MCUSA Closed; ESFS Open

This blog is closed, but my new endeavor, The E Street Film Society is now open.

Closed...For Now

I know I promised a solid last week of blogging, but I've been sick for two straight weeks, so I haven't been up to it. However, you should not consider this the end of my blogging career, just the end of this particular chapter. The next chapter will be The E Street Film Society, an all-inclusive movie club in which you can choose your own level of participation. As the founder and President, I will be choosing and publishing a schedule of movies at least one month in advance, and all of the films will be available on Netflix. If you want to play along, great; if not, also great; if you've already seen the film in question and would like to chime in, great as well. Instead of writing a simple review, I will start a discussion thread so we can all review it and talk about it together. In order to keep myself fully invested (and to ensure that at least 1 person is reviewing every film), I have made a long list of the supposedly "classic" films that I have never seen, and we will be ticking them off one a week for the next couple of years. I compiled the films from a plethora of sources - the Mike Dub 100, the IMDB 250, Sight and Sound polls, award winners, and so forth; I am viewing this as the masters course in film studies that I will never take.

If you've always wanted to catch up on the classics of world cinema but never had an avenue, here it is. Old movies not your bag? That's also cool, as I will be spicing the proceedings with reviews of every new theatrical and DVD release that I see. There will be something for everyone who likes movies, and by the end, I fully expect to be the best film critic in the country, if not the world.

I will be e-mailing everyone in late October to remind you that The E Street Film Society is convening; if you think that I might not have your e-mail address but would like to be alerted, drop me a line at danielebarnes@hotmail.com. For now, you can check out The E Street Film Society for the initial slate of films. I hope to see you all there!

Love,

The Barnesyard

The Top 10 Jack Nicholson Movies

I omitted from consideration any films where Jack isn't one of the 3 or 4 main characters. Thus, films like "Easy Rider" and "Reds" are in the running, while "Tommy" and "Broadcast News", for example, are not.

1) Chinatown
2) About Schmidt
3) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
4) The Last Detail (pictured above)
5) Five Easy Pieces (pictured below)
6) Easy Rider
7) Prizzi's Honor
8) The Shining
9) Batman
10) Carnal Knowledge

A Friendly Reminder...

Everything Star Wars is great! Without exception!

Barnesyard + Shia 4-Eva

The Top 40 Films of the Millenium

This list was made for a couple of different reasons - first of all, in response to the Entertainment Weekly list of the New Classics in film, music, TV, etc. That list stretched all the way back to 1982, which I thought was a little silly, since it's pretty much understood that movies like "Pulp Fiction", "Goodfellas", "Blue Velvet" and the like are venerated classics. There's really no need to re-venerate them, since everyone had a year/decade/century/millenium-closing list back in 2000. It seems like the real question is about any "great" films produced in the 8 2/3 years since that time. More personally, 2000 was the year that I first had movie reviews produced in the Sac City Express and the News and Review, and it was when I initially started considering myself a quasi-professional critic. Thus, these are essentially the 40 best movies that have been released since I became a working critic. I would leave to hear which films you feel that I should or shouldn't have included here, especially anything obscure I might not have seen.

A couple of things to note - for the purposes of expediency, I included all three "Lord of the Rings" as one entity; however, I counted "Kill Bill" as two separate volumes and "Grindhouse" as one amorphous Experience. In all cases, it only served to boost the rankings of these films, and anyway it's my list and I can do what I want.

1) The Man Who Wasn't There (pictured above)
2) Lord of the Rings trilogy
3) About Schmidt
4) Requiem For a Dream
5) Kill Bill, Vol. 1
6) The Grindhouse Experience
7) The Rules of Attraction (pictured below)
8) Memento
9) I'm Not There
10) Bully
11) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
12) There Will Be Blood
13) Talk to Her
14) Punch-Drunk Love
15) Zodiac
16) The Prestige
17) The Squid and the Whale
18) Sexy Beast
19) Far From Heaven
20) City of God
21) Little Children
22) The Royal Tenenbaums
23) No Country For Old Men
24) 5X2
25) Borat
26) Before Sunset
27) Bad Education
28) Black Book
29) Team America - World Police
30) What Lies Beneath
31) Nine Queens
32) The Dreamers
33) Unbreakable
34) The Pianist
35) The Departed
36) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
37) Storytelling
38) The 40 Year-Old Virgin
39) The Secret Lives of Dentists
40) American Psycho

The 12 Most Important Directors of the New Millenium (2000-present)

This list displays some obvious biases, especially the fact that are only 4 non-American directors, and only 1 (Almodovar) who specifically makes foreign-language films. But I can only rate the films that I've seen, so what are you gonna do. I excluded filmmakers who have made only one film this decade (e.g., Spike Jonze); additionally, anyone who didn't make more than one exemplary film (e.g., Michel Gondry, Noah Baumbach) or more than one film that I've seen (e.g., the Dardennes, Michael Haneke) were pretty much fucked. Beyond that, it's a fairly subjective list, and only accounts for my personal estimation of the filmmakers and their movies, rather than any cultural or popular "significance". I used my list of the Top 40 Films of the New Millenium, which will be published next week, to determine many of the rankings; the movies in parentheses are the reasons that they are here. Let me know what you think, and tell me about any excluded directors that you believe should be on this list.

1) Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill; Grindhouse/Death Proof)
2) Paul Thomas Anderson (Punch-Drunk Love; There Will Be Blood)
3) Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven; I'm Not There)
4) Christopher Nolan (Memento; Insomnia; The Prestige; The Dark Knight)
5) Joel/Ethan Coen (The Man Who Wasn't There; No Country For Old Men)
6) Pedro Almodovar (Talk to Her; Bad Education)
7) Michael Moore (Bowling For Columbine; Fahrenheit 9/11; Sicko)
8) Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings trilogy)
9) Martin Scorsese (The Aviator; The Departed; No Direction Home)
10) Alexander Payne (About Schmidt; Sideways; his segment in "Paris J'Taime")
11) Todd Field (In the Bedroom; Little Children)
12) Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Children of Men)

Corndogtown and Deepfried Cheese-Boys

There won't be much blogging today, since I'm taking a half-day to go check out the State Fair. This year, I'm going in with the gastronomic strategy of listening to my stomach, rather than getting dazzled by deep-fried novelties. Also, beer. Then some beer. And after that, beer. Air Supply is playing tonight; I originally intended to check out Grand Funk Railroad next week, but I stupidly double-booked. Jessica Simpson is playing on Monday night, so be sure to bring your binoculars and yell disgusting things at her.

Tomorrow will be the last week of MCUSA, so I am going to take the time this weekend (my first free one in a while, it seems) to make sure that it's worth your while. I will have the last Duelling Review (w/Becky), movie reviews, the last Dare Daniels, and maybe even one last Bump/Dump, time permitting. I'll work up a schedule tomorrow, along with one last Box Office Barnesyard.

Political News/Box Office Recap

In our Vice-Presidential poll, 50 percent of MCUSA citizens opined that Democratic hopeful Obama should choose a jar of Little Richard's "no manners" as his running mate. None of the other candidates seemed to unite the people like The Georgia Peach's poop, although apparently 25 percent of you are Christo-fascist homophobes set on waging nuclear war with Iran. Personally, I voted for Evan Bayh from Indiana, because I believe that Obama needs to pair himself with a fresh young face, while Little Richard's scat still represents the "good old boy" politics of corruption and partisan rhetoric.

*************

I had a decent week picking the box office, correctly predicting 4 of the top 5 movies, including the #1 film in the country. Ben Stiller's "Tropic Thunder" finally unseated Batman at the top of the box office, although its $25 million take is nothing get too worked up about. The animated "Some Candy-Ass Shit" nabbed third place with a little less than $15 million, and has finally inspired the nation's film critics and fanboys to stop pulling their punches with Lucas (only twelve years too late, fellas, but thanks). The Keifer Sutherland horror flick "Mirrors" grabbed fourth place with $11 million, and Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" did well in limited release (I'm seeing it this weekend). Here's how the box office shaped up this weekend, with my predictions in parentheses:

1) Tropic Thunder (1)
2) The Dark Knight (2)
3) Some Candy-Ass Shit (4)
4) Mirrors (x)
5) The Pineapple Express (3)

I'm So Bored With the MCUSA

MCUSA will be shutting down at the end of the month of August. It was a good run, but it's been about a year since I started MCUSA, and I never intended for this particular chapter of my blogging career to last any longer than that. Besides, I'm getting married in two months, and I feel that the wedding is more deserving of my attention at this point. I am currently working on ideas for a new blog that will be better, smarter, and more intently focused on film criticism (and specifically focused on establishing myself as the best movie critic in the world, and doing it on my own terms). The new blog will be called The E Street Film Society (www.estreetfilmsociety.blogspot.com) and it will be an interactive (if you want it) movie club open to all. It should start up sometime after the wedding, probably the first week in November, and I will have more details in the coming months. Until then, I will take the next couple of weeks to publish all of the MCUSA content I've been working on (including my Duelling Review with Heckasac over the original Scandinavian version of "Insomnia"). Thank you to everyone who ever read MCUSA and/or took the time to comment...you've all been an inspiration to me.

Love,

DB, President, E Street Film Society

New Scientific Breakthroughs - CAN This Pot Smoke Itself?

Long considered an impossible dream by the scientific community, The Barnesyard has finally drawn up working blueprints for weed that smokes itself. Allow me to walk you through the above diagram:

A. The Subject triggers a remote ignitor, which is...

B. ...connected to a burner set up under a pipe full of weed.

C. With the carb and the mouthhole stopped up to prevent leakage, the smoke enters into a high-intensity balloon, which is secured around the pipe.

D. A computer chip imbedded in the balloon collects the THC.

E. Through the use of Science, the THC is transmitted to a companion chip already implanted into The Subject's bloodstream (note: this is the same Science used for cel phone transmission; the difference is that instead of disappearing, the world's bees just play Grand Theft Auto and watch "Battlefield: Earth").

F. The Subject is now high as shit.

Now all I need are a battalion of Chinese scientists, several hundred million dollars in investor start-up cash, and a pound of yo' finest Cheeba!!

The Top 10 Documentaries of the New Millenium

Recently, in a sort of response to Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 New Classic Films, I put together my own lists of the top 40 films, top 10 documentaries, and 12 most important directors of this millenium. The EW list stretches back to 1982, but given the rapid momentum of pop culture, it seems that films like "Blue Velvet", "Do the Right Thing", "Goodfellas", and even "Pulp Fiction" have been sufficiently venerated as classics for a decade now. On the other hand, the year 1999 seems like a watershed moment for film, a time that showed how new cinematic technologies available in the coming millenium could be used for the power of good, original storytelling ("Being John Malkovich", "Magnolia", "The Matrix", "Run Lola Run", "Fight Club") or for the purpose of pure, mercenary evil and greed ("The Phantom Menace").

Smaller, cheaper, higher quality cameras have certainly been a boon for documentaries this decade, and they make up a large segment of Netflix's Instant Viewing content. These are my 10 favorite docmentaries since the year 2000:

1) Bowling For Columbine (pictured below)
2) The Devil and Daniel Johnston (pictured above)
3) No Direction Home
4) Spellbound
5) Jim Brown: All-American
6) Deliver Us From Evil
7) Capturing the Friedmans
8) Sound and Fury
9) Murderball
10) The Kid Stays in the Picture