<p>Add Seinfeld to my TV shows. I don't know how I left it out.</p>
<p>Well Jenny...we should go to concerts (I agree that Fab Moretti is just....<em>siiiigh</em> is he still with drew barrymore?) and watch TV together sometimes ;) I was reading in your sororities post, and I'm interested in being a Theta as well! (recommended to me by someone) Maybe we'll be sorority sisters if we're lucky</p>
<p>Name: Andrew</p>
<p>AIM: afollick88 </p>
<p>Major: Business Admin.</p>
<p>Movies: The Big Lebowski, Dumb & Dumber, Robin Hood: Men in Tights</p>
<p>TV: South Park, Chappelle's Show, and pretty much anything else on Comedy Central. And if I'm being honest with myself then The Real World.</p>
<p>Books: sparknotes.com. Damn senioritis...</p>
<p>Music: Pretty much anything from Beethoven to Iron Maiden, but mostly focused around Zeppelin-ish 70's rock.</p>
<p>Food: Sushi, Chinese, Mexican, anything grilled</p>
<p>Teams: Oakland A's, Sacramento Kings, SJ Sharks</p>
<p>Intrests: Beirut, ice hockey, atheism, playfully stereotyping others, procrastinating (thus the whole being on CC at 12:30 thing)</p>
<p>That's all I can think of now, basically I'm too excited for college to study so here I am, see you all next year.</p>
<p>Name: Henry</p>
<p>AIM: xkrzylilaznb0ix <- yes it's lame, but I've had it since 6th grade</p>
<p>Major: Biochemistry, Pre-Pharm</p>
<p>Movies: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Rush Hour</p>
<p>TV: I don't watch TV...</p>
<p>Books: I don't read either...</p>
<p>Music: AFI (I like the newer poppy songs than the oldschool hardcore), Strung Out, Coheed and Cambria, Yellowcard, We Are Scientists, etc. I can listen to any kind of music.</p>
<p>Food: Chinese, Mexican</p>
<p>Teams: oMg!!11! ***!!1 t3h T12oJ4Nz R +eH w0o+!! I like professional wrestling, too. (the scripted stuff)</p>
<p>Intrests: playing piano, playing guitar, music, video games, tennis (though I suck), and that's all I can think of.</p>
<p>PHH! Twister<em>the</em>great, just thought you'd like to know that I left the theatre about a month ago convinced that "V for Vendetta" had made my top 5 movie list, an extremely hard list to get into btw.</p>
<p>That film was trully awesome.</p>
<p>^ Well I definitely liked it but I don't think it quite makes it into my top 5. I totally respect your point of view but I would put it in my top 20.</p>
<p>Lately I was bored so I started thinking about my 50 favorite films...It's not finished and I'm still working on the rankings but hey I'm getting there lol (this might seem really nerdy/geeky to some people but what the hell.... ^^)</p>
<ol>
<li> Fight Club<br></li>
<li> Snatch </li>
<li> Hardboiled </li>
<li> Matrix </li>
<li> Sin City </li>
<li> The Professional </li>
<li> Pulp Fiction</li>
<li> Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels</li>
<li> Die Hard Trilogy </li>
<li>High Fidelity</li>
<li>The Rock </li>
<li>Seven</li>
<li>Requiem For a Dream </li>
<li>Reservoir Dogs</li>
<li>V for Vendetta</li>
<li>The Usual Suspects</li>
<li>American History X</li>
<li>Apocalypse Now</li>
<li>Crash</li>
<li>Alien 2</li>
<li>Blade Runner </li>
<li>The Fifth Element</li>
<li>A History of Violence</li>
<li>Jarhead</li>
<li>Collateral</li>
<li>The Big Lebowski</li>
<li>Taxi Driver</li>
<li>28 Days Later</li>
<li>L.A Confidential</li>
<li>Man on Fire</li>
<li>The Green Mile</li>
<li>The Sixth Sense</li>
<li>The Big Hit</li>
<li>Running Scared</li>
<li>Alien 1</li>
<li>Predator</li>
<li>Lord of War</li>
</ol>
<p>Goddamn I forgot Super Troopers! I feel like an idiot.</p>
<p>Kinda still deciding, but I'm heavily leaning toward USC, and I really want to reply because I love ranking things and having opinions.</p>
<p>Name: Geoff
Location: Pennsylvania
AIM: Project SHIRO V2
Major: Cinema-Television Critical Studies
TV: Scrubs, Cowboy Bebop, Lost, Firefly, House
Books: 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Fight Club, Fathers and Sons, Hamlet
Music: Camel, Spock's Beard, Ayreon, Modest Mouse, Pink Floyd
Food: Pizza, Cheesesteak, Hoagie
Teams: Hardcore Eagles and Flyers fan</p>
<p>twister<em>the</em>great: If that's nerdy/geeky, then I guess I am, too. I keep a list of my top films that I constantly add to. It goes up to about ~180, but it is somewhat top heavy (top 100 or so). It's in order, but there is admittedly a little error for each one. Since you only posted your top 37, I'll just post my top 50.</p>
<ol>
<li>Lost in Translation</li>
<li>Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
and Spring</li>
<li>Vertical Ray of the Sun </li>
<li>2001: A Space Odyssey</li>
<li>Last Life in the Universe</li>
<li>Cyclo</li>
<li>A Clockwork Orange</li>
<li>Fight Club</li>
<li>3-iron</li>
<li>Sex and Lucia</li>
<li>Scent of Green Papaya</li>
<li>Chungking Express</li>
<li>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind </li>
<li>Bad Guy</li>
<li>In the Mood for Love</li>
<li>Ikiru</li>
<li>Hero</li>
<li>The Dreamers</li>
<li>Vanilla Sky</li>
<li>25th Hour </li>
<li>Amelie </li>
<li>Dogville </li>
<li>Akira Kurosawas Dreams </li>
<li>Requiem for a Dream</li>
<li>Rashomon </li>
<li>Mulholland Drive </li>
<li>Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2<br></li>
<li>Pulp Fiction </li>
<li>Samaritan Girl</li>
<li>Run Lola Run</li>
<li>Closer </li>
<li>Garden State</li>
<li>Dark City </li>
<li>Life Aquatic</li>
<li>Spirited Away </li>
<li>Eyes Wide Shut</li>
<li>Audition</li>
<li>Stray Dog</li>
<li>Oldboy</li>
<li>Girl With a Pearl Earring </li>
<li>Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf</li>
<li>Seven Samurai </li>
<li>Amadeus </li>
<li>Dead Man</li>
<li>Pi: Faith in Chaos</li>
<li>The Isle</li>
<li>Ran </li>
<li>Princess Mononoke</li>
<li>Crash</li>
<li>Broken Flowers</li>
</ol>
<p>There's a movie for 2001?! Man, I gotta go watch that!</p>
<p>nice list twister.....I would only object to one film on the entire list, but as you said, I respect the opinnion and I'll keep my comments to myself....</p>
<p>ranking 50 for me would be tough, but I definately know my top 10 (in no particular order)</p>
<p>-Amores Perros
-V for Vendetta
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
-Adaptation
-Family Plot
-Amadeus
-The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
-Rear Window
-Arlington Road
-American Beauty</p>
<p>(you know what? maybe Airplane! deserves a spot on that list too)</p>
<p>I'm in the class of 2007, so obviously I don't belong here, but I was just checking everything out, and when looking at TV shows, noticed that no one put Veronica Mars. I just wanted to recommend it to everybody. Tuesdays 9pm, on UPN. It's so critically acclaimed but the ratings have been really low (like Arrested Development, and everyone knows what happened to that). So everyone should check it out, and when you come to USC you can borrow my DVDs. :) OK, haha, sorry that is all. I'm just paranoid that the show will be cancelled, so I'm trying to get the word out there!</p>
<p>hahaha, just thinking about UPN makes me chuckle, not that it's low quality television or anything...</p>
<p>just looking at your lists reminds that I forgot some movies so I'll have to work on it.</p>
<p>Please tell me Nachotondi what movie you think does not belong on the list. I really want to know ^^</p>
<p>oh and BTW everybody calls me Twister but it's actually Twiser.
Just call me Sean ;)</p>
<p>hahaha, sorry sean. I don't know why I read "twister" all along.</p>
<p>Ok, so anyway, in my humble opinnion, Crash was not a good movie. It had strong scenes but it was lacking a true story, it was just a bunch of random scenes on racist people. And they were fake too. Anyone trying to get medicine (or whatever it was) for his father would not call the black clerk all those names for no reason at all. Today, existing racists keep it to themselves because it is not "politically correct" anymore, and yet in this movie everyone except Ryan Phillippe was too outspoken about being racist. And most of all......there was no story. After the amazing Pulp Fiction and the utterly perfect Amores Perros, the modern trend has become to make movies with multiple storylines. But writing such movies is taking a huge risk. The more storylines you add, the less screen time your most important characters get, and the less an audience can root for them. And the more that happens, the more boring those films become. The more storylines, the less the fun. Three is ok. Maybe four if done correctly. But eight is a waste of my time because it will never be done satisfactorily in two-hours time. The "racist" message is overemphasized too much. I don't want a message, I want a story. If it comes with a message then great. But story is the important thing for me.</p>
<p>But again, that is my opinnion. Lots of people, including most of my friends loved it, and some hated movies I hold in the highest regards, so it really comes down to taste and not all I just said. I guess it depends on your priority when writing/watching a movie. And I can guess it is already a debate in the movie business. Message, or Story?</p>
<p>To me, true geniuses are those who can achieve both succesfully in 1 movie, like the Wachowski brothers in "V"..........a resounding message in an extremely entertaining story. </p>
<p>The "beauty lies in the beholder" line is a lot nicer in Mexico. It goes:
"En gustos se rompen generos"</p>
<p>Which I would translate to: "Tastes can kill any trend" more or less. Feel free to bash any movie on my list! That's what it's all about.</p>
<p>Name: Marcus
Location: Cape Cod, MA
AIM: Neobasser15
Major: Cinema-Television Critical Studies
TV: Futurama, The Boondocks, Cowboy Bebop, The Oblongs, History Channel, Red Dwarf, Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL (basically all of [adult swim])
Books: Catch-22, D-Day, Calvin and Hobbes (although I know that is not a "traditional" book)
Music: Beck, Gorillaz, Jurassic 5, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Miles Davis/John Coltrane, The Chemical Brothers
Food: Macaroni and Cheese, and anything Italian
Interests: Conquering the world</p>
<p>I have so many movies that I really enjoy, but off the top of my head these would be some of the favorites (in no particular order):</p>
<p>-Full Metal Jacket
-The Blues Brothers (not 2000)
-Good Night and Good Luck
-The Royal Tennenbaums
-Oldboy
-Ghost in the Shell
-The Godfather
-Gladiator
-All James Bond movies (especially Moonraker)
-Army of Darkness
-Dark City
-Run Lola Run (or Lola Rennt)
-Close Encounters of the Third Kind
-Reservoir Dogs
-Thank You For Smoking
-The Aristocrats
-Blade Runner
-Snatch
-Princess Mononoke
-Spirited Away
-Office Space
-Raging Bull
-Pulp Fiction
-Amelie
-Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
-Downfall
-Network
-Pitch Black
-Jurassic Park
-Saving Private Ryan</p>
<p>uschicka: I've been considering buying the Veronica Mars DVDs (I am crazy with blind buying DVDs of TV shows; I have a ridiculous amount of them) for quite a while, but I couldn't find anyone who had seen the show and would recommend it. Maybe I'll get them, then. Also, while on the topic of TV shows, I forgot Dead Like Me, and I need to remedy that horrible blunder by mentioning how great it is. Also, I probably should have included Huff, as well. I love most of Showtime's shows.</p>
<p>I strongly suspected you were referring to Crash, Nachotondi. It's on my list, too, so I feel that I should at least offer my views. I hear the first complaint fairly often. Personally, I don't have a problem with it; I simply see it as the film's method of revealing the thoughts and emotions of its characters, no more "objectionable" than a voice over (which isn't to say that you can't prefer one to the other). To me, as a result of this method, these characters and their lives are less "real" and more allegorical. They represent mindsets and thought patterns seen in society, and in Crash, they are simply set loose, uninhibited by "political correctness" and social mores. For this reason, they and their circumstances are depicted in extremes, and I think it's fair to call Crash a melodrama because of that. Some people like melodrama and allegories, some do not, but I think Crash executed it very well. AO Scott had a similar opinion as far as classifying it as allegorical melodrama, warning viewers against "mistaking its inhabitants... for actual human beings," classifying them instead as "ciphers in an allegorical scheme dreamed up by Paul Haggis," but he arrived at the opposite conclusion.</p>
<p>Personally, I felt that the characters were emphasized enough even with multiple stories. I agree with you about the overuse of that narrative tactic today, but I think that Crash, because of its goals, used it appropriately. Also, I saw and was able to appreciate the complexity in each character as a symbol even with their limited screentime, but I understand that you don't feel that way. </p>
<p>As for story VS. message, I think that's a very interesting discussion. Personally, I'd have to say that I'm more of a message person. I find that I can enjoy a good story, but I truly appreciate a strong message. Of course, it's all in the communication of that message, and I truly like to see a story and cinematic techniques that illustrate it, but I do not think that it has to be a particularly "interesting" or "traditionally told" story. Many of my favorite films are accused of having a story in which "nothing happens," but I find myself appreciating that if it is coupled with significance in the "nothing" and expressive filming.</p>
<p>Marcus: Ah, I should have included FLCL on my top TV shows list! Great show. Also, I see The Royal Tennenbaums on that list... Have you seen any other Wes Anderson films?</p>
<p>Well Geoff, I have seen Rushmore, which like the Royal Tennebaums can only really be described as "oddly interesting." I really do have to see Life Aquatic though, I hear it is quite "interesting" as well.</p>
<p>I wont go into a long philosophical explanation of why I liked the movie however I do understand what you mean and in a sense I totally agree. The fact of the matter is when I went to the cinema that day I wanted to see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and well the movie had already started so I decided to see Crash (the poster looked interresting lol) even though I knew absolutely nothing about the film. All I can say is that I was hooked right from Don Cheadle's first lines "it's the sense of touch"....</p>
<p>Now, you are absolutely right imo there isnt a real driving force, there are too many stories which prevent the characters from being developped sufficiently, and most of all there are a lot of clich</p>
<p>Wes Anderson's work sure is "interesting". I really loved The Royal Tenenbaums....how could the guy make such a watchable film with no rythm whatsoever.</p>
<p>Life Aquatic was not as good IMO it was much more random and lacked meaning like royal tenenbaums which felt much more "human". There still are some pretty hilarious moments although I guess not many people think of those films as hilarious....( half the people watching the movie with me fell asleep lol)</p>
<p>Well, I accept those comments. It's more fun when you get to debate a film, isn't it? </p>
<p>Anyway, I think that in the story vs. message debate, the only winner is story AND message, woudln't you agree shirobot? The combination is all but impossible.</p>