Sunday, June 10, 2012

"It Was The Greatest Movie I've Ever Seen in my Life!"


"And you wouldn't believe the celebrities who did cameos: Dustin Hoffman, Michael Jackson.  Of course they didn't use their real names, but you could tell it was them."

I mentioned in one of these posts several months ago that I was going to try and compile a top 10 movie list.  As someone suffering from a massive infestation of geekteria (there is no cure), this turned out to be way more goddamn complicated than it should have been.  So I gave up.  But now, being the brave and valiant blogger that I am (and also not being able to think of anything else to write about), I shall try again.  Here we go:

Some of the choices for my top 10 movie list were super easy: Star Wars? Check. The Sound of Music? Of course.  Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy? You bet your smelly pirate hooker ass!  But then things started to get difficult.  As you can see from my no brainers, I have a bit of an eclectic palate. I do lean towards comedies, but that is far from the only genre in which I partake.  So, I started asking myself some difficult questions about this seemingly straight forward, quick and easy topic:

1. Should I create some kind of subsection for each genre, and list my top 10 of each of those? 

      Tempting, but I foresee problems:

That would be quite a few movies to list, and some of them would be embarrassingly short (would some lines in Klingon from a Star Trek movie count as a foreign film? If so, can I use it twice?).  What school of genre category should I adhere to? For example, most award shows have Drama, Comedy, Animated, and Short films.  Ok, yeah, that sounds good, you say.  Use those parameters.  Oh, how sweetly naive you are, you stupid, stupid, dummy.

How can we forget about the video store (and by 'video store', I mean 'netflix') categorization matrix?! Action & Adventure, Family & Children, Gay & Lesbian, Special Interest (these are actual Netflix genres...  for serious), Classics, Musicals, Independents, etc.?  That would be just too tedious, and many of the lists would overlap. I mean, isn't 'Musicals' and 'Gay & Lesbian' essentially the same genre anyway? Tee hee hee!  The cheekiness!*
        *the views of the writer of this blog are not necessarily represented by the terrible quality    
         and borderline discriminatory nature of the preceding joke.  But my dead dad would have 
         thought it was fucking hilarious so I just had to leave it in.

The conclusion I came up with was no; multiple lists covering many genres was not going to be fun.  Not fun to read, and, more importantly, not fun to write.

Hurdle #2:  Everything changes, dude (I know it isn't a question, gimme a minute).

        My favorites from childhood or even my teen years are certainly not my favorites now (though some of you may be not believe it based on my current taste in movies).  So here's the question (see, if you were a little more patient, everything would have been fine, Gee Whiz!): Should I look back and try to remember all the movies I loved throughout my life and come up with some kind of rating system based on number of viewings divided by the age I was at the time, assuming, of course, that the younger I was, the more often I would watch a movie out of an innate need for repetition and/or the rapturousness of pretty colors rather than an actual love of the films story arc, character development, cinematography, musical score and/or emotional evocations from the actors?

Sounds complicated.  And also, impossible.

An overall, life-spanning favorite movie list is out (and for obvious reasons, my future favorite movie list is also out.  Unless... I have invented a time machine at some point during my life and my future self comes back to their past, which is currently my present, and gives me a list of future-me's top 10.  IF I did invent such a machine, I think that the perfect moment for future-me to contact present-me would be to show up... right.... NOW!  Nope, I am not responsible for time travel.  Wait ....Thought I heard something that sounded like the space-time continuum being ripped, but alas, it was just my dog farting.  Not me.  My dog).

Hurray, another piece of this ridiculous and unnecessary puzzle has fallen into place! Let's recap:

Decision one: Top 10 list will be all-genre-encompassing and not several smaller lists ranked by genre.  I mean, which one would you even list first? No, no, I'm not going down that road.  No need.  It would totally be Snuff films though, right? Yeah, it would!

Decision two: this top 10 will be a reflection of my current favorites only and not involve time travel in anyway (I know, I'm as crushed as you are).

Alright, imaginary readers, my brain has officially overloaded ("by all medical logic, steam should be shooting out of his ears!").  I'm going to have to karate chop this post in half like the belligerent cinder block that it is and take a break to go gently weep in the corner.  Or, you know, play Farmville or something.

Stayed tuned for Part two.... 
     More shit exactly like this.  Sorry. 

1 comment:

  1. Before compiling your list, you may enjoy watching La Vita è Bella. Italian with subs, but by far the most...hmm...

    Well, I remember my life being impacted greatly by it.

    Sad movies are almost always well made ^^

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