David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress (the most compelling piece of fiction I've read in donkey's years, a book that practically teaches you how to re-vision fiction as you read it)

 

Selah Saterstrom's remarkable The Meat and Spirit Plan.

 

Remainder, Tom McCarthy's amazing first novel.

 

Francine Prose's Blue Angel.

 

Steve Erickson's Zeroville (may be the best Hollywood novel since Day of the Locust)

 

Robb Foreman Dew's The Evidence Against Her

 

Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land.

 

Peter Ackroyd's The Fall of Troy.

 

Georges Simenon's Dirty Snow.

 

Charles McCarry's The Secret Lovers.

 

Amy Bloom's Away.

 

Walter Kirn's Thumbsucker.

 

Steven Millhauser's Dangerous Laughter.

 

The Beatles Anthology.

 

Morley Callaghan's A Fine and Private Place. Why isn't he more widely known?

 

Ben Tanzer's singular Lucky Man. A wonderful funny-sad bildungsroman about 4 guys trying to become adults.

 

Eric Lax's great new book of interviews, Conversations with Woody Allen

 

And I just read The Beatles' "autobiography," The Beatles Anthology, which is just overwhelming in its joy and depth, a real celebration of THEM.

 

John Williams' Stoner. A truly beautiful, neglected classic.

 

Exit, Ghost, Philip Roth's final Zuckerman novel. What's better than a Zuckerman novel?

 

Charles McCarry's latest, Christopher's Ghosts (he's better than LeCarre, he really is)

 

Richard Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man. Mattheson's best book and one that can be put alongside Verne and Wells. It's that good.

 

I know I am last to the table on this, but I just read East of Eden. What a glorious story! Steinbeck is best when he thinks Big.

 

Don DeLillo's Falling Man (already my choice for novel of the year...I can't imagine a better, more important novel appearing in 2007)

 

Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen (on paper he's still the funniest man alive)

 

Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day (I did too read it all....all 1080 glorious, word-drunk pages of it, a towering achievement, a grand epic of invention and inventiveness and puredee sentence for sentence the best prose on the planet.)

 

Walter Kirn's Up in the Air

 

Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd

 

Cormac McCarthy's The Road (the best piece of fiction I've read this year, maybe his best and that's saying something).

 

Louis Begley's Shipwreck (an elegant, unjustly ignored modern master)

 

Warren Zanes' Dusty in Memphis (a wonderful little exegesis, not only about this glorious album, but about soul music, Dusty Springfield, the South and where music comes from, written in a sharp, smart style.) Also, other fine studies in this wonderful 33 1/3 series: Kevin Courrier's Trout Mask Replica, Franklin Bruno's Armed Forces, Mark Polizzotti's Highway 61 Revisited (actually one of the best books on Dylan I've read.)

 

Richard Power's The Echo Maker (he continues to amaze...the National Book Award Winner).

 

Jonathan Baumbach's B: A Novel

 

Cary Holladay's wonderful new collection of stories The Quick-Change Artist

 

The Manikin by Joanna Scott

 

Charles Baxter's First Light

 

William Gaddis' The Recognitions (what a whopper....to borrow phrasing from Pauline Kael, it makes most other modern novels look like something on the end of a toothpick.)

 

Jacques Prevert's Paroles

 

Contemporary East European Poetry ed. by Emery George

 

Raymond Queneau's whacked-out Exercises in Style

 

Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market

 

Tom Drury's The Driftless Area (a quick read but not one you'll shake quickly...haunting is the word that comes to mind)

 

Diane Johnson's marvelous bio of Dashiell Hammett

 

Philip Roth's Everyman

 

Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People (dag, hes' funny)

 

Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star

 

Muriel Spark's The Finishing School (a perfect novel, in its own small, quiet way)

 

 

Norman Mailer's Marilyn

 

Harry Mulisch's The Procedure

 

Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable

 

John Updike's Couples

 

The crime novels of Ross McDonald, who is every bit as good as Chandler and Hammett but doesn't, for whatever reason, get the same attention. Just finished The Blue Hammer, which is both complex and poetic.

 

Steve Stern's The Angel of Forgetfulness

 

Patrick McGinley's wonderful novels which inexplicably are neglected and all out of print. If you can ferret out a copy of The Trick of the Ga Bolga you will thank me for this note.

 

Iris Murdoch's The Red and the Green (anyone who knows me knows that I think Dame Murdoch is transcendant)

 

Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (yes, it's a book-length poem but is so doggone readable it's a delight...and has a dueling scene that is truly memorable)

 

Bob Dylan's Chronicles Volume One (well, you know how I feel about Mr. D)

 

 

Nick Tosches' Hellfire

 

David Hare's Plenty

 

The best movie I've seen since, um, Black Narcissus: Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. I love all his films but this is his best and the new print they've recently released is gorgeous.

 

The Coen Brothers' return to glory No Country for Old Men.

 

The Spirit of the Beehive (this is such a beautiful film....it's really unlike anything else I've seen)

 

Green for Danger. A neglected British who-dun-it.

 

Pennebaker's documentary Company: The Original Cast Album. I am a straight man. I am a devoted Sondheim fan. Honest.

 

Ozu's Tokyo Story. Subtle, stunning.

 

Breakfast on Pluto, Starting out in the Evening, The Fifth Horseman is Fear, May Fools (Malle), Sleepwalking, Cassandra's Dream, I'm Not Afraid, Lars and the Real Girl.

 

Waitress (totally beguiling, featuring a completely winning performance by Keri Russell....an utter tragedy that Shelly would concoct such a life-affirming movie only to die before ever seeing it released)

 

Malpertuis. This is one whacked-out horror film, a sort of Gormenghast meets Hammer concoction. Anyone else seen this and wanna talk about it?

 

Plan 10 from Outer Space (Because it has the luminous Stefene Russell in it, that's why.)

 

Cloverfield. The best monster movie in years.

 

 

Darjeeling Limited. (I think this is Anderson's best film.)

 

 

Christmas in July, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Once, Les Infants Terribles, Blithe Spirit (what I watched over the holidays)

 

Tom Tykwer's Perfume: such a great novel, seemingly unfilmable, made into such a great movie, by the wonderful director of Run, Lola, Run.

 

Ossessione (Visconti's first film, a version of The Postman Always Rings Twice that surpasses every other version)

 

Fay Grim (the great Hal Hartley)

 

Who Gets to Call it Art: a fine documentary about the New York art scene, circa the 1960s

 

The New World (Terrence Malick's latest. He makes cinematic poems, if that's not too high-falutin')

 

The Oh in Ohio (the resplendent Parker Posey....and if anyone can get me an introduction to Mischa Barton I'll give them my signed Zora Neale Hurston first edition copy of Tell My Horse)

 

Munich (if Spielberg keeps making these complex films--for adults--I'm gonna have to stop badmouthing him)

 

United 93 (I know...you think you don't have the stomach for it, but gird yourself and watch this film. Its attempt to allow us to assimilate the events of that dreadful day is brave, artful....and almost successful. The director, Paul Greengrass, gets my early Oscar nod.)

 

A Scanner Darkly. The great Richard Linklater's animated take on Philip K. Dick, as frightening as it is prescient. And a wonder to watch.

 

And the 3rd Bourne movie. Say what you will this trilogy works as one long smart action film. An amnesiac's trip back to his parentage.

 

 

Cache (very interesting French film with Juliette Binoche....if you rent it watch the interview with the director in the extras...you might otherwise be scratching your head over the ending)

 

Meet the Robinsons --It's really the best thing I've seen recently, sort of the child of Toy Story and The Time Traveler's Wife.

 

 

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (Albert Brooks--if it's not a return to the greatness of Defending Your Life, it's at least a good deal funnier than Mother or The Muse)

 

Antonioni's L'eclisse

 

Captain Beefheart: Under Review (great, strange documentary about the great, strange Don Van Vliet)

 

Inside Man (the best thing Spike Lee has done in a while, a really compelling caper film. Who doesn't love a good caper?)

 

Play it as is Lays (Tuesday Weld is luminous)

 

Tristram Shandy (a very clever version of the unfilmable novel, which is part of the joke...)

 

The Yes Men (documentary that serves as a good antidote to all the BS out there in Bushworld)

 

 

Tell Them Who You Are (Mark Wexler's documentary about his dad, the director/cinematographer/radical)

 

Forty Shades of Blue (props to my homeboy, Ira Sachs, for such a tender, lovely story)

 

Rapture (a wonderful, neglected classic, starring Melvin Douglas and a startling Patricia Gozzi)

 

Port of Shadows (Marcel Carne)

 

Great New Wonderful (O Maggie Gyllenhaal makes my heart sing)

 

Sketches of Frank Gehry (Yeah, I didn't care about architecture going in either)

 

The Prestige (why wasn't Bowie nominated for his understated performance as Nicola Tesla?)

 

Au Revoir les Enfants (great Louis Malle film)

 

Match Point (The Woodman back in top form!  Really, the best thing he's done in a decade.)

 

Ask the Dust (a pretty good movie from a pretty good book....one of the better depictions of a writer on screen)

 

Valmont (doesn't have the deliriously wicked Malkovich, which the other version does, but has a very sexy 15 year old Fairuza Balk and the wonderful Annette Bening)

 

Shopgirl (Steve Martin) Surprisingly tender and surprisingly beautifully made.

 

Black Narcissus (This is just about the best movie I've seen in a long long time, and I think Powell/Pressburger's best film.)

 

 

 

William Eggleston in the Real World (fascinating and sad, esp if you knew Leigh Haizlip)

 

Game 6 (a very interesting "small" film, with Michael Keaton, written by Don DeLillo)

 

 

 

 

Live Love and Learn (Robert Montgomery)

 

Le Cercle Rouge (if you haven't discovered Melville's films...well, time's a-wastin')

 

The Dying Gaul (not for the faint of heart)

 

Bright Young Things (a simply dead-on version of Waugh's Vile Bodies...may I publicly profess my love for Emily Mortimer?)

 

Grey Gardens (has anyone else seen this very curious document? it made me squirm...maybe in a good way)

 

 

Corey's unrecommendations (movies that make you say blech):

 

Bad News Bears (what was Richard Linklater thinking? this is only marginally better than Billy Bob's execrable Bad Santa)

 

The Pink Panther (Steve Martin version--Oh my God, is this really that bad? Yes it is!)

 

The Holiday (Jude Law should know better; Cameron Diaz, well, you don't expect her to know better)

 

Failure to Launch (a concept so ricekty they can't even stick to it....and such a lifeless execution [now, there's a nice turn of phrase])

 

Four Brothers (just in case you thought Singleton was a better director than his protege Craig Brewer)

 

Firewall (a stupid thriller from the same doofus who directed the stupid love story Wimbledon)

 

Syriana (an important movie that's a little confusing....I never did figure out what Jeffrey Wright was doing)

 

Freedomland (why is this movie so bad and the good actors in it so artificial?)

 

Little Black Book (here's my confession: I have the hots for Brittany Murphy and her lack of talent diminishes it not)

 

Elizabethtown (bad even if you go in with low expectations)

 

Silent Hill. I love Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean, but this horror movie tries too hard and, in the end, is ridiculous. No surprise, really, it's a "story" based on a video game.

 

Rumor Has It (great concept, simply dreadful execution....what happened to Meathead as a director? the same malaise that apparently happend to Opie? can we already go ahead and say that Jennifer Anniston doesn't belong on the big screen?)