Saturday, February 21, 2009

Round One

Okay, I started with the list of 27 films mentioned in my previous post. To that list, I added quite a few more films that I like very much. I then counted up the films I had listed, and I had slightly more than 50 films. I decided to add several more to bring the total to 64. Due to the process I used to compose this list, there are a few films that clearly won't make the next cut. I'm pretty sure you'll laugh at some of the choices I've made. That's kind of the way I wanted it. For that matter, I've left out some films that should clearly be on the list, like Citizen Kane and The Godfather, but I'll deal with that later.

The next step was to randomly divide these films into 8 groups of 8. When nearly done with this process, I found that I had miscounted. I actually had 65 films, and needed to discard one. I decided to toss out the Eddie Izzard film as it is just a film of his stand-up comedy routine. A totally arbitrary distinction, and I certainly don't want to ignore concert/stand-up films in general, nor documentaries for that matter. After all, Urgh! A Music War is on the list. I had to get rid of one film though, and Eddie Izzard was the odd man out. (You have to admit, he is an odd man.)

So, the next step is to choose the 4 best films out of each group of 8. I have a pretty good idea which of those films I'll choose, but I'd be happy to hear any suggestions/preferences. Which films out of each group do you prefer? Here are the groups:

A)
Veer-Zaara
The Lord of the Rings
Midnight Cowboy
Koyaanisqatsi
2001
Resevoir Dogs
Alien
Pan's Labyrinth

B)
Dead Alive
O Brother Where Art Thou?
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Big Night
Fargo
Pi
Warriors
M

C)
Best in Show
The Hidden Fortress
Felicia's Journey
This is Spinal Tap
Pulp Fiction
Gods and Monsters
X-Men
Scarface

D)
The Third Man
The Saddest Music in the World
Requiem for a Dream
Eraserhead
Gojira
Run Lola Run
Juno
Z

E)
Quadraphenia
River's Edge
Allegro Non Troppo
Bonnie and Clyde
Blue Velvet
Seven Samurai
A Clockwork Orange
Bicycle Theives

F)
Bombay
Memento
Ararat
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Blood Simple
The Devil's Backbone
Blade Runner
Waiting for Guffman

G)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Brazil
Cool Hand Luke
A Face in the Crowd
Urgh! A Music War
Straw Dogs
The City of Lost Children
Yojimbo

H)
Night of the Living Dead
Dr. Strangelove
Baraka
Boy's Don't Cry
Earth
Dancer in the Dark
The Grifters
The Deerhunter

5 comments:

L. Chupacabra said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Escape Goat said...

Hey, where's, "My Life as a Dog"?

L. Chupacabra said...

Good question. I don't know how I could have forgotten one of my most favorite films, one that would certainly make my top ten no matter what rules I used. The answer is that, after the initial alphabetic list, I added films haphazardly. As I said in my post, though, great films have been skipped, and I will remedy this eventually. It all fits my unfathomably daffy plan.

Bill said...

Interesting and good fun and makes one think of beloved films not on someone's list and groups of films one needs to see. Do you like Chaplin's Modern Times, for instance. I will think of some of my favorites, including some light-weight films that please.

Bill said...

I await approval from Google. I like the manner of generating lists that then allows one to add and subtract all that got missed, such as My Life as a Dog. I also enjoy Modern Times, Red River, and a few others such as Groundhog Day--and for sports films, Bull Durham.