The web has come alive with Best Film of the Decade lists. Unlike Best of the Year lists, where the same dozen or so films appear again and again, Best of the Decades are where a list-making critic can really take wings and fly, revealing their inner soul through their choices. Are you a Lost in Translation type or a Memento -ite? The choice says everything, and nothing, about the list makers.

So what we've done is added up all the Best lists we could find online — from the New Yorker to spitefulcritic.com; anywhere where people had made a list. We gave each film a point for every inclusion on every top ten list. Some lists made it a bit difficult, doing say an unordered top 15's, but we've included as much as we can to try and get an accurate count.

Also in the case of multi-film series, such as Lord of the Rings or the Bourne films, some critics placed the entire series on the list, some cast their votes for the individual films.

And when the votes were all in, by a nose, There Will Be Blood stood alone at the top of the decade, its straw in the whole damn cinema's milkshake.

Some other interesting findings:

• Really this has to be considered a huge moral victory for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Barely noticed by Oscar, relatively little discussed so many years later, the Gondry/Charlie Kaufman film came just one vote away from taking the entire decade.
• When one looks at how spread out the voting is, one can't help but see how few consensus masterpieces there were in this decade. A mere 11 films get more than 5 votes.
• Perhaps the most discussed filmmaker of the decade, Michael Moore, barely registers, getting just two votes for Farenheit 9/11 and one for Bowling for Columbine.
• Many of the decades other high profile auteurs also barely crack the list: No Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino gets higher than the four vote level. Judd Apatow and Alexander Payne fail to rise above three votes. Clint Eastwood and David Cronenberg above two. Steven Speilberg bizarrely scores a high ranking in the voting only because of Catch Me If You Can, which inexplicably received six votes for a highly forgettable film. Other than that, no Speilberg film received more than a single vote.
• The highest grossing series of the decade, the Harry Potter films, gets body-slammed by the listmakers with just one vote.
• If the Pixar movies had been one series, it would have won the decade. Easily.
• Foreign films predictably are largely ignored by the listmakers. Brazil's City of God is the highest ranking with six votes.
• This was a rough decade for comedy, with very few films seemingly entering the canon. The highest ranking and thereby best comedies of the decade are 40 Year Old Virgin and Anchorman, each of which scored three votes.

Overall certainly no one could say that masterpieces were pouring out of every crevice during the zeroes. But looking at the list overall, one can feel mildly content that there were in fact a pretty large number of pretty decent films over the last ten years. We can close the door on a decade of tumult saying in the cinema front at least, if not in the peace and economic stability front, the 00's can go home feeling content about a job well done.

Below is the tally of votes, in order of their place of finish:

12 Votes
There Will Be Blood

11 Votes
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Lord of the Rings films,

10 Votes
No Country For Old Men

8 Votes
Memento

7 Votes
Brokeback Mountain, The Dark Knight,

6 Votes
Almost Famous, Catch Me If You Can, Pan's Labyrinth, Wall-E

5 Votes
City of God, The Departed, The Incredibles

4 Votes
Cache, Gladiator, Kill Bill,The Lives of Others, Lost in Translation, Royal Tennenbaums

3 Votes
The 40 Year Old Virgin, Amelie, Anchorman, The Bourne Series, Finding Nemo, Mullholland Drive, Sideways, Slumdog Millionaire, The White Ribbon, You Can Count on Me

2 Votes
25th Hour, Adaptation, Amores Perros, Borat , Capturing the Friedmans
Casino Royale, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Fahernheit 9/11, Far From Heaven, A History of Violence, Inglorious Basterds, Mystic River, The New World, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Son, Spirited Away, Team America, Together, Werckmeister Harmonies, What Time is it there?, The Wrestler

1 Vote
2046,300, AI, American Splendor,The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ,The Baader Meinhoff Complex, Bad Education, Battle in Heaven, The Beat that My Heart Skipped, Before Sunset, Best of Youth, Beau Travail, Bloody Sunday, Bowling for Columbine, La Commune, Crash ,Dead Man's Shoes, The Descent, Divine Intervention, Donnie Darko, Downfall, The Fog of War, The Fountain, Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, Funny People, Grizzly Man, The Harry Potter series, Hunger, Hustle and Flow, Inland Empire, Into the Wild, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Knocked Up, Last King of Scotland, Let the Right One In, Letters From Iwo Jima, The Life Aquatic, Little Miss Sunshine, Master and Commander, Metallica, Some Kind of Monster, Million Dollar Baby, Millions, Monster, Monsters Ball, Moulin Rouge, Ocean's Eleven, The Passion of the Christ,The Pianist,Ratatouille, Red Road, Requiem for a Dream, Superbad, Talk to Her, Time of the Wolf, Transformers, Traffic, United 93, The Queen, Wet Hot American Summer, Y Tu Mama Tambien ,Zatoichi, Zodiac

The Source Lists:
Drew Mcgary, NBC Bay Area, Paste Magazine, The Times of London, The Onion AV Club, Popdose, Hollywood Reporter, Houstonian, Entertainment Weekly, Total Film Editor in Chief, Total Film Readers, L Magazine, Jonathan Fuhrman: Mediaite, Global Comment, Rolling Stone, IDS News, Zero For Conduct, TV Guide, True Slant, IMDB top rated, Stylus Magazine, The Telegraph, Orlando Sentinel, Moviefone, David Denby: The New Yorker, Reel Loop, richardrushfield.com, Spiteful Critic,

Some film tie-ins (Mission: Impossible, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) have already been announced, but a half-dozen more rumored attractions trickling out of Paramount HQ have us even more jacked:

—The Sonny Corleone Tollbooth Adventure: Buckle up and grab the phone — it's your sister Connie! Her husband's got the belt again! Swoop down the New Jersey turnpike at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour before plunging almost 300 feet into a hail of ice water and shrieks. On your way out, purchase your photo with optional Marlon Brando Sobbing Picture Frame™: "Look how they massacred my boy!"

—The "Ow Shia's Balls" Jungle Coaster: Settle in for the ride of your crotch's life as you straddle vehicles on two tracks through the Peruvian rainforest, just like the the young hero from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Don't let the spiky jungle cacti thwacking your genitals distract you as you battle an animatronic Soviet swordstress and her Commie henchmen — it's either your balls or America, kid!

—Ash Wednesday Eye-Lift Experience: Go under the knife just like desperate housewife Liz Taylor did in her forgotten 1973 melodrama, and then leave the park with a younger date than you arrived with.

—Ripley's Believe or Not Development Vortex: See how exactly how movies aren't made as cuddly Paramount mascot Jim Carrey guides guests on a winding backlot tour of production meetings, script revisions, salary haggles and other rollicking studio inertia.

—There Will Be Fun! Daniel Plainview Musical Revue: Relive the joy and wonder of There Will Be Blood with sociopathic oil baron Plainview and your entire family. The entire history of California oil drilling gets the stage treatment with numbers including "Bastard in a Basket," "Give Me the Blood, Eli" and the famous show-stopper "(I Drink Your) Milkshake."

—Sumner Redstone: The Ride: Climb 350 feet over Seoul before a wizened finger brushes you into a terrifying freefall back to Earth. (Sorry kids! You must be taller than Tom Cruise to ride.)

Let us know if you've heard about any others!

You know we love you. We've seen everything you've done multiple times, once even all in the same day. Our hearts soared when Daniel Day-Lewis credited your "mad, beautiful head" for his Oscar triumph this year; his appreciation spoke for us as well. Sure, we have issues with Magnolia (OK, we hate it), but at least when the DVD came around we were able to make a little more sense of your passion and indulgence. That behind-the-scenes doc by Mark Rance? Fantastic. We'd have preferred the commentaries like those in Boogie Nights and Sydney (a/k/a Hard Eight), but hey. If you're going to charge us for two discs, you'd better make the second one worth our dime.

Which gets us to this new two-disc "collector's edition" of There Will Be Blood, which Paramount Vantage released April 8. Pardon us, but what the fuck is this?

We're sitting here with our favorite film of 2007, looking for your commentary. Nothing. We bust out the second disc. Photo clippings from your research? Three deleted scenes — only one of which features, you know, editing? And, finally, an exhumed silent short about the history of oil drilling? Really? $30 for two discs and all we get is a public-domain two-reeler from 1923?

Look, PTA, we know it's probably not your fault. There's probably a commentary sitting on some hard drive in Vantage boss John Lesher's office waiting for the precise moment when "collectors" will be ready to part ways with another $30 to hear it. There's probably behind-the-scenes footage with Scott Rudin arriving on location in Marfa, Texas, overdressed and throwing a BlackBerry at the assistant whose weather forecast turned out 15 degrees cooler than the actual temperature. We know there are interviews with you, Day-Lewis, Paul Dano and Ciaran Hinds floating around. We know because it's you, and we expect great things. Not... this.

So get with the fucking program already, PTA, and stop jerking us around with the most stingy, shabby, half-assed miscarriage of DVD justice since Mulholland Drive. You're not that pirate George Lucas, and we're not "collectors"; we're fans — true believers and dedicated followers who deserve better. And you're a candid visionary, so tell Paramount to fuck off and send us the real DVD already, for Christ's sake.

— Love, Defamer

But now the gloves are off: With the season drawing to a close, producers claim to "have saved the worst for last." In a promo all but guaranteeing a life-evisceration in-the-round, ominous words like "shocking," "destroys," and "housewife" are casually tossed about. Also featured: frequent cutaways to the unlucky husband, whose very soul appears to be draining right before our eyes with every question, as if his entire being was squeezed through a citrus presser. Will lives be destroyed? Tune in and see! (Or spend a quality hour with your spouse explaining how badly you've always wanted to bang their best friend and/or accidentally blew some of the nest egg on a coke habit, and watch the far-more-entertaining 60-second web recap instead.)

• The Moment of Truth [Fox]

• There Will Be Blood
• Salvation Scene In The Film, 'There Will Be Blood' [YouTube]

His tantrums are the stuff of legend. Battered by screaming fits, tossed objects and abrupt firings, his assistants rarely last long — a 2005 Wall Street Journal piece estimated that Rudin went through 250 assistants in a five-year period (even Rudin admitted to 119, though his figure excluded assistants who didn't survive a two-week trial period). On the other hand, the industry is full of ex-Rudin assistants who've used the experience as a steppingstone to success.

Sony Pictures chief Amy Pascal, who is releasing the Rudin-produced "The Other Boleyn Girl" this month, worked for Rudin as a young production executive. "He was tough," she recalls. "You'd give him script notes and get back his response, written with a big black pen, saying 'TERRIBLE IDEA!' But you'd always forgive him because he's so smart, cares so much and he gets movies made that no one else can."

Certainly, his brutal, call-roller cleansing regime is a matter of public record: Assistants' rights groups have been targeting Rudin ever since a mass grave was discovered behind his Paramount HQ by an after-hours security guard, who couldn't help but notice a human hand jutting out from a carefully tended flowerbed, still clasping a retrieved Diet Coke can whose lack of vanilla flavoring was what ultimately did them in. But for the elite few with the fortitude to survive the apprenticeship, great things are almost invariably in store: Pascal's time under the tyrannical mentor, for example, is widely credited with earning the Sony head the incongruous sex-parts that would ultimately win her titles like Showman of the Year.

• For Scott Rudin, there will be quality [LAT]

· No, There Will Be Blood's potable does not involve a milkshake. Rather, it's Texas Tea: gin, vodka, rum, tequila, Cointreau. OJ, sour mix, and a splash of Coke, served on the rocks.
· For Michael Clayton, they offer Fixer: amaretto, cognac, cherry brandy and cream. Strained over ice and served in a martini glass.
· And finally, inspired by Atonement (and especially apropo today), try Bound by Love, containing sloe gin, Chambord, lemon juice and an egg white, shaken with ice and served up.

Of course, had the brilliant Diving Bell and the Butterfly snagged a nod, they could have added the Paralyzer to that list, a potent concoction that renders the drinker able to communicate only through a series of eye blinks.

• The Polo Lounger

They used the unusual, malt-based metaphor as the centerpiece of There Will Be Blood's internet suck-up campaign, throwing in for good measure a coupon for a free Cold Stone Creamery milkshake. It's precisely the kind of simple, ear-to-the-ground promotion technique that winds up getting noticed, and is far less injurious than their original plan of sending the media Blood-branded bowling pins designated for bludgeoning office rivals.

• Paramount Vantage Sends Free Milkshakes to Press [slashfilm.com]

The other faction didn't see the film's homoerotic undertones as quite so glaring, even after we patiently sat them down to inquire whether they found nothing the least bit fishy about an oil man who over a period of decades demonstrates virtually no interest in the opposite sex. Instead, the man chooses to spend his life surrounded by other men, with one in particular—the only thing really standing between him and a satisfying gusher—becoming the obsessive object of his domineering tendencies. Along the way, the young preacher is subjected to gleeful, orally fixated taunts about milkshake-slurping, among other verbal and physical humiliations, all of which he submits to with a surprising, almost capitulatory ease.

Then there's the matter of the photo above: Gotta keep things fresh!

We rest our case.

• paramountvantage.com/blood/

Meanwhile, our city's shadowy society of film-nerd freemasons, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., met at their pentagram-shaped conference room 12 stories beneath the Grove American Girl store, where a slaughtered goat's entrails revealed for them the following winners: Best picture, director, and lead actor honors went to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, Amy Ryan took supporting actress for her work in both Gone Baby Gone and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and best actress kudos went to Marion Cotillard for her Edith Piaftastic turn in La Vie en Rose.

UPDATE:

More returns: The New York Film Critics Online Awards 2007 has a tie for best picture: There Will Be Blood and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Day-Lewis and Bardem take top actor honors, and Julie Christie (Away From Her) and Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There) take actress honors. Boston Society of Film Critics give it to No Country, directing goes to Bell's Julian Schnabel, and in another sure sign that it is the year of the murderous psycho, Ben Foster wins best supporting actor for his roles from 3:10 To Yuma and Alpha Dog. The Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association, meanwhile, gives No Country best picture, the Coens best director, George Clooney best actor for Michael Clayton, and Julie Christie—clearly in the +60 hottie category previously occupied by Helen Mirren— best actress.

• 'No Country' tops with N.Y. critics [Variety]
• LAFCA 2007 winners list [LAT]