2010, your hours have run out

Another year, another Oscar nominations morning, another list of my favorite -- and least favorite -- films from the previous year.

If you haven't been present for my several weeks of hype leading up to the big event, I always reveal my list of movie rankings, from first to worst, on the morning Oscar hopefuls wake up at 5:30 our time (it's 5:27 right now) to watch the reading of the Oscar nominations. (I always watch it on ABC, for some reason.) My reward for waking up early is that I have time enough before going to work to make myself a breakfast complete with eggs and breakfast meat. Mmm, breakfast meat.

The reason I deviate from the usual tradition of publishing my list during the week between Christmas and New Year's is simple -- I need a few extra weeks to watch the movies that get released late in the year. The morning of the Oscar nominations has always seemed like a good amount of extra time. Of course, I don't limit myself to just those movies during these extra couple weeks -- I also watch plenty of bad movies released in February, which have been available on DVD since July.

I fell just short of last year's record total, which was 113. Then again, last year, the Oscar nominations were revealed a full week later, on February 2nd. An extra week this year would have netted me an additional ten movies for sure. But since I'm always suffering from major movie fatigue this time of year, I'm just as glad not to have that extra week. Looking forward to returning to business as usual after the big crunch.

Okay, Mo'Nique is coming out on stage right now ... excuse me for a moment as I watch the nominations live.

A best picture nomination for The A-Team? I didn't see that coming.

But seriously, I've seen ten of ten best picture nominees. I'm getting good at this. Particularly glad to see my favorite film of the year nominated ... no better moment to get down to business ...

Without further ado, my top 109 films of 2010, listed in no particular order. (Wait, scratch that last part.)

1. 127 Hours
2. Tangled
3. The Social Network
4. Agora
5. Winter's Bone
6. Mother
7. Rabbit Hole
8. Exit Through the Gift Shop
9. Cyrus
10. Animal Kingdom
11. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
12. Greenberg
13. Kick-Ass
14. The Human Centipede
15. Four Lions
16. The King's Speech
17. Toy Story 3
18. The Town
19. Black Swan
20. The Living Wake
21. Mother and Child
22. Please Give
23. Easy A
24. Lebanon
25. Blue Valentine
26. Inception
27. Date Night
28. Never Let Me Go
29. I'm Still Here
30. The Kids Are All Right
31. The Ghost Writer
32. Countdown to Zero
33. Let Me In
34. The Last Exorcism
35. Restrepo
36. After.Life
37. Piranha 3D
38. Catfish
39. How to Train Your Dragon
40. The Fighter
41. City Island
42. Get Him to the Greek
43. Daybreakers
44. Splice
45. Shutter Island
46. Micmacs
47. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
48. Buried
49. Casino Jack and the United States of Money
50. Extraordinary Measures
51. Hot Tub Time Machine
52. The Square
53. The Book of Eli
54. The Losers
55. She's Out of My League
56. I Am Love
57. The A-Team
58. Saint John of Las Vegas
59. Frozen
60. Ondine
61. Dear John
62. Youth in Revolt
63. Remember Me
64. Babies
65. Creation
66. Knight and Day
67. Tron: Legacy
68. True Grit
69. Tiny Furniture
70. Sweetgrass
71. Somewhere
72. Machete
73. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
74. Holy Rollers
75. Solitary Man
76. The Killer Inside Me
77. Unstoppable
78. Happy Tears
79. Phish 3D
80. The Joneses
81. The Bounty Hunter
82. The Other Guys
83. The Runaways
84. The Last Airbender
85. MacGruber
86. Easier With Practice
87. The Crazies
88. Edge of Darkness
89. Repo Men
90. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
91. Centurion
92. Killers
93. Brooklyn's Finest
94. Just Wright
95. Finding Bliss
96. Valentine's Day
97. Little Fockers
98. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
99. The Expendables
100. Devil
101. Jonah Hex
102. Operation: Endgame
103. Dinner for Schmucks
104. The Wolfman
105. Vampires Suck
106. The Back-up Plan
107. Legion
108. When in Rome
109. Furry Vengeance

Most regret not seeing before the deadline: Another Year, Biutiful, The Company Men, Get Low, The Tempest, Waiting for "Superman"

Okay, I am waiting -- waiting -- with bated breath for your comments. Even if you don't usually comment, I would love to hear your comments today. I know I've outraged you with certain choices, but I imagine I've also pleased you with others. Tell me about it. This is why I do this.

On to 2011. My rankings so far:

1. The Green Hornet

Discuss.

Comparing 2010 and 2010

Yesterday, I finally finished watching a movie I started watching 20 years ago.

And in the process, took a break from watching 2010 movies to watch the original 2010 movie -- Peter Hyams' 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

It took me 20 years to watch the damn thing because of the abrupt tonal shift that occurs at about the movie's five-minute mark. If that seems like a ridiculous juncture for a "tonal shift," read on.

When I was growing up, we had a copy of 2010 on VHS, which my mom had recorded off cable, as she was wont to do. I watched the opening five minutes numerous times, because it scared the piss out of me. It contains a report on the failed Discovery mission depicted in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, with computer text steadily typing itself over still images from Kubrick's film. I was entranced not only by these ominous images of monoliths and the poor astronauts killed or otherwise compromised by HAL-9000, but also by the haunting choral music, and the cold deadness of the report's conclusions: "Status of the Discovery ... Unknown. Meaning of David Bowman's last transmission ... Unknown. Location of Bowman ... Unknown (Presumed Dead)."

Creepy shit. But not nearly as creepy as that last transmission itself: "My God, it's full of stars." That's the first thing you hear in 2010, before seeing any images, and it's warped by the degraded quality of the voice data, making it extra chilling. (Incidentally, I now have a clearer picture of where this opening came from -- it's more or less stolen from Outland, which I saw earlier this fall and which was also directed by Peter Hyams. The opening to that film contains the same kind of bottom-line report data over chilling images of outer space exploration.)

You'd think an opening like this would rope me in for the whole movie, even 20 years ago, when I was not yet the cineaste I am today. But after the report ends, the credits start, and the familiar strains of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" hit your ear drums and travel quickly down your spine, 2010 thuds back to Earth. It doesn't stay on Earth for long -- in fact, as I was watching yesterday, I was surprised to discover that I had a very wrong impression about how long it would be before the movie would return to space: something like ten minutes of screen time. But those ten minutes were enough to turn off the teenage version of me. There's an energy-sapping scene in which Roy Scheider's Dr. Heywood Floyd is addressed by a Russian scientist while working on a satellite dish, and this is when I would always turn 2010 off. As soon as they exchanged spooky space for broad daylight, I lost interest.

But I decided that the year 2010 arriving definitely meant it was time to watch 2010, and needless to say, I was running out of days to do it. I got it from Netflix last week, and when my wife went to the movies yesterday afternoon following my early release from work, I settled in for the final 109 minutes of 2010 during baby duty.

I'm not here today to tell you how good 2010 was or wasn't -- whether it delivered on even an ounce of the promise of that chilling opening. Because you might like to know anyway, I will tell you briefly that it's a decent movie if you are not comparing it to 2001. It's leagues more accessible than 2001, which is both a good thing and a bad thing -- ultimately, a lot more of a bad thing. For starters, there's some really terrible narration by Scheider at various points, which is not only on-the-nose, but his voice echoes in a very cheesy, space-opera kind of way. Then there's the little problem of the film's ridiculous ending. But there's also a lot of tension-filled danger-in-space shit, as well as a welcome appearance by Keir Dullea from 2001, looking as creepy and ethereal as he ever did. Plus, the special effects are pretty darn good for the year 1984. So, let's call 2010 a mixed bag.

No, what really interests me, and what allows me to turn this into a New Year's Eve "looking back at the year" piece, is how close they got to being right with their predictions about the year 2010. I took notes on the difference between our 2010 and the one depicted in the movie -- should we look at a few examples?

1. U.S. Foreign Policy
Their 2010: The United States of 2010 is still deeply entrenched in the Cold War, involved in a case of brinksmanship with the Russians that involves a Naval blockade off the coast of Ecuador (of all places).
Our 2010: Our United States is deeply entrenched in the war on terror, a war that has several fronts (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan), but its biggest case of naval brinksmanship involves the North Koreans and their nuclear testing.
Conclusion: Fears of nuclear annihilation are still high, even if the enemy is different.

2. The President of the United States
Their 2010: A never-seen conservative hawk who is described as "reactionary," "not into health food" and having "his finger poised on the button."
Our 2010: Barack Obama is a liberal -- though not as much of one as we may have originally thought -- who is trying to wipe out nuclear weapons in our lifetime.
Conclusion: Although Obama is in shape, he definitely likes his hamburgers, and I believe he probably still sneaks the occasional cigarette. So a health nut he is not. And some would say he is "reactionary," in the sense that he's quick to scrap some of his core principles in the interest of compromise. Whether you think that's a good thing or not is another issue.

3. Area of space exploration
Their 2010: Jupiter is the focus of all space activities thanks to the monolith, whose mysteries have dominated the resources and research of all space programs in all countries since the events of nine years earlier.
Our 2010: Although George Bush pledged to put men back on the moon, humans aren't very busy in space these days. The big NASA news of 2010 revolves around a different planet, Mars, where NASA engineers dropped bombs into craters to kick up plumes of vapor, intended to determine the presence of ice, and therefore, water. (I was having trouble finding the exact date or details online, so, to all you space buffs out there, please forgive any inaccuracies in the previous sentence.)
Conclusion: We don't care nearly as much about space as they once thought we would. It's the economy, stupid.

4. Status of major aeronautics company
Their 2010: "At PanAm, the sky is no longer the limit," says a TV commercial, advertising space travel through the company we would have known for their commercial airline travel: Pan American World Airways, as its full title was.
Our 2010: PanAm has not been in operation for the past 19 years.
Conclusion: The company this movie thought was poised to be the face of commercial aeronautics, well into the future, folded only seven years after the movie was released.

5. Status of the ballpark in Houston
Their 2010: Heywood Floyd (Scheider) and Walter Curnow (John Lithgow) discuss missing the taste of a hot dog. Curnow talks about the best dogs coming from the Astrodome in Houston, though Floyd prefers Yankee Stadium.
Our 2010: The Astrodome stopped being used by football's Houston Oilers in 1996 and baseball's Houston Astros in 1999. It hasn't been demolished, but there is currently a discussion of what to do with it, with the most recent proposal being to turn it into a movie studio. Where they would probably not sell hot dogs.
Conclusion: They couldn't have known in 1984 that almost all the existing baseball stadiums would be replaced in the next 26 years, least of all the Astrodome, which probably seemed state-of-the-art at the time. Even Yankee Stadium has been replaced -- though the new one is also called Yankee Stadium.

6. Status of bioscan technology
Their 2010: Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban) activates a sophisticated government computer by using a scan of his hand to verify his identity.
Our 2010: I scan my thumb when I go to the gym.
Conclusion: Is the future a lot more futuristic than we ever thought it would be?

7. Virus technology
Their 2010: Dr. Chandra sends what he calls a "tapeworm" into the memory banks of HAL-9000, to destroy "unwanted memories."
Our 2010: Viruses enter our computers all the time, destroying things we actually want.
Conclusion: Advantage: Their 2010.

8. Signs that you're well off, financially
Their 2010: The Floyds own dolphins, who live in their indoor pool.
Our 2010: Home dolphin ownership is still a thing of the future, but if you're really cool, you now own a 3D TV.
Conclusion: I would probably rather watch images jump out of my TV screen than get to look at dolphins every day.

9. Portable computing
Their 2010: Floyd types on a computer on the beach, clunky though it may be.
Our 2010: We can take our laptops with us to the beach, if we aren't worried about sand gumming up the works.
Conclusion: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a match!

10. Number of suns
Their 2010: Two. At the end of the movie, Jupiter explodes, or something (it's hard to tell exactly), and a second sun is created in its aftermath, appearing as a smaller but still very bright light in the sky visible from Earth. Something to do with aliens, I think.
Our 2010: One.
Conclusion: Sorry to spoil the ending for you. But it's so stupid, I had to get it in there somewhere.

Bonus: HALs
Their 2010: HAL-9000.
Our 2010: Hal Sparks.
Conclusion: Sorry, that was the best I could come up with.

One final note regarding the year 2010. At the start of the year I wrote about not being sure what I wanted to call this year -- actually, by arguing in a January 5th post that we should call this year "two thousand ten" because we had always called the movie "Two Thousand Ten: The Year We Make Contact." Now that I've gotten to the other side, I feel the "twenty urge" building up inside of me. Although I've still heard as many people call 2010 "two thousand ten" as "twenty ten," I think the shift is really on for 2011, which will probably be referred to as "twenty eleven" by most people. Including, I think, me. I know, the firm "thousandaire" described in that post may be converting to a "twentier."

Well, happy twenty eleven or two thousand eleven or 2011 to all of you. See you back here next year.

Twentiers vs. thousandaires

In recent days I've had a number of lively discussions with friends about their preference for what to call the year 2010.

There are two obvious choices: "two thousand ten" and "twenty ten." Then there's the slightly less popular choice that's very similar to the first: "two thousand and ten," though I think that's said mostly by people who say "September the 11th."

I've got my own preference, and I contend that we had the decision collectively made for us by a movie that came out 26 years ago.

When a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was released 16 years later in 1984 -- and, in many minds, quite superfluously -- it was called 2010: The Year We Make Contact. You didn't hear anyone call it "Twenty Ten: The Year We Make Contact," and the reason was obvious: As a sequel to 2001, it should clearly bear the same naming properties. Even if, in a vacuum, you would have called that year "twenty ten," its very status as a follow-up to "two thousand one" meant it would be named "two thousand ten."

And since we had no other reason to make mention of that year before that point -- no more so than we would randomly talk about 2016, 2049 or 2742 -- it settled in our consciousness and stuck. 2010 would be "two thousand ten" when it actually arrived on the calendar.

Except now, there's been a serious "twenty movement." A lot of people I've talked to would really prefer "twenty ten." They think it sounds buoyant and whimsical and snappy. I'm inclined to agree, but I don't think that alone is a reason to determine how a year is referenced in speech.

They cite the precedent of the 1900s, when things were called "nineteen" and not "one thousand nine hundred." The statement "Well duh" should cover that pretty well. In that case it's clearly just a syllables issue. Not to mention the precedent set by the previous five or six hundred years of spoken language.

But rolling over to 2000 changed the rules, and gave us a new precedent that we've been using for ten years. Ten years is, I believe, long enough for a precedent, even when the previous precedent lasted the better part of a millennium. Clearly we weren't going to call those years "twenty one" or "twenty seven," for the obvious reason that those numbers already exist and mean something quite different. Never mind the fact that people would never know you were actually referring to a year unless you prefaced it with "the year." We could have, I suppose, called those years "twenty oh one" and "twenty oh seven," but that just sounds stupid.

I understand those people who want to restore the "twenty" naming structure, but I think our collective memory of a movie not very many of us saw should win out in this case. I have not even seen all of 2010: The Year We Make Contact, which is quite strange because I had it on VHS at one point and watched the opening ten minutes several times. If you've never seen 2010, it's worth a rental just for those eerie opening minutes, some of the eeriest I've ever seen. It's basically just a recap of some of the final events of 2001, but it's handled in the form of still images and a computer report typewriting over them, plus some damn scary music. And if you've never heard Keir Dullea's line "My God, it's full of stars" all twisted and warped by computer distortion, it'll give you nightmares. I'm getting chills right now -- maybe I need to add this movie to my queue and finally watch the whole thing.

And because of 2010, I think it was all the easier for me to call Roland Emmerich's recent disaster epic "two thousand twelve." The fact that it's a different year, however, could make a difference in how other people named the movie. Some people are now telling me they did call 2012 "twenty twelve," and I don't want to accuse them of lying. After all, 2012 is both an Olympic year and a presidential election year, so we'd been referring to it long before the movie was even a glint in Emmerich's eye. (Plus, 2012 has always been the end of the Mayan calendar, so a lot of us knew it in that context before the movie anyway). I guess it's quite possible that the International Olympic Committee has been calling them "twenty twelve" and "twenty sixteen" for years now. I can't rightly say that I remember. Or, it could be that just as in society at large, different members of the IOC have been saying it differently. It hardly makes sense to set an institutional policy, right?

And here's where I may shock you -- I agree with the twentiers once we reach 2020. Rather arbitrary, right? Perhaps I'm the worst offender out there, because I advocate different methods depending on where we are in the century. Then again, so do all the twentiers, who certainly didn't complain about saying "two thousand one." But at least their transition date makes some amount of sense. They say we should start using "twenty" as soon as it is semantically viable, in 2010.

Why 2020 for me? Again it has to do with the precedent set by a movie.

In 2004 I saw a Chinese language film called 2046, directed by Wong Kar Wai. (It actually says Kar Wai Wong on IMDB -- I must admit I am still flummoxed about how to correctly say Chinese names, which is another issue altogether, but I heard it as Wong Kar Wai at the time, which dovetails quite nicely with this discussion.)

When referencing this film to other people, it felt natural to me to call it "twenty forty-six." And that's how I alphabetized it in my movie list. Instead of taking all the numbered titles and putting them together, as they do at some video stores, I alphabetize as they would appear if you spelled the numbers out in words. So 2046 would actually appear before 2001 and 2010, as "twenty" comes before "two" in the alphabet.

So even though I was not consciously aware of it at the time, I was having this naming debate with myself as long as six years ago. I didn't acknowledge anything strange about the fact that I had automatically called this movie "twenty forty-six," even though the others began with "two thousand." It did not seem to require an intellectual explanation.

But obviously I don't advocate starting to call the years "twenty whatever" only in time for 2046. That would be ludicrous indeed.

So when, logically, should that start? Here's where the twentiers probably have a point. They think we should start it now. I think we should wait until 2020, when, paradoxically, everyone will confuse everyone else by having to explain whether they are talking about a year, or the name of a popular TV snow.

And I guess the only reason I really think that is because of 2010: The Year We Make Contact, which has already claimed this entire decade for itself.

Strange but somehow sturdy reasoning, don't you think?

Or, what you could do is say that 2010 will be the final year we use "two thousand," instead of 2009. That could satisfy both camps: those who want to respect the precedent set by the movie, and those who want to switch over to "twenty" pretty damn soon. Because as I'm thinking about it, although "two thousand ten" doesn't sound unwieldy to me, "two thousand eleven" sort of does. Plus there's something appropriate about making the switch in 2011, as that is the actual beginning of the next decade, as we all know from the whole "when is it really the new millennium" debate that was regularly discussed in 1999, 2000 and 2001.

Who knows if a consensus will ever be reached. We're only on day five of this new frontier.

But me, I plan to pay pretty close attention to see which wins out.

Check back here in January of 2020 for my follow-up post.