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If all the year-end and decade-end lists (even though we realize the decade isn't actually over until 2011) have left you dizzied and depleted, take heart! Perhaps you've missed out on some of the more invigorating, far-sighted list-based ventures. Over at Some Came Running, for example, Glenn Kenny conducted an ingenious and fascinating project, going back and taking a look at the late Manny Farber's Best Films of 1951. Meanwhile, at The Crop Duster, Robert Horton is engaged in surveying the year's best -- in non-chronological order -- from, oh, about 1919 or so, to the present, posting a new list every Sunday. What fantastic delights are to be found in these itemized accounts...

Traditionally (or, perhaps a better word is "statistically"), in order for film to win the Best Picture, it has to also receive director, screenplay, editing and acting nominations. Of the ten BP nominees this year, only "The Hurt Locker," "Inglourious Basterds" and "Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire" were nominated in all the winning categories.

Sure, there have been exceptions. James Cameron's "Titanic" screenplay didn't get nominated, either. And remember the stink when "Driving Miss Daisy" won Best Picture without even a nomination for its director, Bruce Beresford?

Some Muriel history here. She's alive.

In today's New York Times, Manohla Dargis writes:

For almost as long as it's been in existence, the Sundance Film Festival has fended off criticism that it has gone Hollywood. [...]

But let us not be (entirely) cynical. For all its problems, the festival remains one of the most important in the world and the foremost launching pad for American independents.

Both parts of that last sentence are arguable, but if Sundance is (or has ever been) one of the most important film festivals in the world, I hope it's because it retains some power to launch American films, "independent" or otherwise, into the media and consumer marketplace -- and not just because it's a big party in an upscale ski resort town.

Ironically (intentionally?) embedded in the above article, however, was this (un-embeddable) Carpetbagger video about the exclusive swagfest -- the "gifting suites" to which persons of predetermined celebrity are invited and... "gifted" by corporations and boutique merchants. You may want to throw up (I did), but the shameless decadence is something to see. (Does the festival officially cooperate with these ventures? How do they determine who's attending and who's on their lists?)

Meanwhile, Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe says he's never heard more griping about the actual movies being shown: