Apropos of Nothing: The Ten Best Movies of the Decade

I first became aware of this in a comments thread at SOME CAME RUNNING, but why jump into the fray there when I can start my own fray here?

Recently, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE critic Mick LaSalle (who I must admit I'm unfamiliar with outside his admission in the bonus features of last year's Godfather box set that he doesn't understand the plot of Part II) posted his (premature) Top 10 list of the Aughties' best films. It reads like so:

1. The New World
2. 25th Hour
3. The Lives of Others
4. The Best of Youth
5. Before Sunset
6. Downfall
7. The Pianist
8. Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days
9. After the Wedding
10. (tie) Almost Famous; Bridget Jones's Diary; The Dreamers; In the Cut; Match Point; V for Vendetta

I presume that no one here would agree with all of those choices--what I'm curious about is whether we would all agree with any of those choices. I feel confident that my own list would include 25th Hour, but then I'm under the influence of "True Blood", which I'm finally catching up with on Blu-ray.

As a postscript, we just began posting Jefferson's SIFF capsules.

Redux-a-go-go

I like remakes. I like reboots. I like it when they do "Hamlet" again at the local rep house as much as I like new screen versions of it. I thought, for instance, that Michael Almereyda's Hamlet was brilliant and, in its way, as good as Branaugh's four-hour unexpurgated take.

No one cries foul when CU does their annual Shakespeare festival.

I liked Marcus Nispel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre though I liked the original better - and I liked Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead better than Romero's. I like both versions of The Manchurian Candidate - I like the first three versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Kurosawa's MacBeth? It's great. Batman Begins? Also great. And Dark Knight? Fuggehdabout it.

So on the eve of the new Star Trek redux/reboot - and having seen it on Saturday - I just want to say that as I'm sitting here writing the review that I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to be right here at this moment in history to see so many franchises that I love (Superman, Batman, Star Trek) get honorable reboots and here's to Rob Zombie's new Halloween sequel and the remake of Videodrome upcoming and all those flicks that deserve to be treated canonically: that is, with versions that better tap the well of this time.

Ideas about good prospects for remakes?

Hopes and fears about the new Trek?