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Any Guardian sit-down worth its salt has to include a not-so subtle evaluation of the star's interview habits, and this new one with Maggie Gyllenhaal is no exception. "She sits directly opposite me, her feet planted firmly on the floor," the interviewer tells us. "She asks for a camomile tea and coolly, in a tone that brooks no argument, requests that the assembled public relations people leave the room while we conduct the interview." After this evaluation, it's off to the races, with Gyllenhaal delving into everything from her trepidation about doing Secretary -- "in the wrong hands, in even slightly the wrong hands, even in just slightly less intelligent hands, this movie could say something really weird" -- to everything that went into her performance in Sherrybaby. She's especially frank when it comes to the movie's sex scenes. "I find those scenes hard to watch," she says. "But when I was making them, I was thinking how Sherry would be thinking: I've been in prison for three years, I want to c*me."

Gyllenhaal also owns up to some tussles with directors over the years, but she's too polite to name names. When asked about what her most difficult acting experience has been so far, she replies that she once "realized very early on in a shoot that I was at odds with the director, and I had to go through the whole shoot trying to figure out how to stay alive as an actress, when I was being squashed by the director." For the record, it wasn't Oliver Stone -- she says that she loved working with him, and describes him as being "nuts, but totally inspiring." As for the movie she's shooting right now, The Dark Knight, Gyllenhaal has nothing but praise for how she's being treated. "Doing Batman has shocked me at every turn. When I started, I thought 'Well, it's a huge movie, I'll just do my best to put what I can into it. But, in fact, they've been really hungry for my ideas, for my views. It's great! They've been asking for more!"

I'm not a big fan of top ten lists. For the past couple weeks, a slew of people have bothered me for my top ten films of the year -- a list I've never felt comfortable putting together, regardless of what year we're in. The thing is, I cannot for the life of me throw together such a list when I haven't seen most of the films that probably would have made the list had I managed to catch a screening. Thus, I'd have to call it something like, "The Top Ten Films Erik Watched in 2006 ... But Keep in Mind He Hasn't Seen (insert a good ten titles here)." Now, how much fun would a list like that be?

However, movie trailers are a whole different animal. I don't have to see a film to judge a trailer, and the previews for pretty much every film released in 2006 (as well as a ton to be released in 2007) are available online for me to watch. But how does one go about picking the top ten trailers of the year? Well, first off, your opinion should be based solely on the trailer, and not the film (if you happened to have seen it). And, when you watch the trailer, you should ask yourself two questions: 1) How much does this trailer make you want to see the film and 2) How badly do you want to show this trailer to everyone you know? If the answer to both those questions is, "Holy crap, you have no idea how much I want to see that film, and I definitely need to show my friends this trailer right now!" -- congrats, it's most likely in your top ten.