Tynan's Anger

In lieu of a decade in review type-piece about movies in February (the last decade was, like, a whole month ago!), I'll take the Oscar's newfound embracing of the top-10 format to do an all-decade Oscar list. Keeping in mind that I have my own standards in place, which I will defend if so asked. My all-Oscar nominees of the 2000s (winners in bold) is as follows:

Best Picture:

Dark Knight
Children of Men
Happy-Go-Lucky
Hot Fuzz
Memento
Million Dollar Baby
No Country For Old Men
Ratatouille
The Squid And The Whale
Synechdoche, NY

Best Foreign Language Film:

2046
Barbarian Invasions
Counterfeiters
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Katyn
I Served The King Of England
Osama
Pan's Labyrinth
Volver
The White Ribbon

Best Actor:

George Clooney - Up in The Air
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd
Paul Giamatti - Sideways
Ethan Hawke - Before Sunset
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote
Richard Jenkins - The Visitor
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Clive Owen - Children of Men
Tom Wilkinson - In The Bedroom

Best Actress:

Penelope Cruz - Volver
Rebecca Hall - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married
Sally Hawkins - Happy Go Lucky
Angelina Jolie - A Might Heart
Laura Linney - You Can Count On Me
Ellen Page - Juno
Meryl Streep - Doubt
Naomi Watts - Mulholland Drive
Kate Winslet - Little Children

Best Supporting Actor:

Javier Bardem - No Country For Old Men
Michael Caine - Children of Men
Steve Coogan - Coffee and Cigarettes
Timothy Dalton/Jim Broadbent - Hot Fuzz
Paul Dano - There Will Be Blood
Morgan Freeman - Million Dollar Baby
Jackie Earle Haley - Little Children
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Jack Nicholson - The Departed
Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

Best Supporting Actress:

Cate Blanchett - Coffee and Cigarettes
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Zooey Deschanel - Almost Famous
Eva Green - Dreamers
Kate Hudson - Almost Famous
Leslie Mann - Knocked Up
Meryl Streep - Adaptation
Marisa Thomei - In The Bedroom
Michelle Williams - Brokeback Mountain
Ziyi Zhang - Crouching Tiger

Best Direction:

Coen Brothers - No Country For Old Men
Alfonso Cuaron - Children of Men
Gullermo del Toro - Pan's Labyrinth
Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby
David Fincher - Zodiac
Ang Lee - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Chris Nolan - The Dark Knight
Martin Scorsese - The Departed
Steven Soderberg - Ocean's 11
Edgar Wright - Hot Fuzz

Best Original Screenplay:

Kelly Masterson - Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright - Hot Fuzz
Diablo Cody - Juno
Sophia Coppola - Lost In Translation
Woody Allen - Matchpoint
Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan - Memento
Brad Bird - Ratatouille
Noah Baumbach - The Squid and The Whale
Seth Rogan & Evan Goldberg- Superbad
Charlie Kaufman - Synechdoche, New York

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman- Adaptation
Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke - Before Sunset
Larry McMurty - Brokeback Mountain
Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton - Children of Men
William Monahan - The Departed
John Patrick Shanley - Doubt
Michael Hanecke - Funny Games
Todd Field and Tom Perotta - Little Children
Brian Helgeland - Mystic River
Coen Brothers - No Country For Old Men

Best Special Effects:

Avatar
28 Days Later
The Dark Knight
Hot Fuzz
The Hurt Locker
Iron Man
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The Lord of the Rings: Return Of The King
Pan's Labyrinth
Spider-Man 2

Best Documentary:

The Aristocrats
Bowling For Columbine
The Fog of War
The King of Kong
Kill Your Idols
Rize
Sicko
Spellbound
Sugar
Super Size Me


Best Use of Music (Soundtrack/Score)
24 Hour Party People
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Departed
Hot Fuzz
High Fidelity
Lost In Translation
Observe and Report
Ocean's 11
Slumdog Millionaire
There Will Be Blood

Labels: crazy lists, decade awards, hot fuzz, movies, oscars, top 10

I understand the need for top 10 lists at the end of the year. No critic likes them, but they sell papers, so they must. But what I don't understand is providing lists when they are unprovoked, just for the hell of it. I thought this was the whole phenomenon High Fidelity mocked. Witness every issue of Time magazine of the last decade for how these things get out of hand. The only pseudo-unprovoked lists that work, in my mind, are the A.V. Club's weekly feature, which are so over the top in their specificity that they usually end up mentioning every relevant work. McSweeney's lists are a clinical study of pretension.

In any case, the most recent absurd list may top them all, and it comes from someone who should know better. Benedict Nightingale, general guru of all things British Theater and The Times's head theater critic, recently came out with his list of top 10 Hamlets he's ever seen. His analysis of what makes a good Hamlet is interesting, but nothing new. Of course, very few people will actually read his analysis, they'll skip to the list, where he not only mentions the top 10 Hamlets (out of 60) that he's seen, but gives them a numerical order (ugh). Simon Russell Beale at the National Theatre in 2000 (woohoo this blog's namesake!), who of course gives a mind-numbing analysis of the role, summarizing Hamlet as a "decent chap."

In my mind, why not go further back? Why not go to David Garrick, inventor of the famed "dramatic pause" or Edmund Kean, famous for wowing audiences in the ghost scene by spinning three times, or Richard Burbage, the man who started it all?

Labels: benedict nightingale, crazy lists, hamlet, old timey theater