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The EW greatest movies in 1999, dropped in 2013

Possibly the flat out funniest movie in the second half of the 20th century.

An astonishing number of films that were on Entertainment Weekly’s Top 100 films in 1999 didn’t make the cut in 2013. I realize they were compiled by different people; editor Ty Burr was responsible for the earlier list. Still, some of these being displaced startled me, even if I hadn’t seen the newer iteration.

5. Raging Bull (1980) – I saw the craft of this film. I didn’t love it, though I liked it more as it went along. Then again, I saw it on video originally; had I first seen it in the theater, that might have made a difference.
7. The Godfather, Part II (1974) – never saw this, but how does this fall off the list? 1974 Best Picture!
16. Star Wars (1977) – I’m rather partial to this film. The 2nd pic (or 5th, if you insist), may be technically more proficient, but this one I fell in love with.
23. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)- I’ve only sure I’ve seen this fairly recently. This is quality, though quite scary, stuff for kids, I would think.
24. Bringing Up Baby (1938) – Watched this on TV. Enjoyable.
27. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) – Saw this long ago on TV, and STILL kicking the dust out of boots.
28. Sunset Boulevard (1950) – another great film I saw on TV, probably in the 1970s, dropped from the list unjustly.
33. Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim) (1962) (Fr.) saw this in Binghamton back in the late 1960s in a theater. It was my favorite foreign film, and ought not to have been dropped
34. Sherlock, Jr. (1924) – Don’t know it.
35. The Philadelphia Story (1940) – Saw it in the 1980s, I believe, and it was great fun.
36. 8 1/2 (Otto e Mezzo) (1963) (It.) – Don’t think I ever saw it, but felt I should.
42. Aliens (1986) – Didn’t see.
46. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) – I found this very affecting the couple of times I’ve seen it on TV and great whistling.
51. Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) (1945) (Fr.) – Don’t know.
53. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – Saw this on TV after watching the remake in the theater; this is far superior.
59. The Lady Eve (1941) – Don’t know.
62. Henry V (1944) (Br.) – Did not see this version.
65. The Third Man (1949) – On my list to see.
67. Airplane! (1980) – Possibly the flat-out funniest movie in the second half of the 20th century. And features a character named Roger. Belongs on the current list!
68. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – saw, but recollection is sparse.
69. The Conformist (1970) (It./Fr./WGer.) – Heard of this, but did not see.
70. Beauty and the Beast (1991) – I’ve seen maybe three times now on DVD, and it gets better with each viewing.
71. To Be or Not to Be (1942) – Don’t recall seeing.
72. M (1931) (Ger.) – Didn’t see.
73. Great Expectations (1946) (Br.) – Didn’t see, but want to.
74. Funny Face (1957) – Audrey Hepburn I remember, but it’s sketchy in the mind.
75. Tootsie (1982) – Dustin Hoffman used his actual real anger pre-transformation to give this real bite. Very good film.
76. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – Actually, THE movie on this list I most want to see – Angela Landsbury and Frank Sinatra. I saw the remake with Denzel Washington, and it’s so-so.
77. Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin) (1925) (USSR) – Didn’t see.
78. White Heat (1949) – Didn’t see. I wonder if it’s true of the critics as well.
79. It’s a Gift (1934) – Didn’t see.
80. Nosferatu (1922) (Ger.) – Saw only bits of it
82. Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) (1955) (Fr.) – Did not see
84. Blow-Up (1966) (Br.) – Saw this in the early 1970s. Was great at the time, but the memory of the specifics has faded.

85. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) – This movie I find SO powerful and has resonance for today, still. Saw it again in the last five years. Belongs on the current list.
87. L’Age d’Or (1930) (Fr.) – Don’t know.
88. The Producers (1968) – Brilliant, audacious Mel Brooks film. I’d have kept it.
89. Wings of Desire (Der Himmel uber Berlin) (1988) (WGer./Fr.) – Did not see.
90. Pickup on South Street (1953) – Embarrassing how many I didn’t see.
91. Mildred Pierce (1945) – Did not see, but feel like I did, because my high school friend Vito mentioned it SO often.
94. The Shop Around the Corner (1940) – Didn’t see
95. Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari) (1953) (Jp.) – #10 foreign film on the current list. Did not see.
96. The Last of the Mohicans (1992) – Somehow missed this.
99. Swept Away… (1975) (It.) – I saw it at the time and was moved by it, but the details are fading.
100. Celine & Julie Go Boating (1974) (Fr.) – Don’t know.

Then there are the top 10 genre films from 2013 that did not make the overall top 100 list.

The 10 Greatest Horror Flicks
8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – Never saw.
9. Carrie (1976) – Didn’t see
10. Alien (1979) – DID see, and was engrossed by it.

The 10 Greatest Action Films

9. Die Hard (1988) – Another one of those films that I’ve seen on TV from time to time and didn’t know which iteration I was watching. It does have its appeal.
10. Kill Bill–Vol. 1 (2003) – did not/will not see.

The 10 Greatest Family Movies

6. The Little Mermaid (1989) – It’s not my favorite, but it has its charm.
7. The Red Balloon (1956) – Did not see
8. Shrek (2001) – I rather liked it, though the sequels were lesser efforts.
9. National Velvet (1944) – I’ve seen bits and pieces, but probably not the whole thing.
10. Spirited Away (2001) – I loved this when I saw it in the theater at the time.

The 10 Greatest Documentaries

4. Hoop Dreams (1994) – Great film.
5. Nanook of the North (1922) – Didn’t see
6. Crumb (1995) – Liked it
7. Gimme Shelter (1970) – Did see; it was depressing.
8. Titicut Follies (1967) – Don’t know it
9. Don’t Look Back (1967) – Not familiar
10. The Up Series (1964-present) – Mr. Frog mentioned this recently. I saw 14, 21, and 28, maybe 35, definite not 7, 42, or 49. Loved what I’ve seen, and I should just see the whole Magilla.

Here are some movies I have seen, some of which may be better than the ones on the 2013 list. It is not comprehensive.

The African Queen (1951)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
Bull Durham (1988)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
The Verdict (1982)
West Side Story (1961)

What’s the frequency, English?

Americans have no idea what a fortnight is.

I used to go out with a poet, and she helped put out this poetry chapbook. It came out triannually, and that was the first time I knew that triannual meant thrice a year, rather than once every three years, which is triennial. Likewise biannually and biennially – twice a year and every two years, respectively. EXCEPT that, according to this dictionary, the second definition of biannual IS biennial. This both hurts my head and breaks my heart.

I KNEW this was a problem with biweekly, which means both twice a week AND every two weeks. This was a tad confusing when wanting to order comic books back in the day. We assumed, though, that a comic was going to come out twice a month, rather than eight or nine times a month. To avoid this confusion, I started using the term fortnightly for every two weeks. The problem with THAT is Americans have no idea what a fortnight is.

In the triannual definition, the usage note reads: “To avoid confusion between ‘triennial’…and ‘triannual’…, it is often better to substitute a less ambiguous phrase such as ‘three times a year’ or ‘every four months’. I suppose so, but often the phrase is far less elegant than a single, perfect word. Obviously, triannual has been rendered an imperfect word.

For twice a year, I use semiannually, but I don’t have a similar option for thrice annually.

Two of my favorite words denoting the passage of time:
Sesquicentennial – 150 years. Find more anniversary words here.
Lustrum – five years, which was tied to the census of ancient Rome.
***
What’s The Frequency, Kenneth? – R.E.M.

8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need, says College Humor.

The official list of English words misused in EU documents.

To boycott or not to boycott; that is the question

The traditional idea that international sports events should be a place to create cooperation through competition is damaged by boycotts, as are the athletes that have trained for years for the opportunity to participate.

There is a movement to have the United States and other nations boycott the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia in 2014, and I’m a bit conflicted about it.

One group wants to boycott because of the country’s highly repressive new law banning any speech that equates the social status of same-sex relationships with heterosexual ones. I agree with the intent of the boycott in this case. But we’ve had Olympics in repressive regimes before; the dissidents in Beijing were just locked away for the Summer Olympics in 2008, and let’s not even talk about Tibet.

Another group wants to boycott because Russia has given sanctuary to Edward Snowden, the leaker of all that NSA classified information that showed the United States has all this “metadata” on its own citizens. I heard Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) float that one while Snowden was still living in the Moscow airport, which was reason enough for me to be inclined to oppose it.

I’m also reminded that there was a boycott by African nations at the Summer Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976, having to do with New Zealand competing athletically with South Africa, which had been banned from the Olympics since 1964 because of its apartheid policies.

Then the United States and some of its allies boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow because of the USSR invasion of Afghanistan; the irony still resonates. In response, many of the Soviet bloc nations stayed away from the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

On the fourth hand, I think we’re at here, the traditional idea that international sports events should be a place to create cooperation through competition is damaged by boycotts, as are the athletes that have trained for years for the opportunity to participate. All the Games were diminished, even if the boycott rationales were worthy.

Right now, I’m leaning against the boycott. Circumstances could change that. And perhaps I can be persuaded. Lessee, Arthur’s ambivalent, too…

D is for Death

Death is such an uncomfortable subject, even though most of us will experience it eventually.

When someone significant in my life dies, I like to mention him or her in this blog. They don’t have to be people I actually met, but are usually people who inspired me in one way or another. The late Roger Ebert’s birthday was June 18, and I had a passing recollection of how well he wrote about issues other than movies in the latter stages of his life.

Paul McCartney, who shared a birthday with Ebert – both were born in 1942- put out an album in 2007 called Memory Almost Full. The penultimate song was The End of the End [LISTEN], which had these lyrics:
“On the day that I die, I’d like jokes to be told And stories of old to be rolled out like carpets That children have played on and laid on While listening to stories of old.” He said on the audio commentary disc to the album that the song was inspired by someone who said, “I wish you a good death.” This initially startled him, but then he started to think of the tradition of the Irish wake, and he gained a greater understanding of the sentiment.

Death is such an uncomfortable subject, even though most of us will experience it eventually. I’ve been to LOTS of funerals in my time, quite a few fellow church members from my last two churches. I’ve come to the conclusion that being there trumps almost anything one can say because almost anything said can be taken wrong:
“Well, she lived a long life.” True, she was 92, but they wanted her to be there at 93 and 95.
“He’s in heaven now.” Even if all the parties believe this – some don’t – I’ve seen it used as an attempt to shortcut the grieving process, some theological variation of “Get over it.”
“It’s for the best,” usually said of someone who passed after a lengthy and/or painful illness. While this may be true, it’s not for YOU to say. On the other hand, you can say, “If you want to talk…” And let THEM talk.

This article about former BeeGees singer Barry Gibb losing all of his “brothers without being friends with them” is very sad because it is not unusual. Someone dies and issues remain permanently unresolved.

Whereas I enjoyed the story about National Public Radio’s Scott Simon chronicling his mother’s last days on Twitter. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it, but given his mom’s show biz past, it was appropriate for them.

I really liked the poem included in this blog post, which also includes this narrative: “For a time, it feels like the whole world should stop, when a loved one dies. I remember experiencing that feeling so strongly… Perhaps the nicest thing you can do for someone who has lost a part of their world, is let your own world stop, if only for a moment.”
***
It occurred to me I never gave props to Helen Thomas, pioneering White House correspondent, mostly because I had nothing to add to what others said.

I’ll also mention John Palmer, NBC’s White House correspondent, and later, a newsreader for the TODAY show, back when it was still doing news.

Michael Ansara was an actor who “specialized in playing American Indians and aliens”; he was actually born in Syria and was married for a time to Barbara Eden.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

The new old movies

Mcmurphy-one-flew-over-the-cuckoo — McMurphy from Cuckoo's Nest

That Jaquandor fellow did this exercise: “For me, when I think of an ‘old movie’, my brain always defaults to Casablanca, which by the time of my awareness of its existence, had become a venerable classic movie. Now, when I was born, Casablanca was 29 years old. So here is a list of films that, as of this year, are as old as my brain’s canonical ‘old movie’.”

My problem is that my default ‘old’ movie was The African Queen (1951), only two years before I was born, because I saw it long afterwards. So the list generated would be too recent. I thought of 1939, but I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz so often, not to mention variations on it, it’s still new. So I finally decided on Birth of a Nation (1915); now that’s an old film.

1953-1915=38. 2013-38=1975

These are the movies of 1975, as old today as Birth of a Nation was when I was born:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Tommy
Nashville
Love and Death
The Stepford Wives
Shampoo
Jaws
Dog Day Afternoon

Lots more, of course, but these jumped out at me as films that either reflected the era, or are timeless classics. And the latter two I’ve never seen.