“Every year since 1989, the Library of Congress has selected 25 films to preserve in the National Film Registry, a 600-film (and counting) collection of some of America’s most important achievements in filmmaking,” writes Scott Meslow for the Week, where he’s got an annotated list of this year’s 25 selections. Among them: Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Blake Edwards’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Monte Hellman‘s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Rob Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991), and Andy and Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999).
Richard Brody finds that “the Black List’s list of the year’s ‘most liked’ unproduced screenplays (as published here at ComingSoon.net) frustratingly opaque. There’s no particular reason to be automatically interested in the story of Draft Day, which tops the list (about a football team’s general manager who ‘trades for the number one draft pick’ and ‘must quickly decide what he’s willing to sacrifice in pursuit of perfection as the lines between his personal and professional life become blurred’); if the script is any good, it’s in the particulars.”
The one most have been talking about, though, is Rodham: “During the height of the Watergate scandal, rising star Hillary Rodham is the youngest lawyer chosen for the House Judiciary Committee to Impeach Nixon, but she soon finds herself forced to choose between a destined path to the White House and her unresolved feelings for Bill Clinton, her former boyfriend who now teaches law in Arkansas.”
Melissa Anderson writes up the “10 Movies We’re Excited to See in 2013” list for the LA Weekly.
Best of 2012. Glenn Kenny has not only counted down his top 25, he’s supplemented his annotated list with interviews with the makers of two of his favorites: David Cronenberg (Cosmopolis) and Mia Hansen-Løve (Goodbye First Love).
Artforum hasn’t posted J. Hoberman‘s 12 Best Films of 2012, but Year-End Lists has.
Slate‘s Dana Stevens writes up her 10 favorites of the year in alphabetical order—and adds notes on 2012’s five worst films.
Graham Fuller‘s #1 at Artinfo: Béla Tarr‘s The Turin Horse.
At Time Out Chicago, Ben Kenigsberg’s #1 is Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master; A.A. Dowd goes for Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet—which is Alison Willmore‘s #2 at Movieline. Her #1: Jafar Panahi‘s This Is Not a Film.
Ray Pride and Bill Stamets have posted 18 top fives at Newcity Film. Andrew Schenker wraps his year. William Goss‘s #1 at Film.com: Joe Carnahan’s The Grey.
Supplements to previously mentioned lists and polls: Eric Kohn picks out some of the best comments attached to ballots sent into Indiewire; and the AV Club lists the year’s best scenes and worst films.
And for those who read German, at Perlentaucher, Lukas Foerster, Thomas Groh, Ekkehard Knörer, Maximilian Linz, Elena Meilicke, Nikolaus Perneczky, Jochen Werner each write up a favorite 2012 film that has not yet made it onto a German screen.
The non-film lists. James Wood‘s best books (New Yorker) and Dan Wagstaff‘s favorite book covers; gorilla vs. bear‘s best videos, Pitchfork‘s top 100 tracks and 50 albums, and Andrew Womack‘s top ten albums (Morning News). “2012 Year in Pictures” at the Big Picture: parts 1, 2, and 3. The top 15 posts at Colossal.
Awards. The race for the foreign language Oscar is down to nine: Michael Haneke‘s Amour (Austria), Kim Nguyen’s War Witch (Canada), Pablo Larraín‘s No (Chile), Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair (Denmark), Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano’s The Intouchables (France), Baltasar Kormákur’s The Deep (Iceland), Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s Kon-Tiki (Norway), Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (Romania), and Ursula Meier‘s Sister (Switzerland).
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