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50. Battle Royale

49. The Wrestler – Darren Aronofsky

48. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India – Ashutosh Gowariker

47. Punch-Drunk Love – Paul Anderson

46. Cache – Michael Haneke

45. Donnie Darko – Richard Kelly

44. Dancer in the Dark – Lars Von Triers

43. Cast Away – Robert Zemeckis

42. About Schmidt – Alexander Payne

41. Monsters, Inc. – Pete Docter and David Silverman

40. About a Boy – Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz

39. The Departed – Martin Scorsese

38. Bad Santa – Terry Zwigoff

37. Once – John Carney

36. Before Sunset – Richard Linklater

35. The Station Agent – Thomas McCarthy

34. Saw – James Wan

33. Superbad – Greg Mottola

32. No Country for Old Men – Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

31. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl – Gore Verbinski

30. You Can Count on Me – Kenneth Lonergan

29. Cloverfield – Matt Reeves

28. In the Loop – Armando Iannucci

27. J.S.A. Joint Security Area – Chan-wook Park

26. Adaptation – Spike Jonze

25. Napoleon Dynamite – Jared Hess

24. In the Mood for Love – Wong Kar Wai

23. Sexy Beast – Jonathan Glazer

22. A History of Violence – David Cronenberg

21. Spirited Away – Hayao Miyazaki

20. The Bourne Ultimatum – Paul Greengrass

19. Gwoemul (The Host) – Joon-hu Bong

18. Far from Heaven – Todd Haynes

17. Hero – Zhang Yimou

16. 28 Days Later – Danny Boyle

15. Chopper – Andrew Dominik

14. Oldboy – Chan-wook Park

13. Pan’s Labyrinth – Guillermo del Toro

12. Toy Story 2 – John Lasseter, Ash Brannon, and Lee Unkrich

11. 2046 – Wong Kar Wai

10. Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters) – Ji-woon Kim

9. Hedwig and the Angry Inch – John Cameron Mitchell

8. Y Tu Mama Tambien – Alfonson Cuaron

7. Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 – Quentin Tarantino

6. Cidade de Deus (City of God) – Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund

5. Audition – Takashi Miike

4. Kung Fu Hustle – Stephen Chow

3. United 93 – Paul Greengrass

2. Together – Lukas Moodysson

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Michel Gondry

PS I have excluded my own films.

PPS This may all change tomorrow.

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So a few weeks ago, Rainn Wilson posted a new “First Rule of Fight Club” on Twitter. I thought this was funny, so I retweeted it, and started obsessively writing additional rules. From there, other folks added their own rules, including Pete Alton, @Brandon007, @EdouardBond, and @tollishtwit. Although this has been reposted in other places, I thought I’d finally post the original sixteen rules here.

1st Rule of Fight Club? Don’t talk about ‘potpourri’.

2nd Rule of Fight Club: Don’t put a cigarette in your penis and pretend like it’s smoking.

3rd Rule of Fight Club: Always know where Fight Club is held, so you don’t need to stop and ask for directions to Fight Club.

4th Rule of Fight Club: The safe word is “Bernadette Peters.”

5th Rule of Fight Club: Don’t put peanuts in any of the pot luck items. Sal is deathly allergic.

6th Rule of Fight Club: Turn off your cell phone.

7th Rule of Fight Club: No one wearing any Ed Hardy apparel will be allowed to enter Fight Club.

8th Rule of Fight Club: You have to admit, it’s still fucking hilarious when Philip does jazz hands in the middle of a fight.

9th Rule of Fight Club: No, the Lord’s Prayer at the end of Fight Club is not necessary, but please be respectful of others who pray during this time.

10th Rule of Fight Club: Just wearing a Ramones T-shirt doesn’t make you hip.

11th Rule of Fight Club: Anyone sending me a Facebook invitation to play Farmville will be immediately ejected from Fight Club.

12th Rule of Fight Club: Don’t flush the paper towels. We’ve had a lot of plumbing problems from idiots doing this.

13th Rule of Fight Club: No air saxophone in Fight Club.

14th Rule of Fight Club: Don’t do a “retarded voice” in Fight Club. It may be funny to you, but Kenny’s brother has Down syndrome and he’s, understandably, sensitive.

15th Rule of Fight Club: This is supposed to be fun! Smile, you guys!

16th Rule of Fight Club: IN FIGHT CLUB, THERE ARE NO RULES (besides the preceding 15 rules. Especially that retarded thing: seriously not cool.)

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For those of you who missed my Twitter commentary on the Oscars yesterday, here it is:

Why is Alec Baldwin standing like a Neanderthal?

There was a 4th John Hughes kid, but Matthew Broderick killed him while drunk driving.

Fuck this Logorama bastard piece of shit for screwing up my Oscar pool.

Mrs. Garrett just won an Academy Award for documentary short.

God, this is boring. If I didn’t drive @Yarvo I think I’d be on my way home to jerk off to furry porn, or something else more interesting.

Precious is fat.

I think Up in the Air may be the best Pixar movie. I mean, it really looks realistic!

Mo’nique was good in Precious, but I liked her better in The Parkers.

‘An Education’ is my favorite movie in the Twilight saga.

Wait a second. I’m forgetting. Who are the nominees this year for Best Anal Scene?

I love that costume design chick. She absolutely did not give a shit that she just won an Oscar!

What better people to present the horror reel than the stars of Twilight? #fuckyousohardoscars

Why is this horror tribute sucking Tim Burton’s cock?

The best of horror!

(My favorite response, during the Horror Tribute:) RT @Ian_Pretorious @james_gunn I’m taking it you didn’t like the oscar salute to the horror section at Wal-Mart.

I can’t believe James Cameron had time to sound edit the Hurt Locker.

I think John Travolta just insinuated that the holocaust didn’t happen (Tarantino ‘rewrote history.’)

These people are all dead.

Every year they throw a live person into the dead people montage, to keep us awake. Karl Malden is alive & well, folks.

I want to do a montage of living people whose careers are dead.

I’m enjoying this salute to gay Hollywood dance sequence.

I like the part in The Cove when Ed Helms marries that stripper.

I love when Tyler Perry puts on that fat suit and plays Precious.

THE END

P.S. Although I was retweeted hundreds of times and I got a lot of new followers, I also got a lot of people sending me the Wikipedia page for Karl Malden to show me that he was really dead, and a few folks explaining to me that “Up” was the Pixar movie and “Up in the Air” was actually live action, which is why it looked so good. Um, okay. I also got a few people offended by my Tweets. Sorry. If you don’t like ‘em, click unfollow!

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Since, I don’t have anything else to post today, I thought I’d put up the greatest hits of one of my favorite musicians, Mark Gormley. First, is what I consider the greatest of all his tunes, “Gray Days.”

However, it’s the next two numbers, “Little Wings” and “Without You” that are by far his most popular:

Here’s an interview with the man himself:

One of the comments below this video: “When I play D and D I play as Mark Gormley.”

I really like what Tommy Robinetti adds to the proceedings.

Here’s a pretty good report from Attack of the Show, which gives us all a lot more information:

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Nick Holmes sent me this, because it’s a woman being freaked out by my movie, Dawn of the Dead.

I then see it’s the YouTube site of a guy who has posted many videos of his wife crying at the end of or during films.  Like, really crying.

Marley and Me

Her husband: “But would you rather the dog died in pain with a twisted stomach?”

Crying wife (sobbing): “No, but I could never be a vet… They should just make a super dog that never dies!”

The end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy

The best part is where she claims she’s not going to cry while the kingdom kneels in respect to the fucking hobbits, and then starts sobbing like crazy.

Return of the Jedi

Crying wife (sobbing): “Did they put R2D2 back together?!!”

But my favorite moment is where she’s breaking down crying, and the husband looks at the camera, starts laughing and says, “It’s Star Wars!”

Back to the Future

Back to the Future II (Seriously)

Husband: “Which one’s your favorite of the three?”

Crying Wife: “This one!” (followed by uncontrollable tears.)

You can check out more at their website, Cryingwife.com.

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I mentioned on Twitter a while back that this was the worst year of movies in a long, long time. Today, I disagree with that statement. I don’t think there were many, if any, GREAT movies this year. To my mind, there were no all-time classics like Eternal Sunshines or Kung Fu Hustles or City of Gods. However, there were more very good films than I remember there being in a long, long time. I usually end up filling out my top ten of the year list with some movies I just kind of like. This year I like them all very much – and I even like a lot of movies that didn’t make the cut, like Observe & Report, District 9, and Drag Me to Hell. So I actually think it was a good year for films. I apologize to all of you I argued with on Twitter. You were right.

All that said, there are a few movies I wasn’t able to see this year, mostly of the foreign and difficult-to-get-on-DVD variety. I was shooting a movie for a few months, so missed out on some things. For instance, I haven’t seen Haneke’s The White Ribbon yet. Being that I’m a big fan of Funny Games, and an admirer of Cache, I’d really like to see it.  What I HAVE seen are almost all of the mainstream, critically-acclaimed films, American Oscar nominees, etc.

So, of that group, here are my favorite movies of 2009:

11. Star Trek

10. Zombieland

9. Anvil: The Story of Anvil

8. The Fantastic Mr. Fox

7. Adventureland

6. The Hangover

5. Avatar

4. The Hurt Locker

3. Up

2. Moon

1. In the Loop

Being that I know you all pretty well, there are a couple of questions I’m certain you’re going to ask, so let me just answer them now:

Why the Hell isn’t District 9 in your Top Ten?

I enjoyed District 9 and thought it was a well made film. But it did something that almost ruined the film for me – it set rules for the structure of the movie (it was a documentary), and then completely changed those rules part way through the film (that is, it was being shot as if it was a documentary, but suddenly had scenes where a documentary crew couldn’t possibly be, like the inside of the aliens’ home.) I haven’t talked to a filmmaker yet who wasn’t irritated by this cheat. It was a sloppy move that took me outside of the film. That said, it’d still be in my top 15.

Avatar? Really? That’s a gay choice.

Honestly, I fucking loved Avatar. All I heard before I saw it was how poor and simplistic the story was. Yes, it wasn’t the greatest script ever, but I found it simple more than simplistic, more in the manner of a Pixar film like Finding Nemo. Plus, I thought the ideas were exciting and smart, the filmmaking was incredible, and it was one of the most astoundingly beautiful films ever. All of that made up for any lack in the story or acting department – and, again, I didn’t think those things were as problematic as a lot of other people did.

Okay, let the hazing commence – here, on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

James

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