AFI Ten Top 10's Results

[Of course they were gonna miss some things, but no Dances with Wolves in either epic or western (which somehow included the lame Cat Ballou)? A double western stiff for Costner, with Open Range not in there either. No Aliens or Poltergeist or Spielberg's Close Encounters, Minority Report or War of the Worlds in science fiction, with slots wasted on Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Day the Earth Stood Still? Another best picture that was snubbed was Million Dollar Baby in sports (and Chariots of Fire), which had National Velvet in above Seabiscuit, Black Stallion, Hidalgo and Phar Lap, all much better horse racing films. Somehow they missed Double Indemnity in Mystery Suspense…. But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong…. The Jman] Worst Best Picture Snubs (among many): Silence of the Lambs, The Departed, Dances With Wolves, Million Dollar Baby, Chariots of Fire, The Last Emperor, Patton, The Bridge On the River Kwai, Out of Africa, My Fair Lady (romantic comedy!) Animation (pretty good choices but Nemo belongs in the top 5, and where is Hoppity Goes to Town, and Cars?) 1. Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs 2. Pinocchio 3. Bambi 4. The Lion King 5. Fantasia 6. Toy Story 7. Beauty and the Beast 8. Shrek 9. Cinderella 10. Finding Nemo Fantasy (good 10 but move Oz down to about 8 and Kong to 10, and Harvey is a one joke movie, give me Babe instead and in the top 5, and maybe Batman or Spiderman here, each better than Kong or Thief) 1. Wizard of Oz 2. Lord of the Rings 3. It’s a Wonderful Life 4. King Kong 5. Miracle on 34th St. 6. Field of Dreams 7. Harvey 8. Groundhog Day 9. Thief of Baghdad 10. Big Science Fiction (where’s Aliens and Close Encounters? Minority Report? Dr. Strangelove?) 1. 2001-A Space Odyssey 2. Star Wars IV-A New Hope (Empire Strikes Back is far better) 3. E.T. (the only Spielberg here?) 4. A Clockwork Orange (read the book!) 5. The Day the Earth Stood Still 6. Blade Runner 7. Alien 8. Terminator 2-Judgment Day 9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 10. Back to the Future Sports (missing Million Dollar Baby is a travesty; should also have Hoop Dreams, a three hour documentary that was 5 yrs in the making. Rocky is way overrated (maybe the most ever), even Golden Boy was better, and especially Cinderella Man, a true story and film by Ron Howard) 1. Raging Bull 2. Rocky 3. Pride of the Yankees (great choice, coulda been #1) 4. Hoosiers 5. Bull Durham 6. The Hustler 7. Caddyshack 8. Breaking Away (!) 9. National Velvet (ouch; I prefer Seabiscuit, Black Stallion, Hidalgo) 10. Jerry McGuire (yuck) Westerns (I always liked She Wore a Yellow Ribbon better than the Searchers or any other Ford western, 5 and 9 are boring, and Open Range is a new top 5 of mine, but where the heck is Dances with Wolves? Ballou is a farce...on both levels, so is Butch Cassidy) 1. The Searchers 2. High Noon 3. Shane 4. Unforgiven 5. Red River 6. The Wild Bunch 7. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid 8. McCabe and Mrs. Miller 9. Stagecoach 10. Cat Ballou Mystery-Suspense (pretty good choices, but Out of the Past is an all-time top 3 missing here; Blue Velvet is a stretch over Double Indemnity, unbelievably snubbed; also missing is best picture winner Silence of the Lambs) 1. Vertigo 2. Chinatown 3. Rear Window 4. Laura 5. The Third Man 6. The Maltese Falcon 7. North by Northwest 8. Blue Velvet 9. Dial M for Murder 10. The Usual Suspects Romantic Comedy (are you kidding with Chaplin? Hannah and Her Sisters is as good as Annie Hall, and Woody's Alice and Manhattan were as good as half of these, and where is The Graduate, or Parenthood? Harry Met Sally and Adam’s Rib were good surprises, each better than 1, 3, or 4. 8-10 are just average) 1. City Lights 2. Annie Hall 3. It Happened One Night 4. Roman Holiday 5. The Philadelphia Story 6. When Harry Met Sally 7. Adam’s Rib 8. Moonstruck 9. Harold and Maude 10. Sleepless in Seattle (avg, I prefer You've Got Mail) Gangster (pretty good but missing Once Upon a Time in America, as good as the top 3 here; best pic The Departed was snubbed) 1. Godfather 2. Goodfellas 3. Godfather II 4. White Heat 5. Bonnie & Clyde 6. Scarface, The Shame of a Nation (31) 7. Pulp Fiction 8. Public Enemy 9. Little Caesar 10. Scarface (remake, boring...) Courtroom Drama (ok but gimme Caine Mutiny over Few Good Men, and get rid of Kramer altogether for Runaway Jury; and In Cold Blood doesn’t belong here, not a courtroom movie any more than is Goodfellas) 1. To Kill a Mockingbird 2. 12 Angry Men 3. Kramer vs Kramer 4. The Verdict 5. A Few Good Men 6. Witness for the Prosecution 7. Anatomy of a Murder 8. In Cold Blood 9. A Cry in the Dark 10. Judgment at Nuremberg Epic (great #1, and kudos for Reds, but missing Bridge On the River Kwai and Patton; take off 6, 7 and 10, and drop Ben-Hur to about 9-10; add in Dances with Wolves here also or even Doctor Zhivago or the Russian War and Peace by Sergei Bondarchuk, or The Last Emperor) 1. Lawrence of Arabia 2. Ben-Hur 3. Schindler’s List 4. Gone with the Wind 5. Spartacus 6. Titanic 7. All Quiet on the Western Front 8. Saving Private Ryan 9. Reds 10. The Ten Commandments PS - Of all the great Billy Wilder films only Witness for the Prosecution got a mention; Sunset Boulevard should have been in mystery-suspense. Voters are always idiots, you normally get the "lowest common denominator" - that's what makes the picks of 2001, Mockingbird, and Lawrence so surprising.

My Ten top 10's for the AFI special...

I can’t really predict what the AFI will choose for their 10 top 10’s, but these are the choices I would make, alphabetical by genre. Animation – 101 Dalmatians, Beauty and the Beast, Cars, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Fantasia, Finding Nemo, Hoppity Goes to Town, The Mask, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Toy Story (Too bad Nick Park’s short films collected as The Amazing Adventures of Wallace and Gromit aren’t eligible, they all deservedly won Oscars. Jason and the Argonauts, belongs here too but was a mix of live-action and animation; Ray Harryhausen was a true artist. Mary Poppins should be here also another live-animation mix.) Courtroom Drama – 12 Angry Men, Adam’s Rib, Anatomy of a Murder, Breaker Morant, The Caine Mutiny, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, Runaway Jury, To Kill a Mockingbird, Witness for the Prosecution (Is Agatha Christie's Witness going to be considered a mystery instead? if so, put The Rainmaker here. Definitely not Kramer vs Kramer or A Few Good Men, they'll probably include both due to popularity, and Adam's Rib was really a comedy anyway, but you gotta put it somewhere.) Epic – The Bridge On the River Kwai, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Gandhi, The Gangs of New York, Gladiator, Hero (the Chinese one with Jet Li), The Last Emperor, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, The Seven Samurai (If Seven Samurai is elibigle, that would replace Ben-Hur, which was pretty boring other than the ship battle and the chariot race. Sergi Bondarchuk's 7-hr Russian "War and Peace" should be here too, but was also, like the book, way too long and had a Hollywood ending; but it did have 250,000 Red Army extras and cost 100 million in the early 70's; that's like a trillion now, right? Which was really a better film: Doctor Zhivago or Reds?) I've got SIX best pictures listed... Fantasy – 5000 Fingers of Doctor T, Babe, Batman, Dr. Strangelove, Field of Dreams, Ghostbusters, It’s a Wonderful Life, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Will they consider a trilogy as one or three separate films? To me, if it’s one story then it’s one long film. With Pirates, I liked Dead Man’s Chest the most, and Return of the King from the Rings trilogy) Gangster – The Big Sleep, Bonnie and Clyde, The Departed, The Godfather, The Godfather II, Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America, Pulp Fiction, The Replacement Killers, Witness (didn't know where to put this; if not eligible, then The Yakuza. Little Caesar belong here as well: "You can still dish it out but you just can't take it anymore!") Mystery – The Conversation, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, Memento, The Name of the Rose, Out of the Past, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Sleuth (Is Maltese Falcon really a gangster film, and is Silence a mystery, or suspense, where you know the criminal beforehand?) Romantic Comedy – A Room With a View, Annie Hall, The Graduate, Groundhog Day, Hannah and Her Sisters, My Fair Lady, Parenthood, Raising Arizona, Shakespeare in Love, When Harry Met Sally (Are both A Room with a View and Much Ado About Nothing ineligible since they’re both British? They definitely belong here. If Room or Shakespeare are ineligible, I would add Beautiful Girls to this genre, maybe even Singin' in the Rain: "I ain't people, I am a shining star in the firmament".) Science Fiction – 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aliens, Back to the Future, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T., The Matrix, Star Wars Trilogy, Terminator 2 (The Road Warrior belongs here but is it really science fiction, or action/adventure? A better film than half of these! If they break up the Star Wars trilogy, I liked The Empire Strikes Back the best) Sports – Breaking Away, Cinderella Man, Friday Night Lights, Glory Road, Hoop Dreams, Million Dollar Baby, The Natural, Pride of the Yankees, Raging Bull, Seabiscuit remake. (They’ll have Rocky here but I hated its contrived and predictable story, I kept pulling for him to get pummeled right out of boxing; even the original Bad News Bears was a better sports film. Also, Requiem for a Heavyweight belongs here but wasn’t that a TV movie? Even Golden Boy, bw w William Holden, was a better boxing film) Western – Dances with Wolves, The Grey Fox, High Noon, Hud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Open Range, Shane, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Unforgiven (Hud is a modern western, doesn’t that count? The Searchers is overrated and racist, I prefer “Yellow Ribbon” of all the John Ford westerns. Lonesome Dove was a tv "mini-series", as was The Broken Trail, but both belong here, and both starred Robert Duvall, as did Open Range; as he put it "my western trilogy".) Author’s Notes: I’m not certain that their list is limited to American films, and if not I would definitely place Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (French, one novel in two parts) in epic, City of God (Brazil) in gangster, and Diva (French) in mystery. I’m also not sure if they will consider Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon a U.S. or Chinese film, nor if they would consider Dr. Strangelove a fantasy, but this is such a great film that it belongs somewhere; technically it’s a comedy, but not “romantic”, same with Airplane! and M*A*S*H. Is Field of Dreams a Fantasy or a Sports film? I’ve often had this argument with people, it’s a parable about the spiritual realm, and uses baseball for a metaphor, but is not about a sport. I’m also certain that the AFI will include some films I think are highly overrated like Gone With the Wind and Rocky