MC Yearly Consensus - 1973

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the voting is closed, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Kurosawa Fan]

Sorry, I thought this was supposed to be posted tomorrow.

[Spinal]

1. The Holy Mountain
2. O Lucky Man!
3. Scenes from a Marriage
4. Sleeper
5. The Sting

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Badlands
2. The Fantastic Planet
3. Mean Streets
4. Sleeper
5. Paper Moon

[Spinal]

Sorry, I thought this was supposed to be posted tomorrow.

Don't worry about it. I'm not even paying attention to who is next. I'm just posting them every 3 days.

[Raiders]

1. The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
2. The Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky)
3. O Lucky Man! (Anderson)
4. Don't Look Now (Roeg)
5. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Peckinpah)

---------------------------------------

6. The Mother and the Whore (Eustache)
7. High Plains Drifter (Eastwood)
8. Badlands (Malick)
9. Breezy (Eastwood)
10. The Hour-Glass Sanitorium (Has)

[Russ]

1. The Holy Mountain
2. The Spirit of the Beehive
3. Paper Moon
4. The Wicker Man
5. I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse

[Pop Trash]

1. The Exorcist
2. The Holy Mountain
3. Scenes from a Marriage
4. Badlands
5. Enter the Dragon

6. The Wicker Man
7. Sleeper
8. Westworld
9. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
10. American Graffiti

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. The Last Detail
2. The Exorcist
3. The Long Goodbye
4. The Sting
5. The Spirit of the Beehive

EDIT: Forgot The Long Goodbye.

[Yxklyx]

1. Badlands (Terrence Malick)
2. The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
3. The Sting (George Roy Hill)
4. The Exorcist (William Friedkin)
5. Electra Glide in Blue (James William Guercio)

6. Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer)
7. Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich)
8. Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
9. Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison)
10. High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood)

[Yxklyx]

People need to see Electra Glide in Blue.

[Melville]

1. The Spirit of the Beehive
2. Badlands
3. O Lucky Man!
4. Don't Look Now
5. Scenes from a Marriage

HM: Paper Moon, The Sting

[Pop Trash]

People need to see Electra Glide in Blue.
I really want to...

[Mysterious Dude]

People need to see Electra Glide in Blue.
I've seen it. I didn't find it all that amazing, but it has an awesome title. Maybe my favorite title ever.

[Stay Puft]

1. The Holy Mountain
2. The Fantastic Planet
3. Amarcord
4. Jesus Christ Superstar

[Boner M]

1. O Lucky Man!
2. Badlands
3. Don't Look Now
4. Charley Varrick
5. Scenes From a Marriage

6. The Exorcist
7. The Holy Mountain
8. Spirit of the Beehive
9. The Last Detail
10. Les Noces Rouges

HM: The Fantastic Planet, The Long Goodbye, Sisters, La Grande Bouffe

Need to see: The Mother and the Whore, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Day For Night

[baby doll]

1. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)
2. Amarcord (Federico Fellini)
3. The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice)
4. Global Groove (John Godfrey and Nam June Paik)
5. Badlands (Terrence Malick)

[Watashi]

1. Pat Garret and Billy the Kid
2. Badlands
3. Robin Hood
4. Spirit of the Beehive
5. Mean Streets

Good year.

[MadMan]

Due to it being followed by one of the greatest 6 year stretches in film history I've really overlooked 1973. So much still left to see that's great from this year....but at the same time there's much I like from this year that I have seen.

1. Enter The Dragon
2. The Long Goodbye
3. The Day of the Jackal
4. High Plains Drifter
5. Black Caesar
===================
6. Live and Let Die
7. Magnum Force
8. Horror Express
9. Save The Tiger
10. Soylent Green

HM: Hell Up In Harlem and Robin Hood

PS: Oh and Westworld and Charlie Varrick are good films as well, although I don't really remember either one with crystel clarrity.

[Duncan]

1. The Spirit of the Beehive
2. Badlands
3. Amarcord
4. The Holy Mountain
5. The Long Goodbye

Now that is a good year.

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. American Graffiti
2. Amarcord
3. Badlands
4. Day For Night
5. Scenes From a Marriage

[trotchky]

1. The Long Goodbye
2. Badlands
3. Mean Streets
4. O Lucky Man!
5. Sleeper

Fantastic year.

[Boner M]

crystel clarrity.
Awesome.

[MadMan]

Awesome.Sometimes I just get lazy....:P

[origami_mustache]

1. Amarcord
2. O Lucky Man!
3. The Spirit of the Beehive
4. Badlands
5. The Holy Mountain

6. Day For Night
7. Sleeper
8. Robin Hood
9. Jesus Christ Superstar
10. Charlotte's Web

[Robby P]

1. The Last Detail
2. Badlands
3. High Plains Drifter
4. The Wicker Man
5. Mean Streets

[Derek]

I really need to give Badlands another look considering my love for Malick's other three films.

1. Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman)
2. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)
3. O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson)
4. The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice)
5. Fantastic Planet (René Laloux)
****************************** *
6. The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini)
7. Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese)
8. Day for Night (Francois Truffaut)
9. Amarcord (Federico Fellini)
10. Coffy (Jack Hill)

HM: Breezy (Clint Eastwood)

[monolith94]

1. The Holy Mountain
2. Sleeper
3. Enter the Dragon
4. Day For Night


Yeah, I def. need to catch up on this year.

[soitgoes...]

1. High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood)
2. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)
3. Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman)
4. The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice)
5. Badlands (Terrence Malick)
------------------------------------
6. Amarcord (Federico Fellini)
7. The Fantastic Planet (René Laloux)
8. American Graffiti (George Lucas)
9. Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich)
10. The Last Detail (Hal Ashby)
11. The Exorcist (William Friedkin)
12. Serpico (Sidney Lumet)
13. Papillon (Franklin J. Schaffner)

[soitgoes...]

I would like to see High Plains Drifter do better this year. Tough competition, I know. Still it's Eastwood's shining moment.

[Pop Trash]

I would like to see High Plains Drifter do better this year. Tough competition, I know. Still it's Eastwood's shining moment.
I'm more concerned by the lack of Exorcist votes. It's my favorite horror movie of all time. :cry:

[soitgoes...]

I'm more concerned by the lack of Exorcist votes. It's my favorite horror movie of all time. :cry:I guess I would expect it to do better than it has, but it'll still make the Top 10 probably. It's a good film, but like I said above, there's some tough competition this year. I'm not the biggest fan of horror films, so it has that working against it for me.

I'll be stoked to see Bergman make it too.

[Yum-Yum]

1. The Holy Mountain
2. The Exorcist
3. The Wicker Man
4. The Last Detail
5. Coffy

[Kurosawa Fan]

I would like to see High Plains Drifter do better this year. Tough competition, I know. Still it's Eastwood's shining moment.

It's my #7. I really wanted to include it, but couldn't justify leaving any of those other films off my list.

[Lazlo]

1. Scenes From a Marriage
2. The Sting
3. The Exorcist
4. Sisters
5. Badlands

[Grouchy]

1. Amarcord
2. High Plains Drifter
3. The Wicker Man
4. Mean Streets
5. Juan Moreira

[Silencio]

1. Scenes from a Marriage
2. Mean Streets
3. The Last Detail
4. Day for Night
5. The Long Goodbye

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. American Graffiti
2. The Exorcist
3. Jesus Christ Superstar
4. The Wicker Man
5. Enter the Dragon

Ron Howard beats Jesus and the Devil for this year.

[Bosco B Thug]

1. The Long Goodbye
2. Don't Look Now
3. Badlands
4. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
5. High Plains Drifter

I feel so Anglo-centric having not seen the two popular (kind of genre) Spanish offerings of the year.

[dreamdead]

1. Scenes from a Marriage
2. Fantastic Planet
3. Badlands
4. The Spirit of the Beehive
5. Don't Look Now

Way too much that I still need to get to from this year. :sad:

[Ezee E]

1. The Exorcist
2. Badlands
3. Amarcord
4. High Plains Drifter
5. Don't Look Now

6. The Last Detail
7. Mean Streets
8. Coffy
9. Westworld
10. Enter The Dragon

Damn, it hurts to leave out The Last Detail.

[Qrazy]

1. Badlands
2. The Long Goodbye
3. Amarcord
4. Spirit of the Beehive
5. The Holy Mountain

6. O Lucky man
7. Mean Streets
8. Day for Night
9. Paper Moon
10. The Last Detail

[Grouchy]

Edited because I forgot about Fellini. Fuck me.

EDIT: Edited for the second time. Just seen a great movie from 1973.

[ledfloyd]

1. The Long Goodbye
2. Scenes from a Marriage
3. The Sting
4. Mean Streets

[Boner M]

Added Charley Varrick. What a tight film; def. one of the most flat-out entertaining crime films I've seen. Gotta catch up with the Siegel and Matthau canons.

[Spinal]

Any more?

[MadMan]

Added Charley Varrick. What a tight film; def. one of the most flat-out entertaining crime films I've seen. Gotta catch up with the Siegel and Matthau canons.I just revisited it last night, and I agree with you. However I thought I had voted for it in the consensus. I guess I didn't like it enough for it to make the list, but it is indeed quite entertaining. And from what I've seen Siegel is a good action director, although he did also make the classic 1956 horror/sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[Spinal]

KF? Need an assist?

[Kurosawa Fan]

Sorry, busy day yesterday. I'll have it done by this evening. I'll leave it open until lunch, because I won't be able to get to it until then.

[Kurosawa Fan]

This is closed. Sorry, work got a bit busy. I'll tally this now and try to have the results tonight. If not, it'll be first thing tomorrow morning.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Wow. Incredibly close results. Some great films just missed the list. This was the most up-in-the-air year I've had the pleasure of tabulating.

[Kurosawa Fan]

#10
http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/5802/highplainsdrifter07gc7.jpg
High Plains Drifter
Clint Eastwood


A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

Shortly after the film's release, Clint Eastwood wrote to John Wayne, suggesting that they make a western together. Wayne sent back an angry letter in reply, in which he denounced this film for its violence and revisionist portrayal of the Old West. Eastwood did not bother to answer his criticisms, and consequently they did not work together. One of the headstones in the graveyard bears the name Sergio Leone as a tribute.

"Eastwood’s mystery man is either a ghost, an avenging angel, or simply a walking-talking deus ex machina, personifying the townspeoples’ self-immolating guilt, and preparing to bring grief to an American frontier founded on bloodshed, capitalist greed, rampant self-interest and immigrant exploitation." - Michael Atkinson

[Mysterious Dude]

Has there ever been a portrayal of the old west that wasn't "revisionist"?

[Kurosawa Fan]

#9
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/4143/meanstreetsdp2.jpg
Mean Streets
Martin Scorsese


A small-time hood struggles to succeed on the "mean streets" of Little Italy.

While many consider this to be the quintessential New York film, very little of it was actually shot there. Many scenes, including the famous pool hall sequence, were shot in Los Angeles. The title change from SEASON OF THE WITCH to MEAN STREETS was inspired from a Raymond Chandler line, "Down these mean streets a man must go." Film critic Jay Cocks suggested the change to Scorsese, who thought it pretentious at first but eventually came to agree it was effective.

"A true original, and a triumph of personal filmmaking. This picture about the experience of growing up in New York's Little Italy has an unsettling, episodic rhythm and it's dizzyingly sensual. The director, Martin Scorsese, shows us a thicker-textured rot than we have ever had in an American movie, and a riper sense of evil." - Pauline Kael

[Raiders]

Has there ever been a portrayal of the old west that wasn't "revisionist"?

I think Wayne just missed the racism.

[Kurosawa Fan]

#8
http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/4228/oluckymanxl01filmbkm2.jpg
O Lucky Man
Lindsay Anderson



This sprawling, surrealist musical serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of capitalism, as it follows the adventures of a young coffee salesman in Europe.

In France the title is 'The Best of all Possible Worlds' which is the refrain from Voltaire's novel, "Candide", upon which the film is very loosely based. Helen Mirren was an 11th hour casting. Fiona Lewis started filming but was fired so Mirren was cast as Patricia instead.

"A strange, sprawling, satirical odyssey, its targets include advertising, the military, science, religion, class and finally filmmaking itself. It's a bewildering trip which veers wildly between black comedy and surreal fantasy, but the scattershot approach throws up some extraordinary moments and McDowell turns in a performance equal to his role in A Clockwork Orange. " - Jon Fortgang

[Kurosawa Fan]

#7
http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/3109/exorcistcw2.jpg
The Exorcist
William Friedkin

A teenager is possessed by a mysterious entity and her mom seeks the help of two priests to save her.

Ellen Burstyn received a permanent spinal injury during filming. In the sequence where she is thrown away from her possessed daughter, a harness jerked her hard away from the bed. She fell on her coccyx and screamed in pain, which was filmed for the movie. Christian evangelist Billy Graham claimed an actual demon was living in the celluloid reels of this movie.

"For a new generation, the film, directed by William Friedkin from an Oscar-winning script by William Peter Blatty, who wrote the novel, will stir the same debate: Is the film a provocation about the nature of good and evil, or horror claptrap? To me, it's always been both. Still, there's something elemental about The Exorcist, even with the new hopeful ending that betrays the bleak original. Go ahead -- critique, discuss." - Peter Travers, who apparently is so poor at his job he's hoping we'll do it for him

[Kurosawa Fan]

#6
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/5615/amarcordzw2.jpg
Amarcord
Federico Fellini


A year in the life of a small Italian coastal town in the nineteen-thirties.

Director Federico Fellini has denied that the movie is autobiographical, but agreed that there are similarities with his own childhood. The title is the phonetic translation of the words "Mi Ricordo" as spelled in the dialect of Rimini, the town in which the director Federico Fellini was born, and where the film is set.

"There is a night... when all the people of the town get into their boats and sail out to wait for the great new Italian liner to pass by. And when it comes, it towers hundreds of feet above the waves and has thousands of portholes -- and is, of course, only a prop built by the special-effects men. It drifts away into invisibility like a candle dying out. The image is of Italy itself in the 1930s: all grandeur and pomp and nationalism, but with an insubstantial soul." - Roger Ebert

[Kurosawa Fan]

#5
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/578/scenesfromamarriageix9.jpg
Scenes from a Marriage
Ingmar Bergman

Follows the relationship of Marianne and Johan as they separate, engage in extramarital affairs, bond, re-bond and eventually divorce.

According to the interview with Ingmar Bergman, after the original TV mini-series version of the film was broadcast in Sweden, the divorce rate in Sweden increased substantially and the number of married couples who seek marriage consultants also doubled. The film was ruled ineligible for Oscar consideration because the longer mini-series version of it had already been telecast in Sweden.

"Beyond love, beyond marriage, beyond the selfishness that destroys love, beyond the centrifugal force that sends egos whirling away from each other and prevents enduring relationships--beyond all these things, there still remains what we know of each other, that we care about each other, that in twenty years these people have touched and known so deeply that they still remember, and still need." - Roger Ebert

[Kurosawa Fan]

#4
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/752/spiritofbeehinveeh2.jpg
The Spirit of the Beehive
Victor Erice


A sensitive seven-year-old girl living a small village in 1940 rural Spain is traumatized after viewing James Whale's "Frankenstein" and drifts into her own fantasy world.

Cinematographer Luis Cuadrado was going blind at the time this film was made. He eventually went completely blind and committed suicide in 1980. There is no shot of all the family in a single frame in the entire film: even in the dinner-table scene, the actors are shown separately. There is a total of exactly 1000 shots in the film. Exactly 500 are inside, and exactly 500 are outside.

"For the girls, the film's fierce oddness, experienced in a cinema-poor context, is electric, but it rhymes with the world as they see it—stretching away from them in every direction, rife with unclear connections, treacherously inhabited by images that belie their own meaning." - Michael Atkinson

[Kurosawa Fan]

#3
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/11/longgoodbyeoo2.jpg
The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman


Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

The film is dedicated to Dan Blocker. Robert Altman, who had directed many early episodes of "Bonanza" (1959), had originally cast his friend Blocker in the role of Roger Wade, but he died before filming commenced. The role subsequently was filled by Sterling Hayden. The movie's ending, different from the source novel, is usually attributed to director Robert Altman. It actually appeared in Leigh Brackett's original script, written before Altman signed on. Altman liked the new ending so much that he insisted on a clause in his contract that guaranteed the ending wouldn't be changed during production or editing.

"In Altman's Los Angeles of Hemingway knock-offs, thousand-dollar-a-day psychiatric playground retreats, Barbara Stanwyck-impersonating parking attendants, cats with gourmet tastes, and topless Yoga bimbos with a penchant for pot brownies, Marlowe's persona is not only a relic, it's nearly uncool. Altman's "Rip Van Marlowe" is said to reveal just how much had changed In the two decades between Chandler's 1953 novel and Altman's 1973 film, and the casting of Gould (over producers Jerry Bick and Elliott Kastner's preferred choice of Robert Mitchum) works in spite of the notion that a Jewish Marlowe might seem as much a sign of the times as one seedy character's reference to then Governor Ronald Reagan." - Eric Henderson

[Kurosawa Fan]

#2
http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/7071/holymountainhl6.jpg
The Holy Mountain
Alejandro Jodorowsky


A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful individuals, each representing a planet in the solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide's assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek out the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.

Before filming began, director Alejandro Jodorowsky spent a week without sleep under a Zen Master's direction and lived communally with the film's cast for a month. Much of the sound in the film was improvised by Mexican sound effects specialist Gonzalo Gavira, yet nonetheless gained the admiration of American director William Friedkin, who in turn hired him to do sound work for The Exorcist (1973).

"But in the case of this filmmaker: the smaller the output, the heavier the dose. The Holy Mountain and El Topo are cinema of the extreme, rejecting normal modes of storytelling in favor of something primal. In defying naturalism, Jodorowsky glorifies and celebrates the power of the imagination." - Jeremiah Kipp

[Kurosawa Fan]

#1
http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/4294/badlandsww9.jpg
Badlands
Terrence Malick


Dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

The Bandlands plot and lead characters of Kit and Holly are based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, who in 1958 embarked on a murder spree that horrified the country. Although Charlie Starkweather had been executed when the movie came up for production, Caril Fugate was still alive and facing parole, prompting the filmmakers to change the names of the principal characters to avoid a lawsuit. The actor that originally had to play the man that rings at the rich man's door did not show up, so Terrence Malick played it himself, although the intention was to use this part only temporarily.

"Malick appears to be saying that mass-culture banality is killing our souls and making everybody affectless, but his detached tone puts the viewer in the ugly position of feeling culturally superior to the people on the screen. An intellectualized movie-shrewd and artful, carefully styled to sustain its low key view of dissociation-but so preconceived that there's nothing left to respond to." - Pauline Kael

[Kurosawa Fan]

Final Tally:

1. Badlands - 67
2. The Holy Mountain - 45
3. The Long Goodbye - 44.5
4. The Spirit of the Beehive - 43.5
5. Scenes from a Marriage - 42
6. Amarcord - 32
7. The Exorcist - 28.5
8. O Lucky Man - 26.5
9. Mean Streets - 22
10. High Plains Drifter - 21


11. Don't Look Now - 18.5
12. The Last Detail - 16.5
12. The Sting - 16.5
14. The Wicker Man - 16

[Duncan]

"Malick appears to be saying that mass-culture banality is killing our souls and making everybody affectless, but his detached tone puts the viewer in the ugly position of feeling culturally superior to the people on the screen. An intellectualized movie-shrewd and artful, carefully styled to sustain its low key view of dissociation-but so preconceived that there's nothing left to respond to." - Pauline Kael
Wrong again, Pauline.

That's a really good year overall.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Remove Mean Streets and High Plains Drifter and replace them with The Last Detail and The Sting and this list would have been heavenly.

[Pop Trash]

Remove Mean Streets and High Plains Drifter and replace them with The Last Detail and The Sting and this list would have been heavenly.
This list would have been heavenly no matter what got on it. This year rocks. Also, I was disappointed that my local video store didn't have O Lucky Man, If..., or Performance. Lame.

[Grouchy]

Remove Mean Streets and High Plains Drifter and replace them with The Last Detail and The Sting and this list would have been heavenly.
Hell no.


Has there ever been a portrayal of the old west that wasn't "revisionist"?
Hell yes.

I like the whole list a lot except Badlands at #1.

[Raiders]

Remove Mean Streets and High Plains Drifter and replace them with The Last Detail and The Sting and this list would have been heavenly.

High Plains Drifter wipes the floor with The Sting.

[Derek]

Tough to argue with results like that, though I would've liked to see Fantastic Planet at least make an appearance.

[Kurosawa Fan]

High Plains Drifter wipes the floor with The Sting.

Hmm. I do like High Plains Drifter. Amarcord can go.

[Grouchy]

Hmm. I do like High Plains Drifter. Amarcord can go.
Amarcord also wipes its nose with The Sting.

If you ask me, The Sting can go along with Badlands and The Wicker Man should nab a 10th spot.

[Spinal]

Amarcord can go.

I'd be OK with that.

[Mysterious Dude]

Hell yes.Example?

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

son of a bitch. I forgot to vote. Don't Look Now is missing my love right now.

[soitgoes...]

So happy, and surprised, that Bergman made the top 5. I didn't think enough people here had seen it. Apparently those who had like it enough. High Plains Drifter is too low. I'm glad it slid onto the list, but still...

[soitgoes...]

son of a bitch. I forgot to vote. Don't Look Now is missing my love right now.
Well since your vote might've kick High Plains Drifter off the Top 10, I can say, thank you for not voting. :)

[Grouchy]

Example?
I dunno... How the West Was Won? The Alamo? Any of them? Two pretty fucking conservative westerns.

[Mysterious Dude]

I dunno... How the West Was Won? The Alamo? Any of them? Two pretty fucking conservative westerns.
I have seen neither of those films, but applying conservative values to the 19th century west strikes me as revisionist in its own way. Whenever you make a fiction film set in a particular place, you are inevitably going to apply your own modern values to it (i.e. "revising" the setting). And I think any of John Wayne's Westerns are going to be revising the 19th century to fit his 20th century brand of conservatism. And I'm willing to bet there's a great deal of information about the battle of the Alamo that Wayne omitted or altered.

[Qrazy]

Wrong again, Pauline.

That's a really good year overall.

Honest to god every single quotation I've read from her I've disagreed with. She also comes across as such a shrewish bitch to me.

[balmakboor]

Final Tally:

1. Badlands - 67
2. The Holy Mountain - 45
3. The Long Goodbye - 44.5
4. The Spirit of the Beehive - 43.5
5. Scenes from a Marriage - 42
6. Amarcord - 32
7. The Exorcist - 28.5
8. O Lucky Man - 26.5
9. Mean Streets - 22
10. High Plains Drifter - 21


11. Don't Look Now - 18.5
12. The Last Detail - 16.5
12. The Sting - 16.5
14. The Wicker Man - 16

I'm amazed that Holy Mountain did so well. Is it because it is so fresh to DVD and thus a hot new discovery for a lot of people. I haven't seen it yet. I loved Sante Sangre and pretty much hated El Topo, so I haven't taken the plunge yet.

[Spinal]

I'm amazed that Holy Mountain did so well. Is it because it is so fresh to DVD and thus a hot new discovery for a lot of people.

No. It's because it's really good.

[Qrazy]

High Plains Drifter wipes the floor with The Sting.

False.

[Qrazy]

I'm amazed that Holy Mountain did so well. Is it because it is so fresh to DVD and thus a hot new discovery for a lot of people. I haven't seen it yet. I loved Sante Sangre and pretty much hated El Topo, so I haven't taken the plunge yet.

Both El Topo and The Holy Mountain are significantly better than Santa Sangre.

[Duncan]

Honest to god every single quotation I've read from her I've disagreed with.Same. It's a little eerie. Even the films we both like she likes for reasons I would oppose.

[Raiders]

Both El Topo and The Holy Mountain are significantly better than Santa Sangre.

False.

[origami_mustache]

I liked The Holy Mountain a lot more than El Topo, Fando y Lis, and La Cravate (need to see Santa Sangre), but I am surprised it finished #2 as well.

[SirNewt]

I have seen neither of those films, but applying conservative values to the 19th century west strikes me as revisionist in its own way. Whenever you make a fiction film set in a particular place, you are inevitably going to apply your own modern values to it (i.e. "revising" the setting). And I think any of John Wayne's Westerns are going to be revising the 19th century to fit his 20th century brand of conservatism. And I'm willing to bet there's a great deal of information about the battle of the Alamo that Wayne omitted or altered.

So everything that is not contemporary and told from a first person perspective (so that it is clear your own moral values and perceptions are being imparted) is revisionist.

[balmakboor]

No. It's because it's really good.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But there certainly are a lot of other really good movies from 1973 that are better known.

[Spinal]

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But there certainly are a lot of other really good movies from 1973 that are better known.

Your implication seems to be that it scored high because of novelty or because it is a 'flavor of the month'. I'm rejecting that and telling you that it is a film of extraordinary creativity and vision. The placement at #2 is no fluke.

[Mysterious Dude]

So everything that is not contemporary and told from a first person perspective (so that it is clear your own moral values and perceptions are being imparted) is revisionist.Am I wrong? How can a man criticize a film for being a "revisionist" depiction of the old west when he himself colors his depictions of the old west to fit his own view of the world?

[SirNewt]

Am I wrong? How can a man criticize a film for being a "revisionist" depiction of the old west when he himself colors his depictions of the old west to fit his own view of the world?

No, you are absolutely right. No matter how a creator, an artist, tries to step into another's shoes he is always filtering everything he knows, everything he learns through himself. The word, however, revisionist, is usually not defined in so broad a spectrum, despite what we may feel on the subject.

[balmakboor]

Your implication seems to be that it scored high because of novelty or because it is a 'flavor of the month'. I'm rejecting that and telling you that it is a film of extraordinary creativity and vision. The placement at #2 is no fluke.

I'm suggesting that if this survey had been conducted a year ago, Holy Mountain would not have even been mentioned. It's recent DVD release has suddenly brought it much -- and probably deserved -- attention. I was still surprised that enough people had seen it to place it above an obvious choice like The Long Goodbye and so far above The Exorcist and Mean Streets.

Of course, MC isn't typical of moviegoers. This is a rare place where almost as many people have seen Holy Mountain as The Exorcist.

For what it's worth, I was surprised about the placement of Badlands and Spirit of the Beehive as well.

Also, for what it's worth, I think Jodorowsky is a pretentious wanker for the most part. He does have some cool images and ideas floating around in his head though and I really wish he'd been the guy to direct Dune. I'm also looking forward to him finally working with Marilyn Manson.

[Grouchy]

No, you are absolutely right. No matter how a creator, an artist, tries to step into another's shoes he is always filtering everything he knows, everything he learns through himself. The word, however, revisionist, is usually not defined in so broad a spectrum, despite what we may feel on the subject.
Pretty much exactly that.