Listosaurus Rex

The IMDb Top 250 is one of my favorite lists to follow.  It’s a list of the best-rated movies by hundreds of thousands of users on the International Movie Database, imdb.com.  The Godfather had been #1 for the two years I’ve been following the list, and sources online state that it’s held the top spot for over a decade.

The Shawshank Redemption has long held the #2 spot.  Its rating has always hovered right next to The Godfather’s, and many message boards have bickered about whether Andy Dufresne’s spiritual epic would ever take the top spot.

And finally, a little over a week ago The Godfather was finally dethroned.  The big surprise that it wasn’t The Shawshank Redemption that took the final spot, but a brand new movie.  The Dark Knight, this summer’s number one blockbuster, climbed into the top five spots on its first night, and within two days held an unbelievable 9.5 weighted rating, which takes away points from movies that not many have seen.  This meant that The Dark Knight’s astronomical score was doubly impressive. The Dark Knight did what Shawshank could never do and took the #1 spot, blowing away The Godfather’s 9.1 weighted rating

The shift caused an uproar among fans of the list, who started putting in votes for the two movies — some trying to keep Dark Knight on top, others trying to restore order on the list and bring Dark Knight down a few notches.

Fans of The Dark Knight have won the battle so far:  The Godfather’s average has sunk a little while Dark Knight’s has leveled out a tenth of a point above The Godfather’s.  In fact, The Godfather even slipped down to #3 below Shawshank for a couple of days, before a flurry of positive votes brought Godfather back to #2.

Whether hype machine The Dark Knight, perennial classic The Godfather, or cult classic The Shawshank Redemption deserves the number one spot is not necessarily the point of this post.  It is merely to speculate how people will vote in the coming days, months, and years.

My prediction is that The Dark Knight will hold the number one spot for a month or two before slipping down to number two and gradually towards number five or so.  It will very likely settle in the bottom half of the top ten, slightly above Lord of the Rings 3, which peaked at #2 not long after coming out on the list but now sits at #14.  The thing is, The Dark Knight is a much better movie than LotR and has a more dedicated fan base, I think.  I wouldn’t call it out of the question for Dark Knight to stay at #1 for over a year based on the number of votes it has so far, which is pretty substantial and well over half of the votes that The Godfather holds.

What do you think will happen?

Weezer is a fantastic alt-rock band that I have loved since I first heard “Buddy Holly” on the radio a decade ago.  Since then, I’ve taken the time to get to know their music.  I own every album and just about every EP and single, so I’ve observed the band’s evolution from misunderstood rockers to pop curiosity of recent years.

Though I in no way qualify as a “hardcore” Weezer follower, I am certainly a pretty big fan, and here is my opinion as to the twenty-five greatest songs they have recorded and released on major albums.

My ranking is of the studio versions, and no live tracks, B-sides, special editions, or unreleased material has been included. Particular care has been taken to judge the songs on their musical merit, and not consider them based on music videos or other factors external from the albums themselves.  Plenty of singles have been included, but some haven’t been.  Don’t be surprised to see an album track or two fighting their way up there.

Here’s a little bit of background on Weezer if you want to brush up.

Of course, these picks are just my educated opinion.  Feel free to disagree (and let me know in the comments).  Before I start, I also want to say that just about any track from Weezer’s blue album or Pinkerton could have pushed for a spot on this list.  I love both of those albums in their entirety.  And, without further ado, my picks.  Enjoy!

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The first post on Listosaurus Rex covered SydLexia’s spectacular Top 100 NES games list. I just ran across the site’s sequel covering the SNES.

I’m a bit too young to have experienced the NES in the prime, but the SNES blew my mind as I was growing up. A few Super Nintendo games remain my favorite games ever, so it’s cool to see these hardnosed game geeks sentimentalizing the classics. Here’s the top ten:

1. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
2. Super Metroid
3. Final Fantasy III
4. Super Mario World
5. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
6. Chrono Trigger
7. Mega Man X
8. Final Fantasy II
9. EarthBound
10. Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting

Unlike the NES list, I’m actually familiar with most of these games, so it warms the cockles of my heart to see these hardcore gamers hilariously arguing the value of these decade-old treasures.

My favorite portion might be each of the critics tongue-in-cheek ripping Super Mario World — maybe my favorite game ever — for being so darn easy. It’s so true.

Anyways, if you have a bone in your body that is nostalgic for sixteen-bit glory days, I’d recommend check out SydLexia’s list. It’ll be good reminiscence with plenty of laughs

There are a few things that I tend to wax nostalgic about.  Any victory of the Redskins over the Cowboys would qualify, as would any Billy Joel record my dad played for me as I was growing up.  But another thing I that I have countless warm memories of is computer games.  As far back as I can remember, these interactive adventures were my greatest pastime and the focus of my free time.

I’ve sinced moved on to bigger and better things, like “console gaming” and “having a life” (just kidding), but I will always browse any Greatest Computer Games list to see if any of my all time favorites have been included.  Recently, I stumbled across a particularly professionally-done one on IGN.  Here are the final results of the countdown:

1. X-COM: UFO Defense (1994)
2. Civilization IV (2005)
3. Star Wars TIE Fighter (1994)
4. Rome Total War (2004)
5. Fallout (1997)
6. Starcraft (1998)
7. Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
8. SimCity 2000 (1993)
9. Half-Life 2 (2004)
10. Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings (1999)
11. Sid Meier’s Pirates (1987)
12. Battlefield 1942 (2002)
13. System Shock 2 (1999)
14. Company of Heroes (2006)
15. Grim Fandango (1998)
16. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)
17. World of Warcraft (2004)
18. Call of Duty (2003)
19. Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness (1995)
20. Deus Ex (2000)
21. MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995)
22. The Sims (2000)
23. Unreal Tournament 2004 (2004)
24. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six (1998)
25. IL-2 Sturmovik (2001)

The list straddles between picking influential games, games that were great at their time, and games that are most fun today.  For example, The Sims 2 is a more complete, fulfilling experience than the original, but The Sims blew everyone’s mind by looking good and playing better.  In fact, its addictive life-management gameplay wowed people so much that it outsold any game in history.

I was a bit surprised to see the pick at number one, but I can’t call it a bad pick by any stretch.  I played the shareware version to death back in the day.  It was one of those games I begged my parents to buy the full version for me, but they never budged.  I’ll have to go hunting online and see if I can find a torrent legal download of it somewhere.

But for any lifelong computer game fan, the real satisfaction from this sort of list comes from seeing your favorite games receiving props.  And here is where the list excel.  Warcraft 2 was my obsession for months on end.  Modern RTS games may improve gameplay and graphics, but none will ever steal my heart like Tides of Darkness did.  It was dramatic, exciting, engrossing, beautiful, and hilarious — everything my young mind wanted out of a game.  The map editor alone got double-to-triple hours worth of play from me, and blowing up critters remains my favorite Easter egg in any game.  Even Warcraft 2’s transcendent follow-up, Starcraft, didn’t engross me the way the humans’ and orcs’ epic struggles did.

But the only game to give Warcraft 2 a run for its money was Age of Empires 2.  Epic in scope and brilliant in execution, Age of Kings revived my love of RTS gameplay to a level it hadn’t been since the peak of my Warcraft 2 obsession.  It made up for having only one unique unit-set by having thirteen distinct, balanced civilizations to tinker with.

I’m also glad TIE Fighter is getting props, though #3 might be a stretch.  There was just something so satisfying about flying around TIEs and taking out X-Wings, completing secret objectives for the Emporer and taking orders from Vader.

There are of course a few oddball picks (IL-2 Sturmovik?), and Starcraft as low as #6 will pass as travesty in some circles, but overall this list hits all the right nerves and includes plenty of deserving classics.  Of the twenty-five, I’ve played fourteen of the games (or their similar predecessors or follow-ups), and I now have a hankering to find down some of the picks I missed (Deus Ex, Fallout) to see if they’re worth their reputation.