Topic: The FIYH Top 20: An Experiment
Inspired partly by Herc's awesome Re-Weighting the IMDB 250 thread and partly by the fact that I think it could lead to some good discussion amongst all of us, I had the idea to see if we could attempt to establish FIYH's version of the IMDB 250. It'll probably require the aid of someone who's better at charts and algorithms and such than I am, and considering our relatively small user base it might not pan out at all, but I figured it's worth a shot.
So, obviously none of us actually has 250 films ranked in their head, so I'm proposing a much smaller-scale model: twenty films each. In addition to this, rather than just duplicating IMDB's system and having one "Greatest" list, the FIYH list will have two categories: your twenty favorite films, and the films that you think are the twenty greatest in terms of craft, impact, influence, etc. Obviously it's kind of a loaded word, but that's rather unavoidable in this context.
Hopefully, if we get enough people contributing and enough overlap between titles, we'll be able to create a chart of sorts mapping out what the FIYH community considers to be the twenty greatest films of all time. And who knows, maybe the favorite films will overlap enough that we'll be able to chart those too. Even if that doesn't happen, my hope is that the numerous different answers everyone gives will provide a good stimulant for conversation and debate. Feel free to provide as much or as little explanation with your list as desired.
I'll go first. My list of the greatest is inevitably going to suffer from the fact that until relatively recently I haven't studied film as an art so much as for entertainment, something I'm frantically trying to catch up on. This is why I may have some films on there undeservedly--I've seen their influence, but not what influenced them . It also explains the prominent lack of Citizen Kane—I haven't seen it yet. However, I do think I can still lay out some relatively coherent criteria for why I label great films as such. Technical and artistic advancement are obviously of huge import. Impact and influence maybe even more so—there are many films that are better than, for example, Blade Runner, but there's no question that it's one of the most important movies ever made in terms of setting the look for decades to come. Something that combines both advancement and impact leaves a massive footprint, which is why I placed Star Wars so high. And in a lot of cases, it comes down to sheer scope for me. Apocalypse Now and Gone with the Wind are wonderful films that would have artistic merit even on a smaller level, but their primary importance lies in their staggering scale—you have to stand in awe watching them and seeing such huge amounts of work bring something so massive to the screen. An epic scope rarely leads to perfect movies, but it does epitomize what film does so well—bringing other worlds to an existence that is larger than life. All that in mind, I recognize that the list is loaded and arbitrary regardless—again, that's unavoidable.
Darth Praxus' Twenty Favorite Films
1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. The Princess Bride
3. The Fellowship of the Ring
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
5. Her
6. Pulp Fiction
7. Mad Max: Fury Road
8. The Thing (1982)
9. Gone with the Wind
10. Fight Club
11. Gravity
12. Blade Runner
13. Chinatown
14. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
15. The Babadook
16. Dr. Strangelove
17. Inherent Vice
18. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
19. Fiddler on the Roof
20. Beauty and the Beast
Darth Praxus' Twenty Greatest Films
1. Gone with the Wind
2. Star Wars
3. Apocalypse Now
4. Jaws
5. Rear Window
6. The Maltese Falcon
7. Frankenstein (1931)
8. The Sting
9. Blade Runner
10. The Godfather
11. Pulp Fiction
12. 2001: A Space Odyssey
13. 12 Angry Men
14. Vertigo
15. It's a Wonderful Life
16. It Happened One Night
17. Oklahoma!
18. The Silence of the Lambs
19. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
20. The Fellowship of the Ring
Last edited by Abbie (2015-08-23 04:51:11)
