Best Films (and Books) of the Year

I love reading year-end lists. Helps me identify stuff I might have missed. Or tally my favorites with the list-maker. Or just give a last collective thought to things that made the year great.

I didn't watch as many films or read as many books as I have been doing in the last few years. But, the number might still be higher than most people I know. Since there is still a day to go, and since I don't really have much of a partying plan for tonight, the final number is still not signed and sealed.

But, among the movies and books that I have seen and read till last night, here are the ones I liked the most. The list has 18 movies and 6 books. All of them didn't necessarily come out in 2009. I just saw/read them this year (I know because I have maintained a list of all movies and books I have chatofied since 2004).

In no particular order:

Frost/Nixon - For proving that a film can be thrilling even if most of it is about an old American and a younger Brit talking to each other.

Wilde - For Stephen Fry being an even Wilder Wilde than Wilde could have been.

Dev D - For Kalki Koechlin speaking in Tamil on the phone. For helping forget SRK in the Devdas role. For the horniest Paro ever.

Luck By Chance - For that beautiful opening credits sequence. For Farhan Akhtar doing a typical filmy dance number.

Gulaal - For Ransa. For Piyush Mishra's music and lyrics.

Red Cliff I and II - For showing that there is still a lot of juice in a Far-East war film.

Marley & Me - For Marley, the World's Worst Dog.

The Hangover - For making me laugh more than I have watching any other film this year.

Pontypool - For being a zombie film, and still being interesting.

District 9 - For some of the coolest weapons in films. For some of the ugliest creatures in films.

Chintu Ji - For being that small film, which so many more should have watched, and which I almost did not. For Sophiya Chaudhary dancing to Akira Kurosawa (the song).

Inglourious Basterds - For Col. Hans Landa. And for, well, everything else.

Kurbaan - For being a rare Hindi thriller that actually thrills.

Choke - For Sam Rockwell.

Waltz With Bashir - For showing that even non-Nam/Korean/Desert Storm/Afghan war movies are worth talking about. Or maybe more so.

3 Idiots - For being a rare instance where we can say that the movie was better than the book.

Avatar - For Pandora. For Cameron, the King of the World.

Kaminey - For the music. For the Priyanka Chopra. For the Fahid Kapoor.

And then there were books:

The Strain - Even though it got a little tedious towards the end, I still can't believe how scary I found it in the first hundred pages or so.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I haven't found the two sequels in the same league as the first book. Maybe because the first one had more than one incestuous, murderous, rich men.

Cujo - Turning a dog into a scary creature is about the most sacrilegious thing Stephen King has done. And one of the most effective.

Cuckold - I had been told it's one of the most under-rated books in Indian Writing in English. I think I agree. It took me a while to figure out who the lady being spoken of in the book is.

Palestine - The graphic novel made me realize how so many people today are paying the price because the world still hasn't been able to forgive itself for the Holocaust, and so lets Israel do anything it wants to.

Moonward - Ugly fat creatures. Very little text. Almost no color. Sometimes difficult to get symbolism. What's not to like?