sycasey 2.0

So Amy announced that Shaun of the Dead won this poll, but I wonder when she did the cutoff? Because it seems like Zodiac has taken a pretty clear lead after the first week.

Not as such, but as previously mentioned there are other academic groups that do regular polls on this kind of thing. Sight & Sound (which is run by the British Film Institute) would have the most famous one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sight_%26_Sound_Top_50_Greatest_Films_of_All_Time If you're feeling particularly ambitious, there's also one from They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm

Yeah, most of this discussion is perfectly polite (at least on the Facebook group, which got a shout-out on this latest episode), but you know, it only takes a few yahoos to message Paul and complain that the AFI list doesn't have any foreign films.

I dunno, I think that was intentional. They want you to focus on Addison and have Eve hidden during that bit (so you don't immediately know how she's taking it). Most of the blocking and camera placement seems pretty intentional and considered here to me. I can see an argument that it occasionally feels stagy, but IMO it's the good kind of staginess (where the placement of people within the frame is supposed to communicate meaning), sort of like Citizen Kane.

I think they're getting this because some of the discussion (in Facebook/Twitter) is about what SHOULD be on the AFI list, and people keep bringing up stuff that's shot down because it's not American. So that upsets some people (that these are the AFI's rules) and gets back to Paul that way. Not really his fault, so I hope he doesn't take it as such.

Yup, these should be the clear moments where you see that Eve is the villain. The rest can be chalked up to standard career ambition, but actively going after the husband of someone who is supposedly your friend? And doing it twice (thereby proving that it wasn't just some heat of passion thing, it's a deliberate plan)? A decent person doesn't do that. But I will say that the first time I watched All About Eve I was also totally taken in by Eve's act. It wasn't until very late (when Addison first questions her in the dressing room) that it became obvious to me she was playing everyone for suckers. Watching it back again, it seems pretty obvious from the start. But that's also the strength of the movie! It totally works either way.

Right, all of that plus the fact that Giorgio feels the need to lie to Carla on the phone makes me think there isn't any such arrangement.

Garbage Pail Kids still holds that crown for me.

The fact that everyone has to keep lying about Giorgio's affair would also seem to destroy the idea that we are meant to see this as an example of Italians having a more "open" attitude towards sex and relationships. Giorgio's wife wouldn't seem to think so!

You can argue that some of that is in there, maybe unintentionally thanks to the work of the animators making Kong so sympathetic upon his death. But I think it's hard to watch the movie and not feel sorry for the death of the beast . . . and by extension, for the exploitation and destruction of the native peoples he is a metaphor for. I mean, yeah, they're still basically equating those people with gorillas. I'm just saying it's complicated.

So like the rest of the movie, the existence of the kitchen scene entirely hinges on Giorgio's ego and lack of consideration for other people's needs. Makes perfect sense, in retrospect.

Much like Jason and June, I stopped paying attention for long stretches of this movie, so perhaps I missed something . . . but why were Pavarotti and Lady Doctor tasked with cooking dinner for some large and seemingly important gathering? This is a rich guy who has people he can easily order around to do stuff for him, right? If he had some special affinity for cooking, it sure didn't show in that scene.

I contain multitudes!

Yeah, this has come up on the Facebook group. If they want to do world cinema, then maybe the Sight & Sound list would be a good thing to go through (leaving out those already covered by the AFI). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sight_%26_Sound_Top_50_Greatest_Films_of_All_Time

Yeah, Every Frame stopped producing new videos, but the ones they have up are great.

There was some question about why Peter Jackson decided to tackle a remake of King Kong, but the discussion of the meta-filmmaking aspects of the original movie make me think this fits right in with his thematic interests in much of his non-Tolkien stuff. I'll also note that I can't take all credit for this stuff, as I first read this analysis of Jackson on the old (now defunct) Rotten Tomatoes forums. Jackson is interested in the idea of fantasy storytelling and how it interacts with reality (or "reality" as individuals perceive it). Heavenly Creatures - about two girls who live out a secret fantasy world that morphs into a real-life murder Forgotten Silver - mockumentary about a fake Kiwi filmmaker that aired on New Zealand television and fooled a lot of people into thinking it was real The Frighteners - story about a guy who can actually see and speak with ghosts but uses this ability to fake hauntings and get people to pay for his "exorcisms" In that context, remaking a movie about a film production turned frighteningly real like King Kong fits right in. He even cast Jack Black as Carl Denham, and Black is a fairly decent on-screen counterpart for the then-portly and scraggly Jackson. Anyway, it was divisive, but I also quite liked the Peter Jackson version of Kong, though it is certainly too long and seemingly the beginning of Jackson overstretching his narratives to their detriment.

We'll just disagree on that. I think it easily does. Though I might also be making some concessions for the time period. This was fairly early in cinematic history, particularly for sound movies. The acting styles were still pretty stagy and declarative, and the writing probably played that up to some degree.

I guess I'd say there's a spectrum, that in considering these movies (especially from a historical perspective, as is the AFI's charter) you have to think about balancing your personal reactions against the larger context. Sometimes there will be a movie like Birth of a Nation where it's just become so toxic in a modern context because of its themes that it's going to fall off even though it's very important. Sometimes there will be movies that are super-divisive, but the movie's fans love it SO MUCH that it manages to get in there despite the haters (I'm not sure which one that would be on the current list -- Blade Runner maybe?). There's no hard-and-fast rule here. But I will say that discussing influence is a valid argument to bring in the context of a list like this, especially since the AFI literally asked voters to consider that as part of the criteria.

So what does "good" mean in this context? Is it entirely based on our personal feelings about the movie, or are we also making an effort to look outside ourselves at how others have reacted? The "influence" argument goes to the latter, IMO. If something has had that much influence on the culture then it must have been doing something that worked on a lot of people. I might need to step outside myself a little bit if my reaction didn't match up with that. Not necessarily that I'm going to love it, but I can use that as a way of seeing merit. In some cases you can make the argument that the influence was mostly negative. I don't really see that with King Kong (unless you're really strongly against action/adventure movies in general), but that could be the case sometimes. Finally, this also doesn't mean you have to put the movie on your personal Top 100. But a list like the AFI 100 is attempting to form some kind of consensus. For that maybe you do want to look more at outside factors like influence and cultural impact.

Sorry, but I just don't see an argument for leaving it off. It's way too iconic and influential. Personally, I find it very entertaining. Some of the racist/sexist stuff I largely chalk up to being a product of its time, and on the other hand the movie also has hints of progressivism in how it gets you to sympathize with the creature. As a thrill ride I think it holds up marvelously. The characterization/dialogue only needs to be good enough to serve as scaffolding for the adventure spectacle, and IMO it does.

More from that classic Simpsons episode:

Paul was apologizing for Yes, Giorgio being too long in the minisode, but according to IMDb it's only 1 hour and 50 minutes. That's not all that long. Does it just FEEL really long? By comparison, Blues Brothers 2000 is 2 hours, 3 minutes.

For animated films, the original AFI 100 had both Snow White and Fantasia. On the updated list, Fantasia was out and Toy Story in.