frankie1

Greetings one and all. It’s a pleasure to be back at last.

First off, apologies for the prolonged hiatus. Not to go into too much detail but a busy fall movie season + churning out reviews and regular columns for my fulltime gig at GIANT Magazine (on newstands almost everywhere–pick it up, people!) + site-crippling spam issues = mucho time away from NYC Film Critic.com. I wish I could promise more regular updates, but the fact is that most of my writing time goes towards GIANT, Film Journal and any other paying gigs that come my way. However, I will try to be better about linking to all this other content though and will attempt to post original musings here and there when I can.

Speaking of content, I’m sure all of you are wondering: “Hey Ethan, what were your favorite movies of 2008?” or “Hey Ethan, which performances did you think absolutlely sucked in 2008?” Well, guess what! I wrote about all that stuff over at Giantmag.com. Links to my various year in review pieces are below. I’ll also add a direct link to my archive at Giant so you can always pop over there to see what I’m posting. Tomorrow, for example, brings my weekly DVD column as well as my Top 9 Things to Look Forward To in ’09 list–because we all love lists, right? Thanks for your readership and I promise that I won’t disappear again…at least not for three months anyway…

Like I said, a link to the actual write-ups are below, but if all you want is a list, here’s my Top 10 of 2008:

1) Che (Steven Soderbergh; in theaters this month)
2) Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman; in theaters now)
3) Speed Racer (The Wachowski Brothers; on DVD now)
4) Wall-E (Andrew Stanton; on DVD now)
5) Milk (Gus Van Sant; in theaters now)
6) Reprise (Joachim Trier; on DVD now)
7) The Class (Laurent Cantet; in theaters this month)
8) Up the Yangtze (Yung Chang; on DVD now)
9) The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin; on DVD now)
10) Burn After Reading (The Coen Brothers; on DVD now)

Best and Worst Movies of 2008
Most Underrated Movies of 2008
Most Overrated Movies of 2008
Best Actors of 2008
Best Actresses of 2008
Worst Actors of 2008
Worst Actresses of 2008