All entries for Sunday 03 October 2004

Aaaalllriiiight… Giggety–giggety–giggety!

…OH!!!

: 03 Oct 2004 14:56 |  Tags: Inane Drivel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

(Fanfare): THE TEN GREATEST FILMS OF ALL–TIME!

I noticed that a few people were doing lists of greatest albums etc, so as a saddo High Fidelity devotee I thought I'd weigh in with a few cinematic choices.

A few points before we begin:

1) This list was initially compiled while writing a Film Studies Postgrad essay on what makes Great Films ™ "great". The final criteria were set as longevity, influence, artistic achievement, critical significance and directorial authorship. To be honest, I couldn't really give a monkey's yazzock about most of these. So the films selected here are either perfect examples of a complete synthesis of form and content, or the greatest achievement of an individual writer or director.

2) Obligatory semantics: we're talking "Greatest" here, not "favourite", so I'm trying to think as objectively as possible. Stamp and cry all you like but Dirty Dancing is, under no criteria, a Great Film. Plus, before people start weighing in with lists of films solely from the 80s and 90s, it generally helps when doing these sorts of things if you've seen stuff which came out before Star Wars and don't discriminate against something on the basis of it being foreign and/or silent, black-and-white etc…

3) …That all said, I genuinely love every single one of these, and the first four are clearly personal favourites (though as objectively as possible using the above-listed criteria I do believe them to be genuinely brilliant and will defend them until my dying day!)

I do of course fully expect people to weigh in with comments of the "fascist", "film snob" (resolutely not true – none of these films are obtuse, pretentious or unwatchable) and "Where's Pretty Woman?!" variety…

1) The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998)
2) Chasing Amy (Kevin Smith, 1997)
3) Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)
4) Dazed & Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
5) The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
6) The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
7) Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
8) Dekalog (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1987)
9) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
10) The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)

[nb. Just bubbling under, a couple of which were kept out on grounds of favouritism] –

Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)
JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)
Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)
Quiz Show (Robert Redford, 1994)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Joe Dante, 1990 – I'm not kidding!)
Problem Child (Dennis Dugan, 1990 – okay, I am kidding)

"We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented..."

: 03 Oct 2004 14:35 |  Tags: Cultural Fetishisation |  Comments (20) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Skool Dayz – officially more massive than the Twin Towers (er… pre–9/11, obviously).

"Whoo-ha!", as Busta Rhymes once said.

So Skool Dayz was as much of a riot as Ed & I had hoped – completely sold out with only a few tickets on the door, with the place rammed to capacity and everyone well up for it. Definitely as much fun to DJ as last week's Welcome Party, and at least this week we weren't falling over by the end of it. Best bits of the evening: seeing the whole marketplace bounce in unison to House of Pain and Blink-182, the blatantly ridiculous "Vengamix", and of course the wonderful Tiffany (who is officially not as much of a M.I.L.F. as we'd initially predicted, and still has it after all these years). Probably should've played "Gay Bar" as the last song over "Danger! High Voltage", mind, but you live and learn.

FUN FACT: While The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" has been banned by the Equal Opps Working Group in the Students Union (a ridiculous decision given that firstly it's a superb tune, and secondly if you ban it on the grounds of offensive lyrics then surely you have to take out at least half the records played at Soul Nation), the only record to have been banned by the actual Ents Department is none other than 3 Of A Kind's lamentable "Babycakes".

The reason?

[Genuine quote from Ents representative]: "We didn't pay thousands of pounds for a top-of-the-range PA system to have that come out of it".

The moral: don't ask for that shit in future because not only will we not play it, we're actually not allowed to! And thank Christ for that, frankly…

: 03 Oct 2004 13:46 |  Tags: Inane Drivel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem