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Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2024, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

It is almost impossible, or so it seems to me, to have a conversation about the films of 2024 without first considering 2014. That year, many of us wondered where cinematic language was headed, especially given our recent experiences: Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color (2013), Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012), and the revolutionary Terrence Malick’s adventure The Tree of Life (2011). What more was there to be said, if anything at all? But then, Paweł Pawlikowski presented Ida, a quiet yet audacious black-and-white, 4:3-ratio, minimalist film, and we thought the possibilities for great cinema were infinite, and that we really could have a masterpiece every year.

Ida, in any case, was and still is, something more than a masterpiece: it’s a classic, and as such, a reminder that good cinema,...

Martin Scorsese has had a great influence over countless filmmakers who have picked up cameras in the last forty or so years, and while it might be easy to think of him as the eternal granddaddy of cinema, there was a time when he was just as confused as every other youngster out there, unsure of what he wanted to say or how he wanted to say it. That was, until he saw Bernardo Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution at the New York Film Festival, presented to him like a gift from up above. Promoting the phenomenally successful Killers of the Flower Moon at the BFI London Film Festival, Scorsese caught up with local cinephile Edgar Wright to discuss his monumentally influential career, shedding some insight into just how this obscure little gem from 1964 got him going, to begin with.

“They’re gonna put me in the movies,” Ringo Starr sang on The Ed Sullivan Show as the Beatles covered Buck Owens’ hit “Act Naturally.” The 1965 appearance featured songs from the group’s new film, Help!, director Richard Lester’s send-up of James Bond movies and other elements of spymania, as well as a follow-up to the greatest jukebox movie ever made, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Both films put the rhythm up front. It was natural.

Prior to the nationally broadcast live performance, Starr prepared the audience by introducing himself as “all nervous and out of tune,” and smiled embarrassedly without missing or slowing a beat through his propulsive country swing. Starr was a natural performer, a locally famous beat-keeper in Liverpool before joining the Beatles, whose rhythm patterns had a character which set him apart from other drummers. His beats had personality. As the song says, he played the...

There is something to be said for unbridled ambition. No matter its accepted outcome, no matter how it scores at the box office or what instantaneous praise it receives, a film can still be admired for its fearless commitment to scope and the best of its intentions. If it’s passionately executed with personal conviction, even a faulty feature can be respected for aspiration alone. And if said film happens to also be very good, so much the better. This, on more than one occasion, has defined the best of Bernardo Bertolucci, a filmmaker who thrived in the realization of such grand cinematic enterprise. From Before the Revolution (1964) to Last Tango in Paris (1972), from The Conformist (1970) to The Dreamers (2003), his films have been fortified by a visual potency and an overt thematic prominence—big ideas, brazenly presented. Even when they’re a tad self-important, the stirring spirit of his work is impressively demonstrable.

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies that have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Bernardo Bertolucci (1941-2018) - Filmmaker. He won two Oscars for writing and directing The Last Emperor, which also won Best Picture. He was also nominated for helming The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris. His other movies include The Dreamers, Stealing Beauty, 1900, Little Buddha, The Sheltering Sky and Before the Revolution. Early in his career, he served as assistant director for Pasolini's Accattone! He died on November 26. [THR] Dominique Blanchar (1927-2018) - Actress. She co-starred in...

Above: illustration by Jean-Marie Troillard.When the great arthouse impresario Dan Talbot passed away last week, just two weeks after the announcement of the closing of the Lincoln Plaza, his flagship Upper West Side multiplex, it was a double-blow to the New York film community. To me and to a number of my friends and colleagues it was also a deep personal loss. Dan had given me my first job in New York in 1990 at his distribution company New Yorker Films, hiring me first to type up their annual catalogue and then to be an assistant to himself and his right-hand man, Jose Lopez. Ironically, it was a New York Times article about the closing of another of Dan’s theaters, the Cinema Studio, that alerted me not only to Dan and to New Yorker Films, but also to the whole concept of film distribution. Dan took a chance on...

Daniel Talbot, a distributor and exhibitor of enormous influence over specialized exhibition and distribution as well as the international film world, died Friday in Manhattan. He was 91. A memorial was held Sunday, December 31 at the Riverside Memorial Chapel with a capacity audience including many leading New York specialized players. Talbot’s wife and business partner, Toby Talbot, as well as daughters Nina, Emily and Sara attended the memorial, where the family spoke fondly about Talbot’s love for the comedian W.C. Fields.

Another more public post-holiday event marking the closing of the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas is scheduled on January 28 in New York. The last few weeks have seen Talbot’s legacy celebrated with reaction to the unexpected announcement that the six-screen Upper West Side theater would close at the end of January, at the expiration of its lease. Milstein Properties, who have been the Talbots’ co-partners in the theater since...

Influential indie film distributor and exhibitor Daniel Talbot died on Friday morning in New York, his longtime manager at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Ewneto Admassu, announced. Talbot, who was in his early 90s, halted his routine travels to the annual Cannes and Toronto film festivals this year as his health was reported to be in decline. Talbot managed Manhattan’s New Yorker Theater in the early 1960s and in 1965 launched his own indie distribution company, New Yorker Films, to handle the U.S. release of Bernardo Bertolucci’s debut film “Before the Revolution.” Also Read: 'Darkest Hour' Fact Check:...

One of the joys of the New York Film Festival is that for 18 days the greatest international filmmakers descend on Lincoln Center not only to share their most recent films, but to engage in a conversation about their work and career.

This year, two of the greatest living cinematographers, Vittorio Storaro and Ed Lachman, had films at the fest – “Wonder Wheel” and “Wonderstruck” – and for 90-minutes shared the stage with festival director Kent Jones to discuss the craft to which they’ve dedicated their lives. IndieWire has the exclusive video of the entire “Master Class” below.

Lachman has shot a number of the seminal American films of the last the 30 years, including Sofia Coppola’s “Virgin Suicides” and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey,” but it’s been his 15-year collaboration with director Todd Haynes (“Carol”) that has defined his career. Storaro is best know to American audiences for having shot...

The Video Essay is a joint project of Mubi and Filmadrid Festival Internacional de Cine. Film analysis and criticism found a completely new and innovative path with the arrival of the video essay, a relatively recent form that already has its own masters and is becoming increasingly popular. The limits of this discipline are constantly expanding; new essayists are finding innovative ways to study the history of cinema working with images. With this non-competitive section of the festival both Mubi and Filmadrid will offer the platform and visibility the video essay deserves. The seven selected works will be shown during the dates of Filmadrid (June 8 - 17, 2017) on Mubi’s cinema publication, the Notebook. Also there will be a free public screening of the selected works during the festival. The selection was made by the programmers of Mubi and Filmadrid.Telefoni NeriA video essay by Hannah LeißAs a reaction to the...

Abel Ferrara has a taste for trouble equal to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s, but this chronicle of the late film-maker’s final hours is surprisingly restrained

The 40th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s murder brings us this mysterious, flawed movie from the maturing adulte terrible Abel Ferrara, dramatising scenes from the final 24 hours of Pasolini’s life. More importantly, it aspires also to recreate an endgame in his art, a kaleidoscope of ideas citing Pasolini’s modernist repudiation of conventional film-making. “Narrative art, you know, is dead,” Pasolini opines, “and we are in mourning.”

It’s an intriguing, startlingly restrained and even cerebral piece of work from Ferrara, an unimpeachably serious homage, with an assured lead performance from Willem Dafoe – who does look uncannily like Pasolini. With its mix of conversation, interviews, metatextual fantasy and stodgy revolutionary rhetoric, the film looks like a New Wave monument created in Pasolini’s honour,...

An oldie, but a goodie. Open Culture resurfaced this list (below) sent from director Martin Scorsese to a budding young filmmaker. Let's appraise it. Italian directors are well-represented but this list needs some Bertolucci ("The Conformist," for one, though his early "Before the Revolution" makes the cut) and Pasolini ("Salo" or "Teorema" for weaker stomachs). What about Antonioni's "L'eclisse"? The last ten minutes or so, when neither Alain Delon or Monica Vitti show up for their appointed date at a water fountain, are a formally radical must-have for aspiring directors. And no Fellini? Bergman? Come on Marty. There's a real dearth of women on here. Where's Chantal Akerman, director of the mind-blowing "Jeanne Dielman"? Or Agnes Varda, whose "Cleo From 5 to 7" and others have inspired innumerable present-day indie filmmakers. Scorsese seems to be limiting himself to two films per director -- though Godard (why...

The Conformist

Written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Italy, 1970

When first introduced to the improved quality of Blu-ray technology, there were about a dozen films I couldn’t wait to see in the format. These were movies of extraordinary beauty that I knew would surely benefit from the enhanced visual resolution. Now, with the arrival of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist on a stunning new Raro Video edition, another one of those titles can be scratched off the list. What makes this an exciting release, however, goes beyond the look of the picture (though that is paramount). This is, in every regard, one of the greatest films ever made.

The Conformist is a complex chronicle of the tormented, ruthless, and devious Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a rising-through-the-ranks Fascist enforcer. The film is a fascinating look at the extent to which one will go to escape the past, fit in with the present,...

It has been said that very few (modern) filmmakers are able to succinctly capture the enigmatic nature of women on film. Matias Pineiro is most assuredly one such filmmaker. In his (thus far) brief filmography, complex, spirited females are always at the forefront of his films, both in the focused frame, and in the often elliptical narratives. Drawing on the works of deceased Argentinean writer/statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in his earlier two films, and then Shakespeare in his later films, Pineiro permeates his canvas with characters taken from some of literature’s most memorable texts. What could have been a stale English lesson, however, has Piniero instead brilliantly transforming the material into something altogether compellingly fresh and intoxicating. This week, Tiff Bell Lightbox is proud to present a retrospective of the master auteur’s work, with the filmmaker in attendance for each of the special screenings.

It is only...

Jennifer Lawrence returns in the phenomenal Catching Fire, but that's not the weekend's only terrific offering, says People's critic. From The Hunger Games to Philomena, here's what to see and what to skip at the movies. See ThisThe Hunger Games: Catching FireHope, as it happens, is contagious. So is rage. With their glorious win over 22 other contestants in the annual televised child murder known as The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) inspired their countrymen with their made-for-tv love. They also unwittingly lit a fuse of rebellion that begins to grow in this deeper, darker...

It often comes as a shock to remember that some of cinema's most revered elders were once young firebrands. Bernardo Bertolucci was only 21 when he directed his first feature The Grim Reaper and 23 when he followed it up with Before the Revolution, one of the best films about the torments of youth. Today, aged 73, the maestro returns to that same subject, in a modest and intimate film – essentially a two-hander set in a cramped basement.

© All rights reserved by afifestpublicity / May 24, 2012.

The American Film Institute announced today that internationally acclaimed filmmaker and Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter Bernardo Bertolucci will serve as its Guest Artistic Director at AFI Fest 2012 presented by Audi. Last year.s Guest Artistic Director was Pedro Almodóvar, and David Lynch, an alumnus of the AFI Conservatory, held the role in 2010.

Bernardo Bertolucci began his career as an assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini on Accattone and directed his first feature film at the age of 21. His second film, Before The Revolution (1964), was released to great acclaim and he has continued to shape the way the world looks at cinema. His 1970 film The Conformist with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli premiered in Berlin and received Bertolucci.s first Oscar nomination, and his 1972 film Last Tango In Paris with Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Léaud received another two Oscar nominations. His fame...

The European Film Academy has announced that Bernardo Bertolucci will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the European Film Awards. The ceremony will take place December 1, 2012 in Malta. Full press release below. In recognition of a unique and dedicated contribution to the world of film the European Film Academy takes great pride in presenting Bernardo Bertolucci with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Bernardo Bertolucci began his career as an assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini on Accattone and directed his first feature film at the age of 21. His second film, Before The Revolution (1964), was released to great acclaim and he has never since then stopped to shape the way we look at cinema. His 1970 film The Conformist with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli premiered in Berlin, won the Italian David di Donatello for Best Film and received Bertolucci’s first Oscar nomination and his 1972 film Last Tango In Paris with Marlon Brando,...

Young filmmaker Colin Levy reached out to Martin Scorsese asking him for some film recommendations to further his cinematic education and Scorsese's assistant responded with the following list and a note that read: Mr. Scorsese asked that I send this your way. This should be a jump start to your film education! The list is comprised of 39 foreign films and I've gone through and put a little check mark next to those that I have personally seen, which, I guess, means I have 19 films I need to begin to explore. Of those I haven't seen, Rocco and His Brothers and Children of Paradise are two I've meant to watch for a long time. Rocco was one Francis Ford Coppola told me was one of his favorite films back when I interviewed him for Tetro and I've still yet to give it a watch. (slacking) According to the post from Colin at Reddit,...

(Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970, Arrow Academy, 15)

The son of a poet and film critic, Bernardo Bertolucci, Italian enfant terrible, did his best work in the 1960s and 70s, directing his first film, The Grim Reaper (a Rashomon-style thriller) in 1962, aged 22; his first minor masterpiece, Before the Revolution, three years later; and his finest film, The Conformist, in 1970. Based on Alberto Moravia's novel and set in 1938, The Conformist has an edgily sinuous performance by Jean-Louis Trintignant as a tormented middle-class Italian intellectual marrying a mindless beauty and setting out to be the perfect fascist – to assuage the guilt arising from his latent homosexuality and his father's insanity. Volunteering as an assassin for Mussolini's secret police, he's dispatched to Paris to kill a liberal professor. Fashionably for its time, the film attempts to reconcile Marx and Freud. But its real strength resides in the use of modern architecture and art deco to create the Italy of the 1930s,...

[1] Today's Amazon Gold Box Deal of the Day is The Ultimate Matrix Collection Blu-Ray for $25.49 [2] ($65 msrp). The Gold Box Deal of the Day is only good for 24 hours and will disappear at midnight. So act fast. This seven-disc collection contains the complete Matrix Trilogy in high definition video and lossless high definition 5.1 audio (Dolby TrueHD) — each with hours of special features including Whv's ground-breaking In-Movie Experience. The Animatrix, the nine-part anime film, three additional bonus discs include more than 35 hours of additional features and a digital copy of The Matrix. Full list of special features after the jump. Also, they have a one day only deal on It's A Wonderful Life, selling the Blu-ray for only $13.99 [3] ($30 msrp) and the two disc collector's DVD set for only $8.99 [4] ($20 msrp). Disc #1 - The Matrix (1999) In-Movie Experience Written introduction by the Wachowski brothers Philosophers commentary by Dr. Cornel West, Ken Wilber Critics commentary by Todd McCarthy,...

Editor's Note: in this new series we're exploring Oscar nominated or Oscar winning contributions to the horror genre to get you in the right mood for Halloween. For this edition I've invited first time contributor Mayukh Sen, to offer up his provocative thoughts on an Oscar winner -Nathaniel.

Here lies... Jonathan Demme's early career. There was a time when he was the most promising young American director of his time. But we lost all his potential the minute he won his Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Demme was a humanist in an era that desperately needed one. He loved people, and he possessed grace, sensitivity, and a lack of condescension toward his working-class characters. Kind of like McCarey or Renoir, he had a way of illuminating human flaws and virtues without passing judgment and was capable of expressing patience -- talents many directors lack. Demme's universe seemed...

[1] Today's Amazon Gold Box Deal of the Day is The Ultimate Matrix Collection Blu-Ray for $26.99 [2], 58% off the $65 msrp. The Gold Box Deal of the Day is only good for 24 hours and will disappear at midnight. So act fast. This seven-disc collection contains the complete Matrix Trilogy in high definition video and lossless high definition 5.1 audio (Dolby TrueHD) — each with hours of special features including Whv's ground-breaking In-Movie Experience. The Animatrix, the nine-part anime film, three additional bonus discs include more than 35 hours of additional features and a digital copy of The Matrix. Full list of special features after the jump. Disc #1 - The Matrix (1999) In-Movie Experience Written introduction by the Wachowski brothers Philosophers commentary by Dr. Cornel West, Ken Wilber Critics commentary by Todd McCarthy, John Powers, David Thomson Cast and crew commentary by Carrie-Anne Moss, Zach Staenberg and John Gaeta Composer commentary by Don Davis with music-only track The Matrix Revisited...

Continuing their stellar year, BFI are set to release Bernardo Bertolucci's debut film, Before the Revolution this August 22nd.  This will be the first release of the film on Blu-ray as far as I'm aware, and BFI's track record with high definition releases is stellar.  As usual, BFI have stacked the release with extra features, including a conversation with Bertolucci, though strangely all of the extras are only on the DVD.  This still looks to be a wonderful release and I'm hoping I'll get the chance to tell you guys about it when it becomes available.  Details on the release, which is to be Region B locked, and pre-order information can be found below.Before the RevolutionA film by Bernardo BertolucciStarring Francesco Barilli, Adriana Asti2-disc setAfter...

Foreword:

Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 film The Dreamers is a tribute to cinema. It’s mainly a tribute to the European school of cinema which had been critically acclaimed and inspirationally followed across the globe. Hence it doesn’t need any time to hook onto it. For film buffs of India and the other Third world countries, this surely works – nostalgia and associations flood in making the viewing experience quite worthwhile in most of the case. This also reminds of two very interesting and subtly different films which also pay tribute to the motion picture – Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1998) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Once Upon a Time, Cinema (1992). The latter pays tribute to the Iranian film history of the silent age. It’s quite unfortunate that in spite of being the biggest cinema industry of the world, it’s hard to find an epical re-take of the country’s cinematic ingenuity.

It's not a freedom fighter atop a tank but a young bohemian woman in Benghazi reviving a carnival banned by Gaddafi and singing songs of protest. Ann Marlowe reports on an extraordinary utopian moment in the free city.

The most interesting news here in Free Libya isn't war but peace-and cultural vitality. Signs everywhere say, "We began it peacefully and we will end it peacefully," and the utopian social transformation is much more interesting than the stalemated war.

Related story on The Daily Beast: The PR Hacks Behind Facebook's Google Smear

The front line was here on March 19, when Gaddafi's troops and lijan thureah, or local revolutionary committees, killed fighters defending the city. And on the 20th, they deliberately struck civilians, sometimes aiming RPGs at family cars. Dr. Hajer al Jahmi, 27, a third-year emergency medicine resident at Benghazi Medical Center, saw a huge sack of human body parts brought into the ER.

Acclaimed Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci is to receive the first annual 'Honorary Palme d'Or' award at this year's Cannes Film Festival. While the prize has previously been handed out to filmmakers who had never won the Palme d'Or throughout their careers, Bertolucci's tribute will mark the beginning of a new annual tradition at the festival where honorary awards will be bestowed. Bertolucci first gained notoriety in the 1960s with a series of films, including La commare secca and Before The Revolution, which questioned accepted norms in Italian society at the time. The controversial Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, brought Bertolucci to international prominence and earned him his first 'Best (more)...

When Carlos Saldanha's 3D animation opened on the first warm weekend of 2011, there was only ever going to be one winner ...

The wipeout

Sunny skies are the mortal enemy of cinemagoing in the UK, and that's never truer than on the first properly sunny weekend of the year. Most people choose parks and gardens over darkened multiplexes on any fine day, but when it's the first to come along in many months, it's really no contest.

The executives at 20th Century Fox will be cursing the weather gods now that the weekend numbers are in for Rio, the studio's big animation of 2011, which took £1.52m including £109,000 in previews. That's by no means a flop, but hopes will have been much higher for a talking-animal 3D animation overseen by Carlos Saldanha, who directed or co-directed all three Ice Age movies. The first Ice Age – which, like Rio, did not have...

The 22-year-old Bertolucci made an impressive debut in 1962 with The Grim Reaper, a Rashomon-style thriller about the murder of a prostitute scripted by his mentor, Pier Paolo Pasolini. But it was his second film, Before the Revolution (1964), now rereleased to accompany a well-deserved retrospective at London's BFI Southbank, that made his name. Semi-autobiographical, partly inspired by Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, and set in 1962 in his native Parma, the film is deeply indebted to the French new wave and centres on Fabrizio, a 20-year-old introspective haut bourgeois student both attracted to and repelled by middle-class conformity and revolutionary Marxism. He has an incestuous affair with his attractive young aunt (a recurrent theme in Bertolucci's work), and it is altogether a dazzling film, both continually vital and something of a time capsule. I think, however, that his best movies are The Conformist, The Spider's Stratagem, the first part of 1900, and,...

Armadillo (15)

(Janus Metz, 2010, Den) 105 mins

After last year's Restrepo, another fine documentary from the Afghanistan front line, bringing us closer than we'd like to a war we'd rather not think about. Again we track a tour of duty with its mix of boredom, adrenaline and futility, but the key differences here are that they're Danish soldiers (who seem a lot less uptight about access) and the camerawork is better than in most fictional war movies. As a result, we're brought right into the soldiers' lives, and pitched into the heart of battle when things really heat up.

Cold Fish (18)

(Sion Sono, 2010, Jap) Makoto Ashikawa, Denden, Mitsuru Fukikoshi. 146 mins

Not your average serial killer, this one's sociable, presentable and a big fish in the fishkeeping world – even if there's a grisly explanation for his success. As we follow a meek colleague drawn into his demented orbit, proceedings get uglier and messier,...

Source Code (12A) (Duncan Jones, 2011, Us/Fra)

Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright. 93 mins.

After cult hit Moon, Jones goes for the mainstream with a conceptual thriller that makes Christopher Nolan look soulless but would have Hitchcock scratching his head. The Deja Vu-meets-Groundhog Day plot forces Gyllenhaal's GI to relive the last eight minutes of a train bombing over and over till he finds the terrorist (experimental technology – don't ask). That shouldn't leave much time for relationships, big questions or light relief but it's all squeezed in, just about…

Sucker Punch (12A)

(Zack Snyder, 2011, Us/Can) Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone. 110 mins.

Zack Snyder shows you his fantasy, which turns out to consist of fetish-outfitted babes in scenarios out of computer games and women's prison movies, to a diluted alt soundtrack. This man needs help.

Oranges And Sunshine (15)

(Jim Loach, 2010, UK/Aus) Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving,...

Bernardo Bertolucci, London

In his early career, which forms the first half of this two-month retrospective, Bertolucci seems to have lived for danger. He was fascinated by eroticism and politics and the connections between them, which, combined with his fluid visual moves, made his films pulse with life. Even before the scandalous Last Tango In Paris, he'd dealt with fascism, murder, terrorism, incest and other hot potatoes in films like The Conformist, La Luna, The Spider's Stratagem and Before The Revolution. His career went widescreen and international, with the star-studded 1900, Oscar triumph The Last Emperor and so on, but the visual mastery never deserted him. Bertolucci himself is in conversation next Saturday and curator David Thompson gives a talk on 14 Apr.

BFI Southbank, SE1, Thu to 30 Apr

Radiophonic Weekend, Bristol

The BBC's unlikely incubator of British electronica gets an aptly boffinish-yet-uber-cool tribute, with films, music, talks and cosmic oscillations from...

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 finally dropped last month and it was like Christmas in February. Whether you’re a fan of the superhero comic genre, Capcom gaming scene or just a fan of a good fighting game, this game is a definite buy.

Once upon a time, there were these glorious places called arcades. Before the revolution of online gaming, the only “party chat” was the guy behind you trash talking while you played your current opponent. When Marvel vs. Capcom 2 hit the scene it was a smash hit. Now, 10 years later, we are finally blessed with a sequel that matches and in several ways surpasses its predecessor.

Much like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (MvC2), Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (MvC3) has kept the six button system but they have simplified the gameplay just a bit more to suit the casual gamer. This concise button scheme is ideal for the casual gamer to pick...

For the fifth year running, we tally up the Other Year's Best -- the films that made it to DVD (or onto U.S. home video in any format) but not to theatrical, which generally meant they posed too much of a marketing challenge. As in, the films were either too odd, too original, too archival, too subtle, too something. DVDs still stand as our go-to B-movie-distribution stream of choice, although as I've barked every year, video debuts are still not eligible for any year-end toasts or trophies. Except ours.

10. "Parking" (Chung Mong-hong, Taiwan) At first blush a Taiwanese riff on "After Hours," this measured little odyssey is more realistic, evoking those all-night odysseys we've all had, when time evaporates and tiny logistical dilemmas drive us insane and eventually it's morning and something about our lives is different. Chung doesn't spring for laughs when you think he will -- he holds back,...

A Russian organisation has argued that there should be a National Toilet Day to boost the country's worldwide lavatorial standing to its pre-revolutionary levels. According to Afp, the public toilets in the capital Moscow have been the subject of much criticism. Vladimir Moksunov, head of the Russian association of lavatory manufacturers, said: "Before the revolution of 1917 the quality of toilets in Russia was the best of the world. "But now we (more)...