Back in 2004 I started constructing my Top 10 (or 15 or 20) films of each year lists. I didn’t have this blog then, and was just posting them on myspace (hey, remember when myspace was essentially twitter! Good times, good times). Before closing down my myspace I copied them with plans of posting them here and taking a look at what I think of each list retrospectively.

Since the 2004 list is half a decade old now, and I have seen approximately one bajillion films since then, it seems like a good time to check that one out. Here is the original list made after I viewed as many of the top candidates from 2004 as possible:

1a. Garden State
1b. Sideways
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4. Kill Bill vol. 2
5. Million Dollar Baby
6. Closer
7. The Aviator
8. Hotel Rwanda
9. Finding Neverland
10. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
11. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
12. Badassss
13. House of Flying Daggars
14. Collateral
15a. Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events
15b. Mean Girls

Some thoughts: I would move Kill Bill vol. 2, Million Dollar Baby, Hotel Rwanda, Anchorman, and Mean Girls up.  I wouldn’t worry about including Life Aquatic (not the best Wes Anderson film), Badassss (seemed novel at the time, but really not memorable), House of Flying Daggars (amazing visuals, but nothing else), Collateral (other than Tom Cruise channeling the Terminator in certain scenes, it’s really not outstanding in other ways), and Lemony Snickets.

I didn’t include The Downfall, Shaun of the Dead, Motorcycle Diaries, and The Machinist as I hadn’t seen them. I would try to include them now.

So, if I re-made the list, here is how it would look:

1. Garden State

2. Kill Bill vol. 2

3. The Machinist

4. Million Dollar Baby

5. Hotel Rwanda

6. Eternal Sunshine

7. Motorcycle Diaries

8. Anchorman

9. Downfall

10. Sideways

11. Closer

12.The Aviator

13. Shaun of the Dead

14. Mean Girls

15. Finding Neverland

Scream gets a ton of credit for resurecting the slasher genre, and horror movies as a whole, but often overlooked in this equation is Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Released two years before Scream, New Nightmare is essentially the same story, people in a horror movie who acknowledge they are in a horror movie and know the rules of slasher movies. Both are self-referential, laced with satire, and were directed by Craven.

New Nightmare was nowhere near the financial success that Scream was. That’s likely due to the advantages Scream had in the two year gap. Scream gave Craven a second chance to complete what he had attempted with New Nightmare, they were able to step out of the Nightmare on Elm Street world and were instead allowed to reference the entire slasher film genre, the meta was dialed down a bit as the kids still talk about being in a horror movie but they aren’t actually on set filming a horror movie, and they were allowed to cast a group of young, up-and-coming stars instead of being tied to Freddy and Heather Langenkamp (who most teens in 1994 really couldn’t have cared less about since the first Nightmare was a decade old at that point).

Despite the fact that Scream was actually the movie to kick open the door on the slasher revival, New Nightmare was the genesis of the revival. Much in the same way that the success of Halloween kicked started the golden age of the slasher films in the early 80s, while Black Christmas was actually the genesis of that golden age 4 years earlier.

The lesson, if you are a fan of horror movies, specifically slasher movies, and haven’t seen New Nightmare or the original Black Christmas, you really should. They are way more important than people generally give them credit for.

Since I finally got around to seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button via the wonderful world of Netflix, I thought it would be a good time to publish my annual Top Films of the previous year list. And here…we…GO:

Top 15 Films of 2008:

1. Slumdog Millionaire – there were films that featured better acting and slightly better cinematography, but no film combined story/conflict/humor/tension the way Slumdog did. It had the kinetic energy that has come to be expected from Danny Boyle’s films (see: 28 Days Later and Trainspotting). It features arguable the best love story of the past 25 years. It felt like a throwback to the magical Hollywood films of yesteryear, before Hollywood became dedicated to only doing remakes, reboots, and sequels. That said, I look forward to Slumdog Millionaire 2: Slumdog Millionairer

2. The Wrestler - no one has been more perfectly suited for a role than Mickey Rourke was for Randy The Ram. Everything in The Wrestler works; the romance betweeen Tomei and Rourke, the true-to-life behind-the-scenes professional wrestling material, the realistic disdane that Randy’s grocery store boss has for profession wrestling, the realistic portrayal of the physical and emotional damage that professional wrestlers deal with all in an attempt to entertain the fans, and the in-ring wrestling. Of all the films from 2008, this is the one that the American Film Institute is probably putting on lists 10 or 15 years from now.

3. Revolutionary Road - a brilliant take on the pressures of societal norms. The easiest way to sum this up is that if you are married and have kids it will likely be upsetting due its constant questioning of the institution of marriage and societal structure as we know it. If you aren’t married, or have ever wondered why it is assumed everyone should follow the same basic formula: get married, have kids, work a job you probably don’t enjoy because you need the money, stop enjoying life, and eventually die from stress; then this is the film for you. Personally, I thought Winslet should have won this Oscar for this instead of The Reader, but six of one, half dozen of the other.

4. Let the Right One In - a Swedish vampire film period peice about love and revenge. Sorry True Blood fans, but this was the superior vampire-related media of 2008. Visually stunning due to the snow-covered landscape, audibly stunning due to some of the best sound design of recent memory, emotionally moving, and featuring the best dark comedy since the early seasons of Nip/Tuck.

5. Burn After Reading - the Coen brothers magnificent return to comedy which simply crescendos in humor as it goes.

6. The Reader - a pedophiliac love story carried by a frequently naked Kate Winslet. And it involves Nazis.

7. Doubt - superbly acted drama about a priest (played by the always excellent Philip Seymour Hoffman) accused of molesting an alter-boy.

8. Frost/Nixon - I generally don’t enjoy biopics, can take or leave Ron Howard’s films, but Frank Langella’s performance as Nixon is so transcendent that it over-rides either of those factors.

9. Snow Angels - David Gordon Green’s lesser known film of 2008, Pinneaple Express being the more marketed one for obvious reasons (see: Rogan, Seth), follows the interweaving story of a married couple, divorced couple with a young child, and a pair of teenagers who have just started dating. Simultaneously uplifting and depressing.

10. The Dark Knight - rarely does a mainstream movie, much less a comic book movie, actually become such an artist achievement. Also, it was nice to be reminded that comic book films don’t always have to follow the same formula of guy with superpowers fights villian who is just like him with greater powers that leads to redundant CGI-filled battle scene climax between them.

11. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - if someone can explain how this didn’t win best cinemtography that would be great.

12. Transibberian - the latest installment from Brad Anderson, aka this generation’s Hitchcock.

13. Counterfeiters - the true story of a concentration camp the Nazis had for counterfeiting money.

14. Frozen River - a story about a single mother, the always brilliant Mellisa Leo of Homicide: Life on the Street fame, struggling to raise her children. A film not without flaws, which can be completely ignored due Melissa Leo’s extremely realistic and naturalistic performance.

15. Man on Wire - documentary about Philippe Petit tight-ropping across the twin towers in 1974.

Edit – realized I had forgotten a couple of films from the first half of 2008 that deserved mention, and watched a couple of other films from 2008. So, here is an honorable mention section:

The Strangers, Rachel Getting Married, Cloverfield, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, The Changling

If there are any I missed, or over-valued, let me know in the comments section below.

I finally completed the task of viewing the entire series run of The X-Files. I originally followed the first five seasons as the aired on tv, even seeing the pilot on the night of its premiere. I saw the first movie, Fight The Future, in the theatres, and then jumped ship and almost completely abandoned the show. I viewed the second movie, I Want To Believe, in theatres last summer, on opening day no less. Hence, I decided after an 11 year hiatus, I decided I wanted to finish off the series.  Now that I have, here is my take on each season:

Season 1 – I don’t remember a ton of the specifics of what happened in what order in each of the first five seasons, so I will just list my favorite episode from each of those seasons.

Favorite episode: Darkness Falls – Mulder and Scully investigate a missing group of loggers in a remote forest.

Season 2 -

Favorite episode: Humbug - the one with the carnival acts

Season 3 -

Favorite episode: War of the Coprophages - the one with the cochroaches

Season 4 -

Favorite episode: Gethsemane – the season 4 finale

Season 5 -

Favorite episode: The Post-Modern Prometheus - their modernized tale of Frankenstein’s monster

Season 6 – featured a ridiculously awesome mix of episodes focused on the mytharc of the show and “monster of the week” episodes. The run of episodes to start the season is some of their best. The Beginning picks up where the Fight the Future movie left off and answers some of the questions left unanswered by the first movie. It is followed by Drive, Triangle (an omage to Hitchcock’s Rope), the two part Dreamland (featuring Michael McKean and the Marx Brothers mirror gag), and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas (featuring Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin).  Overall the season seemed to keep up the quality I remember from the first five seasons.

Favorite episode: Triangle

Season 7 – other than a few mytharc related episodes, it became quite light-hearted. Almost as if the writers got tired over drama and decided it would be more fun to be writing comedy. But it was totally enjoyable.

Favorite episode: X-Cops – the COPS themed episode complete with an alternative opening sequence

Season 8 – Mulder is missing from most of the episodes, replaced by Agent Doggett (Robert Patrick, the evil liquid metal terminator from Terminator 2: Judgement Day). The show certainly suffers from the change and loss of Mulder/Scully chemistry. Although I did enjoy the plethora of Terminator references, including the Terminator themed episode, Salvage.

Favorite episode: Vienen - Mulder and Doggett investigate deaths on an oil rig, and the chemistry between them works. So, maybe the problem with this season was Scully/Doggett was just a poor pairing.

Season 9 – Mulder is completely gone until the series finale. As a result, some of these episodes were a bit of a chore to get through, especially the first 11 episodes which all focused on the show’s mythology. I did end up enjoying the series finale quite a bit, due to its focus on clarifying the whole government/alien conspiracy of the show’s mythology.

Favorite episode: Sunshine Days – The Brady Bunch themed episode that also features Benjamin Linus from Lost and Bud Bundy.

X-Files: I Want to Believe - the second movie, which picks up six years after the series ends. It is essentially a “monster of the week” episode in movie form. The story itself worked for me. Mulder’s mountain man beard at the beginning was a great touch. It features some excellent cinematography filled with brilliant snow-filled backdrops. Billy Connolly puts forth a tremendous perfomance. Unfortunaly, the same can’t be said for Amanda Peete and Xzibit.

In conclusion, this is one of my top 10 favorite television shows of all-time. The first seven seasons are all quite high quality in their own regards. It’s worth it to plow through the final two seasons if only to conclude the mytharc of the show, which although quite complex and confusing at times, is still intriguing and makes more sense than Lost probably will when all of its secrets finally get revealed. And the X-Files managed to do something that I don’t know any other show has done – have an overarcing mythology storyline that runs the course of the series, while completely abandoned that storyline for episodes at a time to do self-contained one-off episodes. The truth was out there.

Here is what I learned this weekend -

I was able to confirm that Cameron Indoor Stadium is absolutely one of, if not THE, best live sporting event experience you can have.  (I know, I know, that’s not really shocking news, just want to brag that I was there)

The Crazies definitely lived up to their billing, busting out some tremendously creative chants. Such as, “Dr. Pepper” since Virginia Tech’s colors are the same as that of the fabled soda, “Tuck your shirt in” at the Hokie who had his jersey untucked,  “Come to Duke – John Wall – Come to Duke” at the talented recruit who I assume was also in the crowd but I can’t confirm that as I really have no idea what he looks like. Also, the energy level is unrivaled by that of any crowd I have been a part of.

In NFL news, its seems the Chargers do in fact have the Colts number

As demonstrated by the spectacular return of the Upset Peyton Manning Face!

As a fan of another NFC North team, I hope the Tarvaris Jackson Era NEVER ENDS!

In ‘The Ohio State University’ continuing its attempt to be humiliated in a BCS game every season news – if you have the ball on your 45, down 3, with a decent kicker, 2 timeouts, 11 seconds on the clock, and the other team is playing insanely deep prevent. You should throw a quick pass in the middle of the field to pick up a quick 15 to 20 yards then call a time out and take your chances on a long field goal to tie the game, right? Well, not if you are already planning to role you QB out to the left (he’s right handed, by the way) in an attempt to throw a hail marry, which leads to a sack and an attempt at an even longer hail marry on the next play. Not sure why it would have hurt to throw a quick pass to the middle and call a time out, if even to just make it possible for a hail marry to make it to the end zone on the next play. If any Ohio State players, fans, or sweater vest wearing coaches can explain, please do.

Oh, and anyone who brings one, or multiple, small children onto an airplane is, at least in my mind, equivilent to a terrorist. They might not be trying to blow up the plane, but they are terrorizing me. So, they are essentially “Comfort Terrorists”.

Everyone looking for an interesting read, go check out The Walrus Panel’s Top 100 Songs list

I was one of the many participants in the panel’s assembly of the list, and its definitely worth a look.

As a preview, here is one song that DIDN’T make the list:

Apparently, Chris Webber is awesome!

Thanks to the fine people at Awful Announcing for posting this first.

Unfortunately, TNT generally shows only quality teams, meaning they NEVER show the subpar NBA team that I support. So, I don’t see enough of the entertaining pre/post game shows.

So, I did a whole Top 10 Christmas movies list last year, but after re-watching most of them this year, and finally seeing Its A Wonderful Life all the way from beginning to end, I decided I must redo the list. I’ll add some video this time to spruce things up (some of which contain explicit language, AND you can probably guess which ones) -

1. A Christmas Story

2. Home Alone

3. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

4. It’s A Wonderful Life

5. Scrooged

6. Gremlins – Keep it out of daylight, never get it wet, and never ever feed it after midnight

7. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

8. A Charlie Brown Christmas

9. Bad Santa

10. Die Hard

Apparently, a woman received a face transplant on Wednesday. This is absolutely great news, as it means we now have the technology to allow John Travolta and Nicholas Cage switch faces and pretend to be each other. Cue the flying doves:

Back with yet another retro recap of a past historical sporting event. This one is David Cone pitching a perfect game on July 18, 1999 against the Montreal Expos. This is the ESPNClassic “Drive Thru” version of the game, meaning its edited down to one hour (actually 42 minutes + American Gladiators and Bosley Hair Restorations commercials).

A little background on the game, it was Yogi Berra Day at the stadium and Don Larsen threw out the first pitch to Berra, who are ironically the only battery mates involved in a perfect game in World Series history.

The Yankee lineup consists of the usual suspects from the late 90s dynasty (Bernie, O’Neill, Jeter, Brosius, Tino, and Knoblauch), except now manager Joe Girardi is catching and Ricky Ledee is starting at the revolving door that was known at the time as Left Field.

Tim McCarver was apparently pontificating for the Yankees local tv coverage back then, as this was pre-YES Network and pre-FOX hiring McCarver to pontificate and ignore the games on a national level.

TOP 1st – The Expos have the lite hitting Wilton Guerrero leading off and DHing, as apparently with the introduction of interleague play NL teams didn’t quite understand that the DH is probably a good spot to put a good hitter. Or its a possibility they had no good hitters to insert into the DH spot as Wilton K’s looking on 3 pitches to start.

Someone by the name of Terry Jones is batting 2nd and playing CF for the Expos. Wikipedia reveals he played only 227 games in his career before being out of the league for good. However, he laces one toward the gap in RF but O’Neill makes a tremendous sliding catch to save extra bases (and make it possible that I am even typing about this game today). Think about it, that ball gets by O’Neill there is no perfect game, and best case this game goes down as a one hit shutout that is never seen again. He makes the catch, and I am blogging about it almost a decade after the fact.

Eventual Yankees failure Rondell White flies out to left to end the inning.

BOTTOM 1st - Javier Vasquez is making the start for the Expos, making this his second most famous appearance at Yankee Stadium (the other one involved surrending a grand slam to Johnny Damon). He plunks Knoblauch to start.

After a Jeter fly out, O’Neill grounds out to first and is as usual angry about it. Andwe findout the Expos are rolling with a $10M payroll and are seeking a new stadium, seems like that ended up with DC getting a team they don’t want to watch http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/07/ST2008070702853.html

Bernie grounds out to end the inning.

TOP 2nd – Vlad Guerrero is batting 4th for the Expos and is swinging wildly as usual. He strikes out swinging at a pitch the was at least a foot and a half off the plate.

Jose Vidro is up next, as this lineup isn’t as horrible as you would expect considering its the Expos and a $10M payroll. He grounds out. As does Brad Fulmer. We also find out that the Expos were 34-55 coming into the game and 21.5 games out of first place.

Now time for some editing as a disembodied voice informs us Ricky Ledee hit a 2 run HR to the upper deck in RF in the bottom of the 2nd, and the Yankees ended up putting up 4 in that inning capped by a solo HR from the future Captain.

A brief rain delay took place, and Cone struck out the side in the top fo the 3rd.

TOP 4th – Wilton hits one that carries to deep right, but O’Neill track hit down. Jones K’s and White pops out to right to make it 12 up and 12 down.

We skip the bottom of the 4th.

TOP 5th – Vlad and Vidro both fly out while McCarver tries to put the jinx on Cone by bringing up talk of the perfect game before he is even through 5. Cone goes to 3-1 against Fuller, but gets him to fly out.

We skip ahead to top of the 7th.

TOP 7th – Apparently the Expos played a night game in Baltimore the night before and didn’t get into NY until 330AM AND this is a day game. You could also argue that this Expos team was so young that they shouldn’t be tired, and that this was pre-MLB drug testing so the Expos could have taken some uppers before the game if they needed energy.

Brosuis robs Wilton of a infield base hit by cutting off a grounder before it got too deep in the hole at SS for Jeter to have a play. Replay confirms that if Brosuis doesn’t get to that ball Jeter has NO shot to throw out the speedy runner from that deep in the hole.  Some guy named James Muton strikes out swinging very wildly, and we get a glimpse of Hideki Irebu (aka Hediki I-rob-u or Igawa version 1.0) in the dugout. White strikes out weakly as well, andthe ground is going crazy.

Skip the bottom of the 7th, and somewhere the Yankees got a 5th run but I am not sure how or when.

TOP 8th – Vlad pops up on one pitch. Vidro with a hard grounder up the middle, but Knoblauch tracks it down, sets himself, andmanages to throw properly to 1B, which at the time was a miracle in its own right (Just ask Keith Olbermann’s mom http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2000/0617/590292.html ). Fullmer K’s looking to make it 24 up and 24 down.

The disembodies voice informs us the Yankees added a 6th run in the bottom of the 8th.

TOP 9th – Cone’s location is just absolutely sick at this point, hitting the glove almost dead on every pitch. He K’s Widger on three pitches. Ryan McGuire pinch hits. McCarver says Cone hasn’t had a 3 ball count all afternoon, and we already know that incorrect as he went 3-1 in the top of the 5th against Fullmer. But its not like McCarver is being paid to pay attention to the game or anything. Ledee almost drops a tough blooper to LF which he lost in the sun before snagging it underhanded. Eventual defensive phenom SS Orlando Cabrera is all that stands between Cone and baseball immortality and he pops up to Brosius. Cone gets mobbed at the mound, some lady stands up directly in front of Don Larsen so we can’t see his reaction in the crowd, and Cone gets carried off by his teammates. Before getting into the dugout Brosius fakes that he is going to toss the ball into the crowd.

As always, comments highly encouraged.