The Chorus Canon • Page 10

You must like a lot of awful movies then. On one hand I couldn't make it two years, three if I am being generous.

 

I can easily count on one hand the number of *winners* since 2000 that I think are bad. Let alone nominees

 

I just found it a little more fun to vary it. It feels much less like process and mechanical then. Plus you can get excited as you realize like "Oh I've almost finished X year" rather than it being a given.

Do your own thing, but as someone who's seen 553 of them, my two cents.


Cavalcade
The Broadway Melody (super important, but not so great)
Flirtation Walk
Precious
In Old Arizona
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
Bohemian Rhapsody
Naughty Marietta
Doctor Dolittle
Airport (though I enjoy it)

Those are the only ones off the top of my head I'd think of going below a 7/10 on. There are others I am not huge on or think are overrated (helooooo The Rose Tattoo), but they're decent movies.



All I have left currently:
The Mission
Barry Lyndon
America, America
Giant
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Pied Piper
49th Parallel
Wake Island
Kings Row
The White Parade (UCLA)
East Lynne (UCLA)
The Patriot (Lost)
The Racket

 

Well since you shared your Letteboxd and I know what you haven and haven't seen, I know you haven't seen pretty much any of them.

 

I have seen too many of them, and there were far more than a handful that were less than pretty good.

Why do you think my Letterboxd is an authoritative list of everything I have seen? Just the other day I ran across a movie I had not logged.

 

Because I asked you when you posted and you said it basically was and that you “didn’t need to see things from the 40s and 30s because the real auteurs hadn’t started yet”

You’ve always been an insufferable snob. But I at least thought you WATCHED the movies.

 

That isn't what I said. You are getting upset because I told someone that there are better ways to see great movies than an industry trade awards show.

 

Quoting you is what I’m doing when I pause the great movie I’m watching to fold laundry. Lord help me if you ever make me upset.

But your snobbery isn’t going to talk someone out of a project they’re interested in if I can help it.

 

I don't see how you can call someone a snob when you are trying to build up this character who hasn't seen enough movies from the 1930's.

Everyone has a limited amount of time to do anything. There are much better ways to see the great films than to follow the nominees from an awards show that is infamous for baffling picks that do not stand the test of time, if they are even highly received at the time (Green Book, Crash, and so many others). It would be far better to use a site like They Shoot Pictures, which compiles lists from critics who have put time and effort into cataloging the greatest films of all time. This is precisely why the Oscars are so bad for film history; they enshrine a lot of films that no one would ever talk about again if not for the awards they received.

 

As long as you don't watch only Best Picture nominees, they're a good batch of movies and indicate where tastes and trends were in their era. You'll enjoy way more than you don't.

If someone was watching them on the assumption that they're the definitive best or only good movies in a given year, that would be foolish, but that's a strawman. Nobody is doing that.

Plus, you appreciate subversive and innovative movies even more when you have the lay of the land of when they're released. Bonnie and Clyde is fine by modern standards, but you understand why it was mind-blowing when you've got a feel for what 1967 in film was actually like, etc.

 

I'm glad three of the ones you dislike are ones I've already seen haha

Broadway Melody, In Old Arizona, and The Hollywood Revue of 1929 made me nervous to keep watching the way I've started... glad to hear they're on the lower end from someone else who has seen a lot more of these movies.

Barry Lyndon is a great one. One of my favorite Kubrick films.

Has UCLA not digitized any of the movies they have copies of? I know The Patriot is lost, but it seems weird if a movie has been archived but isn't available. Also, do you remember where you found Disraeli (1929)? I can't find a copy... there's a VHS tape on Amazon for $40, but I'm not desparate enough for that

 

They Shoot Pictures does the same thing. It creates a canon. Any any canon is a mirage if you slavishly assume it's definitive. You cannot possibly think that all the movies in TSP's top 250 or even 1,000 are actually the best movies of all time if you have any actual personal attachment to the medium.

I'm fine if you think I'm a snob, by the way. My stance will always be encouraging people to watch more, read more, listen to more. If you want to say that's gatekeeping more than "throw out a whole decade I haven't seen stuff from unless a few anointed directors made it", it's no skin off my ass.

 

You absolutely don't need to spend time watching every single best picture nominee ever. It can lead to a few forgotten gems but largely, if one is interested in expanding and understanding cinema, I'd widen the scope beyond the Oscars to include a lot of world/independent/arthouse stuff that American award shows ignore.

 

This is actually kinda my interest in doing this, to see films that were recognized at the time (at least by Hollywood and the industry). I'm just as much interested in the films that don't hold up as the ones that do. I've seen like 30%-40% of the TheyShootPictures top 100 list... I wouldn't call myself a cinephile or super well versed in film history, but it's not like I'm completely ignorant about it and this is my 'education'.

Related to this, I think it's interesting to look at critics lists, like the AFI Top 100 movies lists, and see what they add/drop over time. Critics change their view on what is honored/appreciated over the decades.

 

My plan now is also to watch all the Palm d'Or, Golden Leopard, and Golden Bear, and Golden Lion winners for added diversity.

To be clear, I'm not planning on watching a movie a day and only watching this list. This is like a bucket list thing I want to do over the next decade or two. And I've seen a lot of Best Picture nominees/winners already that I don't plan on rewatching.

 

I believe I got Disraeli on VHS from a library back in the day. Honestly the best resource (for this and MANY other types of film) is having TCM and a DVR. If you can swing the extra 15 bucks a month (that's what it is in my town) it's such an incredible resource and actively works to restore and uncover films that have been out of circulation. I've seen Disraeli on there a few times.

And I keep hoping they'll restore those two, but apparently one of the films is in pretty delicate condition. I imagine commercial concerns come into play too. You have to spend money to restore films and nobody's buying DVDs of the most obscure picture noms of the '30s.

Honestly, it may end in an LA road trip for me and two buddies. We've done similar trips to the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh to see Vinyl and the Eastman House in Rochester to see The Bridge of San Luis Rey (which had never been taken out of the vault and they discovered a reel of sound film meant to be inserted in the film that they didn't know was there).

 

No one said to throw out a decade. I don't know why you keep trying to make that a thing.

They Shoot Pictures is not the same as the Oscars. One is compiled by critics who love movies, the other is an industry awards show that is meant to boost profits.

Best movies of all time is subjective. No list can be correct but someone's own list. However, anyone who is interested in film should look at the films that have consistently been praised by people who watch and write about films for a living.

 

I understand stars143’s original post to basically be saying “I get this is a severely limited exercise in various ways, but I’m curious if anyone has done something similar and whether they felt it was worthwhile.”

Morrissey and username then recommended other lists/awards to do it with instead, as they feel those would be a more worthwhile venture than doing it with the Oscars. And yeah Morrissey dissed the Oscars, but...it’s not like he has said anything about them that isn’t already general consensus amongst most if not all people active in this thread, let alone big movie buffs in general. If you like them and think they’re generally fine then more power to you, but I wouldn’t exactly call it insufferably snobby for someone to say they think tons of Oscar films are bad lol

 

If you want to find a way to look through the history of film in terms of what was influential or popular, Letterboxd is a great tool. Go to the year and sort by popularity and you will see what people have logged the most. There is a huge recency bias on Letterboxd, but if you went to some year from a few decades ago you will get a great sample of the important films of that year.

I was going through the popularity list for every film every made, filtering out post-2000 films for the recency bias, and it definitely was full of movies you hear a lot about but I had not seen. It is not necessarily the most critically acclaimed films, but that is only one metric to look at.

 

Letterbox'd isn't remotely good for reflecting what was popular or acclaimed at the time. Their popularity rankings in the 30s-60s are massively tilted towards lesser known films from notable auteurs and whatever's on Criterion Channel at the time. To an almost comical degree.

It's excellent to reflect what modern viewers are going back to find though.

 

Grasshopper movie club is doing a series with some cool stuff that's hard to find

Visit to the Louvre / Cezanne

 

Wow, Congo is the best movie I’ve watched this year in which characters sing “California Dreamin”

 

Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales is fuckin’ great.

 

hm never heard of the academy awards

 

Vitalina Varela on Criterion Channel!