After the success of the crime drama, Gone Baby Gone, I guess Ben Affleck and everyone else involved figured why mess with a good thing, and jumped right into another project based on a gritty crime novel. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Affleck is reuniting with his producing (and writing) partner Sean Bailey for The Blade Itself. The two will be producing the flick along with Miramax for Bailey's Ideology Films.

Miramax owns the film rights to Marcus Sakey's crime novel about two childhood friends. The Blade Itself centers on Evan and Danny, two kids from the 'mean streets' of Chicago. After a botched pawn shop robbery, Evan serves hard time and Danny turns to the straight and narrow. Seven years later, Evan is out and comes looking for Danny for payback. Using their past ties as a bargaining chip, Evan tries to drag Danny back into their partnership.

Back in October, Sakey himself had announced that it was Affleck and Matt Damon who would be producing. But it looks like there have been a few changes, since it is now Bailey and Affleck in charge. Bailey recently scored a first look deal with Disney for Ideology Films, and in the tradition of keeping it in the family, they will also produce the Jennifer Garner film, Sabbatical. Aaron Stockard, who also co-wrote Gone with Affleck, has been hired to adapt the script. I can't see them making many changes, but something tells me that with these two in charge, The Windy City will most likely be transformed into Bean Town. Just call it a hunch.

My pick of the week is Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, which far exceeded my expectations. Casting his younger brother Casey Affleck as a savvy private eye investigating a child kidnapping might have been a disaster, but Casey turned in an exceptional performance, as did Amy Ryan as the missing girl's severely damaged mother. The film has a handsome, autumnal look, and the surfeit of close-ups should make it ideal on the small screen. Miramax's DVD includes an audio commentary by Ben Affleck and his co-scenarist Aaron Stoddard, behind the scenes footage, a casting featurette, deleted scenes, and an extended ending. (See Erik's DVD review here)

Our own James Rocchi said that In the Shadow of the Moon is "one of the best science documentaries in recent memory, and also much more." Directed by David Sington, the film features new interviews with the surviving Apollo astronauts and archival footage of the moon missions. I'm a space nut from way back and I'm sorry I missed this in theaters, but I plan to sit very close to the television when I watch this. ThinkFilm's DVD appears to be a bare-bones edition.

In the mood for a coming-of-age tale from Australia? Introducing the Dwights might tickle your fancy. Revolving around a "somewhat eccentric family" of entertainers, Erik Davis called it "sweet, quirky, sincere." (You'll have to read his review again to be reminded why he was left blushing at one point.) Warner Independent's DVD doesn't appear to have any additional features of note, so a rental might do the trick.

Other indie releases include John Turturro's musical drama Romance & Cigarettes, with an audio commentary and deleted scenes, and comedy / drama / romance Blue State, featuring Anna Paquin and Breckin Meyer.

It's easy to finger Amy Ryan's performance in Gone Baby Gone as one of the best of the year, however I'm surprised more notice hasn't been given to the entire cast. After all, this is an ensemble film, with fantastic performances from Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, Amy Madigan and a host of Boston locals plucked from obscurity; all of whom were, essentially, asked to play themselves. Gone Baby Gone is a tough film to review, because there are so many plot twists, and criticisms of said plot twists, that it's hard to discuss without giving away some major spoilers. I will say that Gone Baby Gone is a good film; a solid film -- and one that will definitely leave you debating the outcome with whomever you choose to watch it with.

Set and filmed entirely in the Boston area known as Dorchester, Gone Baby Gone revolves around the kidnapping of a little girl and the subsequent investigation into her disappearance. Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play a pair of local private investigators/lovers who are hired by the missing girl's aunt and uncle in an attempt to solve the case by going through the folks who won't talk to the cops. Ed Harris and John Ashton play the main detectives on the case, Morgan Freeman plays the police captain heading the entire investigation and Amy Ryan plays the little girl's delinquent, drug-addicted mother. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), Gone Baby Gone will certainly hit you emotionally, but how much depends upon whether you buy into the story as it unravels.

I get very excited about the upturns some actors and actresses' careers take following awards season, especially when those performers end up Oscar winners. I always enjoyed reading the post-Oscar write-ups on "What's Next for ____?", though it's less of a thrill nowadays because I typically already know what is in their pipeline. For example, thanks to Variety, I now know that Amy Ryan will be co-starring in Paul Greengrass' "untitled Iraq war thriller". She joins the movie, along with Greg Kinnear, which already starred Matt Damon (who has worked with Greengrass on two Bourne films) and which reportedly began filming in Spain yesterday. While Kinnear and Damon will both play CIA agents involved in the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Ryan has been cast as a New York Times correspondent investigating the WMD investigation.

A front-runner for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (for Gone Baby Gone), Ryan has already had one heck of a year (she also appeared in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and Dan in Real Life). In fact, I'm sure I'm not the only one to admit I'd never heard of her until 2007. But she may still not be a household name, and that should surely change following her expected win (she's also the best bet for the Golden Globe this Sunday). The supporting actress category is sometimes a bit of a joke, as it was throughout most of the 1990s (starting with Whoopi and ending with Angelina, with a Mira in the middle), but Ryan is hopefully going to be one of the few actresses that shows us how much she deserves the accolades by continuing to take respectable roles. In addition to Greengrass' film, Ryan will be co-starring in Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, which also stars Angelina (whose "What's Next ... " in 1999 included Gone in 60 Seconds and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider). By the way, for those not keeping track, after making The Changeling, Ryan will have worked with four of the ten 1990s supporting actress Oscar winners (Marisa Tomei is in Before the Devil; Juliette Binoche and Dianne Wiest are both in Dan). Perhaps Greengrass can find a part in his new film for Anna Paquin?

Best Supporting Actress

Nominees:

Cate Blanchett -- I'm Not There

Julia Roberts -- Charlie Wilson's War

Saoirse Ronan -- Atonement

Amy Ryan -- Gone Baby Gone

Tilda Swinton -- Michael Clayton

Predicted Winner: Amy Ryan

Gone Baby Gone had surprise written all over it. The first surprise was that Ben Affleck could direct. The second surprise is that Ryan's edgy, emotional performance as a morally mushy mom actually got noticed at the end of the year. The third surprise is that she could actually win. But it's no surprise that Ryan ("The Wire," Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) has been a rising star for some time.

Now it's your turn to vote ...

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...

Last week, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, a diverse group of which I'm a member, voted for our end-of-year picks. One of the things I enjoy most about this critic's group is that our awards include some fun categories you don't see with a lot of other awards -- Most Egregious Age Difference Between Leading Man and Love Interest (Robin Wright Penn and Anthony Hopkins in Beowulf) and Best Depiction of Nudity or Sexuality (Viggo Mortenson in Eastern Promises -- I don't know about you, but that was one of the highlights of that film for me). Margot at the Wedding was named the "Movie You Wanted to Love But Just Couldn't."

Among the awards I'm most happy about include a triple-play for Juno for Best Original Screenplay, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Breakthrough Performance for Ellen Page. Not surprisingly, No Country for Old Men was voted Best Picture (it seems to be that or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for most of the critics' groups this year), and the Coen Brothers got Best Director(s). Amy Ryan's awesome performance as the bad mommy in Gone Baby Gone netted her Best Supporting Actress (and look for her to be nommed for an Oscar as well -- she'd be my pick to win gold there, too).

You can see the full list of AWFJ winners and nominees right over here ... which film do you think was the best of 2007?

Earlier this week, I along with 20 other San Francisco film critics assembled at an undisclosed location -- okay, it was a café -- to vote on the best films, best performances and best other stuff of 2007. It's an interesting experience. I spent a few weeks combing through the year's releases, coming up with my own choices. Then I second-guessed some of them, deciding whether I should eliminate certain choices. If I was absolutely certain that someone would make the final ballot, then I would cast a vote for someone more obscure, someone I really liked. After doing that, I scrapped the whole thing and went back to my favorites in each category, regardless of where they placed.

For Best Supporting Actress, I selected Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone (301 screens) as my #1 choice, comfortable in my certainty that she was a dark horse and that no one else would pick her. She was far from being the focus of that film, but she knocked a home run in her few scenes as a horrible, drug-ridden mother who has lost her baby girl. As a bonus, she was also in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (321 screens), a film that also made a decent showing on my personal ballot. (She lost a few points by being in the wretched Dan in Real Life, but gained them back again by being on TV's "The Wire.") In any case, Ryan not only made our final ballot, but she actually won. Congratulations, Amy! My other picks, Taraji P. Henson in Talk to Me, Kristen Thomson in Away from Her, and Maggie Smith in Becoming Jane, didn't make it so far. As for my fifth pick, Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There (148 screens), you've not heard that last of her.

Slant Magazine has put out its twin top ten lists for this year, and while I have some serious concerns about those lists -- they couldn't find room for Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece even in the honorable mention category! -- their superlatives boxes are some of the funniest I've seen anywhere. Here's a few of my favorites from their list: Most Homoerotic Use of a Computer goes to 300. Worst Performance By an Inanimate Object goes to Titus Welliver's mustache in Gone, Baby, Gone. I have to agree with that one. Worst Use of CGI goes to Jack Nicholson's skydiving scene in The Bucket List. And my absolute personal favorite of them all: Dramatic Climax Best Suited for a WWE Storyline goes to The Kite Runner. If you haven't seen it, you'll know exactly what that means when you do.

By the way, I've noticed that Slant has also jumped on the bandwagon of delivering high, if left-handed praise for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. In his original review, Ed Gonzalez said the movie was "so completely and violently divorced from any normal concept of narrative thinking it becomes Dadaesque." Now, the Slant duo have given the film a prominent mention in their year-end wrap-up for its "avant-garde insanity." I recently heard about another well-known critic who is seriously mulling the possibility of including Aqua Teen in his top ten list for the year. When he told me, I honestly thought he was joking but now I see it's not just him. Although it never occurred to me before, now I think I actually have to see this movie. It sounds like I'm missing out on something.

The San Francisco Film Critics Awards have been announced, and they're especially exciting for us here at Cinematical. Why? Because three of our writers are in the SFFC! Our very own James Rocchi, Jeffrey M. Anderson, and Richard Von Busack are all part of the San Francisco critic "scene." San Fran made some interesting picks, several outside of the expected Oscar nominees. So what were their choices? For Best Foreign Film, they selected Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which I am watching when I finish this post). For Best Documentary, they selected No End in Sight (which didn't blow me away, but was certainly well done). Best Adapted Screenplay went to Sarah Polley for Away From Her (great script, one of the most kick-in-the-stomach depressing movies I've seen lately). And Best Original Screenplay went to Tamara Jenkins for The Savages.

Amy Ryan was named Best Supporting Actress for her brilliant portrayal of a highly difficult character in Gone Baby Gone. Ryan's co-star in that film, Casey Affleck, was named Best Supporting Actor for his outstanding work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Actress was Julie Christie for Away From Her and Best Actor was George Clooney in Michael Clayton -- two choices I approve of though I disagree with them. Joel and Ethan Coen took Best Director(s) honors for their latest masterpiece, No Country for Old Men. And -- drumroll please -- the Best Picture Award went to Jesse James. A surprising pick perhaps, but it was an absolutely fantastic film, and hopefully the award encourages more people to see it. The SFFC gave a special citation to an indie called Colma: The Musical, "a homegrown song-and-dance extravaganza about the paradoxical drudgery and surreality of life in a city where the dead outnumber the living one thousand to one." That old story again? See the list for yourself here -- it's a San Francisco treat!