By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

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Link to the List

Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

1 Milk
2 Slumdog Millionaire
3 The Dark Knight
4 Frost/Nixon
5 Wall-E
6 Revolutionary Road
7 The Visitor
8 Doubt
9 Rachel Getting Married
10 Man on Wire
Link to the List

Lou Lumenick
New York Post

1 Slumdog Millionaire
2 Wall-E
3 Milk
4 A Christmas Tale
5 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
6 Iron Man
7 Revolutionary Road
8 The Visitor
9 Synecdoche, NY
10 Waltz With Bashir
Link to the List

National Board
of Review

1 Burn After Reading
2 Changeling
3 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4 The Dark Knight
5 Defiance
6 Frost/Nixon
7 Gran Torino
8 Milk
9 Wall-E
10 The Wrestler
* Slumdog Millionaire
Link to the List

Marshall Fine
Hollywood and Fine

1 Revolutionary Road
2 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3 Wall-E
4 Frost/Nixon
5 The Visitor
6 Doubt
7 Milk
8 The Wrestler
9 Elegy
10 Happy-Go-Lucky
Link to the List

Kyle Smith
New York Post

1 Slumdog Millionaire
2 Man on Wire
3 Seven Pounds
4 The Dark Knight
5 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
6 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
8 Doubt
9 Rachel Getting Married
10 Funny Games
Link to the List

Shawn Edwards
Fox-TV

1 The Dark Knight
2 Slumdog Millionaire
3 The Visitor
4 Iron Man
5 Miracle at St. Anna
6 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7 The Express
8 Twilight
9 Secret Life of Bees
10 Fling
Link to the List

David Edelstein
NY Magazine

1 Rachel Getting Married
2 Wall-E
3 Happy -Go-Lucky
4 Cadillac Records
5 The Class
6 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
7 Waltz with Bashir
8 Shotgun Stories
9 Doubt
10 Trouble the Water
Link to the List

David Denby
New Yorker

1 Defiance
2 Rachel Getting Married
3 The Class
4 The Wrestler
5 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
6 Wall-E
7 Milk
8 Trouble the Water
9 Revolutionary Road
10 I’ve Loved You So Long
Link to the List

Richard Corliss
Time Magazine

1 Wall-E
2 Synecdoche, NY
3 My Winnipeg
4 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
5 Milk
6 Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7 Slumdog Millionaire
8 Iron Man
9 Speed Racer
10 Encounters at End of World
Link to the List

Anthony Lane
New Yorker

1 The Orphanage
2 The Edge of Heaven
3 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
4 I’ve Loved You So Long
5 We Own the Night
6 Quantum of Solace
7 Iron Man
8 The Wrestler
9 Changeling
10 Wall-E

Richard Corliss | David Denby | David Edelstein | Shawn Edwards | Marshall Fine | Anthony Lane | Lou Lumenick | Nawtional Board of Review | Kyle Smith | Peter Travers

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon