A Quick Reminder...

...that you shouldn't be anywhere else but here on January 30. Give or take the still-pending Chicago release dates for Breaking and Entering, Days of Glory/Indigènes, and The Dead Girl, I only have Roger Michell's Venus, bowing today in a single downtown theater, and the Great Crazy Hope of David Lynch's Inland Empire left to take in. From that point, It's On.

In the meantime, you'll be hearing a little bit about the movies I most enjoyed watching this year, regardless of their overall aesthetic merit, and about a flock of performances too tiny or peripheral to figure into my awards but highly deserving of their own spotlight. Otherwise, with only one solid A and three A–'s awarded in 2006, I'll need the next ten days to sort out which six titles out of a whopping 21 B+'s will squeeze their way onto my Top Ten List in a movie year replete with robust but flawed successes. Stay tuned, and enjoy your weekend!

P.S. For those of you who have written to ask, my students' marks are well above the grades I give to movies. I'm not the easiest A who ever walked a department hallway, but I'm not doggin' the transcripts, either.