of the Year

I've been thinking about my faves of the year for a while, and here they are.

Album
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca



This is the only album this year that I've listened to over and over again. It's just perfect. "Stillness is the Move" would have got song of the year too, where it not for Al's "Distractions From Studies" compilation with had Noir Desir's gem on it:

Song
Noir Desir - Le Vent nous Portera (Rubber Room re-rub)



Late in the year, Al made me an excellent compilation. This wasn't necessarily the best song on it, but it's the one I've played again and again and again.

Film
The White Ribbon (dir. Michael Haneke)



This, along with his Hidden, could and should easily make any "films of the decade" list someone wanted to write. This film blew me away, it was so, so, so masterful, this is a director at his very peak. It carefully and deliberately builds a case, but so slyly does it achieve this that you don't realise for an hour or two that it's being done, and when finally it hits you what's been happening since the very beginning, all the little hints and clues, it's devastating. Even more so for the fact that nothing comes of it, no resolution, no understanding, it just continues.

Honourable mentions go to:

The Class (dir. Laurent Cantet)



- a really vital, alive piece of film-making, I could have watched the kids for hours and hours and hours

Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme)



- one of the really enjoyable cinema experiences of the year, with the ultimate "if-I-were-going-to-get-married-I-would-have-a-wedding-like-that" wedding

In The City of Sylvia (dir. José Luis Guerín)



- a deceptive depiction of voyeurism and obsession, with a subtle critique of objectification and image-making, all done through a beautifully composed scenes, long, langorous takes and slinky, summery light

Let The Right One In (dir. Tomas Alfredson)



- eerie and scary, it grabs you and draws you in to a Swedish netherworld of snow, murder and puberty

Great films on DVD:

The Antoine Doinel series (dir. Francois Truffaut), watched for the first time in their entirety this year, and absolutely wonderful!

In A Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray)
- fantastic noir with Humphrey Bogart as good as I've ever seen him. (And I don't really like him that much).

The Best of Youth (dir. Marco Tullio Giordana)
- a revelation, an engrossing 6 hour portrait of an Italian family across 50 years of local and international history.

Book
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust



- clearly the book of my year, it took a quarter of it to read, and deserves all those superlatives given it over the 90 or so years it's been around.