I haven’t had a nice little music box…ever. This is really very sweet. Real wood, smooth veneer, real simulated velvet. Thanks, Fox Searchlight! But I have to confess that the mirror came loose almost immediately, and that I had to stick it on with Shoegoo.

The Film Comment/Film Society of Lincoln Center cool kidz have selected their Best of 2010 list, and the #1 with a bullet is Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos. I have to say that I agree with almost all…well, many of their choices. David Fincher‘s The Social Network is #2, followed by Claire Denis‘ White Material, Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer, Jacques Audiard‘s A Prophet, Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone, Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job, Alain Resnais‘ Wild Grass, Marden Ade‘s Everyone Else, and Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg.

The FSLC list actually encompasses 50 films. Black Swan is ranked in 24th place. Inception came in 30th, Exit Through The Gift Shop made it to position #33, Animal Kingdom is ranked 35th, True Grit is 42nd, The King’s Speech is ranked 44th and Blue Valentine came in at 47th place. Congratulations, Derek Cianfrance — three positions way from dead last!

“More than 100 participants” took part in the poll, the release says. They included Thom Andersen (CalArts professor and filmmaker), Richard Brody (The New Yorker), David Edelstein (New York magazine), Scott Foundas (Senior Programmer, Film Society Lincoln Center), Larry Gross (screenwriter), Molly Haskell (author, From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies), Kent Jones (filmmaker, A Letter to Elia), Glenn Kenny (MSN Movies), Robert Koehler (Daily Variety and film festival programmer), Todd McCarthy (Hollywood Reporter), Don McMahon (Artforum), Paul Schrader (filmmaker, Adam Resurrected), Andrew Sarris, Amy Taubin (Sight & Sound) and Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times).

For what it’s worth, I’d pay good money to see the recently discovered 17 minutes of footage that was cut 42 years ago from Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or rather, the 2001 footage that’s being described by Douglas Trumbull as “recently discovered.” Because it hasn’t been.

The 17 minutes of footage has been siting in a salt-mine vault in Hutchinson, Kansas, for eons, I’m told, and its existence was confirmed 20 years ago through the checking of inventory records by film restorer Robert Harris, who’d been asked to check on the 2001 elements by Kubrick.

A lot of the footage, I’m told, is floating-in-space stuff — superfluous, better left trimmed. A portion of it is from the “Dawn of Man” sequence. Apes hopping around, nothing all that special. Some shots of Gary Lockwood‘s Frank Poole character jogging in the centrifuge were removed along with shots of his space walk before HAL kills him. A scene showing HAL severing radio communication between the Discovery and Poole’s pod. Fatty extraneous stuff, in short, that made 2001 better by being taken out.

Would it be interesting to see this footage on a Bluray? Sure. Would 2001 seem like a better or somehow stronger film if the 17 minutes was re-integrated into the 139-minute released version? Probably not. It would most likely make the film seem flabby and longer than it needs to be. Would it be commercial if they put it out on Bluray? Oh, yeah. Because guys like me would pay through the nose to own it.

It’s obvious that Today‘s Matt Lauer doesn’t approve of controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. That or he’s terrified of seeming in any way cordial, lest he be interpreted as being mildly okay with what Assange has been doing.

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I think Assange is more than okay, actually. I think what he’s revealed is righteous, and that Michael Moore and Larry Flynt are good guys for contributing to his defense fund.

I’m also having trouble understanding how anyone can take seriously those charges that Assange raped and molested two women. It sounds to me like a sliver of a thin beef — it basically boils down to his not stopping when a condom broke. But it’s all the Swedish government has, and they’re being pressured to get him any way they can.