The 50s

Gaston's Films

Vertigo
Singin’ in the Rain
Seven Samurai
The Searchers
Seventh Seal

Honorable Mention:
Rashomon


Azimuth's Films

Best Films, 1950-1959

1. The Searchers
2. Seven Samurai
3. La Dolce Vita
4. On the Waterfront
5. The Seventh Seal

Notable Films, 1950-1959

6. Rashomon
7. Vertigo
8. A Streetcar Named Desire
9. High Noon
10. Sunset Blvd.

The 40s

Gaston's Films

Notorious
Out of the Past
Citizen Kane
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Bicycle Thieves

Honorable Mention:
Shadow of a Doubt

Azimuth's Films
Best Films, 1940-1949

1. Citizen Kane
2. Casablanca
3. Bicycle Thieves
4. The Maltese Falcon
5. The Third Man

Notable Films, 1940-1949

6. The Great Dictator
7. It's A Wonderful Life
8. Sullivan's Travels
9. The Lost Weekend
10. Double Indemnity

The 30s

Okay. Here's what we start with. Five films per decade, one honorable mention. Between the two of us, that's a possible twelve films, which should approach the cream of the crop. My choices are my faves which are functionally my choices for best. Once we work our way through each decade we can start the responses about the best decade...

Gaston's list

City Lights
M
Trouble in Paradise
Duck Soup
Gone With the Wind

Honorable Mention:
The Lady Vanishes

Azimuth's List

Azimuth's Films

Best Films, 1930-1939

1. Gone With the Wind
2. It Happened One Night
3. Duck Soup
4. Bride of Frankenstein
5. The Wizard of Oz

Notable Films, 1930-1939

6. All Quiet on the Western Front
7. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
8. King Kong
9. M
10. Modern Times

My Best Records of 2008

These are the records I would set aside as the ten best of 2008:

1. For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver
2. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
3. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
4. Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, Sigur Ros
5. Microcastle, Deerhunter
6. The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow
7. Volume One, She & Him
8. Nouns, No Age
9. Oracular Spectacular, MGMT
10. Attack and Release, The Black Keys

These would be my "honorable mentions" for the year, in order:

11. Fur, Blitzen Trapper
12. Dear Science, TV on the Radio
13. Modern Guilt, Beck
14. April, Sun Kil Moon
15. 13 Blues for 13 Moons, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
16. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
17. The Stand Ins, Okkervil River
18. Heretic Pride, The Mountain Goats
19. Consolers of the Lonely, The Raconteurs
20. Distortion, The Magnetic Fields
21. Brendan Canning's Something For All of Us, Broken Social Scene

I have not listened to the following records, but I really want to:

Saturdays = Youth, M83
Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair
You & Me, The Walkmen
Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, Grouper

I listened to and didn't give too much of a shit about:

Re-Arrange Us, Mates of State
Third, Portishead
Let the Blind Lead Those Who..., Atlas Sound
Songs in A & E, Spiritualized
Partie Traumatic, Black Kids
Death Magnetic, Metallica
Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did, The Twilight Sad
Youth Novels, Lykke Li
Off With Their Heads, Kaiser Chiefs

Lastly:

People who talk up Stay Positive can go fuck themselves. That record is the definition of "wheel-spinning." I'd rather listen to Viva La Vida.

Top 2008 Albums...

I listened hardcore to maybe 25 albums this year. I browsed end of the year lists and sampled things that looked interesting. I did a bunch of Top 500 all time listening too, so this list is necessarily truncated. My taste this year tended towards things that 1) I could run to 2)sounded like a beach that I was at or that Bruce Springsteen would sing about and 3) sounded right in the dozens of airplanes and metro rails I rode throughout the year.

In no particular order:
Anathallo/Canopy Glow
Blitzen Trapper/Furr
Bon Iver/For Emma, Forever Ago
Fleet Foxes/Fleet Foxes
Gaslight Anthem/The ’59 Sound
M83/Saturdays = Sound
My Brightest Diamond/A Thousand Shark’s Teeth
Santogold/Santogold
Sun Kil Moon/April
Vampire Weekend/Vampire Weekend

The individual songs I listened to most (again in no particular order):
Blind/Hercules and the Love Affair
Blue Ridge Mountains/Fleet Foxes
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa/Vampire Weekend
Furr/Blitzen Trapper
Inside a Boy/My Brightest Diamond
The Light/Sun Kil Moon
Kim and Jessie/M83
Noni's Field/Anathallo
Nothing Ever Happened/Deerhunter
Re: Stacks/Bon Iver
Time to Pretend/MGMT

Top films 2008, in media res...

Current Top Five, in no particular order:
The Dark Knight
Man on Wire
Synecdoche, New York
Tropic Thunder
Wall-E

Ten films I want to see from last year:
1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
2. Waltz with Bashir
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Frost/Nixon
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
6. The Reader
7. Happy Go Lucky
8. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
9. The Wrestler
10. Che

Rated, Over and Under

Laura Linney, a perfectly acceptable three star actress...

That's the assertion I'm building this post on. Let's forget individual best lists for awhile and start making larger categories. Four star, three star, two star, one star, etc. actors and actresses...

Who is rated (perfectly in tune with their critical legacy)? Who is overrated? Who is underrated? How do you choose?

For example:

Four Stars:
DeNiro, Brando, Streep, Hepburn, Stewart

Three Stars:
Bale, Crowe, Linney, Depp, Winslett, Kilmer (underrated in my book)

Two Stars:
Wayne, Pitt, Clooney, Portman, Johannson (overrated in my book)

One Star:
Keanu Reeves, Diaz, Roberts

Zero Stars:
LeBlanc, Alba, Van Damme