THE DANMAN CAN

Seriously, the best album of this ilk since Failure's Fantastic Planet  (1996). Not sure why for the track order  the band chose to list the "days" out of order or why "Day Four" and "Seven" are missing (B-sides, maybe?). I created a playlist on my iPod and listed the tracks in "day" order and I actually almost like the way the tracks flow better that way, except 2 of the tracks get cut off in weird ways. Fans of Failure , Shiner , Channels , Burning Airlines , Jawbox and Hum will not be disappointed.

Just wanted to plug Michael Mackenzie & Lee Howard 's Movie Matters Podcast . I was previously a guest on their Brian De Palma Special episode. They were kind enough to include my MP 3 submission of my Top 10 Films Of 2011 in this current epsiode. I hope you'll take a listen here .

This short film is included on the Mary And Max  (2009) ( review ) Blu-ray. It's great.

Finally watched this. I'm not really into CG animated films; I'm just not. Love the writing, the voice acting and some of the animation/character design is great, but I still can't get into the look - too pristine, too clean.

Re-watched Mary And Max . So beautifully done in every regard (animation, music, voice-over). Really hits every emotion. A truly wonderful film.

Enjoyed this more the second time. Earned an extra 1/2 *.

Funny. The last two  movies that I watched in a row were Soderbergh films. Haywire (2011) is another great film from him, written by Lem Dobbs , writer of the superb and underrated The Limey   (1999) ( review ), which Haywire feels similar to at times.  David Holmes , one of Soderbergh's two  go-to musicmen, delivers another impressive score .

"It's all so fucking hilarious."

♥ "I say..."

Bad boys. So many beauties: ♥

My blog is 1 year old today! I posted about my yearly film watching ratios on Valentine's Day of last year (that's not sad, right...?). I'm reposting that info here to include 2011 : 2005 - 339 (that's a lot of films!) 2006 - 369 (wow, more films than days in the year!!) 2007 - 274 (quite the jump down!) 2008 - 270 (very similar to 2007 ) 2009 - 234 (steadily declining) 2010 - 188 (whoa, BIG drop) 2011 - 236 (back up from 2010 and on par with 2009 ) Here's hoping for some great 2012 films (and music), with such anticipated titles as Ridley Scott 's Xenomorph -less Alien prequel Prometheus , Tarantino 's  Django Unchained , Sam Mendes ' Bond film Skyfall , Tim Burton 's full-length stop motion remake of Frankenweenie , The Dark Knight Rises and Soderbergh 's Haywire !

Drive **** * The Tree Of Life **** ( Review ) Hanna *** * ( Review ) Contagion **** Hobo With A Shotgun **** ( Review) X-Men: First Class **** ( Review ) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo ***1/2 ( Review ) Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes *** 1 / 2 A Dangerous Method *** 1 / 2 The Muppets *** 1 / 2 ( Review ) Honorable Mentions 1 . Source Code *** 1 / 2 ( Review ) 2 . I Saw The Devil *** 1 / 2 3 . Insidious *** ( Review ) Biggest Disappointment Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy *** ( Review ) Worst Film Attack The Block * ( Review ) Note: The reason that some selections have higher star ratings, but lower positions has to do with replay value, entertainment value, credibility/deliverance within genre, etc. I thought it would be fun to include all my previous Top Films since I started keeping track of them, when I used to work for Newbury Comics . Looking back at these, there are a bunch of titles that I would definitely shift to higher or ...

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead   Tao Of The Dead ****1/2 Death Cab For Cutie   Codes And Keys **** ( Review ) Thao & Mirah   Thao & Mirah ****1/2 ( Review ) Boots Electric   Honkey Kong **** ( Review ) St. Vincent   Strange Mercy **** The Black Keys   El Camino **** ( Review ) Peter Gabriel New Blood ****1/2 ( Review ) My Morning Jacket   Circuital ***1/2 ( Review ) Tom Waits   Bad As Me ***1/2 ( Review ) The Cars   Move Like This ***1/2 Charles Bradley   No Time For Dreaming **** Foo Fighters   Wasting Light ***1/2 Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross   The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Soundtrack) **** Primus   Green Naugahyde ***1/2 The Chemical Brothers   Hanna (Soundtrack) **** Trap Them Darker Handcraft **** The Go! Team   Rolling Blackouts ***1/2 Fujiya & Miyagi   Ventriloquizzing ***1/2 Cliff Martinez...

The Extended Edition of the second Millennium film earns an extra 1/2 * from my previous rating. This fleshed-out version is more compelling.

The Extended Edition fills in some nice bits from the book that were cut out from the theatrical version. I can't say that I feel that it's vastly superior to the shorter version (I enjoyed them both), but I'm glad to own the longer version. After rewatching this, I DO think that I prefer it over the Finch version, but there are parts of both films (characters, dialogue, events) that I like and dislike or feel that were handled better in one version over the other. I think, if anything, it'll be fun to have both versions to rewatch, once the 2011 version gets released on Blu-ray.