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I put this up on Facebook last week, but I figured it deserved a proper post here. It's been a long while since I recorded a song I wrote myself, and, while I'm not entirely happy with it, it's not too bad.

It is, obviously, based on Hamlet, specifically Act I, Scene V. I was reading this interview with Stephin Merritt, and he was talking about songwriting cliches, like rhyming "dance" with "romance." I started thinking about a love song in which the singer compares himself and his love to various other famous romantic pairs, only the singer would be kind of an idiot and assume that any pair of people he'd ever heard of must be famous lovers, thereby leading to a line in which he'd rhyme "romance" with "Rosencrantz." I fortunately abandoned this idea, but then I started thinking about other Hamlet-themed songs, which led to this one.

As I said, it's not a great song, and I'm not sure at all about the weird percussion in the bridge. For some reason, I wrote the song in E, which is really not a key I can sing, so the vocals are even worse than usual. I also expect someone to give me a hard time about some of those rhymes. "Horatio" and "you say she, oh?" "Serpent" and "usurp, and?" That's just awful.

Last Sunday's Oscars marks my traditional end of the movie viewing season, and is my cue to look at all the movies I saw from last year and try to come up with something approximating a top ten list. Last year I felt fairly apathetic toward nearly everything, even though I saw a fair number of movies. This year I managed to see even more movies, and, for the most part, I actually feel pretty positively about much of what I saw. As usual, the "mediocre" column is pretty hefty, but the "good" and "best" piles are much larger than the "bad" and "worst" piles.

Overall, I managed to see 77 movies released in 2009, 23 of them in the theater. Not too shabby! I actually have enough films that I liked that whittling down to a top ten list is kind of difficult, but here's where I am today.

1. The Box

I am so clearly a sucker for Kelly's particular brand of craziness. I really need to rewatch this one, since I'm not sure I can entirely explain what happened, but I just love the way Kelly takes this incredibly bare bones Matheson story and keeps expanding the backstory until it's turned into this epic, bizarre world. I don't know of any other director who works that way. Even David Lynch, arguably Kelly's chief influence, has been known to rein himself in when working in Hollywood. I mean, Dune's kind of odd, but I can only imagine how weird it would have been if Kelly had directed it.

2. Martyrs

This came out in France in 2008, but it never got a theatrical release here, so I'm counting it as a 2009. Martyrs has the problem that it's one of the best movies I've seen in years, but I can't recommend it to anyone (at least not if I want them to ever talk to me again). It's one of the most disturbing films I've seen, not only on the gore/gross-out level, but on a philosophical and moral level. I also can't think of another film that changes direction quite so abruptly and with so little regard for narrative conventions (and, yet, never suffers from the "this happened, and then this happened" pacing that a lot of films that try to cover a lot of ground, story-wise, do). It's fantastic, but also nearly unwatchable.

3. Pontypool

I'm glad I saw this one twice. The bits that bothered me the first time (most of the third act, really) worked just fine the second time around. The acting is fantastic, the premise is great. I have no complaints. I'm pretty sure it's the film I've recommended to people most often this year. And that opening monologue is pretty much the best opening I've seen this year.

4. Inglourious Basterds

Pretty much everything on this top ten list I feel like I need watch re-watch as soon as possible, but this one is probably #2 as far as "films I feel I need to rewatch to really appreciate." Going in fairly cold, I wasn't really prepared for the formal weirdness going on here. It's not until the last chapter that we get anything that's paced remotely like a normal movie (which, incidentally, is when I kind of felt the movie floundered a bit). I suppose if you have a low tolerance for Tarantino's sense of self-satisfaction in his own ability to write dialogue, this film would be painful, but I have a very high tolerance for watching Tarantino characters doing nothing but talking (or, at least, talking until violence erupts and everyone dies).

5. Two Lovers

Phoenix's performance here is the best performance I saw this year. It would be enough to carry the film, even if the director had no idea what he was doing. Fortunately, Gray does know what he's doing, so all Phoenix has to make up for is Gwyneth Paltrow innate unlikeability. Also, Gray's ability (and determination) to make Queens and Brooklyn look like the New York I grew up watching in the movies is fantastic.

6. A Perfect Getaway

Even on second viewing, I'm pretty convinced this film is cheating a bit, but it's still a clever, fun movie with some really enjoyable performances. I will see pretty much anything Twohy does, even if he's sometimes a little too clever for his own good.

7. Antichrist

I am apparently enough of a sucker for Tarkovsky that even Von Trier impersonating Tarkovsky is enough to put me into that semi-dream state that I enter when watching The Mirror or Solaris. The fact that Von Trier than spins off into horror film territory is perhaps odd, but no odder than the veerings into science fiction that Tarkovsky made. Actually, strike that. That's not true at all. This movie is much weirder and more disturbing than anything Tarkovsky came up with, but I think it's that tension between the gorgeous composition and the troubling content that really makes it work. Again, I need to rewatch this.

8. Un Prophete

This is probably right up there with Goodfellas and the first two Godfathers as my favorite films about organized crime. I love movies that really deal with the day to day mechanics of crime or prison life.

9. The Lovely Bones

I know I am going to get some flack for this one (if anyone ever read this, that is), but I really liked this one. I haven't read the book, which I suspect helps, and I am very, very fond of Heavenly Creatures, so I am clearly an easy mark for Jackson's brand of over-saturated, heart-on-sleeve filmmaking. I don't really care that the premise is pro-death, or that everyone in that town would have to be completely oblivious not to suspect Stanley Tucci, or that the pacing gets really weird at times when years fly by. The whole thing really worked for me.

10. The Hurt Locker

This is now officially the best movie of the year, so I don't really have to defend it, do I?

Runners-up (roughly in order): The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moon, An Education, Whatever Works, Whip It, In the Loop, Sugar, A Single Man, The Limits of Control, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, A Serious Man, Crazy Heart, Taken, Knowing, Trick R Treat, District 9, Collapse, Tetro, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Drag Me to Hell.

I don't really want to spend too long discussing these, but, in case anyone's curious, here's my Worst of the Year list.

10. Nine
9. Surrogates
8. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
7. Pirate Radio
6. Terminator Salvation
5. The Blind Side
4. Julie & Julia
3. Avatar
2. Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
and, without a doubt, the worst movie I saw last year....
1. (500) Days of Summer

Last night we had our more-or-less-annual Oscar party. Last year's got canceled due to illness, so I was hoping things would go better this time around. I never really know what to make food-wise for these parties, but I started coming up with pun-driven foodstuffs based on the ten Best Picture nominees, and, once I came up with six or so, I couldn't really stop. Then, once I had all the puns and recipes in hand, I pretty much had to spend hours Photoshopping movie posters to make tiny little movie posters with the dish names to put on the table. This may have been a bit compulsive, but it looked nice. We had a pretty good turnout, which is always nice, and I figured I might as well document the food part at least.

District 9 Layer Dip

No real recipe on this one, since it pretty much just involves pouring a lot of stuff into a dish. From bottom to top: refried beans, guacamole, green chilis, corn, salsa, black beans, black olives, chopped tomatoes. The ninth layer was shredded cheese, but, since I was trying to make things vegan-friendly, that got served on the side.

Inglourious Batards I worked off the Rustic Bread recipe I found here. I didn't really mess with it at all. I used rye flour and generally stuck to the recipe. I think this is only the second time I've made bread from scratch, and it came out pretty well, though it's a very dense bread. As long as the slices were thin, though, it was quite good.

A Tapenaducation I was kind of surprised to learn how many tapenade recipes include anchovy. Since I was trying to be vegan-friendly whenever possible, that wasn't going to work. I found this recipe online, and, even though the picture didn't look too great, I gave it a shot. I omitted the green olives and did all Kalamata. It took a little tweaking (more salt, more lemon juice), but was pretty delicious, especially on the batards.

The Hurt Latke I've certainly made latkes before, but I've never tried to make vegan ones. I found a few people online who reported some success making it with egg substitute, which we had on hand from a previous party. My usual problem in latke-making is that the potatoes are far too wet. I tried wringing them out as best I could and even let them sit in a warm oven for a while to dry them out, but it didn't seem to help. They still turned out well, even if they finished so late it wasn't quite bright enough to get a decent picture.

Upplesauce Pretty straightforward. Peeled and chopped up about three pounds of apples, dumped 'em in a pot with a little water, and let it cook for about a half hour or so. At some point, I added cinnamon, fresh nutmeg, and pumpkin pie spice. Eventually, it turns into applesauce. Delicious. Good on latkes. Very popular with the tiny guests.

Crème Fraiche-ous I didn't get a picture of this one, since it's the only thing on the menu I didn't prepare, beyond opening up a carton of crème fraiche and scooping it into a bowl. A lousy movie deserves a lousy dish, but I know people like sour cream-y things with their latkes.

Avatarts This was the first dish I made. Eleanor made the pie crust (since she makes a great pie crust), then I rolled out the dough and put it into a mini muffin tin and baked the shells. I used this recipe for the lemon filling, which was good but a lot more custardy than I was expecting. I ended up doubling the amount of lemon juice, since it just didn't taste lemony enough. I chilled them overnight and, just before putting them out, I squirted a little whipped cream on them and topped them with a little lemon curd. Very tasty, but the whipped cream didn't really hold up long at room temperature.

A Serious Flan I was going to go with a more traditional (one might say "serious") flan recipe, but I was a little worried about removing them smoothly from the mini muffin tin I wanted to use. I found this one online, and it sounded delicious, as well as being written specifically for a mini muffin tin. This dish was totally surprising. When I poured it into the tins, it just looked like a cake batter. The top got all golden brown, and they just looked like cupcakes. I was convinced the recipe had gone completely wrong until I cut the first one out. I was totally not expecting the weird translucent, glowing yellow layer, but it was pretty neat looking.

7-Up in the Air Two bottles of 7-Up, half a bottle of Trader Joe's unsweetened blueberry juice, many scoops of vegan coconut ice cream.

The Blind Sidecar Always good to have an alcoholic drink to go with the non-alcoholic one, so made up a pitcher of sidecars (Cognac, Gran Gala, lemon juice). I made about four cups, put it in the fridge, then mixed them up with ice to order, served up with an orange twist.

So, all in all, a significant amount of food, made even more significant by the various things brought by friends (sausage dip, carrot cake whoopie pies, cupcakes, hummus, apple and onion tart, etc.). I'm a little concerned about how I'm going to meet or surpass this next year.

I can't believe this show made it onto the air. I mean, by the time I got around to watching it on Hulu, it had already been canceled, but, really, it's amazing this even made it to pilot. The premise is blatantly absurd (team of past life investigators and their PI help people experiencing past life regressions and help them solve their own murders?), but even stranger is that everyone seems willing to go along with it. I mean, the first episode ends with a SWAT team breaking down somebody's door on the word of a teenage boy who claims to be the reincarnation of a murder victim. How did they get a search warrant based on that? Unless the second episode consists of nothing but the agent who approved that raid getting chewed out by the DA who has to prosecute this case, I'm going to have a very hard time accepting this series at all.

Now, what would be really interesting is if they acknowledged that past life regressions, while vivid, aren't especially accurate. I really liked that BBC special I watched about the young boy with clear, distinct memories of the island he claimed he was from and his previous mother, but who freaked out a bit when they actually took him to the island and found it wasn't quite as he remembered it. To me, that speaks more to cross-parallel world contamination instead of reincarnation (or some sort of time loop theory in which things aren't exactly the same each time around), which would make for a much more interesting show. Though, I guess that's pretty much where Fringe seems to be heading, isn't it?

This got some fairly good reviews, and I know at least one person recommended it to me, but this was just awful. Math suggested the theory that the film was deliberately unfunny so as to underscore the troubling nature of the film, but, based on the one episode of Eastbound & Down I actually made it through, I just think that Hill feels that people saying "fuck" is inherently hilarious. I think Hill thinks he made a really "edgy" black comedy here, but it's not a comedy if it's no one laughs.

All that said, I was kind of impressed with the ending (or pre-ending, I guess). I think if they hadn't had the guy wake up after getting shot and just cut to black, it would have been an impressively jarring ending that might actually have succeeded in driving home an anti-vigilantism message. And, yes, I know Taxi Driver ends with the same kind of weird coda in which everyone's cheering on Travis as a hero for killing those pimps, but it seems even more weird and forced here. I'm sure someone out there has made the same argument as is made for Taxi Driver, that the coda is all in his head, but I'm not buying it.

I knew pretty much nothing about this movie beyond the basic premise, so I had been steeling myself for something pretty unremittingly bleak. The first half hour or so pretty much lived up to expectations (protagonists deliver bad news, a series of guest actors take the news badly, repeat ad. inf.), but after it ran through all the different bad-news-delivering scenarios, it turned into a pretty interesting movie. Mostly I was just glad to see Samantha Morton. I had no idea she was in the movie, so that was definitely a pleasant surprise. I shouldn't be surprised by now to see Harrelson deliver a good performance, but it's always a little unexpected when he delivers a serious dramatic turn. The film got into some weird pacing toward the end - Morton's character disappears for so long that I thought she'd moved out of town while off-screen - but, aside from that, I don't have any real complaints.

So, first off, Meryl Streep is fine. I thought her performance was a bit goofy, personally, reminding me more of Hugh Laurie's characters on Blackadder than of Julia Child. Still, that storyline was fine, if a little thin, though I found Tucci's performance to be more interesting.

I don't know what to make of the other storyline. I mean, obvious, the Julie Powell character is awful. Had I not also seen (500) Days of Summer this year, I'd find her to be the most singularly unlikeable protagonist I've seen in a film in recent memory. The only consolation I had was that I couldn't tell whether Ephron thought she was a horrible person as well. I am not inclined to give Ephron the benefit of the doubt here, since she has a long history of writing stories about horrible people with no sense of awareness of how troubling her characters are, but this movie does dwell rather a lot on what a profoundly self-absorbed and awful person Powell is. I haven't read the book, but I assume it contains a lot of the sort of self-criticism one finds in someone fishing for compliments and reassurance, so maybe the movie's hostility to the character is drawn from that, but I sort of feel like Ephron is the sort of writer who'd tend to tone that down in order to make a more sympathetic main character. The fact that she didn't makes me think that maybe she didn't like Powell any more than I did.

Low expectations here, so this was a pleasant surprise. Bridges and Gyllenhaal are both impressive, and, despite my personal (and completely unwarranted) hostility to T-Bone Burnett, I must say the music is awfully good. Bridges' singing voice is pretty much what I'd have expected, but I was much more surprised by Farrell's voice, which sounded pretty much exactly like a mainstream Nashville guy ought to sound.

I was also kind of intrigued by the parallels to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I mean, a lot of it was probably just how much Bridges was looking like 70's era Kristofferson, but it was a story of a single mom who takes up with a Kristofferson-looking guy, then leaves him over a disagreement over how to treat her child. I guess it's representative of the climate change that now the worst thing you can do to someone's kid is to let him wander a mall by himself instead of beating him.

I think my only real quibble here is that the movie probably should have been set in the mid-80's (when the book was written) in order to make the ages and musical styles match up with actual country music. Either that or actually cast Kristofferson (though that would make for an even creepier age difference).

My wife was feeling pretty flattened by a cold and wanted something dumb, so I figured it was the time for this one. I'm a fairly big Broken Lizard fan, despite their post-Super Troopers work being not quite at the same level (with Club Dread being downright awful), so I'm pretty much willing to watch whatever they do. I'd been dreading this one a bit, but it turned out to be at least partially decent. The first forty minutes or so are pretty enjoyably goofy comedy. Scott's style of comedy meshes nicely with Chandrasekhar's, and the glee with which he does things like strap on a helmet so he can dive at people in a bar fight works very nicely. Knoxville's completely out of place here, and he just feels stiff and insufficiently nutty. The assorted cameos from the Broken Lizard crew are amusing (though the bit in which they re-enact the opening of Super Troopers is kind of an odd choice), so, for a while, the film was moving along nicely as a decent, goofy comedy.

Unfortunately, the entire third act consists of nothing but car chases, which slows things down significantly. I mean, the car stunts are very nicely done. I'm always glad to see the up-on-two-wheels stunt (which has certainly dropped in popularity since my childhood), but there's only so much time I can spend watching cars driving on dirt roads before I lose interest.

I don't know why I put off watching this one so long. I might have lost a little of my enthusiasm for James Gray after watching The Yards and Little Odessa, neither of which did much for me, but this was fantastic. Phoenix's performance is probably one of the best I've seen in years. I don't actually think his announced retirement from acting is for real, but, on the off-chance it is, this is a heck of a film for him to end his career on. This character could so obviously have been done horribly - a lot of actors would read a script about a mentally imbalanced young man who lives in Brighton Beach with his parents and gone for some horrible Woody Allen-inspired caricature, but there is none of that at all here. I was less impressed with Paltrow's performance, mostly because I'm just not a big fan of hers in the first place, so I initially had a hard time really buying her as an irresistible object of desire, but Phoenix managed to sell me on that as well (particularly in that second rooftop scene).

Just as good as Phoenix's performance is Gray's decision to effectively remake We Own the Night as a romantic drama. I mean, obviously, it's not the same note for note, but the main character's arc is very similar. It's particularly interesting given Gray's interest in films that attempt to work against their narrative (which he gets into a bit in this interview from a few years back). It does seem to be pretty much impossible not only to make an anti-war movie, but an anti-violence revenge movie (judging by the misreadings of Taxi Driver, The Godfather, and We Own the Night). Here, though, it's almost impossible to imagine an audience cheering for this ending. It's completely heartbreaking, even if it's visible and inevitable for the last half hour or so, in almost exactly the same way We Own the Night was, but there is no conflict in the audience at all. I mean, I get what he's going for in We Own the Night, and that ending is completely heartbreaking, but there is still so much genre convention pushing the audience toward the pleasure of seeing revenge meted out, that at least part of us doesn't care how much Bobby is destroying his life in its pursuit. Here, freed from the genre constrictions of that film, the conflict disappears, which is really kind of fascinating. It almost feels like Gray made this film just to prove a point.