A Thousand Little Cuts ....

This database is at once utterly extraordinary and
totally depressing.

Is this any fucking way to think about how movies matter?

Screw EW on 2 levels

As Paul rightfully notes, Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 recent classics is an embarrassment to all things cinematic. Not only is Napoleon Dynamite on the list, it's five places higher than In the Mood for Love. In a just world, the EW offices would have burned to the ground in an act of God/s but this is not a just world.

But rather than just gripe, perhaps we should compile our own list. I'd offer the following five, in no real order:

1. Magnolia
2. Unforgiven
3. Talk to Her
4. Children of Men
5. Tarnation

But here's another question: Has the Internet made such lists all the more suspect? They've always been of limited use, although an essential part of the cinematic experience. Even Cahiers found value in them. But in an age when everyone who has an opinion now has a place to get it published in some sense, and in an age when lists proliferate like Tribbles on Viagra, does singling out the best really mean anything any more? What film can't find a home on some best-of list somewhere?

Or perhaps more pointedly: What's the use of a general best-of list like this, or of the term classic? Has the Internet atomized film so much -- as evidenced by clips, fake trailers and the like posted to YouTube, message boards that dissect scenes for flaws in computer graphics, etc. -- that the concept film as a singular entity, as a relatively coherent expression is meaningless? If one wants to put together a list of "best films to do bong hits to" then Children of Men or There Will Be Blood or Russian Ark might not make the cut. In the retarded high school movie category, Napoleon Dynamite is probably a classic.

Film has always been a popular (populist?) art. Has it become such of one that the masterpiece -- the film that most if not all will recognize as sublime achievement -- is an obviated concept?

Just asking.

The New Classics?

Is it any wonder American film culture is all but dead?

Adding: I wouldn't expect Entertainment Weekly to do anything but produce a list designed to affirm its readership's tastes as opposed to challenging them but is there any way to justify a list of 100 "new classics" from the last 25 years that only includes 7 foreign language titles? If ranking Speed (#40) 50 places above In the Mood for Love (#95) why even bother to include foreign language films on the list at all?

Lost Metropolis Found

Exciting news for the film world out of Buenos Aires:

Last Tuesday Paula Félix-Didier travelled on a secret mission to Berlin in order to meet with three film experts and editors from ZEITmagazin. The museum director from Buenos Aires had something special in her luggage: a copy of a long version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, including scenes believed lost for almost 80 years. After examining the film the three experts are certain: The find from Buenos Aires is a real treasure, a worldwide sensation. Metropolis, the most important silent film in German history, can from this day on be considered to have been rediscovered.

Of course, the real anticipation is in wondering what Queen song they'll choose to score all the newly discovered scenes!