Based on a True... Nevermind

In the NY Times' Awards Season package, Dennis Lim's "Screenwriting Drafts of History" takes a look at the screenplays behind three political biopics: Milk, W. and Che. (Click each title for excerpts.) In profiling the writers behind these works -- Dustin Lance Black, Peter Buchman and Stanley Weister, respectively -- Lim touches on an issue that comes to my mind when sitting down with biopics of every flavor: "[E]ach went through a similar gantlet of intensive research but often arrived at different solutions when it came to the conundrums of biography: how to get at the private truth beneath the public person and how to reconcile the conflicting roles of fact checker and myth maker."

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WEEKEND BRIEF: 2008 in Rigor Mortis

Over at the main site, the team has compiled their final year-end tallies with two last Top 10 lists (we promise!). GreenCine renaissance man Craig Phillips' Best of 2008 would make Nigel Tufnel proud (it goes up to 11), with Let the Right One In taking top honors. Then, Erin Donovan details the year's Best Movies About Women, including a personal favorite of mine that received its long-overdue DVD release: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. For more GreenCine lists, including the best docs, B-movies, and gay DVDs of 2008, click here.

Question for the Weekend: Each year, somebody inevitably complains about there being a glut of Top 10 lists, or that nobody cares except for those of us making them. Is it important to chronicle the best films at the end of each calendar year, and is there a better model to do so than an arbitrarily numbered list?

FILM OF THE WEEK: Cargo 200

Cargo 200 (Gruz 200)
Directed by Alexey Balabanov
2007, 90 minutes, Russian with English subtitles

"I show what filth we live in. Society was sick from 1917 onwards."
- Alexey Balabanov, in a 2007 Wall Street Journal interview

Some have suggested Balabanov's admirably rigorous (if unsparingly fiendish) sociopolitical button-pusher to be a black comedy, which is unusual for a film whose grimy wasteland setpieces and tense grindhouse climax fit snugly between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left; if and when there are laughs, they're decidedly the nervous kind. Set in the USSR during the back half of 1984 (and allegedly based on a true story), Cargo 200 takes its title from the shipping code for military corpses from the Afghan front, endless crates of which are frequently seen taking the train home. A single shot unsubtly but ably illustrates the title's intent: not moments after a plane is unloaded with said freight, a new battalion of soldiers marches onboard to become next week's vain sacrifices.

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PODCAST: 2009 Resolutions for Film Criticism

Alternatively: "I resolve my film criticism to be nicer to people and lose 15 pounds."

Celebrating the end of an exhausting year and ringing in the new, I had a wonderful chat over cocktails with Time Out New York critics David Fear and Joshua Rothkopf, plus The House Next Door founder-turned-filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz. Standing outside the Brooklyn Inn, the subject of our tipsy "pubcast" was the future of film criticism; specifically, what we all would like to see and do to elevate and spread it in 2009. These cats are sharp, so consider it a group-think addendum to the goals laid out in my introductory post.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

What'choo Talkin' Bout, Hillis?

Happy new year, everyone. As my terrific friend David Hudson moseys on down to IFC.com to continue fighting the good fight with The Daily, the baton has been handed off here to yours truly. Thanks to David, the accommodating good folks at GreenCine, and especially to all of you for sticking around to see what evolves. It may be a bumpy ride until I learn how to drive this behemoth, but if you promise to be patient, I promise it'll be worth your dwindling attention span.

The world is collapsing in on itself! Arts journalism is dead, and so is cinephilia! In a wintry climate like this -- and I'm not talking about the weather, although seriously, what were those poor fools thinking by standing around in Times Square on an excruciatingly frostbitten night like last? -- there has been so much chatter (again: not just our teeth) about whether film criticism matters. I passionately believe it does, and with GreenCine Daily 2.0 or whatever you'd like to call the post-Hudson era, I intend to find a tone and platform that not only proves it matters, but encourages curiosity, discourse, and awakens new cineastes. Just as Sean Penn channeled Harvey Milk, my name is Aaron Hillis and I'm here to recruit you.

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Lists and awards, 12/31.

Hey, all. We've got the bubbly on ice here in Berlin and we're about an hour away from popping the cork. 2009's going to be a rough one for all of us, but let's do what we can to make it a year to remember - in a good way, of course. Aaron Hillis has some great things in store for GreenCine Daily and I'll see you over at IFC tomorrow.

"Swedish veteran director Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments received the highest number of nominations - eight - for the Guldbagge awards, Sweden's national film prize," reports Jorn Rossing Jensen for Screen.

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Voice-LA Weekly. "Film Poll 2008."

"All hail Andrew Stanton's WALL•E - even us!" J Hoberman: "Sometimes, the movies really are universal. And so a major studio's mainstream, multiplex, mega-million-dollar-grossing, Oscar-friendly 'summer movie' resoundingly won the ninth annual Village Voice-LA Weekly poll of (mainly) alt-press critics, named on 35 of 81 ballots.... Not just the winner on points, WALL•E was also the movie about which critics felt most strongly.... That can only be quantified by the Passiondex^TM - a form of data-crunching developed with a nerdiness worthy of WALL•E."

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SFBG. "The Year in Film 2008."

"As 2008's year-end pieces roll across the blogosphere, one encounters the alluring titles and stills of films which won't reach the Bay Area for months," writes Max Goldberg in his piece for the San Francisco Bay Guardian's "Year in Film 2008" package. "Against this tempting tide, I turn to the faint echoes of those undistributed movies which lingered in mind long enough after their festival screenings to become pliable to memory." His top ten's in alphabetical order, though he does linger quite a while on John Gianvito's Profit motive and the whispering wind.

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Moving Image Source. "Moments of 2008."

"Moving Image Source launched in June 2008. To commemorate the end of our first year, we invited contributors and colleagues, as well as some of our favorite writers and artists, to select their moving-image moment or event of 2008 - anything from an entire movie or TV series to an individual scene or shot, from a retrospective or exhibition to a viral video or video game."

It's quite an honor to be part of a round of contributors that includes the likes of Guy Maddin, Jonathan Rosenbaum and many others, and I'm doubly wowed by the Museum's posting of the trailer for Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army alongside my entry.

Update, 12/31: Part 2 features contributions from Todd Gitlin, Ed Halter, Jonathan Letham and many others.

Registry, Notable DVDs and Dave Kehr's top ten.

This year's round of 25 films to be added to the National Film Registry was announced this morning, "bringing the total number of titles on the list to the nice round figure of 500," notes Dave Kehr in an entry which also points to his piece in the New York Times on the "Notable DVDs of 2008" and features his own "alphabetical list of the best movies I saw in the last twelve months."

Regarding the Registry, Dave Kehr notes that "the annual lists have increasingly moved beyond the borders of Hollywood narrative filmmaking to include avant-garde, independent, documentary and sponsored work"; in the NYT, he argues that "DVDs are the primary force keeping film history alive." Murnau, Borzage and Fox is, of course, the "big one for 2008."

Boston Phoenix. Lists.

Peter Keough "invited some of my highly respected colleagues at the Phoenix to send me their ten best lists (and worsts, if so inclined)."

Michael Atkinson's #1: Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg; Tom Meek's: Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World; and Gerald Peary's: Chris Smith's The Pool.

Earlier: Peter Keough's own list.