Top 10 Movies of 2007 by Richard Corliss

10. Beowulf

Robert Zemeckis' version of the old saga announces the instant maturity of motion-capture animation (where actors perform their scenes and computer whizzes basically paint over them). Writers Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have given the story a weird twist about halfbreed offspring and the need to kill them, but the film is still zesty, sexy fun. P.S.: While Beowulf is still in theaters, see it in the IMAX format. It's 3-Delirious.

9. Waitress

Nothing makes a critic feel worse than the emotional badgering of self-styled "feel-good" comedies. But this one I found pretty darned lovable. Keri Russell is the pregnant piemaker who is abused by her husband and attracted to her McDreamy OB-GYN. Writer-director Adrienne Shelly (who was randomly murdered before the film's release) mixes the comic and social ingredients to make a film that's bumptious, scrumptious fun.

8. In the Valley of Elah

A soldier back from Iraq is found dead, his body hacked to pieces. His father (Tommy Lee Jones) wants to know what happens, and enlists the help of a smart police detective (Charlize Theron). Paul Haggis' drama, based on a true case, is a big improvement on his Oscar-winning Crash: strong in the sleuthing, sobering in its political conclusions. Jones' dogged, drained humanity anchors this excellent drama about the war brought home — a potent requiem for our best intentions.

7. No End in Sight

In a strong year for political docs, Charles Ferguson's study of the Iraq morass stands out for its comprehensive take on how we got there, why we can't get out. Stubbornness is one reason, lack of intellectual curiosity another. As one ex-Bush official notes, when the President was presented with an analysis of the Iraq occupation, he didn't even read the one-page summary. So Dubya probably won't see this movie. Everyone else should, though. It's the perfect stocking-stuffer for holiday enlightenment.

6. Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran, first under the Shah, then in the more repressive shadow of the Ayatollah. She moved to Paris and sketched her early life into a graphic-novel memoir. Now, with co-director Vincent Paronnaud (known in comics circles as Winshluss), Satrapi has created something unusual: an autobiographical animated feature. The visual style is simple, almost monochromatic. But Persepolis is a legitimate descendant of the Disney classics: a coming-of-age tale, that manages to be both harrowing and exuberant.

5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Adapting the 1979 musical about a barber driven mad by lost love and revenge, Tim Burton finds a pulsing, mournful heart inside Stephen Sondheim's cold-steel lyrics — and then he rips it out. He applies the desaturated color scheme of Sleepy Hollow to the streets of 18th century London, where virtually everyone's motives are venal and verminous. Cheers to Johnny Depp, who incarnates this Edward Razorhands with a dark, post-mortem passion. Depp's a powerful singer, too.

4. Atonement

Poaching in Merchant-Ivory territory, director Joe Wright did right by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice two years ago. He reunites with leading lady Keira Knightley in this Ian McEwan story about the naive perniciousness of youth. Saoirse Ronan is terrific as the confused 12-year-old, and as the tale twists over the decades, the mood shifts from beguiling to devastating.

3. Killer of Sheep

Completed in 1977 and virtually unseen since, Charles Burnett's poetic document of family life in a Los Angeles ghetto finally got a decent release, and is now out on DVD. In sympathetic, unsentimental vignettes, we meet a slaughterhouse worker (Henry Gayle Sanders), his wife (Kaycee Jones) and two kids. As the children play games in the post-apocalyptic rubble of Watts, the man's emotional exhaustion abrades against the woman's sexual yearning. This is surely the finest, most uncompromising film by a black director. More than that, it's an aching testament to the persistence of dreams amid desolation.

2. The Lives of Others

In a Communist dictatorship, the government spies on its own citizens. An East German official (the late, great Ulrich Mü) is assigned to bug the home of some theater people and in the process gets a dose of conscience. In February, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's poignant, unsettling thriller won an Oscar as the Motion Picture Academy's Best Foreign Language Film. Now it's my favorite foreign language film too.

1. No Country for Old Men

The good guy (Josh Brolin) steals $2 million in drug money. The implacably, mesmerizingly, astonishingly bad guy (Javier Bardem) tries to get it back. And a West Texas sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) tracks their discursive trails. Adapting Cormac McCarthy's novel, Joel and Ethan Coen have fashioned a nearly mainstream action movie that is dry, funny, beautifully acted, thrillingly cinematic. After two decades of being brilliant on the movie margins, the Coens are ready for their closeup, and maybe their Oscar.

credited to time.com

Top 10 Most Common Passwords

Life these days has become largely dependent on passwords - whether we're checking our emails, transferring funds or shopping online, passwords have their part to play. We're constantly bombarded with horror stories of security breaches, fraud, and phishing sites. Users are consistently told that a strong password is essential these days to protect private data. Why is it, then, that users on websites opt for the same, consistent, insecure passwords time after time?

Taking an aggregate sample of passwords (primarily from the UK), we take a look at the most commonly occurring. If you spot your own password listed - it might just be time for a change!

10. 'thomas' (0.99‰)

First off, at number 10, is the most common format of passwords - the name. Thomas is a perennially popular name in the UK , so it is perhaps no surprise that it makes the top 10, with nearly 1 in 1,000 people opting for this ubiquitous forename as their password. We can only guess that there are a lot of fans of Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison out there! The high prevalence of Christian names only further reinforces the fact that loved ones are a common choice when it comes to passwords.

9. 'arsenal' (1.11‰)

Football teams tend to be another popular choice, and the gunners fall in 9th place. This may or may not be reflective of the fact that the word 'arsenal' starts with a 4-letter swear word - another popular choice when it comes to passwords. Arsenal are ranked 6th overall in average attendance rankings, and are the 2nd most popular football-related password.

8. 'monkey' (1.33‰)

Quite why the monkey makes it into 8th place is beyond me, but the fact that it's a 6-letter word (6 letters is a typical minimum length for passwords), is easily typed and is memorable probably helps cement its position as ideal password material. Still, it's quite worrying that there's such a trend - perhaps the internet and monkeys are inextricably linked?

7. 'charlie' (1.39‰)

Another name - nowhere near as common a name as No. 10, Thomas, but it's our most popular name-based password overall. Could of course, be a homage to a number of famous Charlies - Chaplin, Sheen, or those of a Chocolate Factory persuasion. Or, of course, it could just be the case that they're referring to it's slang usage.

6. 'qwerty' (1.41‰)

I wonder where the inspiration for this one came from? Perhaps when faced with a blinking cursor and an instruction to choose a password people will tend to look to the things closest to them - which would explain why 1 in 700 people choose 'qwerty' as their password.

5. '123456' (1.63‰)

Can you count to 6? It's the most common minimum required length of password - and the 5th most common password.

4. 'letmein' (1.76‰)

A modern-day version of 'open sesame' - and 1 person in 560 will type 'letmein' as their password. Quite why is beyond me. I could be mistaken, but I have a hunch that 'letmein' has been featured in a movie or TV series - Fox Mulder's password from the X Files - 'trustno1' - also ranked quite highly.

3. 'liverpool' (1.82‰)

The most popular football team by some margin, Liverpool was the third most popular password overall. Does this mean that 1 in 550 people is such a devout Liverpool fan that they would be willing to entrust private data to the team they love? Liverpool ranked 3rd in the average attendance ratings - leaving the 2 most popular teams, Manchester United and Newcastle United, out of the top 10 list - perhaps because they're too long and difficult to type.

2. 'password' (3.780‰)

Akin to pressing the 'any' key, when told to enter a 'password', it would seem that users aren't the sharpest tool in the box - with almost 1 in 250 people choosing the word 'password'.

1. '123' (3.784‰)

With nearly 4 people in 1,000 opting for a simple numerical sequence as their password (it should be noted that there was no lower length limit specified), '123' must be the first thing a lot of people think of when asked to specify a password. One dreads to think what their PIN number might be!

Conclusion

The above figures mean that 1.8% of people use one of the above passwords - and 6.5% of people share a password from the top 100 list. Although the remaining 90+% have less common (or even unique) passwords, the trends towards simplistic and guessable show that the average user cares less about choosing a strong password and more about memorability. Or in some cases, their football team. I won't go in-depth about how to make sure you have a strong password - there are plenty of guides out there - but the above list should certainly prove a useful guide as to what sort of password to avoid.

In a day when all our private data and banking information is stored behind simple secret words and phrases, it makes sense to narrow the probability of guesswork as slim as possible.