The 6th PETER TRAVERS TOP TEN LIST contest - (Well, 6th attempt, anyway)

dylanfan23
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Post by dylanfan23 »

no i knew about that...i even mentioned it in my comments on the bottom of my picks that i was gonna get burned for the ties...the mistake i made was the good german/bubble tie, that was dumb...i was never gonna let go of my departed/borat tie though, i had a gut feeling on that one...unfortunatly i must have had a bad meal or something that day.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

dylanfan23 wrote:What do you mean...if i just had that tie...because i did have that tie on my list, just two others too that didn't happen
Yup. And for every tie you predict that doesn't come to fruition is a deduction of a point. You guessed three ties, two of them did not happen. That's a loss of two points. I gave ample warning of this.

The reason I do this is because when someone predicts three ties, they also predict thirteen movies showing up on the list. If someone were to predict ten ties, one for each spot, then he's predicting TWENTY films showing up on the list, with a chance of guessing all ten (or eleven) films on the list twice as great. I included such a penalty to prevent such occurances.

Even with the two missed ties, it's still a very good showing on your part.
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Post by dylanfan23 »

What do you mean...if i just had that tie...because i did have that tie on my list, just two others too that didn't happen
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Post by The Original BJ »

Woah, cool!

What's shocking to me about this is that I barely read any of his reviews. Like anonymous, I just thought about what would probably be the ten most obvious films and that was that.

I was pretty confident The Departed would be number one. I knew, as did most of us, that he would tie Flags and Letters, but I got REALLY lucky predicting where they'd place.

The film I predicted incorrectly was The Good German, and I knew I would get it wrong once the other reviews for the film started coming in. Travers would never put a film that received such mixed-to-negative reviews on his list.

I think my biggest coup was actually predicting Borat's place. After perusing many of your lists, which predicted Borat in the top 5, I wondered if maybe I was missing something (maybe his review -- which I hadn't read -- was ecstatic?). But then I realized that Peter Travers is not unlike the Broadcast Film Critics, and secretly wants his top five to "predict" Oscar. Given Borat's nonexistent Best Picture chances, I knew it would be near the bottom of Travers's list, below the Best Picture hopefuls.

Two questions:

1. How come Peter Travers seems like he's desperately defending all of his choices in his top 10? It's not exactly like they're controversial picks for best of the year . . .

2. Travers speaks of "terrific movies that barely made a dime" on his top 10? Can anyone find them for me? Last time I checked, Old Joy and Three Times weren't anywhere near his list . . .
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Post by FilmFan720 »

Haha, what a pathetic performance on my end. I defend my title with class, don't I?
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Post by Hustler »

Sonic Youth wrote:And Hustler, Travers called Bobby the no. 1 WORST film of the year. Good thing you changed your list.
It was an accurate anticipated move.I can share with you some point.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Woo hoo!

I was pretty good for my first time. And I didn't even have to read all his reviews. All I did was pick the 10 that most critics would obviously go with.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

Finally some stats:

There were eleven films on the list. No one guessed all eleven, but five guessed ten films correctly : Hustler, dylanfan, dws1980, The Original BJ, and anonymous.

The Original BJ accurately guessed the placement of five films on the list; Hustler guessed four; dylanfan, dws1980 and Damien guessed two.

Six contestants correctly guessed The Departed for no. 1; Hustler was the only one to guess Dreamgirls for no. 2.

Most everyone could see that Flags/Letters tie coming a light year away, which accounts for the high scores this year. However, some of you were careless with your ties! Remember, every tie you got wrong cost you a point. dylanfan, you would have recieved 16 points had you stuck to the Eastwood tie.

Common mistakes: The Good German appeared on six lists; Children of Men on five.

Why post these stats?

It proves my point. Peter Travers is just so darn predictible!
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Post by Sonic Youth »

High five! After a box-office slump, movies made money again in 2006. Kill-me-now depression sets in only when I list the big winners (Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest; X-Men: The Last Stand; The Da Vinci Code). Luckily, it wasn't just Borat that hit pay dirt without getting slimed by formula pap. Martin Scorsese had his biggest hit with The Departed. And Dreamgirls proved a musical could have grit as well as glitz. And what of terrific movies that barely made a dime? They, too, have pride of place on my list of movies that mattered this year.

1 The Departed
Directed by Martin Scorsese


Crime in the streets. A Martin Scorsese specialty, from Mean Streets to GoodFellas. So what's so special about The Departed that I'm calling it the best movie of 2006? For starters, it's a new high in a historic career. The Boston crime milieu scrupulously laid out in William Monahan's screenplay sparks something fresh in Scorsese about how moral corruption begins in childhood and festers in adult life. The acting, from Jack Nicholson's Irish mobster to Mark Wahlberg's hothead sergeant, is top of the line. And Leonardo DiCaprio, as an undercover cop, and Matt Damon, as an undercover criminal, give the performances of their lives. Scorsese orchestrates acting, writing, editing, production design and camera placement into a model of what directing is when craft rises to the level of art.

2 Dreamgirls
Directed by Bill Condon


Despite, or maybe because of, the smartasses who rag on this galvanizing musical as "the gay man's Lord of the Rings," Dreamgirls is a movie you take to heart. I sure did. Fictionalizing the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes into a cautionary tale of how 1960s R&B was ground into white pop, director-writer Bill Condon turns Michael Bennett's Broadway landmark into a movie powered by the unique magic of cinema. Give a shout-out to Condon -- he's got the goods. Beyonce excels as the lead singer of the Dreams, as does Jamie Foxx in the role of the manager who sells her out. But the roof of the multiplex is blown off by trumpet-tonsilled newcomer Jennifer Hudson as the diva who gets replaced for singing large and eating larger. And Eddie Murphy totally kills as a James Brown wild man buckling under the pressure of cultural assimilation. It's an all-black cast, which so-called experts insist will hurt at the box office. My guess is that audiences will have the savvy to know Dreamgirls is a story of America.

3 Letters From Iwo Jima/Flags of Our Fathers
Directed by Clint Eastwood


With his customary daring and assurance, Clint Eastwood followed Flags -- which tells the bloody story of this 1945 battle through the prism of three American soldiers who survived, only to be exploited by their government -- with Letters, a tale of the same World War II battle, told from the Japanese side. The film is in Japanese with English subtitles, hardly a sop to draw the Saw crowd. But what Eastwood has done is extraordinary, uniting two films into a single, stinging portrait of war that honors the men who fought while nailing government for fobbing off hypocrisy in the name of patriotism.

4 Volver
Directed by Pedro Almodovar


Yes, it's in Spanish with English subtitles, but no one rivals Pedro Almodovar for speaking the language of love in all its permutations, from filial to sexual to lethal. Penelope Cruz, never more ravishing, claims the screen by divine right as a daughter whose problems with her mother (the superb Carmen Maura) only start with the fact that Mom is dead and may be out for revenge. Cheers to cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine for the film's shimmering beauty and to Almodovar for showing that love has no intention of stopping with death.

5 Babel
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu


Don't buy the rap on this movie. Some people call it pretentious, when the intent of Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga is to reach high by taking on a world divided by terrorism, race, money, religion and language. I guess unpretentious would be taking on Big Momma's House 3. Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi shine in the ensemble cast. But as the film builds to a shattering climax, you'll be in an emotional grip that won't let go. Gonzalez Inarritu is a world-class filmmaker.

6 United 93
Directed by Paul Greengrass


Many people dodged this movie for being too painful a topic -- a 9/11 re-enactment of what might have happened among the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 when four hijackers took control of the plane. It's their right, and their loss. The gifted director Paul Greengrass has crafted a humane tribute to the power of resistance.

7 The Queen
Directed by Stephen Frears


There's this dumb theory that the potency of this film totally hangs on the magisterial performance of Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana. Bollocks, as the Brits might say. Director Stephen Frears, working with an incisive script by Peter Morgan, is devilishly good at springing surprises, political, personal and profound.

8 Borat
Directed by Larry Charles


Maybe you live on planet mars and don't hear how Sacha Baron Cohen make fun about glorious nation of Kazakhstan and make big trouble with politically correct persons. Maybe you make benefit yourself and see cultural learnings of killer satire of year then laugh ass off.

9 Little Miss Sunshine
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris


This bracingly unsappy family comedy is 2006's best movie from first-timers. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris drop their terrific cast (Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Steve Carell, Paul Dano and little Abigail Breslin) into a VW bus and ship them off to a beauty pageant that exposes the ugly side of America and the dysfunction bubbling inside their own wack-job heads. It's hilarious, heartbreaking and achingly true.

10 Prairie Home Companion
Directed by Robert Altman


The last film from the legendary Robert Altman, who died in November, used Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show to salute the joy of creative life and the art of laughing in the face of death. Other movies this year are bigger, showier and more ambitious, but there are none lovelier. The cast, led by the incomparable Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, glows under Altman's playful watch. Keillor speaks of having had the "great privilege of seeing an eighty-one-year-old guy doing what he loved to do." The rest of us have the privilege of seeing Altman's movies. Godspeed, maestro.

BEST OF THE REST

10 MORE BESTS David Lynch's Inland Empire twists your mind into scary shapes; Todd Field's Little Children is a model of literary adaptation; Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is a surreal study of war; Michael Mann's Miami Vice sees the crime genre with laser-eyed freshness; Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking blows satiric smoke up Big Tobacco's ass; Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration blows satiric smoke up Oscar's ass; Christopher Nolan's The Prestige makes magic out of magic; Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy digs deep into the nature of friendship; John Hillcoat's The Proposition, an Aussie Western, is criminally underrated; and Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, despite a taste for gore that's near pathological, brings a poet's eye and fierce energy to a Mayan civilization that mirrors our own.

Best Animated film John Lasseter's Cars is a visual miracle, sweet as hell and mischievously funny. Oscar, take note. Runners-up: Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly and George Miller's Happy Feet.

Best Foreign Film Volver. Runners-up: Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, Deepa Mehta's Water and Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 Army of Shadows in its U.S. debut at last.

Best Documentary Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth cuts Al Gore loose on global warming. Runners-up: James Longley's Iraq in Fragments, Deborah Scranton's The War Tapes, Doug Block's 51 Birch Street and Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's Shut Up and Sing.

THE YEAR'S TEN WORST
1 Bobby
Emilio Estevez tacks on RFK's assassination to a series of soapy star cameos and calls it humanism. Wrong, pal, it's risible exploitation.
2 The Da Vinci Code
Blockbuster book becomes a blockheaded movie.
3 Snakes on a Plane
The Internet hyped it, but audiences rightly spit venom.
4 x-Men: The Last Stand
Let's hope so.
5 Basic Instinct 2
So bad, you wanted Sharon Stone's legs to stay crossed.
6 The Nativity Story
The Virgin birth staged like a stuffy Christmas pageant.
7 Lady in the Water
M. Night Shyamalan loses his sixth sense for scary.
8 Click
Adam Sandler in a sentimental mood; it's like drowning in drool.
9 Death of a President
A fake doc that imagines Bush dead, and it's still boring.
10 All The King's Men
Southern-fried politics, and even with Sean Penn it's duller than dog ####.
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Post by dylanfan23 »

i think is the first contest i've ever entered in predicting...a tie for 5th..i'll take it...i knew i was an idiot making that bubble/good german prediction...but i'm happy...and even more so i liked most of peter's choices.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Congratulations BJ and DWS, as well as Hustler whom I incorrectly called the winner earlier.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Sonic Youth wrote:Magilla, you're clearly an avid follower of the contest. Why don't you participate?

I'll tally the scores tonight, hopefully.
I think I participated last year - this year there were too many things to predict too close together.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

And the winner of the Peter Travers contest is..........


<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>THE ORIGINAL BJ!</span>

BJ's performance was godly. He guessed 10 out of 11 films correctly. FIVE of his guesses were in the correct spots on the list! He accurately predicted The Departed would be the no. 1 film, which gave him three points. His greatest coup was predicting both Flags and Letters (2 points) as a tie (3 points) and in the no. 3 position (another 2 points, one for each film) for a total of 7 points! What does this mean? It may mean I have to reconsider my scoring methodology. But it also means The Original BJ is either psychic or the luckiest S.O.B. on the face of the earth.

It also means he's the winner of the 6th Peter Travers Top Ten List contest. Let us all congratulate him!

Runner-up is dws1982. He guess ten films, two placements, the tie and the no. 1 film accurately giving him a grand total of 16 points. Congratulations.

Tied for third place is Hustler and anonymous, with 15 points. And Hustler, Travers called Bobby the no. 1 WORST film of the year. Good thing you changed your list.

dylanfan, Damien, and Franz Ferdinand scored 14 points.

I scored 13 points, which makes up for coming in dead last the year before.

Okri scored 12 points.

rudeboy scored 11 points.

Van Helsing scored 10 points.

Sabin scored 8 points. (Easy, pal. You're still a great guy.)

flipp525 scored 7 points.

And the loser of this contest, scoring an preposterous 6 points - 13 points less than the winning contestant - is a man of many extremes: FilmFan720! Two years ago, FilmFan came in last place. Last year, he had his revenge and won the contest. But this year... tsk, tsk, tsk.

I'll have some stats later. Hope you all had fun!
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Post by FilmFan720 »

Man, someone beat my record. At least I held the honor for a year:)
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I'm tallying the scores right now, and Hustler is NOT the winner. Results soon...

This is going to be the highest scoring contest I ever had... for some of you, that is.

UPDATE: One constestant scored an astonishing... get ready... NINETEEN POINTS!

The previous record, set last year, was thirteen points. This shows how predictable our Travers is.
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