Best Movies of 2004

Ahhh, 2004. My first year of university. Though with the exception of Eternal Sunshine, Mean Girls and Shrek 2 I saw the majority of these films the next year. I remember it as the year of Fahrenheit 9/11 and the Passion of the Christ. Two films that greatly disturbed my experiences with cinema that year, the former for its horrible documentary practises and the latter for highlighting my preference to not watch a film that was solely about someone getting cruificied. 2004 nevertheless turned out to be an important year of cinema for me - especially the film that came in first - one of my most favourite films of all time.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
2. I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell)
3. The Incredibles (Brad Bird)
4. In My Father's Den (Brad McGann)
5. Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess)
6. Sideways (Alexander Payne)
7. Night Watch (Timur Bekmambetov)
8. A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
9. Mean Girls (Mark Waters)
10. Garden State (Zach Braff)
11. Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury & Conrad Vernon)
12. The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass)
13. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson)
14. Primer (Shane Carruth)
    
15. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban (Alfonso Cuaron)
    
16. Team America: World Police (Trey Parker)
    

Best Movies of 2006

Looking back at 2006 I think it was a pretty good year for movies. I've managed to come up with a nice big list of cool movies that I quite liked from that year - and still plenty of quality movies I'm sure are out there. Of course these movies all have the benefit of being fresh to me. Most of them I saw only last year. It'll be interesting to see if these movies can handle five years of time.

1. Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)
   
2. Thank You For Smoking (Jason Reitman)
   
3. The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry)
   
4. The Prestige (Christopher Nolan)
5. Day Watch (Timur Bekmambetov)
   
6. The Departed (Martin Scorcese)
   
7. Scoop (Woody Allen)
   
8. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
   
9. Casino Royale (Martin Campbell)
   
10. Brick (Rian Johnson)
    
11. The Bothersome Man (Jens Lien)
    
12. A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
    
13. V For Vendetta (James McTeigue)
    
14. Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Foster)
    
15. Cars (John Lasseter & Joe Ranft)
    
16. Running With Scissors (Ryan Murphy)
    
17. Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater)
    

Review: Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

When I said at the start of the year that I should more Russian authors I don't think I meant this.

Nevertheless, I've found myself addicted to the Watch series since last year when I watched the Night Watch movie followed up by the Day Watch movie earlier this year. I got out the books from the library and promptly read them and now just finished Twilight Watch - the third book in the series. If you're into a mixture of magician/vampire/detective novels with a little satire on bureaucracy and some musing on modern Russia then this is will be right down your alley. If not, read War and Peace or something.

Admittedly, this book is not as good as the the first two but has it moments. Lukyanenko keeps up his annoying habit of putting heaps of lyrics in the prose. I don't let Thomas Pynchon do that and Lukyanenko gets the same treatment. What's the point? I don't even bother reading them.

There is a movie called Twilight Watch scheducled for release in 2009 but the setting has been changed from Russia to the States and it will feature American actors rather than Russians. A obviously disapointing movie with the only bright spot being that they've retained the director Timur Bekmambetov. So it should be interesting, the books and the movies are two different beasts with the movies going in a completely diffferent direction to the books. We'll just have to wait and see.