First 20 years of my life movie meme...
Jan. 31st, 2011 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatFinished watching Downton Abbey - which was quite the treat. Makes me want to pull out my A&E Pride and Prejudice DVDs and rewatch them. Also, it sort of ended on a cliff-hanger, dang it.
Although accordingly to flist - there's a second season already in production - 8 hours, and a Xmas special both slated for Fall 2011 for BBC and most likely 2012 for US.
Rather adored it. The dialogue was hilarious in places, and clever. And it was well-paced for a parlour drama.
There's a movie meme going around that I want to try, now that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
2maggie2 has given me the secret to it. Basically you go through each year that you've been alive and pick your favorite film or one you enjoyed the most that came out that year. I'm hoping it won't take me forever...because ahem, 43 years here.
What you do is go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_years_in_film and choose the film that you loved the most for each year of your life. The way I did this - is try to pick films that I would have seen that year or saw shortly thereafter, with a few rather obvious exceptions.
This meme is harder than it looks, because some amazing films came out during these years.
1. 1967 - as a child? My favorite was Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, or Disney's The Jungle Book (neither of which I saw until I was seven or eight of course). But as an adult? The Graduate -
"Plastics, Ben, the Future is in Plastics." & "KaaaKachoo, Mrs. Robinson, the future begins and ends with you" and of course..."The Sounds of Silence" - It was the film that defined my parents generation.
2. 1968 - As a child? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I adored Dick Van Dyke as a small tyke, because he reminded me of my father with his long legs and jet black hair and big nose, also sucker for fantasy, and musicals - this combined both, along with a romance.), As an adult? Very difficult to choose, we have the brilliant historical game of wits - The Lion in Winter, the best of Mel Brooks films in my opinion - The Producers (don't see the remake, see the original), the first of Franco Zeferilli's Shakespeare films, the one, the only way to see Romeo and Juliet, Neil Simon's The Odd Couple with the original Odd Couple of Lemon and Matthau. And finally, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odysessy - which introduced the insane computer "HAL".
3. 1969 - Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone - my favorite actually of Leone's, where the villain is played by Henry Fonda and the hero by Charles Bronsan, a nice twist and subversion of the form, but Leone loved to subvert the Western. Later this film was remade with a woman starring in the Charles Bronsan Role - entitled The Quick and the Dead. As a child? I think my favorite film was most likely the 1969 animated film : A Boy Named Charlie Brown - based on Charles Schultz comics, with an amazing score.
4. 1970 - as a child the Disney film The Aristocrats (Doesn't Everybody Want to Be A Cat??), but as an adult? Five Easy Pieces - a psychological drama about a brilliant man who can't deal with people, the first of many of the 1970s internal character dramas, with subtle acting, and that felt like watching a John Cheever story come to life. Notable mention goes to Little Big Man - the satire on the Western, and a great commentary on the inherent racism within the trope, and of course, M*A*S*H (although I admittedly preferred the television series) - it was in some respects next to Doctor Strangelove, amongst the best satires on WAR that has been done.
5. 1971 - was a great year for films. Here's the candidates: The French Connection (with possibly the best chase scene in cinema for quite some time), the hauntingly beautiful Death in Venice - if you are a fan of good cinematography - rent it now, the ground-breaking allegorical political satire with depth - and possibly Kubrick's best and most coherent work: A Clockwork Orange - the film that made an international star of Malcolm McDowell. Also, Fiddler on the Roof - amongst the best movie musicals made, about Russian Jews who are forced to flee their homeland. We also have the directorial
debuts of Lucas and Spielberg this year - one a sci-fi robot film and one a psychological horror film based on a Stephen King short story (Duel). Plus - Robert Wise's minimalist sci-fi thriller The Andromeda Strain based on the best of Michael Crichton's novels of the same name. My favorite as an adult is probably A Clockwork Orange. But the child in me - loves Fiddler on the Roof.
6. 1972 -How do people pick? Sleuth, Godfather, Cabret, The Ruling Class (come on! The Ruling Class and them bones, them bones...sung by a crazed O'Toole who thinks he's Jack the Ripper?), The Cowboys..about a bunch of young kids on a cattle drive, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoesi by Buneul - a surreal farce about the middle class? I have to go with Cabaret - based on Bob Fosse's staging of the Broadway musical, in turn based on Christopher Isherwood's play I am Camera - it tells the sad tale of Sally Bowls a cabret singer in pre-war 1930s Berlin. Blending political satire with
pathos, it haunts long after you've seen it, and every time you watch you see another layer revealed.
7. 1973 - Robin Hood - the Disney Film. (I was in love with the red fox. Yes, my friends, I fell in love with a dashing red cartoon fox, which subplanted an animated white lion the year before. To my credit? I was only 6 years of age at the time.) As an adult? The Sting - with Newman, Redford, et al, no doubt about it. I rewatch that every time it shows up. There were other notable films that year certainly - Don't Look Now with Donald Sutherland is incredibly scary not to mention disturbing psychological horror piece about a couple who lost their child and is grieving in Venice. And My Name is Nobody starring Terrence Hill and Henry Fonda - is a Western that I've watched so many times I have it memorized. I adored it as a kid - used to come on every Saturday. It's about a man challenging an old and famous gunfighter to take out the Wild Bunch - it's also a neat commentary on fame and anti-heroes.
8. 1974 - Chinatown - the quintessential noir thriller, and a film that is a true work of art.
Every piece perfectly laid. Want to see a well-plotted film with well-laid out plot twists- this is the one. As a child - The Life and Times of Grizzley Adams (I'm guessing - I vaguely remember seeing it at the time).
9. 1975 - Escape to Witch Mountain (as a kid - I fell in love with Ike Eiseman who played the little girls' brother - I was 8, the same age he was. Loved this movie so much, read the book twice and saw it twice.). As an adult - hard one...there are so many candidates - the haunting Peter Weir film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dog Day Afternoon - about a bank heist gone awry, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - the black comedy about an insane asylum or Stephen Spielberg's Jaws. I'll probably go with Jaws - because that film has some moments in it that you just re-watch and rewatch and rewatch - The three men in the boat scenes, and the opening sequence with Roy Schrieder and his family in their kitchen.
10. 1976 - as a kid? Probably the original Freaky Friday - no wait, The Bad News Bears. (Quick antedote - every time I thought of Buffy S8, I kept thinking Bad News Bears in Breaking Training - a horrifically bad sequel of the first film.) So yep, it was the Bad News Bears with tomboy Tatum O'Neal playing on a little league team run by her neverdowell father-figure Walter Matthau. But as an adult...difficult one, there's Robin and Marian, the adult romance between Scean Connory and Audrey Hepburn, All the Presidents Men - another film that I tend to watch whenever it pops up regardless of how many times I've seen it - a terrific buddy film about two reporters, and finally Taxi Driver (are you talking to me?). My favorite is probably All the President's Men, to be honest - although Taxi Driver tackled the mood that Presidents caused.
11. 1977 - as a kid? Star Wars - no contest. (fell irrevocably in love with it). But later, I grew to love Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Stephen Spielberg even more - for the dialogue and the character relationships.
12. 1978- Tie between: Return from Witch Mountain (did I mention I was in love with Ike Eisenman) and Battlestar Galatica (when it aired on tv - didn't see it in the theaters - I fell in love with Apollo - I was 11 at the time.) As an adult - Same Time Next Year and John Carpenter's classic Halloween stick in the memory.
13. 1979 - Breaking Away (I loved that film, I remember celebrating when it won the Academy Award that year. Still love it to pieces.) It's my happy film.
14. 1980 - Empire Strikes Back - which I consider the best film of the Star Wars saga and fell in love with at the time. Saw it on opening night at a huge theater in Kansas City that rarely had films in it. It was a big event. ( I wrote fanfic in my head about this one.)
15. 1981 - Raiders of the Lost Arc - (it inspired a version with a female adventurer named Jade Falcon during the same time period that was the hero of the first book I finished, on a typewriter, filled with typographical errors about 300 pages, single spaced. It's tucked away in my parent's attic.) In short - loved this film. (Although also liked Chariots of Fire, even though I can't remember any of it now and have never made it through it twice.)
16. 1982- Blade Runner - it's the one I own. (But I admittedly loved and have rewatched ET, Poltergeist, The Last Unicorn, Wrath of Khan, Pink Floyd the Wall, Tootsie and many others from that same year.)
17. 1983 - at the time? The Outsiders. Now? A Christmas Story - which I rewatch every year.
18. 1984 - The Terminator by James Cameron or A Passage to India by David Lean (most memorable), but the most enjoyable and I adored and have been known to rewatch? Romancing The Stone and The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai.
19.1985 - Ladyhawk - I have watched that film twenty times - we taped it off of HBO after we saw it in the movie theaters. Adore it, absolutely. Dialogue, actors, story, all of it.
20. 1986 - Pretty in Pink (at the time and the only John Hughes film I fell in love with), other memorable ones that stuck are Labrynthe - come on David Bowie and Puppets, plus a musical with David Bowie singing, The Hitcher - which is a thriller to beat thriller's, and of course Cameron's Aliens, which was a masterpiece of a horror film. Did everything right.
Stopping here. May continue the next 20 years in another post. Time for bed. Also 1987 was impossible to pick one. Some years are easier than others.
Although accordingly to flist - there's a second season already in production - 8 hours, and a Xmas special both slated for Fall 2011 for BBC and most likely 2012 for US.
Rather adored it. The dialogue was hilarious in places, and clever. And it was well-paced for a parlour drama.
There's a movie meme going around that I want to try, now that
2maggie2 has given me the secret to it. Basically you go through each year that you've been alive and pick your favorite film or one you enjoyed the most that came out that year. I'm hoping it won't take me forever...because ahem, 43 years here.What you do is go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_years_in_film and choose the film that you loved the most for each year of your life. The way I did this - is try to pick films that I would have seen that year or saw shortly thereafter, with a few rather obvious exceptions.
This meme is harder than it looks, because some amazing films came out during these years.
1. 1967 - as a child? My favorite was Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, or Disney's The Jungle Book (neither of which I saw until I was seven or eight of course). But as an adult? The Graduate -
"Plastics, Ben, the Future is in Plastics." & "KaaaKachoo, Mrs. Robinson, the future begins and ends with you" and of course..."The Sounds of Silence" - It was the film that defined my parents generation.
2. 1968 - As a child? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I adored Dick Van Dyke as a small tyke, because he reminded me of my father with his long legs and jet black hair and big nose, also sucker for fantasy, and musicals - this combined both, along with a romance.), As an adult? Very difficult to choose, we have the brilliant historical game of wits - The Lion in Winter, the best of Mel Brooks films in my opinion - The Producers (don't see the remake, see the original), the first of Franco Zeferilli's Shakespeare films, the one, the only way to see Romeo and Juliet, Neil Simon's The Odd Couple with the original Odd Couple of Lemon and Matthau. And finally, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odysessy - which introduced the insane computer "HAL".
3. 1969 - Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone - my favorite actually of Leone's, where the villain is played by Henry Fonda and the hero by Charles Bronsan, a nice twist and subversion of the form, but Leone loved to subvert the Western. Later this film was remade with a woman starring in the Charles Bronsan Role - entitled The Quick and the Dead. As a child? I think my favorite film was most likely the 1969 animated film : A Boy Named Charlie Brown - based on Charles Schultz comics, with an amazing score.
4. 1970 - as a child the Disney film The Aristocrats (Doesn't Everybody Want to Be A Cat??), but as an adult? Five Easy Pieces - a psychological drama about a brilliant man who can't deal with people, the first of many of the 1970s internal character dramas, with subtle acting, and that felt like watching a John Cheever story come to life. Notable mention goes to Little Big Man - the satire on the Western, and a great commentary on the inherent racism within the trope, and of course, M*A*S*H (although I admittedly preferred the television series) - it was in some respects next to Doctor Strangelove, amongst the best satires on WAR that has been done.
5. 1971 - was a great year for films. Here's the candidates: The French Connection (with possibly the best chase scene in cinema for quite some time), the hauntingly beautiful Death in Venice - if you are a fan of good cinematography - rent it now, the ground-breaking allegorical political satire with depth - and possibly Kubrick's best and most coherent work: A Clockwork Orange - the film that made an international star of Malcolm McDowell. Also, Fiddler on the Roof - amongst the best movie musicals made, about Russian Jews who are forced to flee their homeland. We also have the directorial
debuts of Lucas and Spielberg this year - one a sci-fi robot film and one a psychological horror film based on a Stephen King short story (Duel). Plus - Robert Wise's minimalist sci-fi thriller The Andromeda Strain based on the best of Michael Crichton's novels of the same name. My favorite as an adult is probably A Clockwork Orange. But the child in me - loves Fiddler on the Roof.
6. 1972 -How do people pick? Sleuth, Godfather, Cabret, The Ruling Class (come on! The Ruling Class and them bones, them bones...sung by a crazed O'Toole who thinks he's Jack the Ripper?), The Cowboys..about a bunch of young kids on a cattle drive, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoesi by Buneul - a surreal farce about the middle class? I have to go with Cabaret - based on Bob Fosse's staging of the Broadway musical, in turn based on Christopher Isherwood's play I am Camera - it tells the sad tale of Sally Bowls a cabret singer in pre-war 1930s Berlin. Blending political satire with
pathos, it haunts long after you've seen it, and every time you watch you see another layer revealed.
7. 1973 - Robin Hood - the Disney Film. (I was in love with the red fox. Yes, my friends, I fell in love with a dashing red cartoon fox, which subplanted an animated white lion the year before. To my credit? I was only 6 years of age at the time.) As an adult? The Sting - with Newman, Redford, et al, no doubt about it. I rewatch that every time it shows up. There were other notable films that year certainly - Don't Look Now with Donald Sutherland is incredibly scary not to mention disturbing psychological horror piece about a couple who lost their child and is grieving in Venice. And My Name is Nobody starring Terrence Hill and Henry Fonda - is a Western that I've watched so many times I have it memorized. I adored it as a kid - used to come on every Saturday. It's about a man challenging an old and famous gunfighter to take out the Wild Bunch - it's also a neat commentary on fame and anti-heroes.
8. 1974 - Chinatown - the quintessential noir thriller, and a film that is a true work of art.
Every piece perfectly laid. Want to see a well-plotted film with well-laid out plot twists- this is the one. As a child - The Life and Times of Grizzley Adams (I'm guessing - I vaguely remember seeing it at the time).
9. 1975 - Escape to Witch Mountain (as a kid - I fell in love with Ike Eiseman who played the little girls' brother - I was 8, the same age he was. Loved this movie so much, read the book twice and saw it twice.). As an adult - hard one...there are so many candidates - the haunting Peter Weir film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dog Day Afternoon - about a bank heist gone awry, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - the black comedy about an insane asylum or Stephen Spielberg's Jaws. I'll probably go with Jaws - because that film has some moments in it that you just re-watch and rewatch and rewatch - The three men in the boat scenes, and the opening sequence with Roy Schrieder and his family in their kitchen.
10. 1976 - as a kid? Probably the original Freaky Friday - no wait, The Bad News Bears. (Quick antedote - every time I thought of Buffy S8, I kept thinking Bad News Bears in Breaking Training - a horrifically bad sequel of the first film.) So yep, it was the Bad News Bears with tomboy Tatum O'Neal playing on a little league team run by her neverdowell father-figure Walter Matthau. But as an adult...difficult one, there's Robin and Marian, the adult romance between Scean Connory and Audrey Hepburn, All the Presidents Men - another film that I tend to watch whenever it pops up regardless of how many times I've seen it - a terrific buddy film about two reporters, and finally Taxi Driver (are you talking to me?). My favorite is probably All the President's Men, to be honest - although Taxi Driver tackled the mood that Presidents caused.
11. 1977 - as a kid? Star Wars - no contest. (fell irrevocably in love with it). But later, I grew to love Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Stephen Spielberg even more - for the dialogue and the character relationships.
12. 1978- Tie between: Return from Witch Mountain (did I mention I was in love with Ike Eisenman) and Battlestar Galatica (when it aired on tv - didn't see it in the theaters - I fell in love with Apollo - I was 11 at the time.) As an adult - Same Time Next Year and John Carpenter's classic Halloween stick in the memory.
13. 1979 - Breaking Away (I loved that film, I remember celebrating when it won the Academy Award that year. Still love it to pieces.) It's my happy film.
14. 1980 - Empire Strikes Back - which I consider the best film of the Star Wars saga and fell in love with at the time. Saw it on opening night at a huge theater in Kansas City that rarely had films in it. It was a big event. ( I wrote fanfic in my head about this one.)
15. 1981 - Raiders of the Lost Arc - (it inspired a version with a female adventurer named Jade Falcon during the same time period that was the hero of the first book I finished, on a typewriter, filled with typographical errors about 300 pages, single spaced. It's tucked away in my parent's attic.) In short - loved this film. (Although also liked Chariots of Fire, even though I can't remember any of it now and have never made it through it twice.)
16. 1982- Blade Runner - it's the one I own. (But I admittedly loved and have rewatched ET, Poltergeist, The Last Unicorn, Wrath of Khan, Pink Floyd the Wall, Tootsie and many others from that same year.)
17. 1983 - at the time? The Outsiders. Now? A Christmas Story - which I rewatch every year.
18. 1984 - The Terminator by James Cameron or A Passage to India by David Lean (most memorable), but the most enjoyable and I adored and have been known to rewatch? Romancing The Stone and The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai.
19.1985 - Ladyhawk - I have watched that film twenty times - we taped it off of HBO after we saw it in the movie theaters. Adore it, absolutely. Dialogue, actors, story, all of it.
20. 1986 - Pretty in Pink (at the time and the only John Hughes film I fell in love with), other memorable ones that stuck are Labrynthe - come on David Bowie and Puppets, plus a musical with David Bowie singing, The Hitcher - which is a thriller to beat thriller's, and of course Cameron's Aliens, which was a masterpiece of a horror film. Did everything right.
Stopping here. May continue the next 20 years in another post. Time for bed. Also 1987 was impossible to pick one. Some years are easier than others.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 10:44 pm (UTC)Anyway, just generally great list.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 11:27 pm (UTC)(I think that's the name). But of the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns (all filmed in Spain), the best is the last one. The first two popped up the same year - Fistful of Dollars and A Few Dollars More.
(Sigh, I've seen too many Westerns, but I also took a course entitled "Cinema:The Western" in undergrad. Wrote my final paper on The Wild Bunch.)
Agreed about Young Frankenstein, which is a touch funnier - but it's more parody than satire. The Producers is pure satire. Most of Brooks films parody other films, such as Blazing Saddles (Westerns), High Anxiety (Hitchcock thrillers), Young Frankenstein (old black and white horror films), but To Be or Not to Be and The Producers are satirical pieces that make fun of anti-semitism and fascism. (And I admittedly prefer satire to parody...I'm not sure why exactly. I think because satire is much harder to pull off. Go too far in one direction and you bore the audience, go too far in the other, you offend.)
Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 11:30 pm (UTC)