AFI Update

[OscarGuy]

Yes, it was, Magilla. All Quiet on the Western Front was ranked at No. 54.

[Big Magilla]

All Quiet on the Western Front was not on the original list.

That Sunrise made it all is cause for celebration.

Raging Bull - was I the first to call it Raging BS - I did so in 1980? Actually it's not a bad film despite over-rated performances by Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty, both of whom drove me up the wall, but the be-all, end-all of 1980s films, no way. In 1980 alone, Ordinary People and The Great Santini were more moving, Melvin and Howard more innovative and The elephant Man just as artistic with its black-and-white photography.

[Eric]

Brokeback so wasn't going to happen.

[OscarGuy]

Of the films excised from the list, I most miss A Place in the Sun, The Manchurian Candidate, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Fantasia and All Quiet on the Western Front.

I'm elated to see the following leave the list: Fargo and Dances With Wolves

Of the new entries, I like seeing Fellowship of the Ring (I still think they should just lump all three films together which, in essence, is what they did here), Blade Runner and Sunrise on the list.

Brokeback may just need a few years to gestate, but at least no other film of that year made the list.

I'm annoyed that Sunrise isn't higher. Really, an 82nd place finish is just not high enough IMO. I think Raging Bull's placement is the most ludicrous one while I'm still mystified by the love for Double Indemnity.

Vertigo's inclusion in the top 10 was a complete shock to me, not to mention that horrendous Raging Bull BS. I wonder if this past year being Scorsese's year helped get his films pushed farther up. Raging Bull leaped to the top 10 but Taxi Driver fell. Goodfellas rose slightly...I don't know. I can't even begin to understand it.

However, you can tell how the members of the AFI saw the original list and spoke out against the omissions and inclusions from the last time and saw where their favorite films placed and made course-corrections this time around. I don't think it has anything to do with tastes changing. I think it has more to do with ballot-stacking.

[Big Magilla]

O'Neill can quibble all he wants, but overall this is a much better list. If you look at the films the new list ranks as the best of each Oscar year you will see that in most cases their choices are superior to Oscar's.

The new downloadable list from AFI has a comparison to the 1997 placements. Interestingly, The General is the highest ranked new listee at number 18. Other new to the list titles, in order, are Intolerance, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Nashville, Sullivan's Travels, Cabaret, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Saving Private Ryan, The Shawshank Redemption, In the Heat of the Night, All the President's Men, Spartacus, Sunrise, Titanic, A Night at the Opera, 12 Angry Men, The Sixth Sense, Swing Time, Sophie's Choice, The Last Picture Show, Do the Right Thing, Blade Runner and Toy Story.

The Searchers has the most dramatic increase, 82 places, followed by City Lights up 65, Vertigo up 52, Unforgiven up 30, The Deer Hunter up 26, Duck Soup up 25, Rocky inexplicably up 21 and Raging Bull up 20.

The African Queen suffered the biggest drop, down 48 places, followed by Ben-Hur down 28, A Clockwork Orange down 24, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid both down 23, Bonnie and Clyde and North by Northwest both down 25.

The highest ranking film to drop off altogether from the previous list is Doctor Zhivago at number 39, followed by Birth of a Nation, The Third Man, Fantasia, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Manchurian Candidate, An American in Paris, Wuthering Heights, Dances With Wolves, Giant, Fargo, Mutiny on the Bounty, Frankenstein, Patton, The Jazz Singer, My Fair Lady and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

[Penelope]

Once I realized that Brokeback Mountain wasn't going to make the list (the tip-off was that "the newest film is right next to the oldest film"--LOTR and Intolerance), I switched to my DVR of ATWT.

The inclusion of films like Cabaret, The General, Sunrise, and Nashville over the likes of Patton, The Jazz Singer, My Fair Lady, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner mark this out as a better list, though still quite conventional, with the occasional dunderheaded choice (Forrest Gump, Sophie's Choice--really, Sophie's Choice???????).

Indeed, positions 11 through 20 (save for #13) are a more interesting collection of films than the entire top 10.

[Eric]

Tom O'Neil thinks this list is worse than the last one, which can only confirm its superiority.

http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_....oc.html

[rain Bard]

For a while I was tring to make a point of checking all of these off my to-see list, but since hitting 90 or so it's been pretty slow going. I've seen about one new title a year for the past few years, mostly when an opporuntity arises to see them in a cinema. Earlier this year I finally saw Bonnie and Clyde. Last year it was Birth of a Nation and the year before the Wild Bunch.

With this revised list, I'm mathematically a notch further away from having seen them all, as three films new to the list (namely, the Last Picture Show, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Sophie's Choice) replace two of of my prior haven't-seens.

But since one of those two is a film I hope to avoid subjecting myself to (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; the other unseen title I've outlasted being Wuthering Heights), I'm realistically a lot closer to the goal of seeing them all. Now the biggest remaining sticking point is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. What kind of circumstances would make me decide to watch that one, are rather hard to imagine. Perhaps a free projection of a restored 35mm print on a day when there's nothing significantly more interesting playing in town...not very likely.

I also still have not seen a Streetcar Named Desire, the African Queen or American Graffiti yet, but that's not due to any serious trepidations. It's more like "not getting around to it" and/or "waiting for a convenient chance to see them on the big screen"-- the same reasons I haven't seen Wuthering Heights or the three unseen new entries on this list.

[Big Magilla]

I agree with Eric.

I had given up hope that The Searchers (number 96 last time) would make the list and jumped for joy when it landed 84 places up on the list to number 12. And Vertigo in the top ten! Wow! Those two films, my faves of 1956 and 1958 ever since I first saw them way back then, continue to grow in popularity. Now if only they would stop pissing on How Green Was My Valley for beating the hallowed Citizen Kane to that 1941 Oscar!

I'm not a big fan of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, but I do think they did the right thing by including it over the now embarassing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

I still have a soft spot for My Fair Lady as it was the first Broadway show I ever saw (with Edward Mulhare and Sally Ann Howes if memory serves), but am not upset to see it replaced by Cabaret, Nashville and Swing Time, though The Gay Divorcee and Top Hat are arguably better Astaire-Rogers films than the latter.

I am so glad they came to their senses and replaced Birth of a Nation with Intolerance and even happier that they replaced The Jazz Singer with Sunrise.

Nice to see In the Heat of the Night getting some newfound respect.

Sorry to see From Here to Eternity and The Manchurian candidate go, but good riddance to Close Encounters, Fantasia, Doctor Zhivago, Dances With Wolves and Wuthering Heights.

Most over-rated next to Raging Bull IMO: Dr. Stangelove. Most cringe inducing moment of the evening: Robin Williams paying homage to Peter Sellers.

Nicest touch: Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft and Billy Wilder back from their graves in sepia tinged re-plays of their 1998 comments.

[Eric]

For what it is, this is probably the best list AFI has yet put out -- if only for the huge jumps City Lights, Vertigo and The Searchers (!) made from their previous positions in the lower third into the top 20, not to mention The General appearing from out of nowhere to land at #18. Do they have themselves confused with Sight & Sound all of a sudden?

I'm no Lord of the Rings fan, but I was personally just relieved that, after the bumper to commercial voiceover which teased "both the newest and oldest film on the list, back-to-back," my horrible premonition of a Birth of a Nation/Crash one-two punch did not materialize. The relief when LotR showed up became elation when they opted for Intolerance in the Griffith slot. (Seriously, how many times did they let Bogdanovich and Scorsese vote?)

As for the rest, sure there are the usual suspects both overrated (High Noon, Raging Bull, The Sixth Sense) and just plain bad (Rocky, Butch Cassidy, Easy Rider). But, still...

Some of the films making their debut this time around:
Do the Right Thing
Sunrise
The Last Picture Show
Nashville
All the President's Men
Sullivan's Travels
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Cabaret

Some of the films that got the boot:
Dances With Wolves
Patton
Doctor Zhivago
From Here To Eternity
Giant
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
The Jazz Singer
My Fair Lady

I give those lists a hearty welcome and "sayonara," respectively. White elephants went down, even if they slipped Titanic in there.

[Larry79]

Glad to see Vertigo and City Lights up where they belong. Their low rankings on the original list were absurd.

The top 50 seems to be a decent snapshot of what film fans and experts consider the greatest. But 51 to 100 is really quite random.

[Sonic Youth]

Other additions to the list include: The Shawshank Redemption (No. 72),

Christ.

A TBS Network broadside. Force them to watch Short Eyes until they repent.

[Penelope]

The American Film Institute (AFI) announced its list of the 100 greatest movies of all time yesterday and, once again, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, released in 1941, tops the list.

This is the first AFI poll since 1997, and of the 43 new eligible films released from 1996 to 2006, Lord of the Rings (No. 50), Saving Private Ryan (No. 71), Titanic (No. 83) and The Sixth Sense (No. 89) made the cut.

Other additions to the list include: The Shawshank Redemption (No. 72), Spartacus (No. 81), Do the Right Thing (No. 96), Blade Runner (No. 97) and Toy Story (No. 99).

1 CITIZEN KANE 1941

2 THE GODFATHER 1972

3 CASABLANCA 1942

4 RAGING BULL 1980

5 SINGIN' IN THE RAIN 1952

6 GONE WITH THE WIND 1939

7 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA 1962

8 SCHINDLER'S LIST 1993

9 VERTIGO 1958

10 THE WIZARD OF OZ 1939

11 CITY LIGHTS 1931

12 THE SEARCHERS 1956

13 STAR WARS 1977

14 PSYCHO 1960

15 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY 1968

16 SUNSET BLVD. 1950

17 THE GRADUATE 1967

18 THE GENERAL 1927

19 ON THE WATERFRONT 1954

20 IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE 1946

21 CHINATOWN 1974

22 SOME LIKE IT HOT 1959

23 THE GRAPES OF WRATH 1940

24 E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL 1982

25 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 1962

26 MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON 1939

27 HIGH NOON 1952

28 ALL ABOUT EVE 1950

29 DOUBLE INDEMNITY 1944

30 APOCALYPSE NOW 1979

31 THE MALTESE FALCON 1941

32 THE GODFATHER PART II 1974

33 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST 1975

34 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS 1937

35 ANNIE HALL 1977

36 THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI 1957

37 THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES 1946

38 THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE 1948

39 DR. STRANGELOVE 1964

40 THE SOUND OF MUSIC 1965

41 KING KONG 1933

42 BONNIE AND CLYDE 1967

43 MIDNIGHT COWBOY 1969

44 THE PHILADELPHIA STORY 1940

45 SHANE 1953

46 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT 1934

47 A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE 1951

48 REAR WINDOW 1954

49 INTOLERANCE 1916

50 THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING 2001

51 WEST SIDE STORY 1961

52 TAXI DRIVER 1976

53 THE DEER HUNTER 1978

54 M*A*S*H 1970

55 NORTH BY NORTHWEST 1959

56 JAWS 1975

57 ROCKY 1976

58 THE GOLD RUSH 1925

59 NASHVILLE 1975

60 DUCK SOUP 1933

61 SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS 1941

62 AMERICAN GRAFFITI 1973

63 CABARET 1972

64 NETWORK 1976

65 THE AFRICAN QUEEN 1951

66 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 1981

67 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? 1966

68 UNFORGIVEN 1992

69 TOOTSIE 1982

70 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE 1971

71 SAVING PRIVATE RYAN 1998

72 THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION 1994

73 BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID 1969

74 THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS 1991

75 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT 1967

76 FORREST GUMP 1994

77 ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN 1976

78 MODERN TIMES 1936

79 THE WILD BUNCH 1969

80 THE APARTMENT 1960

81 SPARTACUS 1960

82 SUNRISE 1927

83 TITANIC 1997

84 EASY RIDER 1969

85 A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 1935

86 PLATOON 1986

87 12 ANGRY MEN 1957

88 BRINGING UP BABY 1938

89 THE SIXTH SENSE 1999

90 SWING TIME 1936

91 SOPHIE'S CHOICE 1982

92 GOODFELLAS 1990

93 THE FRENCH CONNECTION 1971

94 PULP FICTION 1994

95 THE LAST PICTURE SHOW 1971

96 DO THE RIGHT THING 1989

97 BLADE RUNNER 1982

98 YANKEE DOODLE DANDY 1942

99 TOY STORY 1995

100 BEN-HUR 1959

[Aceisgreat]

If I counted right, James Stewart, Robert De Niro, and Harrison Ford each had five films on the list. Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, and Dustin Hoffman each had four. As for the directors, Spielberg had five, followed by Kubrick and Hitchcock with four. Twenty-seven Best Picture winners. I had a nagging suspicion from the get-go what number one would be. I prefer "The Kid" over "City Lights," "The Gold Rush," and "Modern Times." "Sophie's Choice" was an unwelcome surprise. Is there really always a need for "The Godfather: Part II"? And the obession with "Raging Bull" really needs to stop.

[Tree18]

So far some big changes in position