I'm pretty busy today not doing much of anything. This morning was laundry, dishes and ironing. This afternoon, thanks to the wonder of my PVR, it's simultaneously watching the Pittsburgh-Indianapolis football game (14-3 Pittsburgh late in the third - go Steelers!) and the Toronto-New York basketball game (103-82 Toronto early in the fourth - yay Raptors!), while reading "A Short History of the Movies" (I'm at page 44 and have to reach 102 by tomorrow night) during breaks. After the girls return from dance class, it's homework with Brittany, dinner and cleanup, then a game of "Kim Possible". At 8:00, our world stops for the "24" season premiere.

It doesn't leave much time to blog, so today is a perfect day to throw out my list of the 10 best movies I saw last year. 2005 was a year in which I started catching up with the films I have missed since becoming a father. There are no individuals comments and no ranking, just the list. This includes all films I saw last year, not just 2005 releases. They are, in chronological order by year of release:

Beautiful Girls (1996)
Billy Elliot (2000)
Ghost World (2000)
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Infernal Affairs (2002)
The Pianist (2002)
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
Matchstick Men (2003)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
A History of Violence (2005)

My 2005 viewings were pretty slim - only 27 releases so far. In the next few months, I hope to see, either in theatre or on DVD/TMN, such films as "Crash", "Sin City", "The Squid and the Whale" and "Capote", and will put together a list of my favorite 2005 releases once I fill in some of the blanks. As for the films I saw last year, the top two were "Eternal Sunshine . . ." and "Capturing the Friedmans". In different ways, these movies left me questioning what I saw and believed, and forced me to think deeply about what the filmmakers were saying. Plus, they were fabulous stories told well. What more can one ask of a movie?