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Moments Out of Time 2010

A quality of the light. The play of a shadow. The movement of a hand, a lip, an eye, a branch, a cloud, a field of grass. The tone of a word, a sigh, a groan. The organic geometry of a composition across time and space. These are things that distinguish the extraordinary from the mundane in life and movies. And for the umpteenth year (I've been counting) Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy have taken notice of them, curated and cataloged them, recapitulated them in haiku-like prose. They call it Moments Out of Time, and the 2010 montage is here, at MSN Movies.

Feel free to contribute your own in comments.

A few snippets:

- The wall that is, and isn't, there: "The Ghost Writer"...

- In the hills at night, car lights on a distant curve of road--"The American" and "Let Me In"...

- "You'd do that for me?"--a line spoken to, and later by, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in "The Social Network"; the addressee not getting it in either case...

- "I don't think of them as breasts--just tubes of potential danger"; Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), provider of mammograms in "Please Give"...

- "Monsters": Lovemaking all over the sky...

- "Winter's Bone": The ghastly blue twilight in which Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) and the weird sisters search for Jessup Dolly...

- "Black Swan": Nina, in a moment of especial distraction, freezes backstage as her monstrous dreamtime tormentor appears; he says "Hey...," and walks on by....

- Dad (Adrien Brody) teaching bird-legged Dren (Delphine Chanéac) to dance, "Splice"...

- In "The Kids Are All Right" Jules (Julianne Moore), penitent, nails it: "Bottom line, marriage is hard ... f**kin' hard ... just two people slogging through the s**t year after year ... getting older ... changing ... it's a f**kin' marathon."...

- "A Prophet": the moment when godfather César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) becomes just another schmuck...

- Sign of our times: huge decal of wannabe street artist Thierry Guetta's face plastered over the side of a building in the City of Angels, a nobody's "I exist!" writ large, signifying nothing. "Exit Through the Gift Shop"...

ADDENDUM:

Richard T. Jameson was the editor of Film Comment from 1990 to 2000, and Kathleen Murphy was a writer-in-residence, Film Society of Lincoln Center (and NYFF) programmer and contributing editor of the magazine. The current Film Comment features the magazine's annual critics' poll of the year's best films. Here's the top 50:

1. Carlos

2. The Social Network

3. White Material

4. The Ghost Writer

5. A Prophet

6. Winter's Bone

7. Inside Job

8. Wild Grass

9. Everyone Else

10. Greenberg

11. Mother

12. Toy Story 3

13. Eccentricities of a Blonde-Hair Girl

14. Another Year

15. The Strange Case of Angelica

16. The Kids Are All Right

17. Shutter Island

18. Around a Small Mountain

19. Our Beloved Month of August

20. Ne change rien

21. Dogtooth

22. I Am Love

23. Sweetgrass

24. Black Swan

25. The Father of My Children

26. Boxing Gym

27. Secret Sunshine

28. Bluebeard

29. Enter the Void

30. Inception

31. Alamar

32. The Oath

33. Exit Through the Gift Shop

34. World on a Wire

35. Animal Kingdom

36. Vincere

37. Daddy Longlegs

38. Lourdes

39. Life During Wartime

40. Fish Tank

41. Please Give

42. True Grit

43. Lebanon

44. The King's Speech

45. I Love You Phillip Morris

46. Last Train Home

47. Blue Valentine

48. Hadewijch

49. The Anchorage

50. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

(tip: Hitfix)

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