TriBeCa 2010 Recap: Take me to Paris, Cairo and Rajastan

1) Road, Movie
2) Cairo Time
3) Serge Gainsbourg: Je t'aime....moi, non plus

The power of the haunted past: secrets, passion and morality in the screen adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's "The Reader" (2008)

You may leave the prison, but the prison never leaves you: Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" (2009)

Oscars: My Predictions

Leading actor: Jeff Bridges
Supporting actor: Woody Harrelson
Leading actress: Sandra Bullock
Supporting actress: Mo'Nique
Directing: Hurt Locker
Best picture: Avatar

A Weak Year for Cinema, but Here are the Most Memorable of 2009

Top 10 Most Memorable Films of 2009, in no particular order:

- Inglorious Basterds
- Away We Go
- The Hurt Locker
- The Brothers Bloom
- An Education
- Two Lovers
- Summer Hours
- 500 Days of Summer
- This is It

And from the ones I still haven't seen, but my gut feeling tells me they would make the most memorable list (well, the competition is not that stiff in 2009, so it's sufficient to put out a decent, somewhat thought provoking film, to stand out in the pack):

- Where the Wild Things Are: because it brought us all back to childhood, even the Euros and non-Americans who never ever read the book as bedtime reading during childhood
- Antichrist: because it tests your tolerance for the most abstract and head turning self mutilation and violence
- Bright Star: because it marks the return of the glorious Jane Campion and a return to romanticism and poetry
- Broken Embraces: because it is the director-muse definitional movie
- Up in the Air: timely, Clooney and addressing an increasingly pressing issue of the human kind: lack of real connectivity among people
- Up

War is a Drug: Kathryn Bigelow's Raw and Intense "The Hurt Locker" (2009)

WAR IS A DRUG.

I missed you, Tarantino. His beautifully violent return with "Inglorious Basterds" (2009)

How masterful. Gory, addictive, attractive, artistic, fast, emotional, cinematic. He did it again. And this time, I doubted him. I sort of read the incoming reviews, first from Cannes, then mostly from the American press which was somewhat unreasonably so, too harsh on the historical reflection and immaturity aspect of the movie. Went in without expectations. Oh, but what a ride.
Didn't even notice it was 2.5 hours. Christopher Waltz and Melanie Laurent are stunners. Chris Waltz, we read it everywhere, how skillful and entertaining he is at delivering the perfect, logically evil SS. But Melanie! Only in one of the final scenes, in the projection room, when she cannot control her tears, prior to bringing down the cinema (sorry for the spoilers, but all of you should have already seen it, twice by now), it hit me that it is the Melanie I loved in "Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas". Glorious depiction of a tormented yet determined soul. And her final act of revenge, up there on the big screen, black and white, brings back the good old Uma Kill Bill memories (her opening shot, and car driving revenge plot).Genius. And the perfectly crafted intellectually probing dialogues that intensify just before the massacre...