Bryan Appleyard takes a look at the artists who died in 2007 for The Times, and says a few infuriating things about the state of comtemporary filmmaking in the process. The thrust of the piece is a bit of Summer 2007 nostalgia: “The deaths of Antonioni and Bergman drew painful attention to the lack of great European auteurs.” Post-colonial angst is SO exhausting, but let’s engage with it anyway, shall we?

In assessing the year’s disappointments, Appleyard lumps Quentin Tarantino in with Francis Ford Coppola and Philip Roth as artists “who did not die but, somehow, faded.” He dismisses Tarantino on the grounds that Kill Bill was “dismal” (although, both critically and commercially, it was undeniably successful, at least in the States). Death Proof also gets an unrealistic drubbing. In calling Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse “not so much a film as an act of pathological self-indulgence [which] convinced even some of his most devoted fans that the game was up,” Appleyard ignores the fact that Death Proof, which beat out films like Sweeney Todd, The Lives of Others and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead in indieWIRE’s comprehensive 2007 critics poll, is widely considered to be the chunk of Grindhouse that could actually stand on its own.

When Appleyard moves on to consider candidates for The New Film Auteur (with a straight face, as if there’s going to be an election, or maybe a competition show on Bravo), his logic betrays even more personal bias.

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• In lieu of a more traditional 2007 Top Ten, Variety has taken the conspicuously bloggy tactic of presenting the same information with a negative spin, publishing their picks for the Top Ten Things That Didn’t Happen over the course of the last 12 months. Nice idea in theory maybe, but in practice, it’s sort of an exercise in existential futility. Item #2 is “The WGA would keep working through the end of the year.” Are we sure that didn’t happen more than any of the eight things below it that didn’t happen? If something doesn’t happen in a forest, can Variety hear it? Etc. What a conversation starter!
• Meanwhile, the WGA strike took the top spot on the American Film Institute’s list of things that *did* happen in 2007; its happening was deemed more than Iraq movies or the iPhone. And finally, to make the triumvirate of meaningless distinctions complete, The Hollywood Reporter has declared “Technology” to have been “the biggest Hollywood story in 2007.”
• There Will Be Blood made $67,951 on its first day in release, which is pretty much beyond reproach for a film with a running time of 2.5 hours, opening on just two screens. On a Wednesday.

• Above: Jim Emerson’s Top Ten of 2007, presented as a tribute to both the dearly departed Michelangelo Antonioni, and the striking writers.
• “After I saw Cabaret my life was never same. I wanted to move away from home, and become Sally Bowles.” AMC’s Future of Classic blog asks burlesque dancers to name their favorite classic films.
• Mike Jones at The Circuit has named Telluride the Best Film Festival of 2007. An example of the fest’s power: “Before it won Venice, Redacted was despised at Telluride. Before it was everyone’s sweetheart, Juno was loved at Telluride. Similar to the best of Telluride’s previous years, the early talk forecast the two films’ trajectories.”
• Click here to watch the entirety of last Friday’s episode of Charlie Rose featuring Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis, which I mentioned near the end of this post. Via The Playlist.
• indieWIRE has posted the Top Ten lists of 20-something bloggers, filmmakers and industry types, including contributions from Matt Dentler, Aaron Katz, Michael Tully and yours truly. We’ll have more on the First Annual Boxing Helena Award in next week’s podcast.

• Your Christmas weekend time suck is here, in the form of indieWIRE’s massive 2007 Critics Poll. There Will Be Blood takes top honors, but as usual, the real fun lies in investigating the individual ballots and spotting the idiosyncrasies. Behold Andrew Bujalski’s single vote for Best Supporting Actor! Marvel at the critic who gave almost equal love to Ken Jacobs and Blades of Glory! But before you do, decide whether you’re thrilled or infuriated to see Southland Tales land ten full places ahead of Atonement (I’m the former. I think.)
• Speaking of There Will Be Blood, critics poll participant Filmbrain has posted some “sketches, fragments, and other half-baked ideas” about what he declares is “easily the best film of the year.” His key contention: it’s a love letter to Stanley Kubrick.
• Tomorrow is Burbanked’s second blogoversy, and he’s celebrating with a ten day party.
• Finally, here’s another time suck, if you need a break from all that critic pollery: Marisa Tomei joins Natalie Portman in the ranks of unwitting screencap porn stars. NSFW, via The WoW Report.

At the WOW Report, producer Fenton Bailey names a 42-second TMZ clip of Julia Roberts confronting a cameraman as his favorite movie of 2007. The blurb:

“Julia Attacks!” [The video's actual title is "America's Pissed-off Sweetheart"--Ed.] is a TMZ video in which Julia Roberts chases down and gives a telling off to a paparazzi. Julia — absent from our screens for too long — is completely convincing in this role as an angry mom. The car chase is excellent and the cinematography visceral and immersive. Some moviegoers might be disappointed that this movie is less than a minute long because Julia has her costar turn off the camera before she delivers her speech about children and paparazzi, but most movies are too long anyway.

I love that last last line. Movies are too long, too bloated, too full of filler. If the base motivator to see a Hollywood film is to see a star being a star, then a clip like this reduces it to what’s it’s all about. Julia Roberts asserts her dominance on the celebrity food chain (and thus, in the universe) by convincing a paparazzo to stop plying his trade by turning off his video camera. That she manages to pull it off in twenty seconds of car chase and ten seconds of yelling is all the more impressive.