So cinema nerds across the web have been having fun making alphabetical favorite film lists over the past few days.  Meaning they’ve been taking the alphabet and picking one favorite film for each letter.   It’s actually harder than one might think (it’s the reason I haven’t posted much today), with some letters full of lots of options and others needing some research.

For example I had many A’s (Age of Innocence, Ali Fear Eats the Soul, Annie Hall) M’s (Manhattan, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence) P’s (Paris Texas, Portrait of Jennie) and W’s (Wings of Desire, Werckmeister Harmonies, The Woman in the Window, The World) but none of the films listed in this paragraph made my final list.

Head after the jump to see what I picked and leave your own lists in the comments or on your own blogs!

If you don’t have a blog, takepart and make your own!

Read the rest of this entry »

Armin Mueller who? While at MOMA a few weekends ago to see Laura Dunn’s powerful documentary The Unforeseen, I got into a conversation with a gentleman about the year in movies and we got to talking about David Cronenberg and his film Eastern Promises. The man claimed that the actor who played the head of the crime family did a really good job and he tried for a moment or two to remember who the actor was that played the old man.

After a moment I said - “It’s Armin Mueller-Stahl.”

The man shook his head, and said “no no, it’s not him”. I reasserted my position that it was in fact Armin Mueller-Stahl and the man again told me I was wrong. We talked about it until we got let into the theater and my friend decided to look up the answer on his I-Phone.

It was in fact Armin Mueller-Stahl. I resisted the urge to find the man and tell him I was correct and instead thought back to my introduction to the actor.

Read the rest of this entry »