A friend of mine pointed me toward this YouTube video over on Hollywood Elsewhere which was cut together by a guy named Matt Shapiro using clips from a bunch of 2007's great dramas, all set to the wonderful tune Falling Slowly, performed by Glen Hasard and Markéta Irglová from Once. Though there's a bit too much I Am Legend in there, as well as comedy-dramas like Juno, Knocked Up and Ratatouille, I must say the video itself is pretty damn well done. I feel like every year around this time, as awards are being handed out, you get comments from people along the lines of, "Man, last year sucked in terms of movies." Well it's videos like this one that show just how great 2007 was in terms of high-quality entertainment, even if the bulk of it didn't arrive until those last few months. Check out the video up top, then let us know which films you would've liked to see get a mention. Oh, and then you can head over to iTunes and download Falling Slowly. Trust me, if you haven't heard this song yet, you're guaranteed to be swept away in its beauty. It's that f**king good.

The critics have spoken and the massive, $300 box set Ford at Fox was named the best DVD of 2007 by the contributors at DVDBeaver.com. For the fourth annual poll, Thirty-six DVD critics from all over the world submitted their individual top ten lists -- each of which is featured -- and then editor Gary Tooze tallied up points for the final results. The coveted John Ford box contains 24 John Ford films on 21 discs; kudos to any critic who had time to watch it all.

In second and third place are The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 2 and Vol. 1, both distributed by Fantoma Films. Volume 2 earned a few more points, probably due to the inclusion of Anger's most famous work, Scorpio Rising. In fourth place is another huge box set, the Criterion Collection's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), assembling Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15-hour film on 7 discs. Showing off DVDBeaver's dedication to international DVDs, fifth place went to the BFI's second Region 2 box set of films by Mikio Naruse, containing When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), Floating Clouds (1955) and Late Chrysanthemums (1954). The US release of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs from the Criterion Collection was counted as a tie.

Sixth place went to my personal favorite of the year, Criterion Eclipse's five-disc box set Late Ozu, featuring five great films from the 1950s and 1960s by the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu. In seventh place was Warner Home Video's Film Noir Classics Collection, Vol. 4, with ten films on five discs, including Nicholas Ray's debut They Live by Night (1949) and Andre de Toth's essential Crime Wave (1954). Milestone's amazing 2-disc Killer of Sheep DVD, featuring several more features and short films by Charles Burnett, ranked eighth. Paramount's Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition took ninth place, sneaking out a few months after people spent their hard-earned cash on the Season Two box. Criterion sealed up the list at tenth place with their two-disc Sansho the Bailiff (1954), directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.

Tooze also included the first 40 runners up. Top vote-getters include Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Inland Empire and Ace in the Hole. Other categories are "best commentary track," "best extras" and "best transfer." Voters included Jonathan Rosenbaum, Theo Panayides, Tom Charity and the staff of Slant Magazine.

The best movie year since 1999, 2007 offered a staggering bounty of cinematic delights. I keep track of all the movies I see in a given year and give each a letter grade, "A" through "F". Usually my Top Ten list consists of all of the "A's" and a few "B's." This year, "A" pictures made up my top twenty. With so many great films, I won't wallow through a "Worst of the Year" list, I'll simply present you with a few that didn't fully satisfy:

The Biggest Disappointment: The Darjeeling Limited -- A Louis Vuitton commercial stretched to feature length. The Darjeeling Limited is a perfect title for the film because it makes plain what a limited filmmaker the once great Wes Anderson has become. Hey Wes, people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays is always going to look pretty neat. But if there's absolutely nothing else going on in the scene, then that's all it is -- people running in slow-motion while a Kinks song plays. We all think it's really cool that you like The Kinks. Hell, I love those guys! The Rolling Stones are awesome, too! But I wouldn't ask them to do my job for me.

and...

The Biggest Question Mark: There Will Be Blood

Undoubtedly one of the year's most impressive technical achievements, There Will Be Blood is frequently stunning. It's so stunning, in fact, that it's easy to overlook how infuriatingly empty it all is. The film focuses on two main characters, and neither one changes a lick in thirty years and 158 minutes. How did Paul Thomas Anderson, creator of such deeply emotional rides as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch Drunk Love come up with a movie completely devoid of human emotion? (I'm not counting greed.) Beautiful, brilliant, and boring in equal doses, I've seen Blood twice, and I still don't know if it's a masterpiece or a mess. I just know I felt...nothing watching it. It's as hollow, as frustrating, as difficult to know as its "hero," Daniel Plainview.

On to my list. First, ten that didn't quite make the cut. Here's #20 through #11: (#20) Breach, (#19) Once, (#18) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, (#17) Sicko, (#16) Sweeney Todd, (#15) The Lives of Others, (#14) Eastern Promises, (#13) Zodiac, (#12) Atonement, (#11) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

And my Top Ten is after the jump...

I just got back from a brief Christmas holiday to the distant land of relatives and limited Internet access, so my column is just a tad late this week. Nevertheless, I'd like to pick up where I left off last week, in my celebration of those smaller films that lost their way in 2007, either misunderstood, or misjudged, or just never found.

I saw Hal Hartley's Fay Grim in May as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was a sequel to his 1998 film Henry Fool and it had one of those strange near-simultaneous releases in which it debuted on DVD just a few days after it opened in theaters. This technique didn't work at all for Steven Soderbergh's superb Bubble last year, so I can't imagine why anyone would try it again. I found Henry Fool too long with too much navel gazing to be of interest, but somehow Fay Grim worked for me. I felt it was all a huge, deadpan joke that these pathetic writer-types would now be involved in international intrigue. And who is better for a deadpan joke than Jeff Goldblum, with his glaring eyes and sharp delivery?

2007 was an above average year at the movies, far better than the depressing state of 2005 or 2006. And for me it was also the year of the Western. By coincidence I happened to be studying the Western in a graduate course taught by Jim Kitses, who is arguably the #1 Western movie scholar in America. During my semester, 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men opened in theaters, and we studied them in class. Two of these would have made my top ten anyway, but looking at them in-depth gave me even greater pleasure and made me even surer of my choices. Seraphim Falls and There Will Be Blood were also Westerns of a sort, and the number and general high quality of these films make this the strongest year for the genre since the early 1970s, or perhaps even the late 1960s.

The most frustrating thing about the year is that three of my favorite movies didn't qualify for list consideration. David Lynch's Inland Empire opened in 2006 but didn't screen for the San Francisco press until early 2007. (You can look for it on my best-of-the-decade list instead.) Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep is a masterpiece, and an essential part of the history of American cinema. It had its official theatrical debut in 2007, but I decided that its contribution to cinema has more to do with 1977, when it was made, than 2007. Finally, Quentin Tarantino's uncut version of Death Proof was a revelation, and far, far better than the truncated version that most people saw in Grindhouse. It screened at Cannes and then went straight to DVD in the U.S., so it, too, was disqualified. No matter. I came up with ten excellent films anyway.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, USA)
Normally I like to save my #1 slot for a film by a proven master, and Dominik is far from that; his only other film, Chopper, failed to prepare me for the astonishing, haunting dreamlike quality of this new film. I have to admit I thought about this movie just about every day since I saw it. It's too easy to label this as a "revisionist Western," since it contributed so many new ideas to the genre. It's by far the best Jesse James movie ever made, and certainly one of the greatest Westerns I've ever seen.

One thing that Comic-Con isn't complete without is Kevin Smith's signature "talk." You give the guy an hour or so, and he'll fill it up everything from movie news, to anecdotes about life that usually involve oral sex, to his own level of geekery.

Kevin was gracious enough to not only sit down with me for an hour after his panel was over, but he also let me know that he was really digging our Comic-Con coverage. According to him, he was only five minutes away from the convention center, but our liveblogging let him stay seated in an air-conditioned, geek-free, no costume zone. Not that he doesn't love that stuff, but when given the choice, sometimes your own room can be pretty darned comfortable.

The sun is shining in San Diego, the waves are crashing against the shore, seagulls are calling (do they call?), people are bustling about ... and an inordinate amount of them are wearing Star Wars t-shirts. Yes folks, Comic-Con is getting ready to step into full swing, and I'm here.

I would make a lot of geek and nerd jokes here, but I just realized after taking a picture of all of the gear I'll be lugging around every day that I have seen the geek, and the geek is me. For the rest of my week I'll be doing my best to dork out and get the skinny on all the Comic-Con news that comes out, and I'll be chasing down those 12 unanswered questions that we want the answers to.

Plus if I can catch some behind the scenes tidbits, I'll share 'em here. If Robert Downey Jr. wants to tell me how the crotch really rides up on that Iron Man costume, then you'll hear it here first. We'll also be touring the show floor, bringing you photos, videos, and interviews with a woman dressed up like Lara Croft, god willing.

I just came from getting my press badge at the San Diego Convention Center (or SDCC for people without a lot of extra time on their hands to pronounce the whole thing) and it is already mobbed. It's only preview night, where you can't see too much, and the line is stretching around the place. Stay tuned, true believers! Tonight we're attending a screening of 3D footage from Beowulf, so look for that and a whole lot more tomorrow, once things really get rolling.

Although this year's New York Comic-Con was a disappointment with regards to their coverage of upcoming geek-related films, this summer's San Diego Comic-Con (July 26-29) will be picking up the slack; they've just unveiled a fine list of films that will be giving sneak preview presentations at The Con. Hopefully we'll be getting some tasty footage out of most of these; if not, I'm sure others (which include films that just recently started production) will provide pics, plot info, etc ... The full list of films (which is subject to change at any time, and will probably grow larger as Comic-Con gets closer) is as follows:

Alien vs. Predator 2: No Peace On Earth, American Gangster, Babylon AD, Balls of Fury, Beowulf, The Bourne Ultimatum, Coraline, Fred Claus, Get Smart, The Golden Compass, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, I Am Legend, The Incredible Hulk, Indiana Jones 4, Invasion, Iron Man, National Treasure 2, Resident Evil: Extinction, Speed Racer, The Strangers, Stardust, Star Trek XI, Sunshine, Sweeney Todd, 30 Days of Night, Trick 'r Treat, Wanted, Where The Wild Things Are, White Out.

Right off the bat, I find it interesting that Alien vs. Predator 2 has the title No Peace on Earth attached to it. That seems new, and I wonder whether or not it will stick. Also, where's The Dark Knight? There's no way Warner Bros. is letting their Batman Begins follow-up skip class that day; look for this one to show up unannounced. Some pics that folks will be especially interested in include Star Trek XI (will we finally get a finalized cast list?), Indiana Jones 4 (pics of Harrison Ford as Indy? A title? Sean Connery announcement?), The Incredible Hulk (our first peak at the brand new look of Hulk?) and Where The Wild Things Are (anyone else dying to see what Spike Jonze has done with this classic children's book?). Cinematical will be attending San Diego Comic-Con this year, so stay tuned for lots more as we get closer to the convention.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a Monday Morning Poll asking which film(s) you thought would be summer's biggest disappointment. Since I wanted to prove that I'm not all about the negative, I decided it might be fun to also predict which film(s) will surprise. For me (and probably most of the country), last year's summer surprise was Little Miss Sunshine. I remember getting the call to cover the press junket for this little limited release Sundance film in July. And upon exiting the theater, I felt the need to call every one of my friends to tell them about the film. It surprised me in a way that just felt so good -- so alive -- and if this summer can bring me one film like that, then I shall be one happy boy.

As far as mainstream films go, I've surprised a lot of people in saying that New Line's Hairspray update will do pretty well with audiences once it arrives on July 20, providing folks with some much-needed relief (and some light, colorful fun) after three months full of pirates, robots, wizards and superheroes. In a summer predominantly geared toward teenage males, Hairspray is the type of film that females can grab hold of and catapult to the top. Once we move past the mainstream, there are a group of popular festival films that might also find a substantial cheering section. First up is A Mighty Heart; a film that stars Angelina Jolie as Marianne Pearl, the widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl. Jolie's name will get people in seats, but her performance might keep the buzz alive as we head into awards season. My foreign language pick for the summer arrives on July 11 in limited release, and it's called Drama/Mex. Directed by Gerardo Naranjo, pic tells of three back-to-back stories that take place over the course of one night in Acapulco. Although I haven't seen it yet, I've heard nothing but great things. As far as docs go, I have to plug The King of Kong. Pic, which chronicles the lives of a group of guys who are out to set the new high record for Donkey Kong, doesn't yet have a release date, but I've heard it will drop at some point this August. And when it does, go see it. Trust me on this one.

So, I ask you: Which films do you think will surprise us this summer?

2007 is now one-third over, and four movies have broken $100 million: 300, Wild Hogs, Ghost Rider and Blades of Glory. Eddie Murphy's Norbit is creeping up on a $100 million score as well. Only Blades of Glory is interesting in the slightest. It's a poorly-directed, uneven comedy, but with plenty of laughs, all thanks to Will Ferrell. I guess I could waste time wondering why people are paying good money to see these so-called movies, but the fact remains that they all opened on more than 3000 screens, and were available for just about everyone in the country to see.

Despite these duds, the year in movies hasn't been so bad so far. I'd rather focus on some of the year's really good entries, the ones that will probably be forgotten eight months from now when the list and awards season starts all over again. I haven't been able to see it yet, but Syndromes and a Century (1 screen) from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul should be enlightening. His Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), a beautiful combination of documentary and storytelling, is on my personal list of the best films of the past ten years. His amazing Blissfully Yours (2002), among other things, rolled the credits right in the middle of the movie, and his Tropical Malady (2005) had a gay romance far more tender and engrossing than the more widely celebrated Brokeback Mountain.