Sam’s Top 42 Films of the Decade
Just for the sake of my own sanity and desperate need to have these written somewhere, I give you my favourite forty-two films of the past decade. There are at least fifty-six other films I would like to put onto a list, but I think I need to forcefully prevent any more decade-based listmaking as quickly as possible. So beneath is the top ten list, along with a sentence or two on each film and then thirty-two, out-of-list-order, films which I had to include.
News Morsels
Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment is to team with Sony on an adaptation of the life of John Keller, a former marine reponsible for saving 244 of his neighbours in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. I feel tears and Oscars around the corner.
Steven Soderbergh is interviewed, fascinatingly, on Suicide Girls. With The Girlfriend Experience, Sasha Grey does the same with The AV Club.
Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford has signed up to star in the remake of Footloose, replacing the long-attached Zac Efron.
Zach Braff has signed on to direct, rewrite and star in Swingles, from a spec script by Duncan Birmingham. I liked Garden State first time, less second.
President Barack Obama has delivered his verdict on Star Trek.
The great Peter Yates film, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, starring Robert Mitchum, has been released through Criterion. It’s reviewed by RoS here.
Edinburgh Film Festival Line-Up Announced
The line-up for the Edinburgh International Film Festival has been announced with a few reasonably big hitters to join in the fun, including Steven Soderbergh and the world premiere of Shane Meadows’ new film, Le Donk.
The latter, which stars Paddy Considine, with whom Meadows worked on Dead Man’s Shoes, is being heavily anticipated given the reuniting of the two and the brilliance of Meadows’ last two films, This is England and Somers Town.
Soderbergh will come to show The Girlfriend Experience, starring adult film star Sasha Grey, while Sam Mendes will also make an appearance to open the festival with Away We Go.
Mendes’ film comes from a script by Dave Eggers and The Believer-founder Vendela Vida and follows the travails of newly-pregnant couple John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph.
The festival is to be closed by Adam, a romantic drama from Max Meyer following the burgeoning relationship between a man with asberger’s syndrome and a young lady, the latter played by Damages’ Rose Byrne.
Other notables include Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Duncan Jones’ Moon, Vincent Cassell in Mesrine and Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna in Rudo y Cursi.
The announcements also notes some interesting in-depth interviews to take place, including ones with Darren Aronofsky, Joe Dante and Local Hero-director Bill Forsyth.
Round Up: Ricci Joins Sandler Porn Comedy
Christina Ricci has joined the cast of Born to be a Star, a porn-concerned comedy written by Adam Sandler and directed by (no, not that one) Tom Brady.
/Film has the first full trailer for Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst.
John Woo’s post-war drama 1949 has been cancelled.
Steven Soderbergh has released the poster for his new movie, The Girlfriend Experience.
Alternatives to the EW Twenty-Five Directors
Entertainment Weekly recently posted a list of the top twenty-five active film directors. These lists will forever cause disagreement and controversy but some of the inclusions, and subsequent exclusions, on this list are pretty unforgivable. Even if you don’t find it too irratating, as a film fan and blogger I feel it only necessary to present some arguments both against the inclusion of some and against the exclusion of others while I would also like to take some time to argue for the inclusion of a few that I think may brook argument elsewhere.
The Movie Overdose 
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