Sunday Top Ten - Best Picture winners

Oscar season has been well underway for weeks at this point, and yet I confess and apologize that I've been rather lax on Oscar conversation in this space. Life has been hectic as of late. But while we still have a number of weeks to go before December reveals the really big hopefuls, I figured now is as good a time as any to dust of the corner of my brain that promotes awards discussion by dedicating an installment of Sunday Top Ten to the best of the Best – Best Pictures, that is.

This sort of list is different for everyone, but I'll bet one common theme is how difficult it is for everyone to narrow their list down to ten. Easy as it is to complain about Oscar's taste, they've picked a lot of damn good movies over the last 80-some-odd years. In my humble opinion, the cream of the crop are:

Sunday Top Ten - Depressing movies

“There aint no cure for the summertime blues,” sang Eddie Cochran in his 1958 classic. I hear ya, Eddie. And what better way for this cinephile to sing the summertime blues than with a list of his most depressing movies. Mind you, the definition of “depressing” is somewhat amorphous, at the very least variable for me. It's not simply a matter tear-jerking. Many of the movies that get my waterworks running I find possess an ultimately uplifting quality to them. It takes a different kind of film altogether to actually leave me feeling depressed, and none have done it better than these ten downers:

Some SPOILERS lurk beyond this point.

True Grit takes CAS

The Coens' trusty sound team, Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, and Peter Kurland repeated their 2008 victory for No Country for Old Men by winning the Cinema Audio Society Award last night, this time for True Grit. Good for them. It is a fine mix, even if not the best of the nominees.

Inception feels awfully vulnerable, in both Sound categories actually, but I think I'll stick with it. Remember, No Country for Old Men's subtle mix ended up losing the Oscar to a loud, respected action flick. And the CAS only correctly anticipates Oscar a little more than half the time, and having done so the last two years in a row, this just feels like a year when the two groups will go separate ways.

Still, I've got a uneasy feeling about this. Maybe we'll see a split?

Best of the Decade #8: No Country for Old Men (2007)

Hopelessly dire in its content and tone, No Country for Old Men is the most entertainingly depressing film of the decade, and an A+ social commentary from the prolific Coen brothers. As implied by its ambiguous and divisive ending about a discouraging dream had by the film's hero and moral centre (played with superb restraint by Tommy Lee Jones), the main theme of the film is about the futility of battling evil, and the desperation felt by those that take up the good fight anyway. Like the film’s steely villain (an outstandingly creepy Javier Bardem), violence and chaos cannot be stopped. Delayed, wounded perhaps, but to try and vanquish it is a fool’s errand. It'll walk the earth ‘til the end of time. Fun, huh? The Coens also dabble with themes of the randomness of the universe, what we can chalk up to fate and what we can control ourselves.

Ever the visual storytellers, the Coens and their DP of choice, Roger Deakins, give the film a dark and foreboding atmosphere. The Coens themselves (under their longtime pseudonym Roderick Jaynes) cut the footage together as only they can, amping up the excitement so subtly that you barely notice. Equal praise must be given to sound designer Skip Lievsay, whose nuanced sound mix is one of the most effective of the decade.