Back on track!

I guess I missed Blogger. Meh.
Well, that’s pretty much it. Simple design will do for now. I’m way too lazy to work on a banner. I know it looks a bit empty, but I like it that way.
As I said earlier, I will now repost my top 15 of the 2006 year. Because that’s verrrryyyy important to me.

The Best Movies of 2006

1. Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee
2. United 93, directed by Paul Greengrass
3. Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg
4. The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese/The Prestige, directed by Christopher Nolan
5. Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by Guillermo Del Toro/Little Miss Sunshine, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
6. Shooting Dogs, directed by Michael Caton-Jones
7. The Wind That Shakes The Barley, directed by Ken Loach
8. The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat
9. Flags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood
10. Superman Returns, directed by Bryan Singer
11. The Secret Life of Words, directed by Isabel Coixet
12. Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuaron
13. The Queen, directed by Stephen Frears
14. Good Night and Good Luck, directed by George Clooney
15. Walk The Line, directed by James Mangold

+ (by alphabetical order) Babel, Capote, Cars, Casino Royale, C.R.A.Z.Y., Jarhead, An Inconvenient Truth, Marie-Antoinette, The New World, Pride and Prejudice, Romanzo Criminale, Tsotsi, The Science of Sleep, V For Vendetta, Volver. Those are the additional 15 worth mentioning, which were all on my list at some point or another, but ultimately did not make it. I really liked them all, though.
Onto the performances now…

Top 5 – Actors

1. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
2. Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
3. Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed
4. David Strathairn, Good Night and Good Luck
5. Eric Bana, Munich

Top 5 – Actresses

1. Helen Mirren, The Queen
2. Penelope Cruz, Volver
3. Sarah Polley, The Secret Life of Words
4. Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
5. Reese Witherspoon, Walk The Line

Those were a bit easier to pick. Philip Seymour Hoffman was such an obvious choice, and so was Helen Mirren. The performances they both pulled off was just too unbelievable to be true. I struggled not to put all my favorites in there (Cillian Murphy and Joaquin Phoenix barely missed the top 5; Abigail Breslin, too). Last but not least, all the outstanding achievers this year, in my humble opinion.

Take a bow…
*Mexican cinematographers Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain, Babel) and Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World, Children of Men).
*Composer Gustavo Santaolalla. Like Prieto, he worked on both Brokeback Mountain and Babel.
*First-time directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, as well as first-time screenwriter Michael Arndt, for Little Miss Sunshine. Hell of a way to start a career!
*Directors Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes The Barley) and Stephen Frears (The Queen), proving that British vets are still the best directors around.
*K.K. Barrett for production designing Marie-Antoinette.
*Daniel Craig (Casino Royale) and Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) for taking on iconic roles with intelligence and care, defying all their critics.
*Danny Huston, for popping out as a supporting role in the best films this year. He starred last year in The Constant Gardener, and this year in The Proposition, Marie-Antoinette and Children of Men. That’s a lot of good films in a row.
*Sacha Baron Cohen, for being the ballsiest, bravest comic act of this year in Borat, an outrageous creation of Cohen himself.
*And finally, Paul Greengrass, for providing a thought-provoking, intensely emotional and much-needed film on 9/11 –without dramatization, political agenda or any patroniziong tone. He’s the filmmaker of our times.