You guys need to be watching this show. Seriously, EVERYBODY was good this week. And this week, I have video to prove it! I’ll tease my favorite routine outside the cut; click through to see all the rest, complete with very subjective commentary as usual. This is Lacey and Kameron, dancing Broadway to “All That Jazz”. I love Broadway, which you know. I also have decided that Lacey and Kameron are, as of this moment, my favorites (since their contemporary routine last week was also incredible).
Month: June 2007 Page 2 of 3
The American Film Institute released an updated version of their 100 Years…100 Movies list of greatest American movies. Apparently they’re going to do that every ten years. I only saw the tail end of the special last night–did any one else catch it? I think I saw the top fifteen or twenty.
The new list is here in pdf form; and the 1997 list is here in pdf. The new list helpfully shows what position each film was in ten years ago, and how much it has changed its position. As far as new films on the list, there are 23, mostly in second half of the list. Still, out of 100 films, that’s quite a turnover–and interestingly, most of the new additions are not films made in the last ten years, but older ones. Apparently AFI felt they had almost a quarter of the films wrong last time. ;) Some of the replacements are good, I think, but others not so much. The worst thing is that I was 86% through the first list, and I’m only 82% through the new one. :(
Films added for the 2007 list:
- The General (1926, Buster Keaton) – definitely should be here; I never understood why it wasn’t before
- Intolerance (1916, D.W. Griffith) – they took out Birth of a Nation…hmm…I personally like Intolerance better, but I wonder if the decision was a politically correct one
- Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001, Peter Jackson) – I love the film, but one of the top 100 ever? Not sure.
- Nashville (1975, Robert Altman) – Haven’t seen it, but Altman deserves to be here somewhere.
- Sullivan’s Travels (1941, Preston Sturges) – OMG, yes. Love, love, love this film, and it doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves.
- Cabaret (1972, Bob Fosse) – This is a great film, too, I’m happy it’s here.
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Mike Nichols) – Haven’t seen, but I wouldn’t have thought its reputation justified Top 100.
- Saving Private Ryan (1998, Steven Spielberg) – Yeah, I’ll grant this a place.
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Frank Darabont) – I’m torn on this one–I liked it, but didn’t love it like everyone else I know.
- In the Heat of the Night (1967, Norman Jewison – I wouldn’t have included In the Heat of the Night; it’s good, but not that good.)
- All the President’s Men (1976, Alan J. Pakula) – Haven’t seen.
- Spartacus (1960, Stanley Kubrick) – Haven’t seen.
- Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau) – Haven’t seen, but I’m glad they’re at least trying to include more silent film.
- Titanic (1997, James Cameron) – No. I like Titanic a lot, but it is not one of America’s 100 best films.
- A Night at the Opera (1936, Sam Wood) – This is my favorite Marx Brothers film! Yes, even more than Duck Soup, so I’m pleased.
- 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet) – Eh. Maybe, but I’m not wholly convinced (which I guess is sort of ironic).
- The Sixth Sense (1998, M. Night Shyamalan) – No. I’d allow this one on the Top 100 Suspense Films list, but not the Top 100 of everything.
- Swing Time (1936, George Stevens) – Definitely a great, although I would have included Top Hat instead–I’m aware that’s a minority position, though.
- Sophie’s Choice (1982, Alan J. Pakula) – Haven’t seen.
- The Last Picture Show (1971, Peter Bogdanovich) – Great, great film, and very evocative of American nostalgia. I’m glad it’s here.
- Do the Right Thing (1988, Spike Lee) – Should have been on the first list, and I don’t even like Spike Lee movies as a rule.
- Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) – I really need to rewatch this, because I didn’t like it the first time around, but I think I would if I watched it now.
- Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter) – Is it a Top 100 film? Certainly it is if you include impact on the industry, and that’s one of the criteria. So yes, it belongs for that reason alone (although one could make that argument for a lot of films that were left off).
Films removed for the 2007 list:
- Doctor Zhivago (1965, David Lean) – An appropriate loss.
- The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith) – I’m okay losing this one only because they put in Intolerance. Still, I’d consider it a Top 100.
- From Here to Eternity (1953, Fred Zinneman) – Yeah, it’s good, but is it Top 100 good? Probably not.
- Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman) – Amadeus is a good film, but I sort of agree, it may not belong on a list of American films (it is American, but it feels so continental).
- All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, Lewis Milestone) – No. This one should’ve stayed. Even at 77 years old, it’s amazing.
- The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed) – This is technically a UK film, not an American one, so it’s probably a victim of rule-streamlining. Except for that, it should’ve stayed; great film.
- Fantasia (1940, multiple directors) – Hmmm. Fantasia is amazing, but I’ll admit that it hasn’t aged quite as well as some of the others on the list…
- Rebel Without a Cause (1955, Nicholas Ray) – Should have stayed. Or should have been replaced by another Nicholas Ray film, like In a Lonely Place.
- Stagecoach (1939, John Ford) – Well, they moved The Searchers up the list significantly, and if you’re only going to pick one John Wayne-John Ford western…still, Stagecoach is pretty darn good.
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg) – I honestly would’ve kept this in place of E.T.. Not a huge fan of the E.T..
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962, John Frankenheimer) – Oh, come on! Best Cold War thriller ever? Paranoia? Brainwashing? Evil mothers? Yeah, this one could’ve stayed.
- An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli) – As good as it is, I’m okay losing this one; it’s a few notches down my favorite musical list.
- Wuthering Heights (1939, William Wyler) – Good film, but it can go.
- Dances With Wolves (1990, Kevin Costner) – Shouldn’t have even been on the first list, so I’m glad it’s not on this one.
- Giant (1956, George Stevens) – Not one of my favorite 1950s epic melodramas; kick it out.
- Fargo (1996, Joel & Ethan Coen) – Oh, I like Fargo! But enough for Top 100? I don’t know…I think I’d say O Brother Where Art Thou instead.
- Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, Frank Lloyd) – This has been creaky for decades; how it made the first list I don’t know.
- Frankenstein (1931, James Whale) – Yeah, it’s a landmark horror film, but it’s aged a bit now, I’ll admit.
- Patton (1970, Franklin J. Shaffner) – Good film, but I’m okay with it not being in the Top 100.
- The Jazz Singer (1927, Alan Crosland) – Aw, first sound film–but really, yeah, not that good except from a film history point of view.
- My Fair Lady (1964, George Cukor) – Enjoyable, but not Top 100 material.
- A Place in the Sun (1951, George Stevens) – Haven’t seen.
- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967, Stanley Kramer) – No great loss there in my opinion.
After the jump, my version of the Top 100 American Films. They’re unranked, though, because I tried to rank them, and I got incredibly frustrated.
In the comments to my post about Bradbury and authorial intent, Evan pointed out that Ray Bradbury wrote an afterword to Fahrenheit 451 against censorship:
The most important reason Bradbury can’t get away with this re-interpretation is that a few years back he wrote a postscript to the novel in which he talked about how bad censorship was. He made some very good points. I don’t know why he would back away from it now.
Curious, I looked back at my copy of the book, and sure enough, it’s in there. Bradbury states clear as day:
Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel with, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony.
And if you wonder how he really feels about it:
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Yet Bradbury is still mostly concerned with his rights as an author, not the right of readers to read the text (either at all, or as written). From the end of the brief essay:
The tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. […] All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It’s my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I’ve won or lost. At sunrise, I’m out again, giving it the old try.
Here he clearly feels his books are his own territory–which is true as far as the writing goes. Nobody should be editing his books for content. However, the attitude here is strikingly similar to his recent attempts to reclaim power over the interpretation of his novel. Interesting question: If he decided to edit his book now and try to destroy previous editions, would he be a censor? Would such changes be acceptable, after the book as it stands has been available for so long? I tend to think they wouldn’t–certainly literary scholars would do all they could to hang on to the original text. :)
So in this 1979 postscript, Bradbury says the novel is about censorship, at least partially, and decries censorship of his work, but via a claim to authorial superiority–at this point, explicitly only applying it to the text itself, but now he’s applying his superiority to interpretation also, to promote an interpretation which contradicts his apparent 1979 opinion (although perhaps he is only focusing on the censorship angle because that’s what he’s struggling against at that particular moment–even so, that would suggest opportunism). Interesting. Thanks, Evan, for pointing that out. I don’t know if I’d read it before.
Whee! I’m so super-excited!! It’s gonna be a good show this year, folks. And I know I said I wasn’t going to blog it, but…I’m super-excited!! Did I mention that already? Whatever. I wrote this all during the show, but was trying to wait until I could include video–unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get a digital copy of the show yet in order to extract the video clips I want. This post includes both competition run-down and results after the jump.
edit: Now with different video. :)
I’m pretty happy with the top twenty dancers chosen on So You Think You Can Dance last night. My only question is what happened to the girl who was injured during Vegas week last year and was promised that she could re-enter the competition during Vegas week this year? Didn’t see her, no mention of her at all. That was disconcerting.
After the cut, the list of the top twenty and videos of their auditions, if we saw their auditions. Oh, and I put down what each of their specialties is, but I need to mention that I’m not a dancer and am not that familiar with different dance styles…I can’t tell the difference between contemporary and lyrical, for example, and sometimes ballet dancers look an awful lot like contemporary dancers to me on the show. Also, hip-hop dancers throw all sorts of things in there, so I’m not differentiating between b-boying, b-girling, breaking, popping, locking, you name it. Plus, I’m not getting into jazz, pop, etc. So my three specialty categories are ballroom, contemporary, and hip-hop. If you can differentiate them better, let me know, and I’ll update to be more precise. edit – dance styles now more precise, since Fox finally put up contestant pages at the website.