The Alphabet Meme
I've decided to task myself into the Alphabet Meme challenge put forward by Fletch at Blog Cabins – a list of twenty-six films, your favorite for each letter of the alphabet. This great meme has drawn some other contributors, and I was able to put together mine in about a half-hour.
Here's what I noticed:
1) This is in no way a list of my twenty-six favorite films, only a favorite at this moment that fits the first letter;
2) There are many, many, many great films that begin with the same letter;
3) I have seen almost no films that begin with the letters "Z" and "X," and really, X2 and Zelig are nowhere near my favorite films;
4) While I tried not to select multiple films from the same director, the letters "N," "R," and "V" provided me with films that were just too obvious, and I bet if you thought really hard you could figure out what film I almost added for "P";
The list:
• All the President's Men (1976)
• Bringing Up Baby (1938)
• Casablanca (1942)
• Duck Soup (1933)
• 8 1/2 (1963)
• Fantasia (1940)
• The Godfather (1972)
• Hamlet (1996)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
• JFK (1991)
• King Kong (1933)
• L.A. Confidential (1997)
• Modern Times (1936)
• Notorious (1946)
• On the Waterfront (1954)
• Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
• Quiz Show (1994)
• Rear Window (1954)
• Schindler's List (1993)
• Tokyo Story (1953)
• Unforgiven (1992)
• Vertigo (1958)
• The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• X2 (2003)
• Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Zelig (1983)
7 comments:
As a chameleonic mock-documentary with Citizen Kane-esque archival footage, Zelig has its good points. Otherwise, would you want to leave out Woody Allen's work altogether?
Notorious is a much better pick than my choice of Night of the Living Dead.
Branagh's Hamlet(1996)is brilliant, but didn't you find it a tad long?
So true on Zelig – I wish I didn't love All the President's Men and Modern Times so much, else I'd have included Annie Hall and Manhattan, my two favorites by him. I'm down with the length of Branagh's film, perhaps because I consider Hamlet to be one of the ten greatest works of writing in the English language so I took a particular joy in watching an unabridged version come to the screen. I included it as a way to shake up the list, but to be honest, it was in great, graet, great contention with A Hard Day's Night.
Good list, this is a cool idea, but Im not sure if I can come up with that many films.
Actually, I love Zelig. It's really the most amazing mock-documentary I've ever seen - usually you can kind of sense the ways in which the makers are "faking" an old look but in Zelig the effects are seamless, it's really astounding! Just an outstanding piece of work in that regard (and it was pretty entertaining, too).
Certainly a solid list, T.S. - and we share at least one in Vertigo.
I should have tagged you! Glad you got in on it anyway.
I've yet to see anyone who's chosen an "X" film that is not one of the "X-Men"s. Weird.
Looks like we overlap on four. Though now I'm feeling guilty about choosing Star Wars over Schindler's List...oh well.
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2008/11/x-does-not-mark-spot.html
I really thought hard about including Zelig, but the heart-thumpingly exciting story behind Stanley Baker's Zulu (with Michael Caine's introductory on-screen performance) was too much for me to pass up. Besides, I opted for Annie Hall as my fave Allen film, and the great kick-off for my own list.
I still think, despite the popcorn love I have for the first two X-Men movies, that Roger Corman's X-The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is just too uniquely creepy to pass up as the unsung masterpiece of X-titled movies. Ray Milland's final moments in that film are burned into my brain.
As for Q, I thought of including Larry Cohen's Q as my entry. But I obviously went elsewhere.
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