Happy Holidays

As usual, it has been a very hectic time period, both at home and at the movies. Updates are coming...lots of new reviews, including Avatar, Up in the Air, It's Complicated, The Messenger, Nine, Invictus, Me and Orson Welles, The Road, and more...

...We will also be looking at the widening spread of Top Ten lists, looking at the consistencies and contradictions...and eventually we will unleash our own Top Tens, both for the year and for the -- gulp -- decade, if you can believe it...

...And this very exciting time of year gives birth to another very exciting time: Oscar Time. Wanted to get some early prediction charts posted before the year's end, but that might have to wait until the first of the year...either way, charts are on the way soon. For an early preview, if I had to pick now, I would guess that Up in the Air, Up, Avatar, Precious, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, An Education, Invictus, Nine, and A Serious Man will be the Best Picture nominees in the Academy's newly-minted 10-nominee system. Movies like The Last Station and A Single Man could build momentum and wind up on the list as well. Charts to follow soon...

...The Holiday Box Office is over-the-top nuts, with Avatar continuing to chug along, on its way to being the year's top grosser, Sherlock Holmes continuing Robert Downey Jr.'s recent hot streak, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel adding one more sign of the apocalypse...

...And then, of course, there are the movies. Ah, the movies. Go see them. After all the top ten talk, the Oscar buzz, the box-office analysis, and the awards campaigning, the movies are still there, waiting to be seen. The movies are what this is all about.

See Avatar, because love it, hate it, or not too crazy about it, you must experience it.

Try to seek out The Messenger, as difficult as it might be to do so...it is a remarkable experience.

And see Up in the Air...because barring some random, out-of-the-blue miracle, it is the best film of 2009.

And see everything else that strikes your fancy, because it's the movies...and let's face it, when you are in love with the movies, at this time of year, even the turds are kinda wonderful.