... FOR "THE DAWNING OF CINEMA MAGIC"

As a warm-up for the Documentaries entry in our "Best Of The Decade" series (due in a few days - I promise), I thought I'd treat you (or re-treat you, for those already in the know) to just a few of the earliest recorded films in history - five clips, to be exact. These are nifty little glimpses of everyday life - some only a couple seconds long - that were mind-blowing to audiences of the day. (In other words, they made lots and lots of money. Nickels of it, as a matter of fact.)

Some of you might be asking, "How come these things are so darn short?" Well, that's because the technology was just in its infant stages. After all, "motion pictures" are just that: a series of frames played in sequence, one after another at high speed, to give the illusion of actual movement. These clips are the earliest example of that. Innovative minds such as Eadweard Muybridge, William Kennedy Dickson, and Thomas Edison invented the camera equipment that helped usher in the new age of cinema as we know it.

... FOR "'WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE' AND THE RISKY BUSINESS OF FILM ADAPTATIONS"

Adapting books into film can be a tricky business. Especially when that book is a much-loved children's classic. Especially when that children's classic is less than 50 (written) pages long.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Cat In The Hat, The Polar Express - all books we've loved since childhood, turned into Hollywood features of wildly varying quality. A big reason these adaptations fail artistically is because of the padding: Since movies these days run at least seventy to eighty minutes (any shorter and they'd qualify as a "short"), filmmakers are forced to figure out how to bloat these books to feature length. And in doing so, they usually stray from the tone of the original story - what made the book such an enduring classic to begin with.

... FOR "THE BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE" - PART 3

Genre:

COMIC BOOK

Defined:

Whap! Biff! Pow! Any film that's been adapted from a comic book, comic strip or graphic novel qualifies as a Comic Book movie. While genre films had been popular before (Superman in 1978, Tim Burton's Batman in 1989), it wasn't until the Noughties that they gained any real momentum, when the success of Fox's ensemble X-Men (2000) had studios clamoring for their next blockbuster franchise. Titles ranged from the well-known (Spider-Man, Hulk) to the barely-heard-of (The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Would it surprise you to learn that not all Comic Book movies are about superheroes? Subgenres also include Comedies, Period Dramas, even Science-Fiction. And they're not just for kids anymore.


The Top Five:

5. Sin City (Robert Rodriguez / Frank Miller, 2005)

A unique, one-of-a-kind experience (though admittedly not to everyone's taste), taken almost shot-for-shot from Frank Miller's seminal graphic novel series. The cast acted out scenes, on minimal sets, with backgrounds added digitally during post-production to match Miller's panels. Then the images were converted to stark blacks and whites, with colorized objects dotted throughout the film. The result is one of the most visually striking movies I've ever seen. Director Robert Rodriguez seems liberated by the process; as usual, he shot and edited the movie himself, but here, unlike the gee-whiz, Hey-guys-I'm-making-a-movie mentality of his Mariachi and Spy Kids trilogies, he's got such firm control over his environments that the effect is breathtaking. And while I don't think there's really much to it beyond its visual style, as an exercise in literal book-to-screen translation, it's to kill for.

... FOR "HOLLYWOOD'S BIGGEST NIGHT" (aka "THE OSCARS") - UPDATED!

As a diversion from the fact that you're anxiously awaiting Part 3 of our "Best Of The Decade" list (which, again, is taking too long to finish)...

So the 82nd Annual Academy Awards are tomorrow night, Sunday, March 7th. At last. I was going to write something about it, just for the sake of writing about it, but a funny thing happened: I forgot the stupid things were even on.