Yesterday’s Top Ten (Foreign Femme Fatales of 2007) saw a fine selection of international thesps that dominated the silver screen in some form or another, today's 10 focuses on those who had their talents featured in mostly American independent films.
Continuing with our Top Ten lists till the year’s end, we have decided to split what was once called our yearly “Indie Queens and Foreign Femme Fatales” top 10 list (see our 2006 selections here) into two and thus doubling our appreciation and pleasure. Today you’ll be getting our Top 10 Foreign Femme Fatale list, and tomorrow getting a Top Ten list for our favorite indie actresses of the year.
They came out in theaters, made very little money or didn't make a mark at all: they are a slew of independent projects that could have found a different fate. Our Top 10 of overlooked, underrated, under appreciated U.S Independent Films of 2007 is a list of deserving films that didn’t get the attention it deserved. Call it bad marketing, call it bad timing, or simply not being able to connect with the larger audience the following top ten is a list of films to reconsider or to consider before they erase themselves from our collective movie-going psyche.
Today’s Top Ten looks at the best director/actor pairings of the year. More specifically, we are looking at directors and actors who have continued to foster their relationship over the years in the cinematic field - providing us viewers with examples of magical collaborations on screen. I could cite at least 250 other significant relationships of the sort from the past 9 decades of film history, everyone from Dietrich and von Sternberg, Fellini and wife Giulietta Masina, Hitchcock and his slew of muses aka leading ladies, Bergman and Ullmann, Antonioni and Monica Vitti and to Scorsese and DeNiro or Scorsese and DiCaprio. Note sequels and trilogies were not taken into consideration. Enjoy the list!
Yesterday we saw a Daniel Clowes' illustration, a pair of tattooed hands, a horses' head, some crafty font arrangement and a bible. Today's picks are more of a "face friendly" bunch. Among those that were cut from our top ten list and are worthy of a mention were Jim Carrey's scribbled face image for Number 23, Kevin Costner's splitting image in Mr.Brooks, the telling a story in one image rendering for Breach, the haunting poster for No Country for Old Men and Lionsgate's series of teaser and theatrical posters for Hostel II.