Lists and Awards: Ehrlich’s 25 and More

One of the most anticipated highlights of lists and awards season is David Ehrlich’s spectacularly edited video countdown of his favorite films of the year. Today sees the 2017 edition that he’s been teasing on Twitter finally go live, and once again, the wait’s been more than well-rewarded. “Continuing a new tradition that seems well-suited for a time when everything feels slightly out of focus and it’s hard to get a grasp on the big picture, I’ve distilled each of my twenty-five favorite films of the year into a single memorable moment,” he writes at IndieWire. I’ve embedded the video below, but do see the article, too, where he writes about each of those twenty-five moments.

And by the way, before you watch, Ehrlich recommends headphones. I’ll second that. They’ll amplify your appreciation of the odd, sometimes quite funny, sometimes surprisingly revealing juxtapositions between these images and the tunes he’s selected.

The question Ehrlich poses for the latest IndieWire Critics Survey: “What is the most overlooked and/or underrated movie of 2017?” Among those naming and explaining are Richard Brody (New Yorker), Mark Harris (Five Came Back), and Tasha Robinson (The Verge).

“What are the best-cast films of the year?” Chris O’Falt: “IndieWire asked fifteen of the top casting directors to nominate films worthy of casting recognition this year.”

Vulture has begun rolling out its top tens, and Sean Baker’s The Florida Project tops David Edelstein’s list: “The eye-popping artificial Florida colors make for the most potent counterpoint imaginable to the uncertainty, the grayness of the characters’ existence. But therein lies the hope. The best film of 2017 by a wide margin.”

Matt Zoller Seitz puts David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return at the top of his list of the ten best TV shows of 2017 (culled from a list of twenty-three shows he’s really liked this year). Of the eighteen one-hour episodes of Twin Peaks, the eighth, “which reconceived the postwar history of the United States in mythological terms starting with the first atom bomb test, is a masterpiece; at least five other episodes are nearly as good.”

And Craig Jenkins writes about his top ten albums.

“It was a strange year for movies, just as it was a strange (to put it mildly) year for the U.S.,” writes Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson. “What looked, at times, to be a year somehow lacking, without a breakaway phenomenon—like Moonlight or La La Land last year—gradually revealed itself to be chock-full of smaller, varied pleasures.” Regarding the top entry on his list of ten, he writes that “no film in 2017 roused me, shook me, or gave me a sense of ragged hope amidst the ruins like [BPM (Beats Per Minute)], Robin Campillo’s stunning and vivacious account of young AIDS activists in early 1990s Paris.”

Here’s an unusual list from the A.V. Club, the “best films of 2017 that we didn’t review.” After all, no publication can cover every single release. But all of these, they promise, “are worth seeing and writing about, better late than never.”

Also: “Something about this year made reading books feel not just crucial, but a little bit transgressive.” The A.V. Club presents its annotated list of “favorite books of 2017.” Friends of 3:AM write about their favorites as well.

The staff at the Playlist has put together a list of the twenty best movie posters of 2017.

Contributors to Slant write about the “Best Video Games of 2017.”

Sound Opinions hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot discuss their top ten albums of the year (62’17”).

And Gorilla vs. Bear ranks its top sixty albums of 2017.

Awards

“The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the ten animated short films that have been selected to advance in the voting process for the 90th Academy Awards,” reports Zach Sharf for IndieWire. “The biggest omission from the shortlist is Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts, which makes the director already one of the biggest snubs of the 2018 Oscars.” The lucky ten:

• Daniel Agdag’s Lost Property Office
• Esteban Bravo and Beth David’s In a Heartbeat
• Victor Caire and Gabriel Grapperon’s Garden Party
• Robin Joseph’s Fox and the Whale
• Glen Kean’s Dear Basketball
• Devon Manney’s Cradle
• Dave Mullins’s Lou
• Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata’s Negative Space
• Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer’s Revolting Rhymes
• Chenglin Xie’s Life Smartphone

“Disney-Pixar’s Coco leads all projects with thirteen nominations at the 45th annual ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Awards,” reports Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew, where he’s got the full list. “Besides Coco, the other nominees in the animated feature category are Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie,Cars 3,Despicable Me 3, and The Boss Baby.”

Garth Davis’s Lion “completed a clean sweep of the technical prizes awarded by the Australian Academy of Cinematographic and Television Arts,” reports Patrick Frater for Variety. “The awards, which range from editing to screenwriting, were presented on Monday at a lunch. The AACTAs in performance categories will be presented at an evening event on Wednesday.”

“Glenda Jackson’s return to the stage after a twenty-five-year career change as a Labour politician has been rewarded with one of the UK’s leading theater awards,” reports the Guardian’s Mark Brown. “Her King Lear at the Old Vic won her the best actress prize at the London Evening Standard theater awards, presented on Sunday evening. The other big winners at what are the UK’s longest-running theater awards, established in 1955, were Jez Butterworth’s play The Ferryman and Andrew Garfield, who won best actor.”

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