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by Kelly Reichardt
Kelly Reichardt's finest statement on loneliness and the search for our identity in other people. Those who make unfaithful mirrors. Whose eyes tell us that there could be more than the howling silence that sails past us when we sleep alone. More than the space taken up by someone who says "I love you" without feeling. More than the perfunctory identity granted women by men. More than the talk that just keeps quiet at bay. Lily Gladstone makes the most compelling case of all these emotional drifters but through resignation, but hope. The way her eyes glow with happiness, her jawline tightens ever so slightly with tense wonder and that nervousness, the embarrassment of possessing humanity that some of us can't hide.
2. The Lost City of Z
by James Gray
3. Knight of Cups
by Terrence Malick
I've already made this film my pet cause of the year because I felt it was going to be the most misunderstood, not only of the year's crop of arthouse heavy hitters (Malick is America's arthouse heavyweight champion of the world) but of his filmography. By now the issue is whether or not you see that his way of doing things is the purest and truest way (if, necessarily, not the right way. That doesn't exist) of doing things. Only Malick conducts the elements of cinema with this uncanny dexterity and certainty. Only Malick treats music, sound design, performance, set decoration, art direction, production design and choreography as leaves in a whirlwind, each piece helping to craft enough memories in a single second to last a lifetime of regret and ecstasy. Cinema has never been more fully expressive, more bitterly elegiac and laced with longing. There's a reason, even as he racks up the worst reviews of his career, every filmmaker puts a shot of hand in wheat. It's shorthand for poetic perfection. It's proof that you've been affected by what Malick does, even if you have no idea how he did it.
4. Silence
Martin Scorsese may not have the abstract emotional register of Malick, but he does what he does (conventional narrative cinema, I don't think it's unfair to say) better than anyone else on earth. Every year they release his movies, distributors wisely place them at the end of the calendar so that we all may look upon the conviction and energy with which Scorsese maneuvers his camera, supercharges his montage (with fellow genius Thelma Schoonmaker ever at his side), and stages the players in his passion. With the gentle spectres of Mizoguchi, Kurosawa and Ozu guiding him, Scorsese gazes up and down at those who hide confusion and terror behind conviction. Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Adam Driver and Yôsuke Kubozuka howl, moan, wail and bleed while in the throes of violent revelation, that even possessing the strength granted by a god leaves you weak enough to die alone. His silence is everywhere and it is only what we learn to fill it with that makes us whole.
5. 'Til Madness Do Us Part
by Wang Bing
Wang Bing, like Pedro Costa, knows that the shortest distance is that which lies between a digital camera and its subject. The murky digital hellscape captured in 'Til Madness Do Us Part can only be its ugly self. The dank, cold asylum upon which he trains his eye (one of our most important in its ability to weather the sight of inhumanity) hides nothing from him. It cannot. It runs laps in the freezing cold of society's blindspot trying to conjure enough heat not to die and to remind the runner it is still alive. Injustice this grave has been allowed and will continue. The mad are ignored everywhere. It is only in allowing us a tiny window into their abject suffering that these few unfortunate bastards may have our empathy for a few short hours. They are real when he films them. In this world, that has to count for something because help is never coming.
6. Manchester By The Sea
by Kenneth Lonergan
Much has been said about the film's treatment of grief, which is a monumental achievement, to be sure. But what's most interesting to me is the way Lonergan and his cinematographer, Jody Lee Lipes, resolutely refuse to valorize the circumstances through style. It could have been shot on film, lit splendidly, the New England sky an omnipresent observer of every humiliation. Instead Lonergan relies on the poignantly ordinary surroundings, the hopelessly realistic, in order to better communicate the true horror of enduring hardship. Life will not be beautiful to better contextualize your suffering. It will always pile on indignities. You will always be just a human, governed by your wretched frailty and the randomness of life and death.
7. Cosmos
by Andrzej Żuławski
Andrzej Żuławski left two gifts this year before leaving us for good. The first was a restored look at his definitive masterpiece On The Silver Globe. And the other was maybe his last fiction film (and, tragically, his first in more than a decade). Cosmos is a bite-sized blotter of the brutal Polish wizard's worldview and creative fixations. A film so alive you can practically hear the projector rattling with all the ideas spilling out.
8. Crosscurrent
A gentle series of conflicts rendered as insignificantly but monumentally as stones on the bank of the Yangtze. China's artistic tradition (specifically the work of its Sixth Generation filmmakers, at which Yang Chao arrived near the end) presented as pages from a forgotten book, poems to invisible forces at work, drawing us further from who we were and what we knew. A ceaselessly gorgeous work.9. Little Sister
by Zach Clark
Zach Clark's ode to curing cluelessness is as adorable as it is thorny. Addison Timlin (heart-stealing, never better) burrows into her past life to find the brother cut adrift from his identity. History and family is thrown on like a costume to draw out the forgotten identity, itself covered in the costume of agony, of a destroyed self. How a film this resolutely tiny can feel so huge, so timeless, is a testament to the intelligence at work. Clark has discovered something about people, and it is profound and all-encompassing in its humaneness and generosity.
10. Neruda
by Pablo Larraín
Proof, as if any was needed, that art needn't lose an ounce of its power to its steadfast political conviction. That the two may enrich and empower each other and create something unforgettably human and poetic. Overshadowed by now by its more famous cousin, this is the Larraín film all others should be judged against, though he hasn't yet made a bad or dishonest film. It is as hopeful and tastily byzantine as Tony Manero was bleak and uncomplicated.
11. Malgré la nuit
My patron saint up to his old tricks, painting on his biggest canvas in nearly a decade, letting his expressionism and bald experimentation take their place against his typically anguilliform noir, rather than superficially separating them. This film acts as a sequel to his voracious La Vie Nouvelle, also about displaced travelers chasing sexual gratification as a means to filling empty souls. Grandrieux's matured enough that regret and loss have become his masters, rather than a continuous searching. The difference between the pilgrims here and their earlier counterparts: they know the best they can hope for is to leave with their lives. Grandrieux's camera, meanwhile, is as razor-sharp and morbidly curious as ever. His cinema remains among the most jarring, haunting and gripping of the modern era.
12. Sunset Song
12. Sunset Song
by Terence Davies
The poet prince of modern cinema channels John Ford and James Joyce in its alternately soaring and lacerating quality this adaptation of a truly tough Gibbon novel. The heart of the land spinning reams of aching prose to combat the evil and violence in the heart of the men Chris Guthrie loves and loses. Davies' impressionistic gaze and bare, if complete, view of the human condition create something greater than the novel alone could have given us: the beauty of the land that Chris believes in and loves. If the land endures, Davies' rapturous treatment of it will not only endure but support and nourish us as long as we need it.
13. And Nothing Happened
by Naima Ramos-Chapman
Aided by hellraiser Terence Nance, newcomer Naima Ramos-Chapman arrives with the force of a shotgun blast. As we finally get around to listening to oppression narratives from anyone other than the oppressor, works like And Nothing Happened will hopefully find us once a month because sweet jesus, preacher man, do we ever need them. Ramos-Chapman's film stirs together magic realism, surrealism, sensual horror and sweltering, excruciating truth in less than the time it takes most films to introduce their lead character. Chapman's dead stare says everything we need to know about the journey that survivors don't get to take, nearly as much as her response to the stranger in the hallway. There isn't a second not riddled with purpose, not alive with possibility, not blinking and sputtering from too much raw power shooting through its images.14. The Fits
by Anna Rose Holmer
Anna Rose Holmer's sleeper miracle gives power and voice to the quiet ones, the ones never asked what they're capable of. Royalty Hightower mesmerizes as a girl whose powers may be more than metaphorical. The pair find their own rhythm among the inexorable pull of the many on-screen dancers and the grey city drifting indifferently by. A spellbinding and assured tale of ordinary folks waiting for a phoenix to rise by example.
15. Nocturama
by Bertrand Bonello
Bertrand Bonello cuts down on voluptuousness and trade unpredictable mise-en-scene for a genuine mystery in his story. His spatial exploration remains doggedly fascinating and enviable. Paris is an unexplored continent for his gaggle of handsome terrorists, a strange place to be feared and destroyed, so it's with no little irony that they believe sanctuary can be found in a department store, a grim pantomime of the bourgeois complacency they aim to shatter through their violent art work. Bonello finds his usual sensuality in a Gus Van Sant-esque headlong death spiral, and his erotic fixation only tightens when the body count rises. It should be irresponsible, but good cinema never is.
16. 72 Hours: A Brooklyn Love Story?
by Raafi Rivero
16. 72 Hours: A Brooklyn Love Story?
by Raafi Rivero
I've been visiting Brooklyn for years now because some of my closest friends call it home. Thanks to gentrification I've seen many of its corners on film and TV the last few years, but I'd never really seen Brooklyn on film before this year. At the Black Star film festival I sat rapt, jaw wide, as a young director whose name I'd never heard before that day, showed me Brooklyn as if he'd been the first to ever train a camera on it. 72 Hours is a melancholy tale of realizing you cannot ever fit your arms around everything in your life, and you cannot take home with you when you grow to adulthood. Friends can look like obstacles when you sense comfort and childhood slipping away. This bittersweet love letter to a town itself on its way out of its past life will resonate for hundreds of years. It gets everything right.
17. Kate Plays Christine
by Robert Greene
I've been watching Robert Greene play Russian roulette with a camera for years now waiting for him to find the full chamber and still he smiles behind the blindfold. No one in non-fiction takes more formal risks or is as brazen about the games he plays. He wants you to be unseated, to challenge yourself along with him. And after years of hearing him talk up 2001 and its psychedelic ilk, he's finally made a film as audaciously acidic and unhinged. Maybe it lacks the gentleness of Kati with an I and Fake it so Real or the assured Cassavetes-meets-Sirk magnificence of Actress, but this film has the kind of hallucinogenic edge that makes burns its images and sounds into your brain. I will never forget the anger in Kate's voice in the final reel, nor the sight of her applying scads of fake tan to become a victim whose fate she refuses to accept. Christine is a demon Kate will not let into her soul for fear the exorcism won't work. Kate Plays Christine is our meta reckoning. People are people, no matter what screen we see them on. Reality cannot be taken for granted because glass separates us.
18. Cameraperson
by Kirsten Johnson
Co-opting documentary into abstraction so that it may function as autobiography, Kirsten Johnson's repurposing is unforgettably tender and raw. She finds a mirror in all those shots of men in suits preparing to look an awful kind of truth in the face and she stares into it, unafraid to once again be near madness and fear. The image brings us closer to making a friend of the truth. When her mother turns up, it's a reminder why she picks up her camera. The world's infuriating design can only be tamed if we create something for ourselves out of the misshapen fragments. Johnson's Cameraperson is a landmark of reclamation, a political and personal repudiation of our own helplessness.
Mimi Cave made her bones with brightly lit, pastel-hued music videos for interchangeable dance pop bands. When last year she made her first short film, it was a clue that there was more to Cave's neatly ordered chaos than met the eye. That chaos is front and center in her blistering video for Danny Brown's "When It Rain," a song that acts like a viking funeral for the city of Detroit. Cave's images of the desiccated town through warped-VHS and the funhouse mirror of pop culture detritus are shocking in their hysterical asymmetry. This ghetto three ring circus is every bit the rallying cry Brown's song required.
20. Elle
by Paul Verhoeven
This film hurt a friend of mine, so I won't go on at length about why I like it. Everyone can decide for themselves. I think it's Verhoeven's best and I'll leave it at that.
Puiu rediscovers the uncomfortable center of Romanian new wave tragicomedy with the uncompromisingly painful Sieranevada. Every player seems like they might be the one rational character in the melting pot of pettiness and insecurity, but it takes only ten minutes next to someone else for their own faults to come flying out. The perfectly patient, perfectly excruciating family holiday movie to beat the band, Sieranevada finds something to love and hate about everyone at the dinner table. His stable, stubborn form is the right method of unearthing frailty, and Sieranevada will go down in history as the most unappetizing and unsatisfying food movie of the new century.
22. Francofonia
by Aleksandr Sokurov
Sokurov throws his stylistic handbook out the window and crafts an idiosyncratic window into his brand of love, finding the ugly desperation that led mankind towards its better angels. Whether through curious drone footage or choppy skype footage of artwork that could be lost at sea, he throws himself at the mercy of modern technology to tell the story of an age-old affection washing against a fractured, modernized connection to the past. An essay on fascism's connection to art (imagined ownership) and the incredible lengths the compassionate must go to in order to reclaim royal, public possession of human-made treasure. There is no torture too great to make our legacy sharable for as much of eternity as we can stake out.
23. Always Shine
by Sophia Takal
Sophia Takal's terrifying story of rivalry gone awry is a tightly coiled study in minute contrasts. Like Melancholia without an apocalyptic excuse for the awful behavior between sisters, Always Shine gets under the skin of the almost famous. The world cuts lines between professionals and expects mere mortals to hop around them, delineating sociability from competition, keeping friendship through imagined milestones. Always Shine is so sharp and so horrific that even when its game is revealed, it doesn't allow you the intake of breath you'd need to compartmentalize. A terrifying marvel.
24. O.J. Made In America
by Ezra Edelman
Though this film was mired in a pointless argument over whether its cinema or tv (spoiler alert: who cares?) we at least all seemed to agree that this is a remarkable feat of investigative cinematic journalism. OJ has fascinated us for years, and for a good reason: he accidentally found the line between black and white, and we demanded his blood for showing us the divide in the flesh. Edelman shows us the process by which America draws its lines and prepares for its ritual bloodletting. A quicker 8 hours you will not pass.
A disquieting autopsy of our ambition, what the Secret Machines would call a 'graveyard of hope.' Geyrhalter's second glance at our one-time successes states its case with rousing simplicity, which ought to give even the hardest heart pause.
26. I Am Not Your Negro
by Raoul Peck
James Baldwin, the saint we need, not the one we deserve, tells his own story through image criticism and sociopolitical analysis. Baldwin's righteous fury is even more potent now that we get to experience his work, rather than being alive as he was first diagnosing America's narcissism and racism. Peck, Africa's loudest and most accessible philosopher, magnificently contrasts Baldwin's unfortunately timeless words with the cultural artifacts that arose in response to the rift he and his ilk created by announcing their blackness. This is the art we've needed all along.
27. Men Go To Battle
by Zachary Treitz & Kate Lyn Sheil
An ingenious little comedy of manners, it finds the humour in frontier surgery and the tragedy in the simple lack of things to do and talk about. American independent cinema used to produce a film like this a year, and now we must count our lucky stars we got this, a totally cracked Civil War odyssey starring nothing but charming, semi-evil blanks.
28. I Had Nowhere To Go
by Douglas Gordon
Douglas Gordon meets his idol, a game and sardonic Jonas Mekas, and crafts him a biographical form worthy of his legacy. Just as Mekas invited his followers to discover meaning through the notes the aren't played, so to speak (lack of narrative, unfocused, avant-garde images and forms), Gordon tells Mekas' life story in darkness, the way the past must appear to pilgrims who want to know precisely the experience of understanding the wretched fortune of survivors and victims. A film Mekas would have programmed at any point during his lifetime, I Had Nowhere To Go is a love song to the harsh cold he trekked through to find himself and stay alive.
29. The Witch
by Robert Eggers
A broiling kettle of resentment and the endless unknown scattered along the Z-axis, where Eggers perpetually gazes. A free and un-mocked feminine identity is as terrifying as the prospect of the uncanny running our lives. Religion is powerless in the face of unchained id and ego, of women having the power to be whomever they wish. And yet some would still sooner flagellate and die screaming than admit the limits of belief. The final minutes are a bold refutation of reason, because it's easier to embrace one's own fantasia of outright lunacy than to live by someone else's version of it.
30. Hail, Caesar!
by Joel & Ethan CoenJoel & Ethan Coen dig once more into their bottomless bag of Hollywood ephemera and craft a joyous essay on Hollywood's tribalism and its imaginary trials and tribulations. Hollywood's biggest fantasy - that its moral turpitude was under attack from forces the government itself blew out of proportion and misunderstood - is given all the grammatical credence of its most lavish product. A delightful, robust lie, the best kind there is.
31. Edge of Seventeen
by Kelly Fremon Craig
The James L. Brooks name in the "Producer" slot is a nice tell regarding the sort of feelings first-time writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig will be putting us through, but maybe not how profoundly. She's got an ear and eye for the milieu, the dialect, and the unforced naturalism of her teenage purgatory, and she found a cast who never once falters in their task of seeming like human beings and not models pretending to be awkward teenagers. Haley Richardson, who pulled off the same trick in the very good The Bronze, is a bundle of likable qualities, all of which mask her need to be accepted. Hailee Steinfeld is as perfect, as ridiculously talented, as she led us to expect her to be. Given a whole movie to act like hormonal imbalance personified, she is a star made of edges begging to be sanded down. She is one of our most wonderful talents and this is some of her finest work.
32. Everybody Wants Some!!
by Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater's best and most fun film takes a stab at discerning the rituals involved in the creation and maintenance of cliques. A little lesson in our philosophical divide as Americans only learned through abandonment of self-consciousness. And this film is a delightfully unselfconscious romp through parties and rituals, finding the impressionable souls under the costume of subculture. Sort of like an inverted Coen Brothers film, its buoyant colours and incredible specificity reveal a joyous acceptance of possibility and of the breaking down of barriers.
33. Things to Come
by Mia Hansen-Løve
My friend, the critic Teo Bugbee, said that had she would have guessed the director of this film was in the winter of her life, because this seemed like it could have been someone's final statement before retiring. That was how rich and complex and understanding its worldview seemed to her, how full and considerate its conception of Isabelle Huppert's character was. And she's right. This is the kind of unforced character study it frequently takes years to learn how to allow yourself to make. Hansen-Løve has always had solid dramatic instincts, recognizing that it takes lifetimes for events to reveal themselves to be as major as they really were. This, her most relaxed and yet her most specific narrative yet, seeing the discourse Huppert seeks and relishes as solace and also new meaning following her divorce. Her independence stems from her pride in her own intellect - it shapes and strengthens her in her time of need. The connection she loses from those close to her is rebuilt through curiousity and talk, and yet the film's direction never relies on typical staging of conversation. It's as searching and hopeful as Huppert.
34. The Son of Joseph
by Eugène Green
34. The Son of Joseph
by Eugène Green
That rascal Eugène Green turns the story of Jesus into an alternately farcical and jaw-dropping story of arts criticism. Mathieu Amalric plays a publisher who treats his unwanted son like a book he sees no merit in. Fabrizio Rongione is the father who adopts the boy, seeing life and potential in the young man. Both relate to him through their disparate approaches to the worthiness of art. One is ridged and wants only to be moved, the other believes beauty can be anywhere. The latter view informs the film's precise compositions and seemingly tangential narrative, building a world where transcendence could lie around every corner.
35. A Quiet Passion
by Terence Davies
If the other Davies feast this year was about choosing to soldier on in the face of grief and hellish romantic circumstance, A Quiet Passion is what it looks like when we choose to luxuriate in death and misery, everyone's eventual lot. Steeped in Charles Ives' brand of atonal americana and accidentally trawling in D.W. Griffith in its pastoral Belgian suburban hamlets, A Quiet Passion is about the slowly unfolding grip of death and the sibilant mourners who pass us on the way to the grave. The futility of resisting its draw is tragic, yes, but Emily Dickinson's refusal to be cowed by the lies we're encouraged to accept instead of the inhumane truth is as bold a choice as the one to become a poet. Davies, with his looming man phantasmagoria and unapologetic earnestness, rages as roughly against the dying of the light.
36. Midnight Special
by Jeff Nichols
38. Tower
by Keith Maitland
39. Fire at Sea
by Gianfranco Rosi
36. Midnight Special
by Jeff Nichols
Jeff Nichols' Spielberg/Carpenter homage, a buzzing, tentative study of unlikely confederacy, is the sort of film I could watch any day of the week. Desperate people on a cross country road trip towards the supernatural, pursued by all and sundry, knowing no one would believe them if they tried to explain their purpose. That Nichols brings to this particular subgenre his homey sense of place (southern kitchens and bare motels), classically teary-eyed masculinity and unemphatic generic recombining, makes it all the more watchable.
If you were looking for a master class in Mise-en-scène (the latest iteration of the kind of formal perfection and kindness found in The Strange Little Cat, for example), this is your champion. Buschel quietly (very quietly) became the most assured and beguiling filmmaker working in American mid-budget indies. No image is incomplete, no edit wasted, no piece of production design is accidental or without divine purpose. A character's inner life is projected on every surface and spews out of the mouths of every ancillary figure in his life. The Phenom is a western without guns, a hero's journey over before it's begun.
38. Tower
by Keith Maitland
A search for one kind of truth that invokes baldfaced fantasy and invention, this richly textured plea for understanding at a time when America had no psychoanalytic identity will captivate with both its gorgeous animation and its unconventional race for fact. Its undeniable horror is undercut by its hopeful coda, which justifies the whole operation even more than any of its singularly compelling drawings of resilience.
39. Fire at Sea
by Gianfranco Rosi
Rosi's modernist non-fiction forms the link between the found elements in Antonioni's and the remnants of neo-realism that hung over even his most arch, austere studies of paralysis and urbanism. Here he welds a fictional construction to a story of immigration so unbelievably sad that its reprieves not only make the horror palatable, but are necessary to bring us to the edge of suffering. The flight for freedom and safety effects everyone, though we wish to keep the break as far from us as possible. This film shrinks the distance between tragedy as a news item and the real human cost. Both eyes must be open.
40. 20th Century Women
Mike Mills shifts focus from his father (the hero of Beginners, even when he's not on screen) to the absence of a father, and the overwhelming, beautifully wooly presence of mothers and would-be mother figures. His dusty primary palette, the most honest way he can find to present the simplest facts of human interaction, reminds one of the zone between nostalgia and reality. Annette Bening, earning oscars and SAG awards with every puff of a cigarette, is the toughest and most lovable she's ever been, trying, in that wonderfully empathetic way of hers, to make sense of the world in which her only boy is growing up. She conducts a three ring circus of exploration and sexual tension (populated by Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup among others). It's greatest revelation is that one might be able to actually see the ways in which we grow apart and acknowledge them without lamenting the loss of closeness. Bening wants the world to stop so she can see her son grow up in slow-motion, but she can't be beside him and let him be himself at once. Honestly heartbreaking and resistant to mawkishness, 20th Century Women had me in tears.
41. Under Electric Clouds
by Aleksei German, Jr.
40. 20th Century Women
Mike Mills shifts focus from his father (the hero of Beginners, even when he's not on screen) to the absence of a father, and the overwhelming, beautifully wooly presence of mothers and would-be mother figures. His dusty primary palette, the most honest way he can find to present the simplest facts of human interaction, reminds one of the zone between nostalgia and reality. Annette Bening, earning oscars and SAG awards with every puff of a cigarette, is the toughest and most lovable she's ever been, trying, in that wonderfully empathetic way of hers, to make sense of the world in which her only boy is growing up. She conducts a three ring circus of exploration and sexual tension (populated by Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup among others). It's greatest revelation is that one might be able to actually see the ways in which we grow apart and acknowledge them without lamenting the loss of closeness. Bening wants the world to stop so she can see her son grow up in slow-motion, but she can't be beside him and let him be himself at once. Honestly heartbreaking and resistant to mawkishness, 20th Century Women had me in tears.
41. Under Electric Clouds
by Aleksei German, Jr.
A modernist sci-fi parable about the paradox of describing a national condition rendered inscrutable to outsiders thanks to a blanket moratorium on emotional honesty. German, Jr. has his father's feel for rhythm and his eye for composition, and, most importantly, his belief that the people who need to understand is bizarre narrative curlicues will find a way to make sense of them.
42. The B-Side
by Errol Morris
Morris abandons his usual starkness and austerity to let the throbbing heartbeat of Elsa Dorfman and her open artistry (Mike Mills is probably a fan, I wager) affect his usual cold demeanor. Even a cynic like Morris melts in front of such a force for good. Some day we should all be so lucky to have our art be reflected in such gorgeous memories. To have our life's work show the best of the human condition.
43. Journey Through French Cinema
by Bertrand Tavernier
The history of poetic realism and everything we did to lose it. I could describe its pleasures more, but I'd rather have each person experience it themselves. For me, this movie brought me back to Christmases spent with piles of dvds borrowed from college libraries, watching landmarks of French cinema while experiencing stressful developments of my own. The sparkling eyes of every doomed romantic giving me hope that my problems were temporary. Turns out the problems of the existential, the damned, the artist, they don't go away.
44. Reluctantly Queer
Baldwin-inspired bravery from a filmmaker who should be better known. Owusu's gauzy intimacy is a tonic against the harshness of most narrative media, and her love for the black bodies on screen gives no small modicum of strength to the viewer who knows a window is also a powerful screen with an uncomfortable truth to display.
45. Paterson
by Jim Jarmusch
51. The Alchemist Cookbook
56. Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids
by Jonathan Demme
57. The Shallows
by Jaume Collet-Serra
58. The Clubby Pablo Larraín
Larraín plays with heresy and poetry (not to mention a mountain of symbolic classical music to make swallowing the pill easier) so that he might better mess around with our sympathies. He knows full well that what he's asking is despicable, so he doesn't even ask, he just takes. We will feel for these monsters, we will even smile when their little victories come up. And he knows we'll never look back to see how he did it.
59. 31
by Rob Zombie
45. Paterson
by Jim Jarmusch
Jarmusch's study of the mere state of being susceptible to poetic reinvention ought to be used to steel oneself against the endless tides of workplace tumult and American malaise. We need simplicity this seductive now that the world's gone topsy turvy.
46. Age of Shadows
by Kim Jee-Woon
It should by now be no secret and no problem that Kim Jee-Woon wants to be Steven Spielberg. He's got a way with a shoot out, a knack for a setpiece, and a futurist momentum that brings Tintin and Indiana Jones swinging to mind. His latest may be his best yet, a rollicking spy story featuring Korea's great leading man Kang-Ho Song and a climactic bit of intrigue set to Ravel's "Bolero" that would make even Spielberg jealous. Engrossing from the word go, Kim's galloping style is as winning as it is powerful.
47. Moonlight
by Barry Jenkins
This Hou Hsiao-Hsien-inspired triptych will appropriately go down in history as one of the greatest films about and featuring images of beautiful black faces and bodies, but it should also be remembered as fondly for focusing on the long road to loving and accepting one's self. There's been so much devastating writing on this film this year, but seek out anything about how this film showcased a culture not reflected by 99% of American cinema, or how it led someone to better love themselves. Movies like this, with that force of personality, are hard to come by, and they're rarely this gracious and gorgeous when they do show up. I'll be humming its colours for years.
48. Fences
by Denzel Washington
Denzel, the shark of American cinema, takes a big, bloody bite out of August Wilson and tears away enough meat to nourish all of America. His cast (flawless Viola Davis most of all) help him bring the sweat-browed, booze-smelling, bruised-limbed world of Wilson's Fences to life, but make no mistake this is the Denzel showcase any fan would kill to consume. He and Davis huff and puff and nearly blows the screen down with their charismatic mortification. Not a dull moment, nor one where I wished that he'd attempted to ween some of the theatricality from the screen. This film is exactly what it needs to be.
49. Aquarius
by Kleber Mendonça Filho
This lazy jaunt through the memories of an old firebrand is deceptively easy to get a grip on. Just when the live-and-let-live spirit seems to take hold, out come the termites and a fierceness of purpose that Filho allows his magnificent star demonstrate without breaking his own unhurried stride. All the better to point to her determination and let our awe rise from our guts. The ending will stay with you.
50. Embrace of the Serpent
by Ciro Guerra
46. Age of Shadows
by Kim Jee-Woon
It should by now be no secret and no problem that Kim Jee-Woon wants to be Steven Spielberg. He's got a way with a shoot out, a knack for a setpiece, and a futurist momentum that brings Tintin and Indiana Jones swinging to mind. His latest may be his best yet, a rollicking spy story featuring Korea's great leading man Kang-Ho Song and a climactic bit of intrigue set to Ravel's "Bolero" that would make even Spielberg jealous. Engrossing from the word go, Kim's galloping style is as winning as it is powerful.
47. Moonlight
by Barry Jenkins
48. Fences
by Denzel Washington
Denzel, the shark of American cinema, takes a big, bloody bite out of August Wilson and tears away enough meat to nourish all of America. His cast (flawless Viola Davis most of all) help him bring the sweat-browed, booze-smelling, bruised-limbed world of Wilson's Fences to life, but make no mistake this is the Denzel showcase any fan would kill to consume. He and Davis huff and puff and nearly blows the screen down with their charismatic mortification. Not a dull moment, nor one where I wished that he'd attempted to ween some of the theatricality from the screen. This film is exactly what it needs to be.
49. Aquarius
by Kleber Mendonça Filho
This lazy jaunt through the memories of an old firebrand is deceptively easy to get a grip on. Just when the live-and-let-live spirit seems to take hold, out come the termites and a fierceness of purpose that Filho allows his magnificent star demonstrate without breaking his own unhurried stride. All the better to point to her determination and let our awe rise from our guts. The ending will stay with you.
50. Embrace of the Serpent
by Ciro Guerra
One part Wenders and two parts Herzog, Embrace of the Spirit x-rays the fundamentally enfeebled spirit of the adventurer. The infection of riches and conquest localized, Guerra makes an incision and lets greed, pride and gluttony seep out of the wound, hoping we may think twice before succumbing to our basest desires. That we need ayahuasca before we'd consider acquiescing to history's lessons does not bode well for the man who insists on mapping the uncharted, knowing there may gold waiting at the end of the river.
51. The Alchemist Cookbook
by Joel Potrykus
52. The Clan
by Pablo Trapero
A miniature Scorsese opus (add this to A Bigger Splash and you'd get one whole) just thrilled to get to wallow in the mire of greed and violence. Trapero's white-hot camera ballet grabs you by the lapels and thrusts you into down the wrong path along with this family of pitiless dreamers who can't tell wrong from legal. A thoroughly immoral thrill ride.
53. Love & Friendship
by Whit Stillman
Devilishly funny and ceaselessly charming, Whit Stillman's marriage to Jane Austen was written in the stars. Kate Beckinsale, in the role of a lifetime, fires bon mots as if from a gatling gun, her callousness and unforced arrogance more divine than can be accurately measured. Her delightful co-stars brings this world of inbred pomposity to squealing, choking life right along with her.
54. Nine Behind
by Sophy Romvari
55. Julieta
by Pedro Almodóvar
Potrykus' latest tale of economic woe relies on the agoraphobia of The Evil Dead and Mad Max the way his excellent Buzzard reached with clawed fingers towards A Nightmare on Elm Street and Taxi Driver. Here the bootlegger spirit of middle america retreats to the woods to awaken demons who might make an impoverished life run with purpose. Potrykus, one of the great independent filmmakers of our time, lovingly films each ritual, can of cat food and each VHS tape that keeps our doomed hero alive and conjuring, as if they were the work of handsomely paid art directors dreaming up spoons in Hobbiton.
52. The Clan
by Pablo Trapero
A miniature Scorsese opus (add this to A Bigger Splash and you'd get one whole) just thrilled to get to wallow in the mire of greed and violence. Trapero's white-hot camera ballet grabs you by the lapels and thrusts you into down the wrong path along with this family of pitiless dreamers who can't tell wrong from legal. A thoroughly immoral thrill ride.
53. Love & Friendship
by Whit Stillman
54. Nine Behind
by Sophy Romvari
Romvari's debut short film is a small decanter of regret, gorgeously expressive black and white photography mapping a shared history lost, a connection left to wither too long. Hungarian cinema's past on the other end of a phone call, a metaphorical extension of a hand towards a political cinematic understanding of our own identity. Outside the window of the heroine are the forces that told her how she should be shaped. In her hand is the key to understanding who she was before she entered the world, and the art she reaches for to make sense of herself. An astonishingly assured start to what will be a remarkable career.
55. Julieta
by Pedro Almodóvar
The first out and out melodrama Almodóvar has made without the aid of post-modernism or genre in over a decade is like a paper cut from a love letter. It introduces the enthralling highs of connection, then shatters the illusion and watches his drained heroine pick up the pieces. Her resilience and rediscovery of her self-respect replace the love story teased in the first act. This is a film about how amazing it can be to remember that one's life is one's own.
56. Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids
by Jonathan Demme
The joy of concert documentaries rediscovered by the very man who proved that the simple act of watching a band at the peak of its powers could yield one of the most powerful works of art of all time. That smile, that diamond-bright smile lurking behind Timberlake's inhumanly pulchritudinous visage, that is the entry way to a night of chaste debauchery and synchronized swagger. Try not to have too much fun.
57. The Shallows
by Jaume Collet-Serra
The goth over-thinking of Jaume Collet-Serra's films will always lay me right out. His blend of high-concept nerd mathematics (i.e. one drunk + 1 plane x 50 suspects, or in this case One woman + one shark - mobility ÷ communication) and stormy genre stunt-piloting will never cease to make me grip the edge of my seat and jump for joy when catharsis arrives. He plays his viewers like a telecaster.
58. The Club
Larraín plays with heresy and poetry (not to mention a mountain of symbolic classical music to make swallowing the pill easier) so that he might better mess around with our sympathies. He knows full well that what he's asking is despicable, so he doesn't even ask, he just takes. We will feel for these monsters, we will even smile when their little victories come up. And he knows we'll never look back to see how he did it.
59. 31
by Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie's Rio Bravo (or maybe his Fight For Your Life), 31 tells the story of people who'd rather hang out and smoke pot who are forced to fight for their lives. It's the first of his films that feels genuinely like a fetish count, a relaxed and voluptuous checklist of his auteurist tendencies, refracting the 70s grunge of The Devil's Rejects, the surrealism of Halloween 2, the slow-burning satanism of Lords of Salem. In short, it's the Rob Zombiest Rob Zombie movie and an absolute delight for fans of his grimy cinema, a sort of anti-White Elephant art where every corner of the frame is an opportunity to remind his audience of the grindhouse tradition he continues.
60. The Handmaiden
by Park Chan-Wook
Park Chan-Wook's liquid noir fever cabinets are some of Korean cinema's most consistently lurid delights. His latest the fearlessly sleazy The Handmaiden shows that he can take a plot worthy of Du Maurier and sell it like a pervert's fairy tale, replete with oddball symbolism like tentacles, poisoned cigarettes and yonic bells. Like a mix of The Postman Rings Twice and Lust, Caution with a cutting sense of humour that only Park could have engineered, The Handmaiden is a splendidly diverting lunatic fantasy.
61. Yourself & Yours
by Hong Sang-soo
62. Louder Than Bombs
by Joachim Trier
by Park Chan-Wook
61. Yourself & Yours
by Hong Sang-soo
If you've seen any Hong from the last five years, you know the drill. Formal games, hilariously awkward confrontations and abandoned flirtation, and most of all men whose 'poor me' posturing never gets less funny. The world conspires to keep the Hong hero down (even breaking his leg off screen in this one, the funniest off-screen embellishment in a dog's age) and our director never relents, never stops punishing horny, lovesick fools with fantasies they'll never earn. Korea's Woody Allen has struck gold in his current mode and he doesn't look to be running out of ways to be charmingly wonky.
62. Louder Than Bombs
by Joachim Trier
Sure, it's got Jesse Eisenberg, so it can't be perfect, but Gabriel Byrne, Isabelle Huppert and David Strathairn do more than enough to counteract his tics-only performance style. Trier's style, wherein we discover pages of prose in the silences and stares shared by people in denial, wrestling with depression, disappointment and longing, is one of the most ingratiating and engrossing in modern cinema. He finds a way to be literary with his images and editing without relying on self-consciously busy dialogue or lazily breaking the fourth wall. His modernism here gently mixes with post-modernism without ever commenting directly on itself, rather using the inescapable gaze of media in everyday life to show how difficult it is to do something as simple as grieve in private. The world is always watching, no moment, no matter how shattering, is ever private any longer. Louder Than Bombs is what I imagine a book by Sten Egil Dahl, the reclusive author from Trier's Reprise, would have read like.
63. Under The Shadow
by Babak Anvari
64. The Little Prince / Moana
by Mark Osborne / John Musker & Ron Clements
63. Under The Shadow
by Babak Anvari
This year's The Babadook is given power through a rich combination of Iranian repression and secrecy, left over from an endless war, and feminine fury escaping from a culture hellbent on eradicating a thousand identities. The looks a single mother gets may be the product of a demon or from a society used to following the orders of disrespectful men. It is no coincidence that the monster takes the form of the same cloth meant to mask the female essence of its central character. And it is no surprise this film is steadily gaining a cult following.
64. The Little Prince / Moana
by Mark Osborne / John Musker & Ron Clements
Two films about young women, who through the example of lost boys, learn to love and discover themselves. They find their inner queen by seeing how far boys can fall on their way to becoming gods and kings, and do something different. They change, they grow, they're better. Boys can't really do that. It's nice to see two films made for children get that right and prepare them for the revelation that women will always be better and more compelling than men.
65. Sully
by Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood puts a man in the empty chair and realizes that even heroes have doubts. His noodling guitar solo directorial style finally meets its match in a man who demands a no-frills chorus, as if Carlos Santana remembered the rousing mechanics of "She's Not There," and started recording pop songs again. His most focused and rewarding film in a decade or more, Sully puts aside politics and remembers the lives at stake when the Eastwood hero puts his spurs on, and how each one still echoes in their head. "It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man." Turns out saving one is a hell of a thing, too.
66. Kubo & The Two Strings
by Travis Knight
Laika do not believe in half-measures. When they build worlds, they make every blade of grass sing with purpose. Their artistry has so far outstripped their heartstring-tugging ambition, but with Kubo they take a major step towards realizing it. It helps having Charlize Theron play the voice of the vanquished, laying tough love into both her young charge and we young-at-heart in the audience. The feelings are, thankfully, impossible to escape, much like the impossibly lovely artistry assaulting the eye at every turn.
67. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
by Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone
The Lonely Island's most grandiloquent feat of parody-as-love-letter yet, harbouring both a jaw-droppingly gorgeous production design and a secret affection for the garbage it lampoons, knowing only too well how the world melts for the right voice set to the best beat. Their Spinal Tap games are endlessly devour-able and this film may yet find its life in youtube-sized clips, but it should be experienced first as the messy, anarchic expose of our empty culture it was constructed as.
68. The Ornithologist
by João Pedro Rodrigues
The Ornithologist is almost many things. It's almost a remake of La Voie lactée, it's almost a Pasolinian religious lark, it's almost a horror film, almost a road movie. What it is fully? A gorgeously erotic tale of religious confusion and loss of direction, animated by no greater purpose than what's over the next hill. As it should be. This black metal resurrection tale must be seen to be believed.
69. I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House/ The Blackcoat's Daughter
by Oz PerkinsA double feature of slowly simmering stories of possession and loss of feminine identity, from a man with a fair bit of it hiding in his background. The remarkably unmoored performances Perkins gets from his leads (Ruth Wilson, Kiernan Shipka, Emma Roberts, Lauren Holly, and the music of his brother Elvis) showcase the keenness of feeling he brings to his horrific stories of isolation and fear.
70. Staying Vertical
by Alain Giraudie
Picture perfect surrealist jocularity with a fleshy, uncomfortable edge, Giraudie makes literal the pain of creating when your brain keeps throwing you curve balls. His film keeps begging for order from the few characters and incidents spat out by a roving unconscious, and all he can think to do is burrow further into Freudian/Rankian gardens of bliss. When a man on a rowboat arrives at the third act break, begging for the script, it's too late, and who would want order at this point? The pointed chaos is more rewarding.
71. One More Time With Feeling
by Andrew Dominik
Nick Cave takes one more turn financing a myth-ammendment after the howling braggadocio of 20,000 Days On Earth. Not even his narration seems friendly or on the side of a positive control of his once-elusive image. This is a film about grief, loss, pure and simple, and Cave and those closest to him submit to these interviews as a way in. Not to what they're feeling but what they can no longer express. Backstage banter and thwarted calm during abortive interviews here are what that insatiable lack feel like in the chest of the bereaved. This is not right, and it may never be again. This film will stand as a record of the cracks in several hearts, and what it feels like to soldier on despite them.
72. Loving
by Jeff Nichols
Nichols' discover a core of silence as a productive means of communication, rather than a pointed absence as communication. The howling wind outside an unbuilt house, the unsaid scorn from a mother's lined face, the promises broken by a country that never made them, the comedown after a violent road race yields no winner worthy of the name, the moistened yearning that falls from Ruth Negga's perfect eyes when life takes away all that gives her meaning. See it for Negga, but stay for those powerful silences.
73. Daguerreotype
by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
One image late in the game tells me I'm not the only Grandrieux fan on this countdown, but that's not enough to make this film worthwhile. What sells it are the dirty silences, the pained longing for an unbelievable truth, because it would be easier than accepting the hand dealt by fate. Kurosawa's Creepy may be the gut-punch of his two most recent efforts, but this effulgent little haunting gets points for persistence and effortless beauty.
74. Peter + The Farm
by Tony Stone
74. Peter + The Farm
by Tony Stone
An endearing study of drudgery and micro processes as a way of dealing with enough grief to last a lifetime, let alone the unspoken moments of one film. Entire continents of pain are left ignored, resentments long since festered rising out of the bearded maw of a man who believes he's outlived his sociable usefulness. This is the American man at the end of his tether, and he doesn't even know it.
75. Innocence of Memories
by Grant Gee
Gee's soft-focus narratives have become a low-key treasure in the world of modern non-fiction, and here he thrusts a glistening decadent framework over his searching images and gorgeously laconic rhythm. He remains in love with the factual underpinning of his existential quests, keeping him at once in the clouds and on the ground.
76. 13th
75. Innocence of Memories
by Grant Gee
Gee's soft-focus narratives have become a low-key treasure in the world of modern non-fiction, and here he thrusts a glistening decadent framework over his searching images and gorgeously laconic rhythm. He remains in love with the factual underpinning of his existential quests, keeping him at once in the clouds and on the ground.
76. 13th
by Ava DuVernayA slam poet of injustice and systemic violence. Loses points for including the lies of bigots in its tapestry, but it still demands to be seen.
77. Hell or High Water
by David Mackenzie
A truly terrible script relieved and pardoned by excessive, hungry performers and a director at the top of his game. Listen not to the facile economic lessons and instead let its action beats and immediacy jump down your retinas.
78. Don't Breathe
by Fede Álvarez
Álvarez doubles down on his mathematical/architectural control of genre here, as well as the squeamish reality underpinning each fantastical development. A knight of discomfort just itching to set our nerves on fire. The moment he gets handed the biggest budget imaginable, the more frightened (and more satisfied) we'll all be.
79. The Finest Hours
by Craig Gillespie
A simple story of stolidly accepting that giving up is not an option. Gillespie finds his old school Hollywood craftsman and gives in to stiff-upper-lip scene construction and performance collection. This film would, ironically enough, never spring a leak. Casey Affleck has gotten a lot of attention for his flashier, more depressive work on Manchester By The Sea, but he's just as good here as a man who may be able to harness enough man power to keep tragedy at bay.
80. Three
by Johnny ToJohnny To's operatic formalism gets another athletic workout in this pot-boiling tail of corruption. As my ride-or-die Tanner Tafelski puts it: nothing much happen until it does. In this case cops and doctors stare each other down in the care of a psychopath while professionals figure out a way to smuggle the downed man to safety. When the violence erupts, To takes it in like an anthropologist, drinking in every move of an arm, every trajectory of a bullet, every preventable mistake, every violent flourish.
81. Jackie
by Pablo Larraín
Perhaps too-portentous for its own good, this study in the micro-view of PTSD and the loss of control writ large across the American political spectrum has much to recommend it, not least of which is an arresting score by Mica Levi. Natalie Portman, a pillar of pink salt, drifts through ceremonial life, unable to grip the pieces that once made her whole, is a quivering mess of uncertainty. Larraín presents strong, totemic images to dwarf her as the world drifts away. A woman without the man who was both her confidant and shibboleth struggling to find a way back into the world she changed and affected as much as the demi-god she married. Acts of sympathy like this are still much needed; that it's luxurious and low-key as well instead of sweeping and titanic is a small blessing.
82. Hello, My Name is Doris
by Michael Showalter
Michael Showalter's tribute to women traditionally forgotten or lampooned by American cinema will break your heart in a few places. Sally Field and Tyne Daly ring ridiculous pathos by behaving just like the women you see in every day life that movies typically forget to love and care for. His care and sense of humour cushions them against the cruel world they rage against in their individualism and eccentricity.
83. Creepy
by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
85. Eyes of My Mother
by Nicolas Pesce
A hillbilly fever dream cut through with an inherited continental softness, an arch coating of near-surreal gentility wrapped around the menace like a sweet coating around a pill. A slinky, seductive psychosexual morass.
86. 13 Hours
by Michael Bay
88. Into The Inferno
by Werner Herzog
83. Creepy
by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, after years of treading into peculiar, off-beat genre waters, returns to the kind of horrific procedural on which he built his reputation. Creepy is his most formally precise work in decades, all the better to absolutely ruin your expectations and piece of mind. Deeply troubling and truly ruthless.Conventional to its very core but there is a design to that. Directors like Melfi are making up for lost time. Since the 90s Americans have been given stories about female empowerment and friendship, frequently through historical stories, as if to prove that women need to show their work to prove their worth. So by making a film this relentlessly upbeat and by-the-numbers skirts the inevitably tragic fact that films like this need to be made. But it also takes the noble suffering angle and makes it not about what black women endure, but that they know they deserve what comes of the endurance. About the proud march down the hallway. About the promise that someday, the worst, least generous white man in the building will be serving you coffee. Progress doesn't have to be over because the people in power won't include you in their conversations. Speak reason, know more than the oppressor, do not let their rules define you.
84. Hidden Figures
by Theodore Melfi
84. Hidden Figures
by Theodore Melfi
85. Eyes of My Mother
by Nicolas Pesce
A hillbilly fever dream cut through with an inherited continental softness, an arch coating of near-surreal gentility wrapped around the menace like a sweet coating around a pill. A slinky, seductive psychosexual morass.
86. 13 Hours
by Michael Bay
Michael Bay's assaultive expressionism finally finds a funnel to make it palatable - an actual assault. Gone are the blackface jokes and pornographic middle American iconography. This film is focused and vicious and finds itself looking at the smoke-stained faces of survivors, and the typically gorgeous landscape, which in minutes turns from brochure to battlefield. Bay's interest is in accidents and for once he's orchestrating them, instead of appearing to allow them to take over the writing and design. The anger and confusion that mounts as every colossal development hits these he-men whose whole lives revolve around preparedness. 13 Hours is about the horror of not knowing the answer to questions that might mean the difference between life and death.by Werner Herzog
87. Queen of the Desert
87. Queen of the Desert
Herzog's two modes got a work out this year. It's lovely seeing his philosophical inquiries age along with him. His globetrotting picaresques have aged into good taste and Merchant-Ivory derived awe. And like James Ivory, Herzog's finally come around to love for people sensing that expectations place limits on them that the world refuses. It's a calm resignation to the world's reaction to the human insects clamoring over its hidden depths and highs. Robert Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence is a particularly inspired choice for comapanionship in this navigation of the waters of middlebrow fantasy and Herzogian truth.
88. Into The Inferno
by Werner Herzog
And then there's this side of Herzog, the spelunking, mountain-scaling conquerer/nomad/high priest. Herzog stands in awe of nature once more, the mountain that talks back, beckoning him to find meaning in the world that created and must now tolerate such a volatile force. The waves and patterns that ripple out from the volcano's existence are treated with the rye sense of humour that is by now the Bavarian maverick's stock in trade. A journey worth taking to a destination still unknown.
89. Mascots
by Christopher GuestChristopher Guest's triumphant return to the form he revolutionized may be little more than a joke delivery system, but when you're in the hands of the best, it hardly matters.
90. Shin Godzilla
In which a room full of young, frightened by committed professionals takes the place of one heroic figure. Anno and Higuchi combine their powers to tackle the issue of Japan's need for a new Godzilla in the wake of an American pretender, but also the need to respond appropriately, through not-too-flippant genre, to the state of Japanese morale. And they do both magnificently, maintaining the eccentric edges both possess independently. When our cancerous id strikes, it takes more than belief in a heroic other to keep it at bay.
91. The Girl King
by Mika Kaurismäki
Mika Kaurismäki's quick-witted tale of royal decadence run amok is mostly a series of fleeting pleasures. The texture of royal bedrooms, the steely eyes of Malin Buska, the whisper-soft confidence of Sarah Gadon failing every second she's placed under scrutiny, the ululating abandon with which Buska fights for her individuality. They may not add up to a motion picture that will stand the test of time, but like Thomas Imbach's Mary, Queen of Scots, its momentary impressions will last a long time.
92. Mojave
by William Monahan
91. The Girl King
by Mika Kaurismäki
Mika Kaurismäki's quick-witted tale of royal decadence run amok is mostly a series of fleeting pleasures. The texture of royal bedrooms, the steely eyes of Malin Buska, the whisper-soft confidence of Sarah Gadon failing every second she's placed under scrutiny, the ululating abandon with which Buska fights for her individuality. They may not add up to a motion picture that will stand the test of time, but like Thomas Imbach's Mary, Queen of Scots, its momentary impressions will last a long time.
92. Mojave
by William Monahan
It's easy to sneer at William Monahan's pompous verbosity but the delight is in watching actors like Walton Goggins, Oscar Isaac and Garrett Hedlund wrap their maws around his insane, unpronounceable dialogue. Sure it's little more than a game for Monahan's enabling cast, but it's the kind of wonky nonsense I will always be game for, the b-side to the excellent, underrated Monahan-scripted The Gambler. Bad reviews are a bitch, brother.
93. Frankenstein
by Bernard Rose
Bernard Rose shifts his attention from formally omnivorous Tolstoy and mercenary horror to tackle Mary Shelley in the most earthy, grotesque fashion imaginable. He's still dialectically voracious and his Frankenstein communicates in three or four tongues at once, having not forgotten the city-specific tales of horror he made his name on and the matter of detail that made them so unforgettable.
94. Gods of Egypt
by Alex Proyas
The kind of near-camp delight that keeps Hollywood in my good graces. If they can greenlight gilded nonsense like this, they can do whatever other dumb thing they feel like getting up to the rest of the year. I defy you to watch without smiling.
95. How To Tell You're A Douchebag
by Tahir Jeter
An absolutely dazzling update of the comedy of remarriage with no humiliation spared its ostensible hero. A hysterical exploration of why it's a good thing some guys don't end up with the girl.
96. Outlaws & Angels
by J.T. Mollner
A scorching trip down grindhouse memory lane.
97. The Settlers
by Shimon Dotan
Even attempting to describe the power of the monumental amount of work Dotan does here feels like a fool's errand. Like the shameless protestors in the film who cite the bible as if it were a deed drawn up yesterday, The Settlers will leave the uninitiated speechless.
98. The Sound & The Fury
by James Franco
99. The Laundryman
by Chung Lee
I don't know if I'll ever get over the pleasant sensation of watching a director figure out his mistakes and get a tight grip on his movie as it progressed. Its charmingly wonky premise seemed like one more too-cool idea it couldn't control or find a tonal home for, but then the film kept trucking along towards destiny and Chung kept getting better behind the camera. He shed the worst of his weaknesses and ended on a satisfying, emotional note. And it still has its action-comedy cake and eats it, too.
100. Emelie
by Michael Thelin
Wunderkind Sarah Bolger is given the solo showcase she's proven she so richly deserved as far back as The Moth Diaries. Her trademark (to me, anyway) earnest demeanor is put to sinister use as she needs to seem unflappably invested in the fate of three children, two of whom figure out she'll stop at nothing to steal what she believes belongs to her. I could watch Bolger's bug-eyed babysitter play mind games and turn little boys to men once a month in perpetuity. Give her a franchise, already, and watch a pro scare maturity into the young. A transfixing performance treated as the gift it is by an eager director.


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A dream that became a reality was the beginning of Higheight. In November 2013, Lisa Sarcevic opened a home and living store. A 140 year old cottage in the township of Inverleigh, just outside of Geelong, became the quaint store.
Higheight offers an inviting shopping experience with the added touch of next to no other customer satisfaction. The store proudly offering a diverse range of products from the latest on trend homewares, furniture and unique statement pieces for anyone's contemporary, retro or eclectic interiors, whilst also selling fashionable women's accessories and apparel.
An added asset to the business that Lisa has to offer is her interior styling, property styling and home staging service.
Her vision is to offer the 'complete package' over and beyond just bricks and mortar.
A year later to celebrate the 1st birthday of Higheight Home & Living, Lisa Sarcevic partnered with Betty Kukanovski have introduced Higheight Online, with the vision to grow the business from a single regional store to an online business with national reach.
Today Higheight has become a multi-channel business within the first year of trading. An achievement that we are extremely proud of.
Our future for Higheight Home & Living and Higheight Online is to continue offering our loyal customers a welcoming shopping experience… We encourage you all to come along for the journey.

subset: commoncrawl


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Aalo ki sabzi (Potato curry)Leave a comment
May 31, 2017 by bhumi
Hi friends,
Potato curry or aalo ki sabzi is quite a go to dish in India. Whenever I am in hurry or didn't have much ingredients in my kitchen or didn't feel like cooking this recipe is my savior. I first tried this curry in Agra (UP). There is it quite a commonly known as "dubki wale aalo ki sabzi" i.e potato in thin curry and generally serves with samosas & khasta kachoris. Strange is it!!
Aalo ki sabzi can be prepared either dry form or with gravy depending on your taste. I usually prefer gravy form with parathas (flat bread). This recipe is quite an easy with very simple spices & potatoes.
Its a pure vegetarian recipe or can be called as sattvik as I have not used garlic & onion in this. This can be best enjoyed with puris , kachoris or parathas.
Serving : 2-3 person
Preparation time : 15min
Cooking time : 15min
- Potato : 4-5 medium sized
- Ginger : 1 inch piece
- Green chilli : 1 medium sized
- Vegetable Oil : 1 tbsp
- Cumin seeds (sabut jeera) : 1 tsp
- Asafoetida (hing) : a pinch
- Turmeric powder (haldi) : 1/2 tsp
- Chilli powder (laal mirchi powder): 1.5 tsp
- Dry mango powder (amchoor) : 1 tsp
- Garam masala : 1/2 tsp
- Dried fenugreek leaves (kasoori methi ) – 1 tsp
- Salt : as per taste
- Water : 1/4 cup + 2 cups + 3 cups (for boiling potatoes)
- Fresh coriander (optional) : To sprinkle
To boil potatoes:
Wash the potatoes and put them in pressure cooker. Add 3 cups of water to it. Close the lid and kept on burner with high flame. After 4-5 whistles, reduce the flame on slow and allow it to cook for another 5 mins. Switch off the flame, allow the potatoes to cook under pressure. Open the lid, once the pressure is released on its own. Peeled the boiled potatoes.
- Put a heavy bottom pan on high flame. Add oil.
- When oil started to heated up add cumin seeds and allow it to crackle.
- Add asafoetida , turmeric power and chilli powder. Instantly add 1/4 cup of water to it to avoid burning of chilli powder. Reduce the flame to medium and allow the mixture to cook till the oil leaves separates.
- Add 2 cups of water. Bring it to boil.
- Add finely chopped ginger & green chilli, dry mango powder, garam masala, kasoori methi to it. Allow it to cook for 2 mins. Add salt.
- Now using hands crumbled boiled potatoes to medium sized. You can also cut them evenly with knife. Add them to pan.
- Allow it to cook for another 3-4 minutes till one boil. Switch off the flame.
- Sprinkle some fresh coriander (optional) & Serve hot with parathas.
- Instead of oil add clarified butter (ghee) for more authentic taste.
- Water proportion can be adjusted as per the desired consistency.
Hope you all like this recipe. Please follow me on instagram & facebook for more such recipe updates. Comment below as I love to hear from you all…


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There have been so many great polishes this year! It was hard to narrow down my favorites, so I ultimately decided to go with four lists, so here they are. Because I've been sick for over a week, I haven't had time to swatch all these, so I went the easy route and made a video of bottle pics. I hope you guys don't mind!
First up, my 12 favorite 2012 releases from mainstream brands (in no particular order):
- Essie Orange it's Obvious
- Essie Butler Please
- Essie Go Overboard
- OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest
- OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls
- Zoya Arizona
- Nicole by OPI Khloe had a Little Lam-Lam
- China Glaze Desert Sun
- China Glaze Manhunt
- China Glaze Champagne Kisses
- butter LONDON Jack the Lad
- butter LONDON Two Fingered Salute
Next, my top 12 indies from 2012:
- Windestine Moana
- Windestine Snow Prince
- Happy Hands Afternoon Thunderstorms
- Happy Hands I Just Blue Myself
- Dollish Polish Dino-mite Yoshi
- KBShimmer Witch Way
- Hare Polish Supernova Springs
- Hare Polish Bury the Hatchetfish
- Lac Attack Felix Felicis
- Lac Attack Death Day Party
- A-England Saint George
- A-England Jane Eyre
And, since this blog is relatively new, and I've really enjoyed discovering some older polishes this year, I thought I'd include a list of polishes that I've loved this year, but were released before 2012. So here it is:
- OPI Glitzerland
- OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue
- OPI Cuckoo for this Color
- Essie Lilacism
- Essie Chinchilly
- butter LONDON All Hail the Queen
- Sephora by OPI Slushied
- A-England Tristam
- China Glaze First Mate
- Orly Mirror Mirror
- Sally Hansen Pacific Blue
- Nina Ultra Pro Cobalt
There are no pictures of these, but I wanted to include my favorite collections of 2012:
- Lac Attack Magical Musings
- China Glaze On Safari
- OPI Skyfall
- OPI Germany
- Happy Hands I've Made a Huge Mistake
- Windestine Hawaiian Collection
- Windestine's new collection
- A-England Gothic Beauties


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Cars: Accelerating the Modern World
November 23, 2019 - April 19, 2020
Cars: Accelerating the Modern World explores how the car as a driving force has accelerated the pace of change over the past century, bringing together 15 diverse cars to tell extraordinary stories about design and the car's impact on the broader world. These cars include the first production car in existence; an autonomous flying car; a converted low-rider; and a 1950s concept car.
As we stand at a new turning point in mobility design, this exhibition acts as a looking-back-to-look-forward – to understand our past blunders and achievements in order to better imagine how we want to move in the future.
Free to Members of the AFV&A and V&A (£18 for non-members)
Saturday – Thursday: 10.00-17.30
Friday: 10.00-21.45
Image: French advertisement (1934) for the Tatra 77.


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Facts about IBS treatment
Many suffer from Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). IBS is the most common disorder that people experience. IBS is likewise known as mucous colitis, spastic. IBS is normally a functional illness which connects to different diseases of the intestinal tract, the stomach, intestines and gallbladder and colon.IBS typically happens when the muscles and the nerves that belong to the organ are not working that correctly. The nerve and the muscles that are related to the organs control the nerve and the spine too. IBS can be normally visible to the common man while it can likewise be detected with the help of X rays or by endoscopy. The intestinal functional illness can not show up with the naked eye however they can be found with the help of various tests.
Another way dancing assists IBS symptoms is as you dance, moving your stomach to the rhythm, your stomach muscles softly massage and support the internal organs, strengthening the pelvic flooring, making the stomach company and assisting to promote good food digestion. Strong pelvic floor muscles are necessary to assist you get rid of the waste from your digestive tract properly.
Severe Pancreatitis Signs:Persistent Pancreatitis Signs:Diabetes Mellitus
The disease is caused due to lack of insulin production from the pancreas. Diabetes mellitus can also happen if the insulin produced in the body is not consumed.
Ginger for Nausea, Menstrual Cramps, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Subscribe to Dr. Greger's free nutrition newsletter at http://www.nutritionfacts.org/subscribe and get a free excerpt from his latest NYT Bestseller HOW NOT TO ...
Symptoms:Pancreatic Cancer
Is the most serious condition related to the pancreas. The worst thing about it is that the signs are not observed up until the cancer reaches a sophisticated stage. By the time the signs are observed, the cancerous cells spread out in the neighboring organs too. Pancreatic cancer is observed in older individuals. It is among the major causes of death due to cancer.


text: Residents have fled with minimal belongings [AFP] Several dozens were killed and hundreds wounded in the recent gun battles in Mogadishu. In an unprecedented statement, 39 aid agencies also said they were unable to effectivly respond to the growing "humanitarian catastrophe" in Somalia, caused by insecurity in the country. The UN said: "Of the people who have left the capital since Saturday, about 46,000 have settled along the road linking Mogadishu to Afgooye, some 30km west of Mogadishu." "Another 42,000 have either fled Mogadishu for areas outside the city or moved to safer neighbourhoods within the capital", the UN said. Failed security Somalia has been in crisis since 1991. An interim government, backed by the UN, has failed to establish security thoughout the country. Nearly half a million people were displaced from Mogadishu after fighting earlier in the year. Hundreds of thousends of refugees are now living in tiny huts and on roadsides. Catherine Weibel, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commission for Refugees in Somalia, told Al Jazeera: "It remains very difficult for humanitarian agencies to access Mogadishu because of insecurity and even because of the numerous checkpoints along the roads." "We still have the possibility of accessing Afgooye. We have already helped about 80,000 people earlier this year in Afgooye and we are preparing to do another distribution to the new arrivals," Wirbel said. "The only solution to really help people efficiently would be an understanding between the political parties." SOURCE: Al Jazeera and agencies


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by Rabbi Joshua Strom
Last Shabbat began the book of Sh'mot, the book we call Exodus. It is the seminal story of the Jewish people, of our freedom and redemption, the leaving of Egypt for the Promised Land of Israel. Two weeks ago, 10 of our teenage chalutzim, or pioneers (along with me and two other staffers from our congregation, Hope and Linda) embarked on an Exodus of our own – the first Teen Exchange program between Temple Shaaray Tefila and our partner congregation in Haifa, Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center. But Exodus is the Greek translation of Sh'mot. What it really means is "names." And the sh'mot, the names of our chalutzim, are Talia, Jordyn, Lauren, Lauren, Hannah, Samantha, Julia, Bernie, Jack, and Jack. Brave, adventurous souls, most of whom had never been to Israel at all, they had no idea what was in store for them.
The honest answer is, neither did we. Sure, our staff had worked for hours upon hours upon hours crafting an incredible itinerary. We knew that all of the activities planned all over Haifa, Jerusalem, Akko, Tzfat, and Tel Aviv would be wonderful. We had no doubt. How would our teens connect with theirs? What if they didn't connect at all? We literally had no idea what to expect.
But, after all the careful planning, to quote my favorite group, Phish, "the trick was to surrender to the flow." And from the moment we cleared customs and came through those sliding doors, there, waiting for us with balloons and signs and warm smiles and open arms, were most of the Israeli delegation. We learned their sh'mot, their names: Adi, Alice, Shir, Rinat, Noa, Rotem, Yuval, Noy, Yuval, Itay, Itamar, and Maayan – and then we got to know them, the people behind the names, their lives, their stories, their families, and how they came to be living in Israel, in Haifa. At the end of our first full day there, having spent the day in the Druze Village of Daliat El Carmel, we shared Havdalah with the students and their parents, all crowded cozily together in a small tea lounge. As it turns out, that Havdalah was more than just the separation between Shabbat and the rest of the week. It was, in fact, for all of us, a separation between the people we were when our plane landed at Ben-Gurion, and the people we were about to become.
Over the next 10 days, we acquired a lifetime of knowledge — about ourselves, about each other, about what it really means to be part of the worldwide phenomenon that is the Jewish people. We established and deepened our own personal connections with the land and the holy sites that have bound Jews together for thousands of years. We learned that some things are universal, like shopping and Facebook and Doritos and terrible hip-hop and that hand-clapping game that I have no idea what it's called. We learned that a lot of things are different, like the Knesset as compared to Congress, like the fact that anyone can sit in on a Supreme Court case, like what high school kids are thinking about and concerned with in the years immediately following high school. We learned that count-offs, in any language, are utterly useless. We learned that sweet talk and charm can get you an awful lot in the Machne Yehuda market of Jerusalem, for just a shekel, or even less. (Ask Bernie, he somehow came back to us with a fish head in a bag!) We learned that photobombing, the act of sneaking yourself into others' pictures, is in fact a skill, dare I say, an art form, and one in which I am nearing levels of mastery. We learned that 10 minutes following a full meal is exactly the time to begin looking toward the next time you'll be eating, that Bamba and Bissli are addictive, and that Krembo, the Israeli version of a Mallomar, is even better than a Mallomar.
And yet, as wonderful and enriching as all of that knowledge is, that alone cannot conjure the magic of deep, intimate personal connections we were so blessed to witness among the students. Something else was at play, some invisible hand, and of course, for me, that's God, making things happen in a way that is so, so much greater than the sum of the parts. And standing in front of the congregation at Ohel Avraham, the same exact place where I had stood just a year ago as part of a small delegation of dreamers, sharing words in lashon ha-kodesh, the holy language of Hebrew, and looking out over the interwoven, yet seamless tapestry of Israeli and American students, I was absolutely overwhelmed with emotions, and had to fight back tears throughout the rest of the evening. To have the opportunity to see our dreams come true, right before our very eyes, was something I will cherish in my heart for the rest of my life.
Here are the words written by Adi Chen, a teen from the Israeli delegation, in a note for our whole group upon our leaving:
Dear brothers and sisters, my new brothers and sisters,
I'm not a religious man, yet it's quite amazing that I met you on the same Shabbat that Joseph gets to know his "lost brothers." If we think about it we all are brothers and sisters, that life and events had separated us before, but this past week we got a chance to make a reunion of brothers and sisters. Only people who are brothers and sisters, as you are to me, could connect with each other and feel so close, so related, as we did this past week. Just yesterday, after the party, Jack M. told me that he feels he has known me so much more than a week. That is the essence of being sisters and brothers—to be connected without being physically together.
There is a song in Hebrew that is called Rikma Enoshit Ahat, which means "One Human Tissue." We are all "one human tissue." This week I began to learn about a different culture, and yet that you are kids just like me. The differences on the one hand, and the shared identity on the other hand, is amazing to me.
From now on, you are all part of my "human tissue"—different, yet the same.
It's funny that the week you leave is the week that Israel (Jacob) leaves his children. I'm sure that you will be part of Israel forever and ever, and that wherever you will be, we will be for each other.
I say to you today only L'hitraot, meaning "we will see you again." This is not goodbye!Love you and already missing you all, my new family,
Adi Chen
L'hitraot. "See you soon." Not just in March, when it will be our turn to host our newfound Israeli family. But hopefully, the powerful connections forged on this sacred pilgrimage will inspire us to create and deepen our own relationships, with Israel and her people, for the rest of our lives.
Rabbi Joshua Strom is the associate rabbi at Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City.
Originally posted at Gateways and Tents: The Partnership Blog, where Rabbi Strom and others blogged about their trip to Israel


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OK – after the conference there has been a lot of talk about starting an all encompassing association, so… What do you say? I'm game if you are.
But what would you want out of it, what would you be prepared to bring to the table and how could we ensure the same mistakes made by other associations isn't repeated?
Here are my thoughts – what do you think???
Purpose of Association
This statement will have to be finalized but the basics would be:
- Provide a website that volunteer organizations in all countries can access and learn from
- Provide monthly webinars on marketing trends, voluntourism news and research, etc.
- Organize geographically relevant conferences to encourage discussion/collaboration
- Organize events throughout the US to promote voluntourism to the masses
- Create a unified voice that can be used to pitch media, lobby government bodies, etc.
This is the only voluntourism association that accepts all members, no matter their geographical location, size, 501c3 status or duration of trips. In order to maintain a website and provide webinars and discussion forums I strongly feel there would need to be a small membership fee to cover admin costs.
Something like $200/year is doable for most companies, and then I think we can adjust that down appropriately to countries with lower currency values like Nepal, China, etc.
I feel that if people are required to invest their money in an association they are that much more devoted to getting value out of that investment and will pay attention to conferences, forums, webinars.
In order to get buy in from all branches of the voluntourism industry I strongly think that the association must be managed by a neutral party and not by a group of companies. I suggest a full time manager that stays constant and then every year a new board of directors is voted on by the membership. The board of directors would consist of voluntourism company owners who are willing to have 6 annual meetings (via phone) on the state of the association. Ideally this would be a board of five people; with new nominations being cast each year (board members may be voted back into office but there will always be new people nominated to keep the peace).


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Dr. Hanif will be presenting a webinar to the PMI Utility Industry Community of Practice. The webinar will take place on 18th October 2012.
"Setting up projects to enable smooth monitoring & control"
Please contact us if you would like further details on how to register and access this presentation.


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Could RBI Governor Rajan Be Ousted By a New Government?
As India appears to be on the threshold of political change, some economists, executives and investors are wondering whether a new government would dare to try to push out the country's hawkish central bank governor Raghuram Rajan.
The Reserve Bank of India governor is appointed by the government, and can technically be fired by the government as well. While some leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party—which exit polls suggest could form the next government--don't agree with Mr. Rajan's inflation-fighting tactics, it is unlikely they will try to oust him should they come to power.
Mr. Rajan, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, was appointed RBI governor by the ruling Congress government in September. He is now loved by many market players but loathed by some business leaders.
Mr. Rajan has shown his resolve to fight inflation by raising India's benchmark interest rate three times in his eight-month tenure. He seems to have helped make some headway in reining in India's inflation as well as the country's chronic current account deficit. That has helped allow the rupee and Indian stocks to rebound from last year's lows.
His tightening bias has also earned him the ire of some trade associations and businesses who want lower interest rates so that they can borrow money more cheaply.
The BJP's treasurer Piyush Goyal told the Economic Times newspaper in February that Mr. Rajan's policies were leading to more inflation and other problems. While Mr. Goyal has distanced himself from those remarks since then and said that BJP doesn't plan to remove the high-profile central banker, friends and foes of Mr. Rajan are wondering whether there will be pressure on him and the RBI if the BJP comes to power.
Mr. Rajan, in a speech Friday in Switzerland, tried to dismiss the speculation.
"The government can fire me, but the government doesn't set the monetary policy," he said according to local news reports.
While speculation about the potential sacking of Mr. Rajan has received a lot of attention in the local media, history shows that new governments rarely call for new central bank governors.
There have been only two instances in the central bank's history in which the governor was changed right after a new government came to power.
The 12th RBI governor, K.R. Puri, was moved out days after the Janata Party came to power in New Delhi in 1977. In 1990, then RBI governor R.N. Malhotra had to step down to make way for S. Venkitaramanan, after the Samajwadi Janata Party formed the federal government.
After every other change in government, governors have kept their positions. Bimal Jalan, the RBI's 20th governor, was appointed by a Congress-led government and was even given an extension after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 1998.
Economists and investors also warn that any political meddling with Mr. Rajan's plans for the economy could sour the global view of India, discourage investment and trigger sell offs of the rupee as well as Indian stocks.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @WSJIndia.
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Catena Sammlung (Mus. ms. Landsberg 122-Berlin).
Intavolatura mit Werken von Frescobaldi, Tarditi u. a. für Orgel (oder Cembalo).
(Frutti Musicali 19) Band I (EW 919), 2013.
[vi] + 50pp. €21.80
This is edited by Jolando Scarpa. There are 30 pieces in Vol. I. Only two each are ascribed to Frescobaldi and Tarditi, the rest are anonymous. It should be interesting getting a class of students to allocate the merits of the pieces by skill as well as by style.
Schmelzer: Sonata Lanterly fur 2 Violinen, Viola da Gamba und Basso Continuo
(Harmonia Coelestis vii.) (EW 763), 2013.
iv + 14pp + 5 parts. €16.50
The title probably implies a vagabond's music. The opening section in C starts with that tune. There's a change to 3/2 at bar 69 which is simpler – but I'm not sure that the editor can call it even a "a sort of galliard". The 12/8 Allegro starts at bar 112 definitely as a gigue, ending at bar 141 with C tempo again as coda. Adding editorial figures to the bass is, I would have thought, more useful than printing a blank treble stave – the whole point of learning to play continuo is to show the chords, not the notes. It seems odd not to treat the beaming in a more logical way. For instance, in bar 6 vln II has two groups of eight semiquavers, whereas the same phrase in the gamba part is in groups of four semiquavers. It was sensible to include a viola part in C3 clef.
Schmelzer: Ciaccona fur Violine und Basso continuo
(Harmonia Coelestis xi) (EW 648), 2014.
7pp + vln & unbound score for Bc. €10.00
The ground is (:a|Ae|F.|D.|E:||:e|Ef|D.|E.|A:). [Minims are capitals, crotchets are lower-case.] Rather than bar numbers, it is more useful to number the ground for the violinist, eg 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b etc. The bass & Bc only need to know how many times the bass is played. Simple pieces like this don't really need the occasional missing barline (eg bars 91 & 96) to be indicated by dotted lines nor do I understand why there is a single eight-note semiquaver group in bar 83.
Georg Muffat: Sonata Violino Solo (Prag 1677) Violine und Basso continuo
(Harmonia Coelestis, x) (EW 874).
vi + 16 + 3 parts. 2014. €14.80
I first heard this played by John Holloway on Radio 3 and we decided that it needed publication. It's an amazing piece lasting 198 bars, the first 37 of which are Adagio and the rest Allegros and Adagios which don't offer gaps for page-turns. My edition (£6.00) is more straight forward and cheaper for those who don't need a score with realised keyboard.
Georg Muffat: Vier Partiten fur Cembalo (B-Bsa SA 4581)
(Harmonia Coelestis IX) (EW 769).
xi + 28pp. €17.50
The four Partitas (C, F, E, e) are from the Berlin Sing-Akademie. Three (C, E and e) are new discoveries, while the set in F amplifies the previously known sections. The MS was copied 30 years or more after the elder Muffat had died. These are interesting to play, but it's not clear whether straight lines are to warn the reader that two notes are in a single part even if not notated with stems in the same direction, though sometimes they might be of some musical significance. The editor seems to be a bit pedantic, but the selection is worth playing.
Clérambault: Simphonia Va : Chaconne fur Violine und Basso Continuo.
(Frutti Musicali 21)
v + 6pp + 2 parts. €11.50
This does not have the repetitive bass of Schmelzer's Ciaccona, whose bass has no variety apart from what the players can inspire. This sensibly avoids a blank right-hand stave, though reading it through in my head, far too much seemed to follow the violin – perhaps I'm out of touch! Two pages of MS are shown, displaying nothing odd as in the earlier pieces considered here.
Johann Ulich: Sechs Sonaten fur Blockflöte und Cembalo.
Band I (Collegium Musicum). (EW 921)
34 pp: two scores with facsimiles. €19.80
I don't know the composer at all, so it's worth giving his dates (1677-1742). His father was organist at Wittenberg, which is presumably where he acquired his skill. He was organist at Zerbst from 1708, active in St Bartholomew's church and as court musician. The VI Sonaten à Flauto con Cembalo was published in 1716 in two separate parts. The treble part is named Flauto, but that almost certainly implies recorder, whose notation is for the G on the bottom line going up two octaves. This has the first three of the six sonatas. There are two copies in score, one of which also has the recorder part in facsimile and the other the bass, both with the original prelims and the three first sonatas. The only complete copy is in the Russian State Library in Moscow, which justifies making the facsimile available. There's a recording of 2013. Well worth buying.
Clifford Bartlett


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Hitchens Nails It
Chirstopher Hitchens says all that needs to be said about the riots over those Danish cartoons depicting caricatures of Muhammad:
As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week's international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate.
"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."
Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean "unacceptable"? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people. However, the illiterate McCormack is right in unintentionally comparing racist libels to religious faith. Many people have pointed out that the Arab and Muslim press is replete with anti-Jewish caricature, often of the most lurid and hateful kind. In one way the comparison is hopelessly inexact. These foul items mostly appear in countries where the state decides what is published or broadcast. However, when Muslims republish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuate the story of Jewish blood-sacrifice at Passover, they are recycling the fantasies of the Russian Orthodox Christian secret police (in the first instance) and of centuries of Roman Catholic and Lutheran propaganda (in the second). And, when an Israeli politician refers to Palestinians as snakes or pigs or monkeys, it is near to a certainty that he will be a rabbi (most usually Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of the disgraceful Shas party) and will cite Talmudic authority for his racism. For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been two sides of the same coin, and it still shows.
And later:
I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. But I will not be told I can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger. But these same principles of mine also prevent me from wreaking random violence on the nearest church, or kidnapping a Muslim at random and holding him hostage, or violating diplomatic immunity by attacking the embassy or the envoys of even the most despotic Islamic state, or making a moronic spectacle of myself threatening blood and fire to faraway individuals who may have hurt my feelings. The babyish rumor-fueled tantrums that erupt all the time, especially in the Islamic world, show yet again that faith belongs to the spoiled and selfish childhood of our species.
Exactly right.


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Black oxidized sterling silver wire forged into a skinny stacking ring with a little ball of bright silver to top it off. This listing is for four rings. They're so slim you could stack a bunch of them, and they're so pretty you'll want to. Beautiful and unique gift for her.
Made to order in your size, including 1/2 and 1/4 sizes. Drop me a note at the time of purchase. For your own benefit please be sure of your ring size.
Visit the rest of my shop here: http://tinahdee.com All raw stock for ring making is purchased from refiners who use and sell recycled metals.


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Streaming video service Netflix has signed a deal with Dreamworks Animation to create its first original programming for children with Turbo: F.A.S.T., a show based on one of Dreamworks' upcoming movies.
Netflix has garnered lots of attention for its ambitious plans to become the next HBO. Its new series House of Cards from David Fincher and Kevin Spacey showed that an online streaming service can make a compelling drama that would be at home on a premium cable channel. Other shows being produced in part by Netflix include Eli Roth's Hemlock Grove, Jenji Kohan's Orange is the New Black, and new episodes of Arrested Development.
Turbo: F.A.S.T. is a spin-off from Dreamworks' movie Turbo, which hits theaters on July 19. The TV show comes to Netflix in December in the U.S. and 40 other countries. The Turbo movie and show follows the exploits of a gardener who wants to win the Indy 500.
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg thinks the new show can help Netflix win in the children's TV arena the same way House of Cards has helped establish Netflix as a place for premium adult programming.
"Netflix boasts one of the largest and fastest-growing audiences in kids television. They pioneered a new model for TV dramas with House of Cards, and now together, we're doing the same thing with kids' programming," Katzenberg said in a statement. "DreamWorks is thrilled to be part of the television revolution."
On top of the deal to create the new TV show, Dreamworks Animation also signed an agreement to bring its 2013 movies to Netflix. So that means you'll be able to watch both Turbo and Turbo: F.A.S.T. on Netflix in the future. We're sure you're terribly excited.
Turbo screenshot via Dreamworks Animation/YouTube


text: Info Search results 1 items matching your search terms. Filter the results. Item type Select All/None Collection Page Event File Folder Form Folder Image Link News Item Templated Document Collection Person New items since Yesterday Last week Last month Ever Sort by relevance · date (newest first) · alphabetically Learning Made Simple (LMS) downtime scheduled this weekend LMS will be down for updates this weekend beginning at 12:30 a.m. Saturday, August 3, through 8:30 a.m. Located in Employee News Online / 2019 / Aug. 1


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Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Bring it all
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Does Your Mind Wander During Sex?
Not if you're doing it right. Same thing with kiting, (and windsurfing, surfing, skiing, unicycling, playing soccer...). All of these activities demand your full attention.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Wave Lesson # 1
|Never drop your kite in the waves- I edged a little too hard in the waves and my board slipped out. I went up and my kite went down. This is what the waves were waiting for. They ate my lines. I felt my bar go slack and watched in disbelief as my kite drifted away across the wind blown whitewater, in slow motion. "What did I do to deserve this?!" I thought.
Update- My kite did hit the dunes. Over 40 holes were patched by Rodrigo.