List Mania
Wednesday, June 25, 2014 at 5:21PM Two interesting lists came out in the past couple of days which are worth discussing / poring over / loving deeply / fuming at for various reasons.
Three LGBT Films I'm Always Wishing More People Had Seen. Paris is Burning (#3), Lilies (#64), and Show Me Love (#168)
• The Advocate crowd-sourced the 175 Essential LGBT Movies list which is a mix of non gay movies that gays love and actual queer films. Brokeback Mountain (2005) tops the list and the top ten is really cool and varied though it's obviously skewing toward historically important cinematic breakthroughs (regardless of quality) which I suppose explains the high ranking of Philadelphia (1993) which is not a good movie and so so timid and Making Love (1982), just outside the top ten which is interesting and way less timid than many movies which came after it (how's that for an odd turn of events) but it's also stiffly made. I've seen all but 34 of these pictures but some of the choices are... unfortunate. The foreign classics are shoved toward the back of the list (Almodóvar is present of course but woefully underrepresented and poorly ranked) but basically every popular American gay film from the last 25 years that actually sucks is accounted for; it's a myth that gays have good taste!
P.S. My Beautiful Laundrette, which we were just discussing, comes in at #21.
And now a more mainstream list...
Only 5 live action musicals made the list. No Cabaret (1972)? I weep.
• The Hollywood Reporter surveyed industry types like Oscar winners, studio chiefs, and TV personalities and came up with a list of Hollywood's Favorite 100 Films of All Time. As a very mainstream list that only grazes Old Hollywood with the most iconic pictures (All About Eve, Gone With The Wind, On the Waterfront - that sort of thing) and heavily favors New Hollywood (roughly the 70s forward) it's fun. But you have to know what you're getting into. Most interesting to me is how beloved the year 1994 is with Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump all in the top 15 !!! The most recent picture listed is Inception (2010) which... gross. Spielberg, Coppola, Hitchcock and Nolan all have multiple entries. Curiously Hollywood only loves modern animated movies - nothing made earlier than Beauty & The Beast (1991) which comes in at #86. Brokeback Mountain (2005) comes in at #76 (Crash is nowhere to be seen. I think Hollywood was embarrassed about that Best Picture win as soon as the morning after if not as soon as Jack Nicholson read the card).
P.S. Since we were just surveying 2004 I think it's worth noting that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the only picture from that year listed... none of the actual Best Picture nominees made the cut, not even Million Dollar Baby.
What should we make lists of here at TFE? Summertime is obviously ideal for movie lists since nothing is actually happening at the movies (besides, you know, CG robots, monsters, and explosions)
Reader Comments (16)
The order may not be perfect, but that Advocate list is pretty vital simply for being so all-encompassing, and as a reminder to me to re-watch Paris Is Buring - I haven't seen it in over 10 years.
The Advocate's lists is OK but nothing really special. The 100 films list is terrible. No films directed by women (though Lana Wachowski is really transgender). No Bergman. No Fellini. No docs? No Truffaut, Godard, Pasolini? Fuck this!
Avatar shows up on the list and The Hurt Locker does not. I guess by the BBM x Crash metric, they regret that choice as well. In fact, for the crap James Cameron gets for being an insufferable person, both Avatar and Titanic made the list with no sign of their Oscar competition.
Oh, and Breakfast Club shows up, but neither The Color Purple or Out of Africa. I guess by the BBM x Crash logic, Hollywood has become embarrassed by those two also.
Peeps, it's been 10 years now, time to move on! Crash won, get over it!
Kudos to Braveheart, though. Everybody shits on that win too, but it keeps popping up, even after full blown Mel Gibson meltdown. Now THAT's staying power!
Strangest entry for me is Good Will Hunting. I guess they surveyed Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for the list.
Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and The Shawshank Redemption are all also on the top 15 on IMDB's top 250; they all have obvious populist appeal.
I would have thought I'd do better with the Advocate list, but the Hollywood Favorite list is so mainstream I've seen almost all of them (I think I missed 2). It's definitely a favorites list though - I wonder if a "best" lit might have skewed more towards the classics, but maybe I'm wrong. (Viva la Inception!)
The ranking of The Advocate list is insane but I guess it's a nice list to have in general. When The Last of Sheila (yikes) and Jeffrey (I know I've seen it and all I can tell you about it is the actors were in Wings and The Pretender) outrank La Cage Aux Folles (!!!, and I'm not talking about the sequel) and Far From Heaven (oh come on), it's time to ask questions. And yeah, Almodovar is weirdly ripped off. I almost wonder if they went to Netflix's Gay and Lesbian section for their final votes and just went "Oh yeah, I liked that one. Done!"
The less said about the rankings and some of the titles on those lists the better. As for lists here since THE FILM EXPERIENCE is pro-actress, pro-auteur -- the lists will be about actresses and auteurs. I need to watch more foreign language film. And I have a preference for everything European.
Word is out
There are too many lists out there if you ask me...
^ agreed, and the Advocate list of gay films is all over the place. Law of Desire, 111? are you fucking kidding me? it looks more like a list of gay films you might like to check some time, in case you missed them.
Moulin Rouge! <3
Since no one else apparently cares about them, TFE should do a list of the greatest movie musicals. Or greatest musical numbers/sequences or something. Both of these lists are very, very weird.
Carmen Sandiego: They include 2 James Cameron movies, but they make the CRAZY choices. Titanic is, though respectable, most people see through it as the bloated prestige that it was and though I don't really love The Hurt Locker (B), I'm still forced to concede it's better than freaking AVATAR. (B- in 3-D, C+ in 2-D. CGI that's often ugly and obviously scaled exclusively to 3-D lighting conditions, a terrible "we really wanted Ron Perlman but we needed to cut whatever budget corners we could" villain and the problematic and nearly two decades old narrative cribbed from Dances with Wolves/Ferngully. (Probably even MORE Ferngully than Dances with Wolves.) Maybe he has improvements in store for us with Avatar 2, 3 and 4, but I still wish he had left it alone and went back to the Battle Angel Alita movie.) They could have gotten cool points for going for Aliens and T2, but those didn't make as much money, so of course they're not going to remember that those are SO MUCH BETTER.
Word Is Out would be among the top 20 absolutely essential LGBT films of all time. An embarrassing omission.
How can Ben-Hur not be in that mainstream Top Hundred????
They LOVE Julie! Only five musicals and she's the star of two.
Suggestion for a TFE list: Top Ten Most Underrated Actresses
Since you're actressexual, how about a top ten best actress performances list from each decade, starting with the silent era, culminating with the best so far of the 2010s?
I love list though I always have to remind myself that they are subjective or I get really pissed off.
The Advocate's ranking is weird (I'm with you Nathaniel on Philadelphia, UGH!) and the inclusion of some films with only a peripheral amount of gay content/subtext like The Last of Sheila (I love the film but the gay story isn't it's core theme) and Streetcar (another great film but the gay husband is tangential) while excluding a gay love story like 2002's The Trip is crazy.
The Hollywood Report list is a joke.
How about a list of the classic actresses who should be better known or whose work we actressexuals should at least have a better acquaintanceship with and a key film or two for each. In the case of women who have some classics to their name some of their lesser known films.
I'll start:
1. Linda Darnell-Summer Storm ('44-Douglas Sirk directed!), This Is My Love ('54)
2. Ida Lupino-Ladies in Retirement ('41), The Man I Love ('47)
3. Susan Hayward-Deadline at Dawn ('46), The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray directed '52)
4. Priscilla Lane-Dust Be My Destiny ('39), Blues in the Night ('41)
5. Ann Sheridan-Torrid Zone ('40), Take Me to Town ('53)
6. Alexis Smith-The Turning Point ('52), The Sleeping Tiger ('54)
7. Ann Dvorak-The Strange Love of Molly Louvain ('32), Heat Lightening ('34)
8. Ann Sothern-Maisie ('39 she makes the entire B series worth watching), Cry 'Havoc' ('43)
9. Betty Hutton-The Perils of Pauline ('47), Somebody Loves Me ('52)
10. Ava Gardner-The Snows of Kilimanjaro ('52), The Angel Wore Red ('60)
11. Veronica Lake-I Married a Witch ('42), Ramrod ('47)
12. Carole Lombard-Hands Across the Table ('35), In Name Only ('39)
13. Clara Bow-Mantrap ('26), Call Her Savage ('32)
14. Claire Trevor-The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse ('38), Hard, Fast and Beautiful ('51)
15. Deanna Durbin-It Started with Eve ('41), Christmas Holiday ('44)
16. Kay Kendall-Simon and Laura ('55), The Reluctant Debutante ('58)
17. Eleanor Parker-The Voice of the Turtle ('47), Lizzie ('57)
18. Gail Russell-The Uninvited ('44), Moonrise ('48)
19. Geraldine Fitzgerald-The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry ('45), Three Strangers ('46)
20. Glynis Johns-Miranda ('48), The Chapman Report ('62-George Cukor directed)
21. Jean Simmons-So Long at the Fair ('50), Hilda Crane ('56)
22. Joan Bennett-The Macomber Affair ('47), The Reckless Moment ('49)
23. Judy Holliday-The Marrying Kind ('52), The Solid Gold Cadillac ('56)
24. Margaret Sullavan-The Shopworn Angel ('38), Back Street ('41)
25. Ruth Roman-Joe MacBeth ('55), 5 Steps to Danger ('57)
26. Patricia Neal-The Breaking Point ('50), Washington Story ('52)
27. Sylvia Sidney-Mary Burns, Fugitive ('35), The Searching Wind ('46)
28. Yvonne De Carlo-Criss Cross ('49), The Captain's Paradise ('53)
29. Carolyn Jones-Career ('59), Sail a Crooked Ship ('61)
30. Myrna Loy-The Rains Came ('39), Just Tell Me What You Want ('80)
31. Rosalind Russell-No Time for Comedy ('40), The Velvet Touch ('48)
32. Suzanne Pleshette-A Rage to Live ('65), Mister Buddwing ('66)
33. Gloria Grahame-Man on a Tightrope ('53), Human Desire ('54)
34. Fay Bainter-White Banners ('38), The War Against Mrs. Hadley ('42)
35. Joan Blondell-The Greeks Had a Word for Them ('32), The Blue Veil ('51)