Listosaurus Rex

 Piero Scaruffi is, I’ve gathered, an academic and historian on film, music, and philosophy. I know very little about him, though I’m considering picking up his acclaimed history of rock book (in spite of its famous claims that the Beatles are overrated and bad).  So I googled the guy and found his web-site, which includes a section of film critiques and rankings.

One feature, which was composed by Scaruffi either in 1998 or some time before — the site is ambiguous — contains his list of the “Greatest Films of All Time.”The list contains 100 items, the first 194 (?) ranked, the other 806 seemingly in no particular order. To me, this list encompasses almost everything that’s wrong with film studies as an educational subject and film criticism in general.  

Here are some of the faults with it: first, it’s a list. Now, as we know, I’m a list fiend. But lists are fun. They’re ridiculous. They put logical order and ranking to taste. They are most certainly not scholarly. Scaruffi takes great pride in the fact that his site is scholarly:

 This web site is an online service devoted to the world of culture and entertainment. Unlike other online magazines of this kind, which target mainly the general audience of tv viewers, this web site caters to the upscale audience of “intellectuals” and experts, who are more interested in critical news than in mundane news.      

–Piero Scaruffi, advertising/about page

If his readership is intellectual, why do they need a rigid list?  Any true scholar of art would know that there is no best or worst art.  To attempt to rank the greatness of one piece of art to another’s is a silly side-squabble that is both impossible and a distraction from the point of the art.  If we’re intellectually approaching it as art, why spend time discussing its greatness? Why not discuss the art itself?  

Don’t get me wrong, I love lists about movies. But not lists that rank movies as a cerebral art form. I like lists that rank movies as engrossing, emotive cinematic experiences.  

Other lists that are good are collections of opinions about what the greatest movies are: Sight and Sound is the most respected example, and IMDb is my favorite of these. Statistically mashing people’s opinions on what films are great is different from one critic ranking the greatest pieces of art.

Let’s move on.  Here are Scaruffi’s top ten:

1. Orson Welles: Citizen Kane (1941)
2. Alfred Hitchcock: North By Northwest (1959)
3. Orson Welles: Touch Of Evil (1958)
4. Roman Polanski: Chinatown (1974)
5. Robert Altman: Nashville (1975)
6. Sam Peckinpah: The Wild Bunch (1969)
7. Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather Part II (1974)
8. Elia Kazan: Splendor In The Grass (1961)
9. John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
10. Lars von Trier: Riget/ Kingdom (1995)

Sorry, folks, Citizen Kane is not the greatest movie to watch today.  It might be the most influential, perhaps one of the most visually interesting, but it is not the single greatest. It’s still a great movie today, but the time-tripping chronology is old hat at this point, and the movies have gotten better at telling stories as time has passed.  (Side note: I will let you know if this is still my opinion after I have seen the movie with Roger Ebert’s legendary commentary.)

North by Northwest at number two? Really? The movie might be worth a second watch for me, but the awkward sexual puns that made up 80% of the script bothered me. Plus, isn’t this more a piece of entertainment than an artful film?  Sure, Hitchcock was famous for making films that seemed like entertainment but really contained great artistic value. But is it reallybetter than Touch of Evil? Better than The Godfather, or Chinatown, or… etc.?

More than anything else, it’s the precision of the ranking that bothers me. If you read any of his film reviews, he rates movies out of ten, but down to a tenth of a point.  This is ludicrous!  There are one hundred possible rankings.  What really separates a 6.7 from a 6.8?  Remember that this isn’t just anyone picking number ratings for a movie, willy-nilly. This is one of the most respected scholars of film!  And he deems it appropriate to quantify art’s value. Down to a number that precisely.  Ridiculous.

You know what, Scaruffi?  I give your list a 3.7.  And your web-site and the rest of your lists, too.  You call Dogma the tenth best film of the ’90s but Schindler’s List the forty-first.  Now, Dogma’s a good movie, three stars probably, but better than Schindler’s List?  Are you sure your “upscale audience” is going to dig that pick?

Does the guy have some keen insights? Yeah. Do his picks probably have more reasoning than I’m seeing? Probably. Does he know more about film than I ever will? Absolutely. 

But learn something from Roger Ebert, Piero Scaruffi.  Cinema is an art of images and emotion and stories.  It’s one thing to develop a keen eye for what makes a film tick, what makes it valuable and memorable. It’s another thing to elevate art to such an intellectual level that it’s no longer fun.

[link to the list]

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?

Roger Ebert is absolutely my favorite movie critic. I don’t always agree with him (for example: he gave The Usual Suspects only one and a half stars) but I always like the thoughtful analysis. “Roger Ebert loves movies more, and better, than almost any critic” says famous director Martin Scorsese, and from my limited observation of movie criticism, I’d have to agree. He has a warm heart and an open mind towards movies, never afraid to learn something new from them or about them, never afraid to be pleasantly surprised or unfortunately disappointed. He gives a lot of four star reviews, but I think that such an esteemed critic, such an experienced viewer, is able to see beauty in so many movies is a great thing. Most people lose appreciation for an art when it becomes a career, when they spend too much time with it, when they develop familiarity. Not Roger. He remains passionate and joyous towards the art of cinema.

It’s just a little bit overdue, as he released it a few weeks ago, but here is his list of his top ten favorite movies from 2007:

1. Juno
2. No Country For Old Men
3. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
4. Atonement
5. The Kite Runner
6. Away From Her
7. Across The Universe
8. La Vie En Rose
9. The Great Debaters
10. Into the Wild

Of these I have sadly only seen three. I’m working on it, though. A few are coming to the cheap local theater I usher at, so I’ll get to see them for free.

Movies are an art, and as such, Ebert tends to go with the movies that move him the most, as opposed to those that have the tightest scripts, highest technical achievement, and the most critical praise. We see some of this with Juno, a romantic dramedy, at number one, and oft-maligned Kite Runner and Across the Universe earning spots on the list.

He provides solid reasoning for each of his picks. I think the list is worth a look.

What movies did you enjoy in 2007?

I watched The Shawshank Redemption for about the fifth or sixth time last night, and I still love it. What a good movie. That ending never fails to pump me up.

I’ve decided that the best part of the movie is the script. It ranks right up there with Pulp Fiction, Casablanca, and Annie Hall as my favorite scripts ever. There are so many brilliant moments in the script.

This got me thinking. What exactly are the best moments of this exceptional script?

After several hours of combing through the movie and pulling out the best moments, it is my pleasure to present what I believe are the greatest quotes from the script.

Let it be known that this post is a SPOILER WARNING! If you haven’t seen Shawshank, don’t read this post. In fact, don’t read anything else about the movie. Just go see it as soon possible, it’s a mighty fine movie.

Without further ado, I present my twenty-five favorite quotes and exchanges from The Shawshank Redemption.

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The guys over at filmschoolrejects.com have put together a list of the twenty films to most look forward to this year.

Here is their top ten:

1. The Dark Knight
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
3. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
4. Iron Man
5. Cloverfield
6. Wall-E
7. Star Trek
8. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
9. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
10. Hellboy II: The Golden Army

They would have been mad not to put The Dark Knight, sequel to the phenomenal Batman Begins and featuring a psychotic-looking Heath Ledger as Joker, at #1, even though I don’t think it will be the best movie of the year. Nope, I think his #6 pick, Wall-E, Pixar’s next movie, will be the best movie of the year. I am somewhat of a Pixar fan boy, mind you, but I really think Wall-E will be their magnum opus. Pixar’s other movies feature creative and touching scenarios — toys that can talk and have their own little world, a rat that is really a great chef, a lonely clownfish losing his son in the vast ocean, a former superhero going through a middle-age crisis — but Wall-E tops them all: The last robot on Earth is spending eternity at Earth in a junk yard, crushing metal into cubes, before he’s greeted by some extra-terrestrial visitors.

Back to the list: The world is certainly looking forward to the fourth Indiana Jones movie, as the first three are some of the most exciting films ever made. Rumor has it that this one will have more of a campy sci-fi feel to it than previous ones, which should make for some spectacular visuals and exciting cinema.

After that, though, it quickly becomes obvious that 2008 will not be full of as many high-profile sequels as last year. Though this makes the headlines a little bit less exciting, I’m ready for this change. I want to fall in love with a movie I have little expectation for, rather than be constantly disappointed by a movie not living up to the original. Rarely are blockbuster sequels better than the originals. Terminator 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Spider-Man 2, that’s about it.

Iron Man looks to be an excellent Marvel super-hero movie, with one of the coolest trailers around. Cloverfield aims at being this year’s Blair Witch Project, except scarier and deeper. Stoner comedy stars Harold and Kumar need another good movie after their first one was such a hit. Hellboy, work of visual maestro Guillermo del Toro, was decent, and looks to up the ante this time around. The first Chronicles of Narnia was a respectable cinematic translation of the classic children’s book series, but nothing to write home about.

Two movies on the top ten I’m particularly curious about are Star Trek and Zack and Miri. With plenty of franchises seeing grittier, darker, more character-based rebirths (Batman, Bond), it’ll be interesting to see how this Star Trek movie plays out. It could have the potential to convert a lot of casual viewers to the historically nerd-based world of Star Trek.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno, despite its off-setting name, has the potential to be an awkward but warm comedy from director Kevin Smith of Clerks fame. It’s about two people who decide to set up an adult film studio together. I get the feeling it’s going to be something like Little Miss Sunshine but with fewer characters and less cross-country VW Bus riding.

But this is the sort of year when a dark horse could pop out of nowhere and be the big hit of the year, thanks to the lack of big-name sequels headed our way.

What movies are you most looking forward to this year?

Don’t forget to check out the original list, he’s got plenty of good stuff to say.