It's at this time of year that I begin wondering if there isn't some famous film score composer named Lists? If not, there should be. Until that's properly determined, however, I join the ranks of celebrated bean counters and offer up the first of a series of lists. My first list has been as much a joy to compile as it was last year. Girish Shambu is an inspiration not only for his honed skills at facilitating discussion on movie thematics, and for tolerating juvenile delinquents in the back of his class, but for tickling us with ink drawings to accompany his entries; less this year, I note, than in years past and I would be remiss in my role as critic not to mention that he has actually tried to pass off some old drawings as new work. Tsk tsk tsk. Notwithstanding, here are my favorite 10.
If it is true that all you need to make a good movie is a gun and a girl, Girish starts us off with those two essential elements. Granted, Sylvia may not have eyes for anybody; which is neither here nor there unless she's aiming that gun.
I absolutely adore "Pour La Suite Du Monde" whose simplicity captures tranquil reflection expertly. Girish has promised me a t-shirt, the likes of which I will probably never see (no doubt because of the way I've behaved in class all year, and which I vainly presume is the direct 
inspiration for his "Smoking Moon"), but now I have a second t-shirt to add onto the wish list. (Seriously, don't you think that if Girish started a line of t-shirts and sold them to his friends at, let's say, $50 a pop, he'd make a killing? I would spend hundreds, perhaps thousands, for the chance to grace a runway with one-of-a-kind Girish couture. Only a hint from the hinterlands.)
Last year Girish gave us a fish-scaled guitar; this year his guitar's gone all "swirly" on us. It raised my eyebrow, that's for sure.
Also last year Girish illuminated the dark recesses of my mind with a pair of lamps, which he has likewise done this year. His Konichiwa lamp would look fabulous in my livingroom though—as much as I like it—the tassles on his second lamp might cause a flurry of rumors which I just don't have the energy to refute.
I love the movement in his dancer's skirt and her herringbone stockings are killer.
And that selfsame energy of movement decorates the kite that whips around in a sky whose clouds—as things go—have morphed into his end-of-the-year and beginning-of-this-entry Ganesh.
So I finish up 2007 by turning around to look at the white canvas of 2008. I wonder what Girish will draw for us next?
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