Like 2009, 2010 has been a very bad year for my personal life while it has been a very good year for me as a constant moviegoer. After the banishment in late 2009, I was accepted again by my peers in early 2010, but now I cannot live at my comfortable dormitory anymore. I live in a very small one-room space. The heater is good and it is fairly comfortable, but I got “dorm-sickiness” sometimes. At the campus dormitory, there was nothing to worry about except your academic progress. Now I have several things I have to take care of as a lodger.

 In case of watching movies, well, it is still as constant as before except extra quality control, but it is quite different now because I promised them to work more sincerely in the lab. There was a time when I willingly hurled myself into any movies, but now I’m more judicial about what to watch. Unless it is truly bad, I stay myself from wasting my time with disappointing movies. None the less, there have lots of good movies I thought I had to watch. And there were few bad ones I wanted to watch and talk about.

 But the reviews have far fewer than before. For example, from last September to this March, I wrote more than 250 reviews in Korean for I had lots of time due to my banishment in the library. Now, I’ve only wrote 26 reviews in English after attending 2010 Ebertfest, one of the best years in my life. In case of the other movies, I just posted very short opinions through twitters. And I rarely talk about my extra activity to the others because I learned how it jeopardized my life. I put the moratorium on my Korean blog. I opened a new blog at WordPress, and I never give its address to anyone around me in South Korea. I always erase my traces and files associated with movies in my laptop when my work on them is done after posting my pieces; the files are saved somewhere instead. I wonder when my activity will be exposed due to my twittering, but I’ve always used English, and my followers are very few compared to most of twitter users.

 Let’s talk about some bright sides. 2010 Ebertfest was a great time for me. I met not only Roger Ebert but also the kind people who knew him, including my dear Far-flung correspondents. I had corresponded with them for several months through e-mails or comments on their fabulous reviews posted by Roger. Getting along with them in the University of Illinois(Urbana-Champagne, IL) was great fun, although the friendship is still a little alien to me. I had some few friends in South Korea, but I don’t know whether they were friends or not for my relationships with them were quite bland outside of the movies. Except two guys whom I wholeheartedly gave anything I thought they would enjoy. One was a bartender at the campus beer bar who is no longer at that place. I talked with him lots of things including movies and Ebert’s reviews. The other one also loves the movies, and, unlike me, he becomes a good researcher with Ph. D. He will move to Boston in next April. I asked him to go to 2011 Ebertfest, but he said he would not be able to go there.

 I still correspond with the people I met at 2010 Ebertfest. I won’t be at Ebertfest 2011 for several reasons at my place, but I have received kind e-mails and twits during last 8 months. I have some regrets over my past decisions, and sometimes I wondered what it could have been if I had done the right things in my graduated years. Maybe I could have attended 2009 Ebertfest, maybe I would have been freer on my own, maybe I could attend 2011 Ebertfest… But my mind instantly rejects such wistful bullshits, and struggles to move on in my hard situation. I am not sure whether I will ever attend Ebertfest again. I have two movies in my mind while writing this. The one is Scorsese’s masterpiece “The Age of Innocence”, whose ending may mirror my possible future; I may will never walk into the Virginia Theater and walk away from it instead for sake of good old memories stuffed in my mind. The other one is Hirokazu Koreeda’s great movie “After Life”, in which the dead can choose the one moment in their lifes for their next stage. I think I know what I would choose if I were in that movie. I’ll have no regret over that.

 Okay, I’ll stop making you bored immediately. 2010 has been another nice year for the critics and the audiences. While we were disappointed by those bland, crappy movies advertised as entertainments, there were many good movies with something to talk or write about. People sometimes criticizes the Academy awards for many reasons, but, what the hell, many movies are released around the end of year for getting nominations, and we are happy to watch them – if they are good ones, of course. Plus, the award ceremony is a good meat parade to watch.

 In case of making my Top 10 list, there had been some limits for me. When I was active in my Korean blog, I only chose the movies released in South Korea in that year. For example, although I wrote an enthusiastic review for “The Hurt Locker” in 2009 summer, the movie was released in South Korea in 2010 April, so that means I had to include it in 2010 list not 2009 list.

 However, I’m sure there are many visitors outside South Korea to this blog, so I change my rule. I have officially or unofficially watched some of the best movies of 2010, and they are more than enough to make my list. I have not watched “127 Hours”, “True Grit”, “The King’s Speech”, “Rabbit Hole” and “The Fighter” yet, and they will probably be placed on the special category in the next year.