Sweeney Todd - a perfect match of content and creator.

It’s that time again for the RFP Overlooked Awards, celebrating award-worthy films, performances, directors, screenplays and animated shorts, which are all worthy of award recognition, but didn’t get enough of a chance to glow in the spotlight. This year I have add a Jury Prize for overlooked craft categories and films and/or performances that I missed since the Overlooked Awards began. So without further ado, here are the winners and honorable mentioned.
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Currently, I’m touring the studios of San Francisco and Los Angeles with the Oscar nominees for Outstanding Animated Short Film. While I’m busy blogging about the experience, Rick’s Flicks Picks will be on hiatus. I will return on before the Oscars with this year’s RFP Overlooked Awards. So for the meantime, you should check out my exploits over at the Oscar Tour Travelogue.

Churgh is sweet for the Coen Brothers.

It was a year for old men and pregnant teens and rats that like fine cuisine. With the Demon Barber, there will be blood and Alexander Supertramp went into the wild on a flash flood. An Iranian girl dared to be a metal head, while brothers hoped they got away with murder before the devil knows their dead. There once was a guy and a girl who made beautiful music together and Edith Piaf sang through a life of stormy weather.

Making a definitive top ten or 25 list is a nearly impossible task. That’s why I would never attempt a “best of all time” list. As the list stands, it’s the top 25 films that were released in 2007, which I’ve seen so far. So the list works as a recommendation list. If there are five or 10 or 25 films from 2007 that I believe you need to see — these are those films in some kind of order.

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To me the curse is mine, only because it is taking me far longer than I first imagined to post all the archival reviews from years of newsletters. Hopefully, it’s not a curse to my wonderful (though small) reader base. This archive update, at least, comes quicker than the gap between the first and the second. The new films added are from the first part of my newsletter that went out on Aug. 13, 2004. It’s a collection of good films, even some very good films.
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Wow the last time I had a chance to post new items into the archive was April. With the addition of This Weekend’s Film Festival, new old reviews from past editions of my old e-mail newsletter have been slowing getting online. Part of the delay in catching up with the older reviews is that I’m fleshing out some of the shorter items. With some it’s easy, especially for films I really liked. For the middle ground films, it’s tough to remember what I actually thought, because the film has slipped from my mind. Anyway, here’s an eclectic mix of the remaining films from the September 16, 2004 edition of my newsletter. Hey, even if you were one of the lucky few to have read them the first time around, they’ve been upgraded. Consider them the director’s cut.
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If you’ve read the history of this blog than you know many of the reviews came from a newsletter that I’ve been doing on a regular basis since 2001. I was able to get a good chunk of the older reviews up before the blog launched, but there are still about 800 more to go. So I finally have been able to get back to tackling the archives that aren’t already posted. When I post new archival reviews, I’m going to post a little recap of what’s new in the world of older reviews. There’s no ageism at Rick’s Flicks Picks… a good movie is a good movie no matter when it was made and the same can be said about a good review.

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Little Children is one of the few masterpieces of 2006.

Welcome to the 1st annual Overlooked Awards. This is a chance to recognize those films, performances, directors, screenplays and animated shorts, which are all worthy of award recognition, but didn’t received nominations at the big awards. Even though its one of those categories that the typical fan dreads to pick for polls, I’m privileged to see many of the wonderful short animated films that are made each year. So I thought it was my duty to recognize the shorts that I felt deserved nods as well.
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