealthy wish. when i have kids of my own, i'll expect no less from them. i'm glad i have this film as a signpost, a signal to remind me that, no matter what i want, i must be bigger than myself. the day will come when i will swallow my pride and hurt feelings and give everything that i possess to soothe some wild thing of my own creation. movies like where the wild things are and synecdoche ny remind us that no matter how lonely we feel, isolation is universal. better to be alone, together, than whatever bleak alternative. perhaps that's too defeatist an affirmation; at least it serves to reassure us that we are all alone but all alone together. by that definition we are all family, and all--even the careless snarls of hurt and anger--is love in disguise.

Written By stephen thomas erlewhine



stephen thomas erlewhine and Elemeno P.T.'s Best Film of 2009

Asher Ford and Badger- #2

Ogawa #3

Should be considerably higher imo. I mean, I didn't see much this year but this one seems good for the end-of-decade list.

Run Cleanup!

Incredible blurb, ste.

WoW STE...thanks for sharing.

We rented this post-deadline. My God...Max in the film looks and acts exactly like my own son. My wife walked out of the room after 20 minutes. I need to see this again to reflect further on what it's all about. Goddamn, wasn't that soundtrack just beautiful? I completely forgot that Gandolfini was playing Carol...if Oscars were given for Best Voiceover, he shoulda got a win.

Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" reflects on the characters' fear that the sun will die. (Jeesus, talk about your misheard lyrics, for forever I thought that he was singing "Sometime")

Blitzen Trappers "Furr" coincidentally in its title can refer to those fuzzywuzzy beasts who love sleeping in a pile. "Drawn into the pack..." of course is pretty much the plotline of the movie.

XTC "King For A Day" is exactly what happens to Max. Did he have the loudest mouth..or the truest wisdom?


Someday LMNO will just use XTC lyrics for every movie on the countdown.

yeah STE, great blurb. Really enjoyed that.

thanks guys. i just really effing love this movie. watched again in the time since and it's so clearly a masterpiece. at least it made the top ten, but i definitely agree that it should've placed at or near the top.

It'll definitely be one of those movies people look back on in two decades and wonder why the critics weren't more receptive to it, or why the awards organizations completely ignored it. Wonderful, brilliant film.

ste- again, can't say enough about your poignant blurb...and your girlfriend situation reminded me of the time I saw Dead Man Walking with my ex. While someone being pro death penalty wouldn't preclude me from dating them, still, when we walked out of the theater, her only comments were of vitriol towards Penn's character and that he, something like, "deserved to fry". Though we didn't officially break up for a few more months, our relationship really ended that night.
...oh and your comments also reminded me that I forgot to put the teaser I originally had before my computer malfunctioned- It's up there now. Thanks Dave Eggers.

i think it might be the artful aspect that makes it difficult to treat like most other films. the lack of one-to-one connection of human characters to wild things, the interiority and lack of plotting, plus, admittedly, the twee, indie-ness of it, probably contributed to its reduced cultural impact. but not to overstate the relevance of a movie to which i am clearly a partisan, but why i don't think think that wtwta is best treated like film. what i mean is that there are plenty of paintings or sculptures that i don't like, books too, but i wouldn't claim that they weren't art or weren't important works. i can fathom that plenty of people might find wtwta to be too slow, sad, limited in scope or just plain boring. but i can't understand how any of those somehow make it a two star film, even on a relative scale. i mean, i'm not too big a fan of virginia woolf, but i'd be an asshole to claim that to the lighthouse isn't some kind of masterpiece.

anyhow, i just got the sendak/bangs documentary in at the library. looking forward to watching that this weekend? and where has lester been lately? he was posting pretty often in the lead-up to wtwta. was self-promotional stuff mostly, but still.

also, elemeno, i'm glad (well, maybe not the best word) you shared your dead man walking experience. movies and music are communal artforms and our experiences with them are shaped by the people we associate at the point of exposure. there will always be songs that remind me of specific people, specific periods in my life, and it's always good to know that other people experience things in similar ways. we're more than our tastes or opinions, but what we enjoy, what we feel about what we enjoy, says a good deal about who we are.

hyper-emo moment over. keep up the good work with the countdown. don't let the occasional kvetching get to you.

Indeed, great analysis Stephen.

Looking forward to this last stretch.

I doubt any of that will happen. Just wishful thinking.