Best of 2007

It was a good year for film, so it was hard to choose the Top Ten. Here are my favorite movies of 2007:

1. Diving Bell and the Butterfly
2. Into the Wild
3. Once
4. King of Kong
5. Lars & The Real Girl
6. Taxi to the Dark Side
7. The Savages
8. Sweeney Todd
9. Sicko
10. Gone Baby Gone

Yeah, none of my Top Ten were nominated for the Academy Awards this year. In 2005 my top five were the five nominees. That was really rare, but it's also really rare that none of my favorites are nominated. I actually really liked all the nominated films this year, but they just didn't grab a hold of me like these did. I should say none of them were nominated for Best Picture, because Taxi to the Dark Side actually won the Best Documentary Oscar.

On July 1 I did a top five of my favorite movies so far and it was a light and funny bunch, with Once at the top. I predicted that more dramatic films would make it on my top ten and oh boy, did they. Diving Bell and Into the Wild edged out Once for the top spot on my final list and they were both really emotional for me.

This year I intermixed the documentaries and fiction films because I didn't see as many documentaries this year as I had in years past - I think the big bounty of documentaries has passed again - or maybe I just wasn't as good about seeing them when I wanted to. In any case, I had three documentaries on my list and if I slid those off, I probably would have added Rescue Dawn, Knocked Up and Michael Clayton. I also really liked another documentary this year, My Kid Could Paint that. I haven't seen No End in Sight yet, though.

So, that's the list for this year. I highly, highly recommend all of the films I listed and pretty much all of them are available on DVD if you want to add them to your Netflix list.

In other fun and exciting news, I got a great package in the mail! My Special Swap partner this time was Kat and she sent me an outstanding parcel. Our theme this go around was A Day at the Spa. Everything arrived in this pretty box:



I opened it up and found a pretty card and these pretty little surprises:



Soothing blues and greens, I'm already relaxing! But when I opened those little packages up I found some pretty great stuff:



Kat was way too generous!! Starting from the right, there's a hand-knit beautiful blue and green facecloth - gorgeous and soft. Next in the back is a really fragant candle - I can't wait to try that out. It smells fantastic. Beside the candle is a bag of chocolate/white chocolate squares. I couldn't wait to try those out - they are delicious!!! In front of and beside that are two big packages of Burt's Bees products. LOVE the Burt's Bees (luckily Kat does too, because I sent her some too). There a little something to soothe every part of my incredibly dry hands, feets, face and body (come soon spring!) Next to that is the best relaxation of all, knitting! Kat included a bunch of really fun accessories and a gorgeous skein of yarn and scarf pattern from Knitspot. You want to see that yarn close up, don't you?



As you can see on the tag, it's Arequipa from Ball and Skein - an alpaca/silk blend (two of my favorite fibers!!) It's a gorgeous colorway called storm - purple and gray and black, beautiful, beautiful! Thank you so much for the fantastic package, Kat. I'm really looking forward to continuing our friendship and of course using this stuff up!!