reporting on out-of-body experiences in a parallel universe

I'm interrupting my self-imposed vacation from blogging for an essential blockquote: with the Top Ten list the latest battleground in the epic mass plea for attention pissing contest that is film bloggery, J. Hoberman prefaces his '06 list with a predictably spot-on reclamation of the practice:

A curious form of journalism, film reviewing is highly topical yet essentially timeless. It consists of reporting week after week on out-of-body experiences in a parallel universe—subject to its own laws but intermittently visited by millions of others and filled with references to so-called real life. For this reason, a reviewer's annual 10 Best list is not just a barometer of taste. It's an exercise in autobiography (however veiled) and a contribution (however modest) to the history of the present.

Film criticism as an exercise in public autobiography? It sounds accurate, if not necessarily palatable.

Full disclosure: S.T. Van Airsdale and I are friendly colleagues; Hoberman is a former professor of mine; my own crimes in the name of attention-seeking have been well documented (mostly by me).

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The National Film Registry has announced their 2006 list of inductees, and whilst Dave Kehr can't resist turning up his nose at the body's annual, token appeals to populism ("Now remind me: what was the historic importance of Blazing Saddles? The first fart joke in a major studio film?"), I find the list to be, once again, the most fascinatingly schizophrenic document of film historiography since ... um ... last year's list, I guess.

For those of you who don't await the NFR's annual press release with bated breath, and/or are perhaps unaware of how this nebulous government-sponsored preservation board functions, or why, allow me to quote directly from their website:

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington seeks nominations for the National Film Registry. To be eligible for the Registry, a film must be at least 10 years old and be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The number of public votes a film receives is a factor weighed during the selection process.

At a press conference today, Billington stressed the need to physically perserve films as relics of the past; it's about maintaining quality prints, almost irregardless of the perceived quality of the content imprinted on them. Which I think is GREAT -- throw it all together. Acknowlege that high and low brow, commerical and independent, would be substantively indistinguishable were we not all -- and not just you and me, but anyone living in a world steeped in moving imagery -- de facto film scholars with an ingrained knowledge of How Hollywood Works. Rocky on the same shelf as Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania? Perfect.

This year's roster also includes the charmingly scrappy debut from a sharply underrated studio hack; star-studded candy for pre-Code fetishists; a silent satire of Hollywood by Josef Von Sternberg; and two decent 90s AmerIndies from wildly overrated filmmakers. Plus, St. Louis Blues, which allegedly contains the only existing filmed record of Bessie Smith singing, and Harold Ramis' masterpiece.

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Late Afternoon Lists (or, catching up on a full feed reader after almost 5 days away)

At the Facets blog, Brian Elza puts Eyes Wide Shut at number 4 on his list of Holiday Flicks For Cool Kids. "Nicole Kidman stops the show by forcefully saying “Fuck” in what appears to be a giant FAO Schwarz toy store. That’s holiday gold, Stanley." Above: my favorite picture of Tom and Nicole, and possibly my favorite picture of any celebrity couple, ever.

Guy Maddin shares space with Miami Vice on Manohla's Top Ten

Diet Coke and Mentos top Scott Kirsner's list of Ten Pivotal Events of 2006, From The Intersection of Entertainment and Technology.

Scroll down for more entries to the 2006 indieWIRE blog poll.

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Morning Links, 12-15-06

• That Little Round-Headed Boy has produced the first end-of-year wrap list that I actually enjoyed reading.
• The Dreamgirls backlash marches on: Ryan Stewart, Aaron Hillis and Tony Scott collectively shrug. As usual, Dave Kehr has the best 25-words-or-less summation: "Jamie Foxx is in it because he won an Oscar a couple of years ago, and Eddie Murphy is in it to prove he’s not turning into Bill Cosby."
• This is interesting: Variety asks a few critics to name films that shouldn't have won Oscars, and films that didn't that should have.
• Manohla's really on a roll lately. She neatly sums up the problem with The Good German thusly: "Yet while the language routinely waxes raw in The Good German, the most striking difference between it and a Hollywood film like Casablanca aren’t the expletives, the new film’s calculated cynicism or even that glimpse of bedroom coupling; it’s that the older film feels as if it was made for the satisfaction of the audience while the other feels as if it was made for that of the director alone."

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