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June 29, 2007

Lucid Screening's Top 7 Project Episode 1

Desert Island Top 7

By Rufus

So we at Lucid Screening have decided to start a Top 7 Project where every so often (in other words when we can) we will bring you various Top 7 lists with different themes. To start off we decided (actually Rufus decided) to begin with the Desert Island Top 7 where you have to pick the impossible: 7 movies to watch while you are trapped on a desert island with no hope of rescue (okay some hope... we don't want to get too depressing here). We hope you enjoy the first of (hopefully) many more lists to come. Feel free to leave comments about what lists you would like to see.

Rufus

This is hard for me because I tend to like everything I watch, and I rewatch movies constantly. If I was stuck on a desert Island with nothing by seven films and a coconut bra I would hope someone would rescue me quick... because unless Ginger shows up with some mojitos... things could get ugly. So here is my list based on movies that I rewatch all the time anyway.

1) Blade Runner: One of my favorite films and totally quotable. If there was a monkey on the island I would teach him how to sign Rutger Hauers' final speech. Or go around saying "If only you could've seen what I've seen through your eyes."

2) Lost Boys: Another great movie that would satisfy my need for vampire films (although Near Dark would be a close second). Who could hate a movie with lines like "Great. My own brother a goddamn shitsucking vampire. Wait til mom finds out."

3) Seven Samurai: Close to perfection as you can humanly get. 'nuff said

4) Godzilla: the Japanese version without Raymond Burr. Me and my monkey could build sand Tokyo and smash it after watching this.

5) Iron Giant: One of my favorite films of all time, and Vin Diesel's best performance.

6) Memories of Murder: A great film that just gets better everytime I watch it.

7) Friend: Just so I can go around talking to my monkey like a Pusan gangster. That accent is just so badass.

Tram

1) Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (David Mirkin, 1997) - Move over Napoleon Dynamite. Romy and Michele is, hands down, the most quotable film I've seen in years. Some favorite one-liners include:
-"I'm the Mary, and you're the Rhoda"
-"Yeah, well, I hope your babies look like monkeys!"
-"Oh Ramon, your penis is so powerful! I'm coming! Okay, thank you! Get off me!"
-"Oh, I know. I was so lucky getting mono. That was like the best diet ever."

2) Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995) - I see no reason why this modern day adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma shouldn't be considered a classic teen flick. The film is so goddamn fun that you often forget, at times, just how razor-sharp a pop satire it is. I still giggle like crazy over the scene in which Cher's crush, Christian, brings over Kubrick's Spartacus, and devotes more of his attention to Tony Curtis than Cher, herself.

3) Dumb & Dumber (Peter & Bobby Farrelly, 1994) - Jeff Daniels was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod. No, I'm serious.

4) A Night at the Roxbury (John Fortenberry, 1998) - Any film that spoofs Saturday Night Fever's gayness deserves kudos. (And oh, that one-two punch of Cameron Crowe's Say Anything... and Jerry Maguire is classic. I love Chris Kattan's impersonation of the Zellweger.)

5) Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1991) - A time capsule gem (remember the days when animated movies were drawn by hand?). Yes, another regressive entry in Disney's "All I wanna be is a Princess..." franchise collection for young girls. But the musical numbers are just so divine!

6) Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) - I make it a tradition to watch it once every year, so...

7) A Wong Kar-Wai film to satisfy my insatiable hunger for unrequited love. A tie between Days of Being Wild (1991) and In the Mood for Love (2000).

Greg

It seems to me that the most important factor for assembling a Dessert Island Top 7 is rewatchability. That is, the potential for a given film to be consistently enjoyable even after heavily repeated viewing. If these seven films are the only ones that I (an addict to the moving picture) will be watching for the rest of my life, I sure as shit better be able to stomach them even on the 285th viewing. If one of my selections starts to get boring it will inevitably be bumped out of the lineup. Not only will this make it harder to gage the passage of time (I plan to watch one film a night in uniform order and measure the number of weeks I've been on the island by how many times I've seen Apocalypse Now), but it will also increase the frequency by which I have to watch each of the other films. This will then increase the likelihood that the other six will wear out their welcome in my little theater.

But by what metric do I assign values of rewatchability? Simple enjoyability may not correlate sufficiently. Can I watch a film, love it, and then say with any level of certainty that I will feel the same exhilaration on screening number 402? Could any film feel like the first time on screening 402? I propose that the only way to measure my ability to watch a given film over and over is practical experimentation. The only way to know for sure that my selections will hold up under this kind of stress is to have already subjected them to it. Thus my list will be of films which I have already seen many times. I will assume that the fact that I am still watching them is evidence that they posses the elusive quality I am looking for. Some may be what I would consider among my favorite films, but they certainly will not look like my top seven of all time. They are merely those seven films which I have, for whatever reason, seen many times and still enjoy.

Monday:
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
I just watched this movie today. "Hey mister, can we have our ball back?" Who knows how many that makes, but I still love it. And not just because I love the Beatles. "If you're gonna have a Barney can I hold your coat?" Sure, the songs are great, and the Fab Four themselves are cool as all hell. It's more than that though. All United Artists wanted was a rock 'n roll movie that could make some money off of the Beatles emerging popularity. "Sorry we hurt your field, mister." What they got was a very funny, very experimental, and totally rewatchable movie. "Please sir, sir, can I have one to surge me sir, please sir?"

Tuesday:
MASH
I watch MASH all the time. Let's get one thing straight though. I'm talking about the 1970 Robert Altman movie, not the television show which was based on the movie. There's really too much to say about this film. Even if all I did was list the cast we would be here all day. Or if I talked about the sound and dialogue editing, or the realism, or the plotlessness, or the how it filled the severe need for films made about Vietnam while the war was still going on even though it takes place in Korea... Let me just say that is a contender for funniest movie ever and that I would gladly watch it once a week for the rest of my life.

Wednesday:
RUSHMORE
It's not even Anderson's best movie (fuck you, Zissou is the funniest and the coolest). However, I have seen this film more times than almost anything. It was a big part of my life in whatever grade that was back then. I'm sure I pretty nearly wore out my VHS tape. I remember that I really desperately wanted to see this when I saw the trailer on the television. It really turned me on. I was totally positive that Rushmore would be awesome. The trailer, if I remember, was all style and music and only one joke. "Oh, are they?" Actually, I have the DVD so I'm gonna check it out, be right back... Ok, I was right about the trailer. Also, I sort of got sucked in and watched the film. That is, I watched the first 40 minutes or so. My mind started to wander, I started to get bored. Maybe I'm second guessing myself here, but this seems like good enough evidence that this film is not qualified for the list. I think I'm gonna have to sub for number eight on my list of movies which I've seen a hell of a lot.

And so...
FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF
This is another one I basically wore out the tape on. Though I haven't seen it in years, I still snap my fingers awkwardly like Cameron when venturing out on some mission. The other eighties teeny-boppers, including all John Hughes' others, are guilty pleasures at best. And I can't fucking stand The Breakfast Club. But Ferris Bueller's Day Off is hilarious, and a genuinely great film. If you think about it, it has a weird structure for the kind of comedy it is. It follows the basic plot of a bad actioner. Far from an underdog, Ferris is a God among men—he's got a plan—a bunch of really cool shit goes down—nothing every goes seriously wrong until some tense moments near the end—everything works out like gangbusters! This should not be an awesome movie.

Thursday-Saturday:
THE STAR WARS TRILOGY
I have seen these films far more times than I would care to speculate about. I've been watching them since before I could speak. Actually, I sort of resent that. I mean I was made to see them over and over throughout the course of my mental development. I was totally familiar with them long before I could even understand them. So the intricate brilliance of the stories never hit me on some virgin viewing I was never allowed to have. I was never surprised by Star Wars. Like food, or the senses, or the use of my hands, Star Wars was just an ever-present part of life of which I gradually became aware. If ever I have children I swear I will do it right. They will not be allowed to see Star Wars until they are old enough to understand it. Then, when they are six or seven, I will sit them on my knee and they will experience it for the first time. They will have grown up watching movies of all kinds, so they will be equipped to appreciate the full force of Star Wars' relative greatness. They will know nothing of the story, so when Darth Vader exclaims, "No, I am your father," they will reel back in horror, clutching their own father and begging him to tell them it isn't so. An experience I will always regret never having.

Sunday:
APOCALYPSE NOW
I fist saw Apocalypse Now on AMC (back when AMC was real cool) during a war movie marathon. I was aware of its importance so I recorded it. I probably watched it weekly for a year strait sometime around the eighth grade. It's so entrancing on so many levels. I just recently watched Coppola's commentary on the "Complete Dossier" DVD. He spoke to something about the film I've always tried to reconcile. While I recognize it as an anti-war piece—a vision of the horrors and atrocities of war up close—I have never been able to jive this with the sense of romanticism about the war and the exhilaration of the Wagner scene in particular. I personally believe that war is the worst of all possible solutions, and that I should hope never to be in one. At the same time (and probably as the result of a lifetime of war films) those big, green Bell helicopters, and the jungle, and the explosions, it's all so inescapably sexy. Coppola brings this up and admits that though he always intended Apocalypse Now to have an anti-war message, it would be possible for those inclined to watch at it as a sort of violent pornography. But then how does one make an anti-war film without running this same risk? Coppola's answer: make a love story instead. Hmm... I've been sitting here for fifteen minutes trying to come up with a way to argue that he must be talking his 1996 classic Jack, but I don't think you're really gonna buy it sooo... let me just say that this movie it one of the greatest ever made and should be on everyone's list.

Casey

Nights of Cabiria - Federico Fellini
Videodrome - David Cronenberg
Man Bites Dog - Rémy Belvaux
Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola
Reflecting Skin - Phillip Ridley
M - Fritz Lang
Chinatown - Roman Polanski or On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan or The Thing - John Carpenter

I will not shy away from violence to defend these choices.

Ben

I guess if I was stuck on a desert island I'd want to be stuck with those films that I watch most often, so with that in mind, here's my list:

No Retreat, No Surrender
I've probably seen this film more times than any other film in existence. Even while dying on a desert island, I'm sure this film would put a smile on my face.

In the Mood for Love
Probably a close second to NRNS in terms of number of times watched.

Miami Vice
My DVD of this is slowly being worn out from repeated viewings. Mostly the first 20 minutes.

Hiroshima Mon Amour
No reason other than that it's just so damn good.

The Thin Red Line
Former title holder of the film I watch most often.

Memories of Murder
My favorite Korean film and it would keep me from forgetting how to speak Korean while waiting to be rescued. Also, like Rufus said, it just keeps getting better every time you watch it.

The Sopranos
So what if it isn't a movie, it's 80+ hours of genius (for the most part). This will give me plenty to do while I wait.

Andrew

Born in Flames for fighting; Happy Together for longing; Hiroshima Mon Amour, Sans Soleil, In Praise of Love, for history the hard work of remembering; Medium Cool for history and ethics; and Mystery Science Theater 3000 for laughs.

Guest Contributor: Marie Kwok

7 Movies I could watch forever

I have to say that my taste in movies can be rather childish. Having the thought of having only 7 movies with me to watch for the rest of my life made me think. Being stranded on an island really sucks, so I'd avoid any movies that would give off negative or scary vibes. Something that would make me happy and forget the lack of technology I have around me besides a magical DVD Player made out of coconuts and powered by an undying force of demonic powers. I'll be listing only North American made movies, since Foreign films are a completely different 'genre'. LOL

1)The Emperor's New Groove

I have to say that this is one of the best and most funny Disney Animations made to date. David Spade was an excellent choice in casting as the spoiled and arrogant Emperor. If you were to mute out his voice, the movie would have withered away at the Box Office. :P

2)The Chipmunk Adventure

Yeah, I'm a Chipmunk fan and I always will be. Growing up in the 80's, the cartoons made back then were pure gold. What's better than a cartoon about gigantic talking rodents going to elementary school? I'd have to say, gigantic talking rodents who could sing. The Soundtrack for the movie is to die for! Go download it, you'll see. *snicker*

3)Mean Girls

I can watch this movie a million times and not get sick of it. This IS what girls ARE really like! The truth in this movie just throws me off my chair. Oh yeah, it's also quite amusing.

4)Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Who ISN'T in love with Angelina Jolie? With one of Hollywood's hottest women in the movie sporting guns AND an accent!? I am all aboard! I also have to add that I absolutely loved the soundtrack.

5)Blades of Glory

Although I have only seen it once, I have to admit that it is one of the funniest movies of the year. Figure skating can not get any hotter than this~!! It'll help me through those hot hot days under the scorching sun.

6)13 Going on 30

A wonderful story about growing up and staying young to enjoy the finer things in life. Much like myself, I am completely a kid at heart and I don't think I'll ever grow up. It's really fun to watch, plus Jennifer Garner is damned cute.

7)Shark Tale

I know, I know... what the hell? They have an excellent cast of voice actors including my honey Angelina Jolie. The soundtrack is totally awesome. As strange as the fish look in the movie, I would probably watch this more than I'd watch Finding Nemo.

PS: If I could sneak in one more movie, I think I'd chose Nacho Libre. XD
I don't know if this helps. My choice in movies is as odd as finding corn in your poop.

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