SpoutBlog on spout.com

• It’s that time of year again: Mr. Skin counts down the Top 20 Movie Nude Scenes of 2007. Marisa Tomei takes the top slot (that’s punny, right?) for her work in Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead. The Mr. Skin crew were either really impressed with how well she’s aged since My Cousin Vinny, or they just couldn’t resist the alliterative treat that is “topless Tomei-toes.” I know I can’t. [Via Rex]
• Matt Dentler traces Frownland’s road to victory: “It was almost precisely a year ago that I fished Ronnie’s film out of the submissions, put it on, and was instantly hypnotized. For all those filmmakers out there who feel you have to have “connections” and “legacy” to get attention or noticed, Frownland is proof against that.”
• There are two new trailers for Youth Without Youth, and Chris Thilk is wholly unimpressed with both.
• Vulture points to an MP3 on Zeon’s Music Blog of “Teen Horniness is Not a Crime”, sung by Sarah Michelle Gellar in character as Southland Tales‘ ambitious porn star Krysta Now. Zeon’s verdict is that it’s “not very good [but] it’s supposed to be a joke anyway so maybe it is intentionally crappy.” Personally, I don’t understand how anyone can resist a lyrical couplet like “‘Cause these statistics do not lie/Just ask those nerds who shot up Columbine/They weren’t getting laid/No.”
• The Onion A.V. Club is hiring.

Under discussion:

Babel  (2006)

Silent Light  (2007)

At The Circuit, John Hopewell and Emilio Mayorga offer a number of signs that “the mantle of greatness is rapidly slipping over” Silent Light director Carlos Reygadas. I’m surely not going to argue with that, but I do think it’s interesting that Mayorga and Hopewell make it a point to set Reygadas apart from other hot young Mexican directors, such as Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonz??lez I????rritu, who crossed over to Hollywood success:

Reygadas has a niche in a pantheon - not new Mexican cinema; given the accessibility of and interest in film-making worldwide, the very concept of new national cinemas may be arcane - but new, left-field world cinema, up there with other unorthodoz film-makers such as, say, Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Read: he’s making art films for die hards, and that’s never gonna translate to the masses.

I don’t know. I don’t want to be an elitist. I feel like I’m a woman of the people, or whatever. But I like it that Silent Light requires work to enjoy. It’s hard for me to reconcile the sad truth that popular culture as a whole feels more comfortable with Crash with subtitles.

Under discussion:

Mysterious Skin  (2004)

I don’t know why the people at the NY Times‘ Style Magazine shot the above video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt talking about Godard, and Russian clowns, and Guys and Dolls, but after Mysterious Skin, I’ll watch that guy do anything. Well, maybe not anything. Via WOW Report.