It's nice reading all your stuff.

Though I'm stuck in Slovenia for a few more days, without any real internet access, I have more or less finalized my lists. It will probably just take a couple of days, before I'll be able to post anything here. 

2007 has in my opinion been a weak year for movies - maybe the weakest I have ever witnessed. But that also has to do with the fact that more and more films I desperately want to see don't get distributed in German theaters anymore, and as I don't even own a TV set, I cannot catch up with national production on TV. This means, as the German "expert by default" (to use one of wpqx's wonderful expressions ) on this board, I again have not really seen that much German films this year. After telling all of you for the past three years that Germany was the most exciting film country in the world, my enthusiasm has somewhat come to a halt. R6dw6C has almost convinced me that the "Berliner Schule" (a term which I originally despised, but which I have since embraced) is a big pretentious hoax, and I haven't seen many new films that have really impressed me in the past two years. Maybe I should return to my initial discovery that we have an incredible number of inividual talents here in Germany, which cannot and probably also should not be connected under any term or in any movement. If anything, there is always a huge tendency to copy a successful formula from other filmmakers, be it mainstream or "arthouse" cinema. It is not necesssarily a good thing, if you discover traits of the great Andreas Dresen in every second German art-film. Of course, giants throw their shadow, but a real talent makes something uniquely his or her own out of that. Although most new German films tend to deal with personal matters, only a few of those tend to overcome the many trappings that lie in front of them. TV-style is another negative influence in a number of films. Although this can be put to good use (when i recently saw the first minutes of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's made-for-TV drama "Seance" (2000), I was amazed how interestingly one could use a low-budget "TV style" to a movie's advantage), German films tend to have a stale taste of predetermined stylistics. I think there wasn't a single German film I have seen this year that has completely been able to avoid this. Of course I haven't seen a lot of new productions, and there may be some surprises waiting for me (I am especially thinking of Heinz Emigholz' last film Schindler's Haeuser, which I missed at the Berlinale). 

But to speak of international cinema: there hasn't been a single new film this year (with the possible exception of Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley) that has been able to impress me as much as some old stuff or re-watches of my favorites. during the whole year, none of the new releases has managed to get a rating above 8/10, and although I have reconsidered what i now call my favorite films, I am still highly in doubt if any film on my Top 10 list which I will publish here, actually deserves to be called a favorite. Maybe my standards have been lowered too much in the course of too many disappointments...

However, I will ponder this later, and only time (and rewatches under good conditions) can show if a film makes a lasting impression. 

Nevertheless, the year was full of cinematic disappointments, and my (alternate) Top 10 are not free of them.