Dog Star Man's Top 100 of Sorts: (Year 2011)

I usually don't bode well with lists of any kind, but I thought it might be interesting to layout films I've enjoyed over the years. I hope it finds you well. I won't provide explanations of why these are placed unless asked, since I hope to do reviews of them all sometime. Enjoy my friends:

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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage

Unique list. I own a lot of these so yay me. Some interesting things, not nitpicking, just curious: Why City Lights out of Chaplin, Red Shoes from Powell, Suspiria, and (this one is nitpicking) It's a Wonderful Life?

Well as far as City Lights and It's a Wonderful Life are concerned. Much of the reason they rank with me is because I myself hold the vision and philosophy of the Romantics. I tend to appreciate films that hold this sort of vision and philosophy in mind, whatever their degree may be. The Red Shoes and Suspiria on the other had are extremely visual films, stunning really, in their use of color and effects on how they portray their story and or message. So they score points with me there. I hope this helps.

In that case I'm surprised Black Narcissus wasn't picked, though the 15 minute ballet scene is pretty hard to beat.

Don't get me wrong, I love Black Narcissus, but I didn't want to bombard my list with Powell and Pressburger.

Fair enough I feel like I could ask about all of them and not get bored.

Just for the sake of conversation, why do you feel a Romantic concept fits It's a Wonderful Life? It seemed a bit far-reaching to blend enough Romantic idealism with sombre realism, instead it seemed George was a complete tool of everyone around him and I felt no reason to care about his woes because he brought them upon himself through thinking he needed so much. Even through his realization later, it doesn't even point out what's so wonderful about life, but instead something too superficial to really take home like continuing his altruism. I'll stop before it sounds like a tirade plus I could be simply reading it differently.

These are all 'real' concerns and arguments, much of them owe due credit. In fact I believe there was an article put out by the Mises Foundation about "Christmas Movies and Bad Economics." However, the Romanticists, if you recall, put aside the 'rational' as it were to produce illustrations, music, literature, etc. that would instead move people on a more visceral level, rather than something that was say more tangible. They were the ones, after all, that proceeded the Modernists. Think of a Van Gogh painting whereby the image is distorted, it creates images more so through color and less so with the precision of the stroke, which creates the profound illustration, and it's inherent emotion. This is much of what I see in that film.

So more of a folk tale than an allegory?

I know what you meant, and I could be mistaking this for something else, but I always thought a Romantic, in full sequence, goes through a visionary, chimerical to create and always returning at some point to, but not necessarily concluding with, a stroke of reality for comparison and a yin-yang effect.

I would find this position aids the film, yes. Even though this is most likely not Capra's intent, it certainly can function in these terms too.

Is this not It's a Wonderful Life in question. The point at which reality chasms from itself to a world without George, (the chimerical), concluding back to the reality in question to produce its illustrated point, as you precisely and accurately put, "Yin-Yang" Effect?

It may have been Bertolucci who said " I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those." and with that I imply that films don't come with their own meaning, but it comes from the viewer.
I guess I didn't see enough of a stark difference to think so. Though if we begin to blur the lines between fantastical and Romantic, or just pure daydream (which is what I would consider this to be, just personified by an angel), I'm not sure where it will leave us other than confused over labels. And labels are for cans of peas

Nice list Doggie would have preferred if you had started with 100 and then counted down to 1 but still a nice list

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

Yeah, sorry about that. I got too far into the list to reverse the order, so I didn't want to change it. However, I'm glad you enjoyed my list all the same!

Nice list Dog Star Man. We have somewhat similar taste in film so I'll have to check out the ones I haven't seen yet from your list.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Thank you very much kind gentleman. I was discussing with W.T. that if I wanted to make a more "accurate" list it would have to range, more or less, in the thousand category. The limitations of a "Top One Hundred" seems daunting, if not completely unfair all together. I find this to be the case because:

1. I try to find movies that I like that are historically important. Though that may sound pretentious a bit, I literally, (like most people on here I assume), eat, breath, sweat, bleed film. In fact, when I'm depressed, the first sign that I'm in a depression as it were is that I stop talking about film, (which is 99% of what I talk about all day long). Much like Kurosawa, "If you remove film from my being, there is no me." I digress. I adore film history. So, without hesitation I would incorporate films like The Edison-Dickson: Experimental Sound Film, or to go further, Monkeyshines no. 1 and no. 2, or even further, The Eadweard Muybridge: Series Photography. I love all of these things with my heart and soul. "God" did not create me, I don't believe, film did. So to see it in it's infancy is so exhilarating to me.

Also, how can I incorporate other things in the list that deal with this history perspective? Film movements, (Expressionism; Impressionism; Soviet Montage; Dada; Surrealism; Cinema Pur; City Symphonies; French Poetic Realism; Italian Neo-Realism, or their earlier Superspectacles; Film Noir; French, Italian, German New Waves, etc.; New Hollywood; Dogme 9; etc. etc.). Or countless directorial influences, actors, cinematographers, producers, etc. This all means so much to me I can't even begin.

2. After History comes Theory and Criticism, which makes me look at films in a certain aesthetical way which somehow makes me adore films I might otherwise disregard had I not looked through a different lens.

3. Then its all personal. What films do I like in general, no matter what the history or the aesthetical theory or critique behind them.

Again, this list was mostly for fun on my part, but I cannot begin to say how unfair it is when there are so many more films I appreciate or enjoy on one level or another. I want to make films, that's my work, but my life is in films all together, in its histories, theories, criticisms, personalities, everything. I say this will all honesty and intent, but I'd rather not live if the world rid itself of film. Film is my pagan religion with many directorial Gods above producing the joys I take for granted every single day I'm on this Earth.

your top 2 choices are what i would have picked, although Godfather would be one

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Xala, much like most African and/or Third Cinema, is quite astounding. One of the reasons I put it on my list outside of liking it is because it is a Third Cinema film, much of it provides amazing allegorical commentary on their political culture. There are these kinds of cinema's the world over, but in the Third World, it takes precedent over most aspects of film making. This seems largely in due to the political fever of these nations who wish for strong, if not radical, change. Glad you seem to enjoy them as much as I do.