I have my Peter Travatar up, so that can only mean one thing. Time for the yearly PETER TRAVERS TOP TEN LIST contest.
Unfortunately, it won't be quite the same this year because some people have decided to not rejoin us after the change in servers. No rain Bard, no Eric, no Franz Ferdinand, no paperboy, and who knows if mashari will ever find us again if he decides to make his year-end appearence. On the other hand, we have a few new members, and I hope they participate with this yearly tradition, one that I believe is great fun (if I do say so myself).
The Peter Travers contest, which I started here I think 10 years ago, is really a statement disguised as a contest. The statement is, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine is the most unoriginal, unidiosyncratic, yet highly dependable film critic around, both in his writing style - it's not for nothing that he's "the most blurbed film critic", according to Wiki - and in his taste in films. He slightly defies convention by positioning his tastes moderately left-of-center, very much like a white, college-age male just discovering "cool" movies would. That's not a bad starting point, but Travers has never opened his tastes up from there. And what better way to expose his predictibility than to build a contest around it?
The object is simple. Just guess what his Top Ten list of the year will be. I will post his previous top ten lists as a refresher, but first here are the rules:
a). One (1) point is awarded for correctly guessing which films will be on his top ten list.
b). One (1) additional point is awarded for accurately guessing precisely where on the list a film will end up. (Total: two (2) points.)
c). One (1) more additional point is awarded for accurately gussing the number one film of the year. (Total: three (3) points)
d). Three (3) bonus points for accurately predicting which movies will result in a tie, if any. Remember, there may or may not be a tie this year. Travers is one of those critics that likes to put ties in his lists, so you may want to take that under consideration. That said, not every yearly list has ties, so predict at your own risk. (Accurately predicting that there will be no tie gets you zero (0) points. Nice try, but no.)
e). One (1) point is docked for every inaccurately predicted tie. This is to discourage contestants from predicting too many ties.
f). The poll is officially closed when his list is released, and it's authenticity has been verified to my satisfaction.
g). Anyone caught revising his or her list after Travers releases his list will be disqualified.
h). In the event of a first place tie, the completely arbitrary solution is: whoever has guessed more higher-ranking movies on the list wins. If there is still a tie, then the winners will agree to share the honor with grace and humility.
i). Sonic Youth is not prohibited from winning his own contest. (This rule has never been applied, and probably never will be.)
Hints:
a). Do not go by Travers' star ratings! He works with a star rating, but it's not to be used as a guage to guess his Top Ten list with. Every year, three-and-a-half star movies are given higher rankings than four star films, and sometimes four star films don't appear on the list at all. It's completely arbitrary, although I don't think a three star film has ever appeared on his list.
b). Don't go by my ballot. No, really. DON'T GO BY MY BALLOT! YOU'LL LOSE!
c). Here are his previous Top Ten lists:
2010
1. The Social Network
2. Inception
3. The King’s Speech
4. True Grit
5. The Kids Are All Right
6. 127 Hours
7. Black Swan
8. The Fighter
9. Winter’s Bone
10. Toy Story 3
2009
1. Precious
2. Up in the Air
3. The Hurt Locker
4. An Education
5. Up
6. Where the Wild Things Are
7. A Serious Man
8. District 9
9. (500) Days of Summer
10. The Messenger
2008
1 Milk
2 Slumdog Millionaire
3 The Dark Knight
4 Frost/Nixon
5 Wall-E
6 Revolutionary Road
7 The Visitor
8 Doubt
9 Rachel Getting Married
10 Man on Wire
2007
1 No Country for Old Men
2 Atonement
3 Into the Wild
4 Eastern Promises
5 Sweeney Todd
6 American Gangster
7 There Will Be Blood
8 Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
9 I'm Not There
10 Knocked Up
(tie) Juno
2006
1 The Departed
2 Dreamgirls
3 (tie) Letters from Iwo Jima
(tie) Flags of our Fathers
4 Volver
5 Babel
6 United 93
7 The Queen
8 Borat
9 Little Miss Sunshine
10 A Prairie Home Companion
All his lists for RS from 1989 to 2005