While it's always nice getting your voice heard, apologies must go out to all of the fine indies and the handful of exceptional studio releases that I've been unable to get to thus far this year. With Florida Film Festival final selections looming in early January, and over 1500 submissions under consideration, November and December are pretty much dead months to me as far as actually going out to the movies. So unless I caught it at Sundance or Toronto, or a film happened to open at Enzian, there's still a whole bunch of movies out there on my "to do" list. But here's what I've got so far:
Best Film: BABEL
Best Performance (gender neutral): (tie) Forest Whitaker, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND and Ryan Gosling, HALF NELSON
Best Supporting Performance (gender neutral): (tie) Jackie Earl Haley, LITTLE CHILDREN; Catherine O'Hara, FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION; and James McAvoy, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, BABEL
Best Screenplay: TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY (Frank Cottrell Boyce)
Best First Film: HALF NELSON, dir. by Ryan Fleck
Best Documentary: WORDPLAY, dir. by Patrick Creadon
Best Cinematography: PAN'S LABYRINTH (Guillermo Navarro)
Best Undistributed Film: Mike Akel's CHALK (narrative) and Shaun Conrad & David Raccuglia's PURVIS OF OVERTOWN (doc)
MC's 2006 Top 10 (as of 12/21, in alphabetical order):
BABEL
BORAT
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
LADY VENGEANCE
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
LITTLE CHILDREN
MONSTER HOUSE (in Digital 3-D)
PAN'S LABYRINTH
TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY
VOLVER
I reserve the right to make wholesale changes in the coming weeks. Let the arguments begin...
--Matthew
As you probably don't care, I restrained from watching any feature length films this year for reasons still unknown. To be fair, I did watch over 300 short films, my favorite of which was a University of Miami thesis film by Matt Jespersen called I'M PRETTY, TOO. (Remember that name - Matt Jespersen.)
Anyway, I've begrudgingly decided to resume watching features in the year 2007, mainly to appease friends who've tormented me over this past year, but also so that I may return to the top ten movie theaters in the state: Bill Cosford Cinema (Coral Gables), Cinema Paradiso (Fort Lauderdale), Hippodrome Cinema (Gainesville), Reitz Union Cinema (Gainesville), San Marco Theatre (Jacksonville), Silver Moon Drive-In (Lakeland), Enzian Theater (Maitland), Beach Theatre (St. Pete Beach), Student Life Cinema (Tallahassee) and, of course, Tampa Theatre (Tampa).
However, I have no clue what to see first. Perhaps it'll be one of the following...
2006 Top 10 Movies I'd Most Like To See
(as of 12/25, in alphabetical order)
DUCK SEASON (2004)
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE
LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
MONSTER HOUSE (DIGITAL 3-D)
MUTUAL APPRECIATION (2005)
OLD JOY
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
THE TIGER AND THE SNOW (2005)
WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?
Or one of these...
2007 Top 10 Movies I'd Most Like To See
(as of 12/25, in alphabetical order)
BEE MOVIE
BE KIND REWIND
HOT FUZZ
RENO 911!: MIAMI
SICKO
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
SWEENEY TODD
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
UNTITLED U2 CONCERT PROJECT (DIGITAL 3-D)
ZODIAC
