December 26, 2009

The Best of the Decade Series Starts

All of the writers and the editor will be putting together our Best of the Decade lists. All will be different but they all will have passion of film behind it.

We begin with writer, Joey Magidson's collection of the decade. Check it out HERE.

The other staff members will be adding them in the coming days.

31 comments:

  1. gr8 list, though I wld hav added a few more foreign titles like Pan's Labyrinth and Let The Right One In. Spirited Away would also have been a worthy addition in my opinion... but hey its your list! Cant wait to see clayton's...lol

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  2. If I had gone to 75, one or two more foreign titles would have cropped up, but I needed to put the cutoff somewhere haha

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  3. Solid solid work.

    I couldn't agree with you more on Garden State. The soundtrack is unreal, Natalie Portman is "the" perfect girl, and it is our generation's Graduate. (I feel the same way about Collateral as a thriller, which came out the same year, being very underrated. Especially anti-Cruise people, which I am admitedly.)

    While I don't like biopic performances as much as original characters, Jamie Foxx in Ray was nothing short of immaculate (to me).

    I recently saw Up in the Air. I liked it a lot. It spoke to the times incredible well. It's below Hurt Locker and Avatar for me, but a great flick. I just don't see it as a Best Picture. Reitman is 3 for 3. I liked Juno better than Up in the Air though.

    Maybe it's time I finally see The Fountain....

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  4. Amazing list Joey. I literally agree with like 30 of them.

    Here is my Top 20

    1) Donnie Darko

    2) Kill Bill

    3) Into the Wild

    4) 25th Hour

    5) Memento

    6) Man on Fire

    7) Traffic

    8) Love Actually

    9) Little Miss Sunshine

    10) A Scanner Darkly

    11) Gangs of New York

    12) In Bruges

    13) Snow Cake

    14) (500) Days of Summer

    15) The Fountain

    16) Vicki Christina Barcelona

    17) Match Point

    18) Solaris

    19) Unbreakable

    20) Anchorman

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  5. I know, right? I was excited to see it and I wrote the thing!

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  6. As much as I liked your list Joey, you know how I feel about your LOTR omission. lol :P

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  7. indeed, though since I don't care for the films, I'd be untrue to myself to include them anywhere in the list...thanks for the support otherwise though!

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  8. The only mivie from this decade that I would have put atop The Fountain would be Eternal Sunshine.

    Very good list though!

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  9. The Fountain came dangerously close to making my top 10, but after rewatching Munich and The Fountain, something about Munich really blew me away in a way I didn't expect it to.

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  10. I know this is your list, but I'm little surprised at why City of God is not on there.

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  11. It's not a movie I've been compelled to see twice, and I tried to make multiple viewings one of the mandates for eligibility in my top 50...

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  12. I love your list. I'm a huge Darren Aronofksy fan and I always love to see him included.

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  13. Joey, you're my boy, but I don't think being compelled to watch a movie more than twice is necessary. The only (major) problem with list making is that it is entirely subjective. However, if a movie is technically masterful with a more than adequate story and acting, and it is considered a modern masterpiece, I don't get how not feeling compelled to watch it twice could completely exclude it from entering a top 50 list. I'm not saying it should be on your top 50 list, but the fact that it did not have a chance because you didn't feel compelled to watch it twice seems erroneous. There are some movies that are confusing, and are made to compel second viewings. They may not necessarily be better movies, but they have a higher chance of making your top 50 list because of the second viewing requirement. I think that's problematic.

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  14. Just a method for determining my favorites. I won't argue it's accomplished nature, but it just never moved me to consider it something I thought of as my favorite of the decade. A top 100 or top 75, yes though...

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  15. Fair enough.

    I do believe that it's more persuasive to exclude a movie from your list if it does not move you (as oppose to not being compelled to watch it twice). There are many reasons that can compel a person to watch a movie twice. As I mentioned before, the movie could just be very tricky. If a movie does not move you, then it does not move you. It does not mean there is anything materially wrong with the film. Moreover, it's more in line with the subjective nature of creating a top 50 if you exclude a film because it did not move you. I hope that makes some sense.

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  16. Indeed it does, surprisingly. Also, that's the beauty of the list. Where else will you find City of God excluded, but Elizabethtown included? By the by, I completely forgot to include High Fidelity, so consider that my #51...

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  17. Movies speak to people for all sorts of reasons. I've tried (unsuccessfully so far) to at least attempt at making my list with some objectivity involved. Of course, even my objective standards are infused with subjectivity.

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  18. Been there, my friend. Been there...

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  19. I've been here for the last 6 years or so. The only standard I've come to accept is the "know it when I see it" standard. Justice Potter Stewart used this standard when describing the term "obscenity". In terms of movies, I feel like masterpieces or classics are created largely in the aggregate. You need a large group of people to "know it when they see it" essentially. It's still subjective, but it's less subjective than the "I liked it" standard. It requires more from a group's perspective than the individual.

    That's not to say that you can't like a movie if it isn't liked by a large group of people. However, if it's not like or critically acclaimed, it's unlikely to be considered a masterpiece (perhaps a classic in time, who knows).

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  20. I've been working on an article for the last two years trying to come up with a way to clearly define a "classic" or "masterpiece". We use the terms so loosely, but we know that every movie can't be a classic or masterpiece. We have standards, but they're not clearly described. It's unsettling to know that we don't have a more sophisticated (and less subjective) way to distinguish City of God from White Chicks.

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  21. Talk about upsetting...I took a film class where both of those films were shown...

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  22. So glad to see some love for All The Real Girls--Its definitely in my top 10 of the decade and one of my favorite films of all time as well...

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