The Alphabet of Brilliant Films
Submitted by jim on Wed, 08/18/2004 - 11:45
Tags:
- Alien
- Beauty & the Beast (Disney)
- Cold Comfort Farm
- Delicatessen
- Eight Men Out
- A Fish Called Wanda
- Groundhog Day
- Hoop Dreams
- The Iron Giant
- Jaws
- Kiki's Delivery Service
- The Last Picture Show
- The Matrix
- Nobody's Fool
- Out of Sight
- Pride & Prejudice
- Qiu Ju da guan si (The Story of Qiu Ju)
- Raise the Red Lantern
- Schindler's List
- The Thin Man
- Unforgiven
- The Verdict
- Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers
- X2: X-Men United
- Yojimbo
- Zero Effect
Author Comments:
"P" was damn near impossible, with Pulp Fiction, Panic, and Psycho in the mix.
"T" was no prize either, with Truly Madly Deeply, Toy Story (and the sequel), The Terminator (and the sequel), Trainspotting, and The Truman Show vying for the letter.
I feel like my choices for K, M, S, U, and V might be slightly shaky. Suggestions welcome!
Cloned From:
Great list! I see many known favorites here, but am a bit shocked that Yojimbo beat out Yi Yi. The 'Y's are much tougher than I thought they would be at first...
Which Pride and Prejudice are you counting? For 'P' I went with Pulp Fiction, but I also love The Producers, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Piano, Persona, and Psycho.
I think the 'B' and 'M' generated the most nominees for me. 'B' gave me my winner, Bringing Up Baby, your winner, Beauty and the Beast, and also Battleship Potemkin, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Breathless, Blade Runner, Before Sunset, Blow Up, Broadcast News, The Big Sleep, and Blood Simple. The 'M's, on the other hand, suggested The Maltese Falcon, My Man Godfrey, Metropolis, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, M (naturally), Mulholland Dr., Meshes of the Afternoon, Manhattan, The Magnificent Ambersons, Miller's Crossing, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, among others.
Again, great list! It is nice to see many films that didn't quite make my first choice show up here!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
This was a very fun list to make, with some letters as no-brainers and others presenting agonizing choices. I also found myself not considering each letter independently, and instead trying to balance the list. For example, with Jaws and Ju Dou for J, and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Raise the Red Lantern for R, I had to decide how to balance Zhang and Speilberg. I couldn't very well put Raiders in without removing Jaws and Schindler's List, and I didn't necessarily want Zhang on there three times either, which is why Ju Dou didn't make the cut. I may tweak this yet to limit to one film per director though.
Then there's the fact that I have four animated movies on here. "B" is a much tougher letter than "I", so I'd probably leave The Iron Giant in and pick another "B", should I decide to prune animated movies. But speaking of animated movies, it was a tough choice putting Groundhog Day ahead of Grave of the Fireflies...
"C" was troublesome in its own way: I can't really say Cold Comfort Farm is a better movie than Casablana or Citizen Kane, but I can fudge "favorite vs. best" this one time, right? :-)
I had "M" down to The Matrix and Manhattan, mostly by managing to forget many of the movies you mentioned. Mmmmm, My Man Godfrey...
Yojimbo/Yi Yi was an incredibly close call. I only didn't note the Y choice specifically because it really came down to those two alone (of the Y movies I could recall) rather than several close contenders.
Oh, the Pride & Prejudice version is the 1995 one with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. I should probably disqualify it for being a miniseries. But then if I do that would I also have to disqualify shorts, meaning no Wallace & Gromit for "W"? Ahhhhh, my head! Anyway, I'm glad I forgot about The Passion of Joan of Arc for "P", as that only exacerbates an already-torturous choice.