Casablanca was a propaganda movie. Albeit a fucking awesome movie in it's own right, the message and premise was US > Evil Nazi's. The love story froo-froo stuff was just a bonus.

But I have to agree that I fail to see the "big deal" about Gone With the Wind (the movie). Scarlet was just a whiny brat who reminded me of my ex girlfriend.

[Edited on March 23, 2006 at 7:38 AM. Reason : OMG I made this into a two page thread. ]

[Edited on March 23, 2006 at 7:38 AM. Reason : .]

3/23/2006 7:37:57 AM

^ ok thanks for agreeing with me, but i have nothing to do with gone with the wind

on AMC or wherever it was i saw it on the introduction guy said that the film was almost not made and no one had any hope for it even after it was made, it just got popular because of the war was going on and all the old guys of AFI remember that and voted for it like we will reminice about "The Matrix" when we get older.

and since now we have established Ben hur as the true #1 film of all time
#2 is "Contact"

3/23/2006 10:30:34 AM

The only people who will be feeling nostalgia for The Matrix are nerds who wouldn't know a good flick if it hit them in their virgin crotches.

3/23/2006 2:03:48 PM

i can barely stand to even watch it now

and this thread is clearly a troll

3/23/2006 4:21:02 PM

im not far off on my point, alot of top 100 lists dont have casablance in the top 25

3/23/2006 6:48:31 PM

While "Gone with the Wind" is a good movie, the book is twenty times better. The movie was sad, but I cried many more times in the book.

3/23/2006 8:01:03 PM

i love the movie. saw it in 8th grade and while all my friends were cutting up i was glued to the tele.

3/23/2006 10:03:15 PM

I wasn't exactly blown away by Casablanca either, but I did like it. It's kind of hard to appreciate the movie now when I've seen countless references to that final scene. Ingrid Bergman was really melodramatic to me.

3/23/2006 10:40:59 PM

The AFI list is a piece of crap, made by a bunch of nostalgic old men.



17 of top 100 within 5 years of 1940?
4 of top 6 within 2 years of 1940?
ONE top 50 since 1982???

3/23/2006 11:19:39 PM

oops

i think you mean schinder's list, im not sure if it belongs there or not

[Edited on March 25, 2006 at 1:55 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on March 25, 2006 at 1:56 PM. Reason : .]

3/25/2006 1:55:25 PM

ttt

12/9/2009 12:49:24 AM

omfg, i totally didnt notice this is over 3yr old, I was like how did i miss this today?!?! If there was ever a way to sticky something on tdub, this should be stickied.

12/9/2009 2:54:24 AM

New updated list, some big moves in there, i must disput ben-hur falling to 100, its should be top 10


Citizen Kane (1941)
The Godfather (1972)
Casablanca (1942)
Raging Bull (1980)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Vertigo (1958)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
City Lights (1931)
The Searchers (1956)
Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
Psycho (1960)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
The Graduate (1967)
The General (1927)
On the Waterfront (1954)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Chinatown (1974)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
E.T. the Extra-terrestrial (1982)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
High Noon (1952)
All About Eve (1950)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Annie Hall (1977)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
The Best Years of our Lives (1946)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
The Sound of Music (1965)
King Kong (1933)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Shane (1953)
It Happened One Night (1934)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Rear Window (1954)
Intolerance (1916)
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
West Side Story (1961)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
M*A*S*H (1970)
North by Northwest (1959)
Jaws (1975)
Rocky (1976)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Nashville (1975)
Duck Soup (1933)
Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
American Grafitti (1973)
Cabaret (1972)
Network (1976)
The African Queen (1951)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Unforgiven (1992)
Tootsie (1982)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Forrest Gump (1994)
All the President’s Men (1976)
Modern Times (1936)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
The Apartment (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Sunrise (1927)
Titanic (1997)
Easy Rider (1969)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Platoon (1986)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Swing Time (1936)
Sophie’s Choice (1982)
Goodfellas (1990)
The French Connection (1971)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Blade Runner (1982)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Toy Story (1995)
Ben-Hur (1959)

12/17/2009 5:04:56 PM

Gladiator not being on that list is a fucking crime.

But otherwise, mad lol to be found in this thread. For real.

12/17/2009 5:15:42 PM

love both

Scarlett O'Hara probably really broke the mold for female characters (am i sure of that . . . no)

that's how women really are, not sweet and classy but bratty and evil. I still don't see many movies that portray just how crazy women are.

also saw It's A Wonderful Life for the first time a few weeks ago and loved it

12/17/2009 5:29:34 PM

here's one with numbers

1 Citizen Kane (1941)
2 The Godfather (1972)
3 Casablanca (1942)
4 Raging Bull (1980)
5 Singin' in the Rain (1952)
6 Gone With the Wind (1939)
7 Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
8 Schindler's List (1993)
9 Vertigo (1958)
10 The Wizard of Oz (1939)
11 City Lights (1931)
12 The Searchers (1956)
13 Star Wars (1977)
14 Psycho (1960)
15 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
16 Sunset Blvd. (1950)
17 The Graduate (1967)
18 The General (1927)
19 On the Waterfront (1954)
20 It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
21 Chinatown (1974)
22 Some Like It Hot (1959)
23 The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
24 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
25 To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
26 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
27 High Noon (1952)
28 All About Eve (1950)
29 Double Indemnity (1944)
30 Apocalypse Now (1979)
31 The Maltese Falcon (1941)
32 The Godfather Part II (1974)
33 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
34 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
35 Annie Hall (1977)
36 The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
37 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
38 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
39 Dr. Strangelove (1964)
40 The Sound of Music (1965)
41 King Kong (1933)
42 Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
43 Midnight Cowboy (1969)
44 The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45 Shane (1953)
46 It Happened One Night (1934)
47 A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
48 Rear Window (1954)
49 Intolerance (1916)
50 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
51 West Side Story (1961)
52 Taxi Driver (1976)
53 The Deer Hunter (1978)
54 M*A*S*H (1970)
55 North by Northwest (1959)
56 Jaws (1975)
57 Rocky (1976)
58 The Gold Rush(1925)
59 Nashville (1975)
60 Duck Soup (1933)
61 Sullivan's Travels (1941)
62 American Graffiti (1973)
63 Cabaret (1972)
64 Network (1976)
65 The African Queen (1951)
66 The Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
67 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68 Unforgiven (1992)
69 Tootsie (1982)
70 A Clockwork Orange (1971)
71 Saving Private Ryan (1998)
72 The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
73 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
74 The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
75 In the Heat of the Night (1967)
76 Forrest Gump (1994)
77 All the President's Men (1976)
78 Modern Times (1936)
79 The Wild Bunch (1969)
80 The Apartment (1960)
81 Spartacus (1970)
82 Sunrise (1927)
83 Titanic (1997)
84 Easy Rider (1969)
85 A Night at the Opera (1935)
86 Platoon (1986)
87 12 Angry Men (1957)
88 Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89 The Sixth Sense (1999)
90 Swing Time (1936)
91 Sophie's Choice (1982)
92 Goodfellas (1990)
93 The French Connection (1971)
94 Pulp Fiction (1994)
95 The Last Picture Show (1971)
96 Do the Right Thing (1989)
97 Blade Runner (1982)
98 Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99 Toy Story (1995)
100 Ben-Hur (1959)

12/17/2009 9:00:32 PM

gladiator doesn't need to be on that list

ben-hur and spartacus are both on there

that's like 6-7 hours of sweaty dudes grimacing in sandals alone!

12/17/2009 9:18:12 PM

that's a pretty neat graph up there.


i'm surprised how many on the top 100 list i've actually seen. the only thing i have a problem with is i don't necessarily think an influencial movie automatically makes it a good movie.

[Edited on December 17, 2009 at 9:32 PM. Reason : .]

12/17/2009 9:30:33 PM

some of them are on there for technological innovations

12/17/2009 9:35:17 PM

hahahaha, this thread almost ran me out of laugh.

12/18/2009 1:04:24 AM

Quote :

"15 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) "

Wow. I've sat down to watch that movie several times. I've never been able to stay awake for the whole thing. The movie is like an ambien pill set to film.

Quote :

"50 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) "

Interesting how that's the only one of the three to crack the top 100. That one was my favorite out of the three. Maybe because the movie actually exceeded expectations (they were fairly low going in) while the others had to live up to the standard the first one set. Or maybe the others just weren't as good.


I've only seen 4 out of the top 10 and like 12 of the top 50 and I've really got no desire to see the ones I missed.

[Edited on December 18, 2009 at 7:35 AM. Reason : -]

12/18/2009 7:32:24 AM

Best Entertainment thread ever!

12/21/2009 11:47:05 AM

I really missed this gem of a thread

[Edited on December 21, 2009 at 11:54 AM. Reason : .]

12/21/2009 11:54:08 AM

i like the people who hate "old" movies

12/21/2009 12:06:35 PM

Quote :

"89 The Sixth Sense (1999) "

Really?!?! There is NOOOO WAY that beats out Blade Runner.


[Edited on December 21, 2009 at 12:38 PM. Reason : asf]

12/21/2009 12:37:00 PM

Comparing films from different eras is an exercise in futility. The standard is just higher now. No, Gone with the Wind is not better than dozens of movies that have come out in the past 15 years, but it was probably considered groundbreaking at the time.

12/21/2009 12:42:55 PM

the standard isn't higher

a good story is a good story

it's been that way since cavemen around a fire

a good story slays production

12/21/2009 1:58:02 PM

There are plenty of terrible movies out there with great scripts/stories. Bad production can make the movie not worth watching. Production value has undoubtedly gone up, but I think plots have improved as well. I'm far more interested in the plot of The Matrix or 12 Monkeys than Gone with the Wind, but that kind of evaluation depends on the person.

12/21/2009 2:11:49 PM

It's cute that you dropped the fancy cliche, "exercise in futility," on us, but you're wrong.

12/21/2009 3:25:46 PM

Maybe you tell me how I'm wrong then, because I'm not seeing how ranking of movies can be based on anything except personal preference. Is there some objective standard for determining how these movies are ranked, other than some film expert's opinion?

[Edited on December 21, 2009 at 3:40 PM. Reason : ]

12/21/2009 3:40:32 PM

The AFI lists its criteria:

Quote :

" 1. Feature-length: Narrative format, at least 40 minutes in length. 2. American film: English language, with significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States. 3. Critical Recognition: Formal commendation in print. 4. Major Award Winner: Recognition from competitive events including awards from organizations in the film community and major film festivals. 5. Popularity Over Time: Including figures for box office adjusted for inflation, television broadcasts and syndication, and home video sales and rentals. 6. Historical Significance: A film's mark on the history of the moving image through technical innovation, visionary narrative devices or other groundbreaking achievements. 7. Cultural Impact: A film's mark on American society in matters of style and substance. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI's_100_Years…100_Movies

Except for the seventh criterion, the criteria are pretty objective. The value placed on each criterion can get subjective, but I think it's foolish to act like it's all personal opinion or that it's impossible to compare movies from decade to decade.

You just came in all know-it-ally about a subject that you clearly don't know much about. I mean, you bafflingly claim that current plots are better than plots in older movies. To support this claim, you cite 1995's 12 Monkeys as one of the movies with a superior plot to 1939's Gone With the Wind. A quick wiki search reveals that 12 Monkeys is inspired by and takes several ideas directly from a short, award-winning film from 1962: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jetée.

You just don't even begin to know enough about movies to be making the claims that you're making. I don't think you have to be a crazy, snobby movie buff or anything, but the stuff you're saying is total nonsense, and you're saying it with a lot of conviction.

[Edited on December 21, 2009 at 4:38 PM. Reason : fixed now?]

12/21/2009 4:32:27 PM

it's not nonsense at all

choosing movies over others really is completely subjective

obviously if you made a top 100 American films list and I made one as well, they'd be different

how award-winning, critically-accepted or popular a film is doesn't describe its worth

since those are subjective judgments made by people as well

[Edited on December 21, 2009 at 4:58 PM. Reason : but as an aside, comparing movies of different eras doesn't bother me at all]

12/21/2009 4:57:11 PM

Quote :

"Except for the seventh criterion, the criteria are pretty objective. The value placed on each criterion can get subjective, but I think it's foolish to act like it's all personal opinion or that it's impossible to compare movies from decade to decade."

Yeah, now you're getting it. The ranking is based on actual criteria, but where each movie ranks for each of those criterion is entirely subjective. It is impossible to rank movies in a way that is relevant to anyone except oneself. There are people that only care about special effects. There are people that only care about plot. The degree to which each film element determines the overall quality of the film varies from person to person, so when you try to say Gone with the Wind is better than, I don't know, Mewtwo Strikes Back, people very well may disagree.

Comparing modern movies to old movies is like comparing a Lamborghini to a chariot. Both are (or were) pretty awesome in their own time, and you could try to argue which had more value, had better performance, was faster, was more useful, or more influential. You could make a convincing argument that one vehicle was better than the other in those specific areas. It doesn't make sense to say that one is better overall than the other, though, because they were relevant in different time periods. Anyway, I never claimed to be a film expert, I'm just calling it as I see it. My overarching point is that Gone in the Wind was great in its time, but if you were to make the exact same film now, with the same techniques and the same acting, it would not seem as great.

12/21/2009 5:01:27 PM

Quote :

"There are plenty of terrible movies out there with great scripts/stories."

There are? Name some.

The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show featured some of the poorest animation in the history of television, but incredible writing and voice acting made it one of the best shows of all time.

IMO, story always trumps production value.

12/21/2009 5:13:50 PM

^^^You didn't read his posts. He made three assertions:

1. You can't compare new movies with old movies because new movies have a higher standard now.
2. New plots are better than old plots.
3. Production is more important than story.

He just blurted that shit out like it was nothing, and then tried to hide behind the "it's all personal opinion" argument.

[Edited on December 21, 2009 at 5:33 PM. Reason : sss]

12/21/2009 5:16:03 PM

Back to the OP,

12/21/2009 5:56:25 PM