I am obsessive. And right now I cannot get enough of Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron. Children of Men and Pan's Labyrinth are my absolute favorite films of the year.

Click here to listen to an amazing interview with Cuaron in which he uses the term syntagm to discuss film grammar...

More greatness from Del Toro:

"I do think there is far more an immoral position in creating a movie like 'Free Willy,' where I'm telling a kid, you know, 'If you swim next to a ... killer whale, she'll become your friend.' ... No! She will eat your ... guts and spit you out!"

Del Toro continues in a more reflective vein: "If my child watches my movies by accident, they will not try to think the world is a safe place, which it's not. Children should know the dangers of the world and not be neurotically isolated from them."

An even better article about Pan's Labyrinth. Be warned as these will reveal plot details but it's all good food for the head when you digest these movies.

I haven't written about Pan's Labyrinth yet but that's coming. It is so hard to choose from it and Children of Men as my favorite film of the year, the ones that I absolutely cloyingly and overbearingly insist you see because they will make you a better person for having seen them. One thing that strikes me about both is that they have a pop sensibility tempered by true intellectualism that is not divorced from emotion. There is a rigour that underpins their work in regards to form and function; but they are not divorced from sensation and mood.

This is without a doubt the single funniest thing I've seen in a long time. It's a bunch of scenes from Nicolas Cage and Neil LaBute's serious horror film The Wicker Man. I don't want to ruin any surprises but I swear to you this is the single most misguided thing I've ever seen put on film; but we can console ourselves with how hilarious it is. If you read reviews about the movie and wondered what all this talk about Nicolas Cage in a bear suit was about, you're going to see.

New tracks by Arcade Fire - who announce five shows in NY that sell out in five minutes. The first tickets to get sold on ebay for a thousand dollars each (making one wonder who the hell likes the band who has $1000 to blow)?

Here's Black Mirror the first single, directly from the band.

If you search hard enough on the Internet you'll also find "Intervention" and "Black Wave / Bad Vibrations".



Well then they've also been doing odd things in preparation for their March 6th album release such as an informerical on youtube and a toll free number that's been teasing us with songs and now on occassion members of the band are picking up the phone.

The band have kindly asked people to donate money to Partners In Health a not for profit organization that brings health care and poverty relief to impacted countries in exchange for the fact that there's a lot of downloaded music out there and they're fine with that. They're just asking your conscience to help out a little if you can.

One of the first blog posts I ever made was after seeing their first ever NY show; which I went into cold and come out a lunatic convert. A few weeks later I found myself following them up the west coast for three shows. I really believe in them that much.

Robot toy geek alert: holy crap this Takara resculpt of Transformer Starscream showed up in the mail yesterday as a Christmas present from my lifelong pal Nick and wow. 2 years ago we got the amazing Optimus Prime. This one is just as amazing; though it doesn't have any diecast. I'm blogging it because I didn't know this thing existed - this is strictly a Japanese import for now.



Speaking of which, I somehow on a late sleepless night found myself reading the script to Michael Bay's Transformers movie. It sucks ass. Product placement is written into the thing left right and center. Bumblebee talks by playing relevant top 40 pop songs out of his stereo. I'm sure there's going to be some great giant robot visuals but the look they've opted for is this really ugly overly busy organic aesthetic for all the robots. It isn't what you grew up with. And the script, really, truly is godawful. Despite protestions by its producer, everything I saw in the trailer is in the script. It just isn't fun or reminscient enough.

What's up with the weather given that it's now officially on the books that 2006 was the warmest recorded year ever - supposedly warmest since pre Ice Age temperatures? According to this climatologist, we're looking at ice free arctic caps in 2040. There's a serious snowball factor in melting sea ice... White ice and snow reflects heat energy back into space, whereas dark oceanic waters absorb more of it. The more that melts, the hotter it gets. Here in Brooklyn there's Cherry Blossoms blooming in the botanical gardens. In January. Cherry blossoms. Read it at the Weather Underground here. And for more fascinating climate science I like to read Real Climate.

Fugazi: an idiot's guide. Music blogs overwhelm me but this is fantastic - a guide that provides 20 mp3s and historical context for one of the greatest bands ever. Check it out.

This is said far better than I ever could, coming from genius Guillermo Del Toro: "A director has to feel about the film as incredibly in love and as much in passion as he feels for his own flesh and blood. One of the first rules I heard from Hollywood -- that I have thankfully never applied in any film I do -- is: Never put your own money in it. I was puzzled. I said, "If you don't put your own money in, why the fuck should somebody spend their own money to see it?" I don't understand. I would give my life, my house, my car, my salary, my blood and my internal organs for my children and my movies. That's what makes a director: the degree of absolute madness that drives him into making the film."

Due to downturn of finances in music videos, there's an idea right now that music video directors are suckers, because we keep putting money we should be getting paid back into the piece. I think this is the most perfect, eloquent reasoning for why I've ever heard.

This is from a Hollywood Reporter rountable discussion with David Lynch, Del Toro, Dayton and Faris (the Little Miss Sunshine directors) and Nancy Meyers. Meyers being the most unexceptional of the filmmakers its no wonder she comes across as a miserable grump.

Carson Ellis is the incredible illustrator many of you know as the artist who has defined nearly everything The Decemberists have done - even creating some of the props and hand lettering the subtitles in the 16 Military Wives video.

Today she's announced the start of her new website little little green house. It's a blog, but all she's going to do for the rest of the year is post drawings mercilessly. For a Carson fan like myself this is a godsend. Look out for more work coming up from here this year - I don't know what I can see but some really cool children's books are going to feature her work.

My pick for best movie of the year, possibly the decade.





High Quality quicktime here.

The movie is undoubtedly technically astonishing. We're talking on a level that would make Gondry or Kubrick's head turn. The multiple unbroken continous shots that last up to seven minutes are astounding but more importantly they never you draw you out of the story. I don't think I've ever sat there stuck between repetitively thinking "holy fuck how did they do that" while at the same time completely engaged in story and what's happening.

Likewise, the film eschews radically and to some degree reactionarily pushes against the boundaries of what we've come to expect of movies. There's a certain safety to cuts. Camera movement is unmotivated by character. There are no real closeups in the way we've become accustomed to. There are extraordinary shots that are completely and wholly unlit by any filmmaking artifice. They're staggering to see in a movie. It will probably escape a lot of people's attention because they've made first and foremost a movie with such a gripping quality it will be easy to overlook the multiple levels of genius going on continually. Read this Manola Dhargis piece about one single scene.

Technicality aside I cannot think of a single film which so accurately compresses the experience of the start of the 21st century. It also rarely capitulates to any sort of extremist solution; in fact it's rather critical of those. Some people will have a problem with what they see as a mercilessly downbeat, nihilistic quality, but I'd disagree. It's about the nature of hope in general especially given what we're confronted with today. I think a person's ideological, social, political reaction to this film is a pretty good barometer of their feelings of the future. The film is flawed - but once the singular premise, one of the few things borrowed from the novel its based upon are set in order, is taken care of it becomes its own thing.

Alfonso Cuaron was in my estimation an amazing filmmaker in my book, but with this movie combined with his other work (the absolutely radiant Y Tu Mama Tambien, the Harry Potter movie I actually liked, A Little Princess) he's easily gotten himself a place in the "they're going to be studying this in film school" list.

Oh and here's a story about the cinemtographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki - easily my favorite DP for several years now. Previously for his work on The New World (the entire picture is worth that shot of actual, real lightning you get a glimpse of) and Y Tu Mama Tambien. He's also done such stylized heavyweights as Lemony Snicket's.

In film school we had Piotr Sobocinski visiting to lecture us in our shoddy classroom. He was a collaborator and cinematographer to the legendary Kieslowski. There was a strange man in our auditorium no one recognized. Turned out it was Lubezki, in London to shoot Sleepy Hollow. He'd actually come down to our film school and sat in the lecture hall to hear and learn from another master himself. I thought it was incredibly impressive and it made an impression upon me about the neverending search for knowledge. I know it sounds supremely silly, but I'm perhaps more excited by the fact I once shyly said hi to Lubezki in film school than perhaps all other filmmakers I've ever had the chance to brush by for a few seconds.