MCN Columnists

By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Critics Top Ten List 2010: Eric Kohn

Eric Kohn
indieWIRE

1.  Dogtooth

2.  Exit Through the Gift Shop

3.  Winter’s Bone

4.  Daddy Longlegs

5.  Another Year

6.  Animal Kingdom

7.  Catfish

8.  Alamar

9.  Prince of Broadway

10.  Enter the Void

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2 Responses to “Critics Top Ten List 2010: Eric Kohn”

  1. Joe Me says:

    I know you work for IndieWire, but you can’t seriously think these little movies are the best movies of the year. Some of them should make the cut, yes, But i feel like in working where you do, you’ve purposely skewed your results to fit your market. And yes, i know that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and can have their own favorite movies that speak to them for whatever reson, but this list is just a joke, in my opinion, unless the words “My favorite ten” replace the words “Top ten” that is titled above.

    Here’s my pointless “Favorites” list as well.

    1. The Social Network
    2. Black Swan
    3. The Town
    4. The Ghost Writer
    5. Winter’s Bone
    6. Inception
    7. Animal Kingdom
    8. The Square
    9. Somewhere
    10. The Killer Inside Me

    Ok, ny list sucks too, though it could change because I havent Seen Dogtooth, Blue Valentine, True Grit, or The Fighter yet. Though Dogtooth looks a bit like a foreigners pathetic attempt at making a Wes Anderson movie from the trailer alone. Still interesting though. And yes, i know i use the word though too much.

  2. Chris says:

    If The Town is one of the best “big” movies of the year, Eric shouldn’t have to try very hard to “skew” his list.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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