Of the making of lists there is no end...
Apr. 18th, 2006 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI had thought I would pick up on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
samarcand's comments on the "hundred and one best screenplays list. But the more I thought about it, the more pointless it seemed: how do you decide if it's the screenplay that's great rather than the casting, directing, cinematography, all the other things that go to make a great film? are the only great screenplays the ones that have made it through to commercial release, or should the list include the great ungilmed screenplays? what's the point of including precisely two non-English language films in a list of 101 (La Grande Illusion and 8½), it doesn't fool anyone into thinking that you've considered the whole of world cinema and found it wanting? why His Girl Friday instead of its original, The Front Page? And so on.
Worse, the question became entangled in my head with a "hundred best" show we stumbled into on Friday evening, home from walking and too idle to do more than fetch a bottle of wine, make some sandwiches and watch television. So I'm also debating the top 28 of a Hundred Best Musicals programme which seemed not to know whether the musical was the show, and could therefore be illustrated by a variety of stage productions and movies, or whether it was a single production and could therefore be praised for one individual performance. The actual listing seems to have vanished without trace, so I don't know what gems languished below the top 28, but how can I take seriously a list which has room for the complete oeuvre of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but no mention of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, only one Gene Kelly film (Singing in the Rain, and rightly so. But no American in Paris, no On the Town...), no Summer Holiday (I don't care, I like it... No? Oh, well, then, no Yellow Submarine).
It doesn't bear thinking about. So here, instead, is a taxonomy of birthday cards received to date (more are confidently expected: declaring a national holiday to celebrate one's birthday does interfere with transmission):
A remarkably well-balanced selection.
samarcand's comments on the "hundred and one best screenplays list. But the more I thought about it, the more pointless it seemed: how do you decide if it's the screenplay that's great rather than the casting, directing, cinematography, all the other things that go to make a great film? are the only great screenplays the ones that have made it through to commercial release, or should the list include the great ungilmed screenplays? what's the point of including precisely two non-English language films in a list of 101 (La Grande Illusion and 8½), it doesn't fool anyone into thinking that you've considered the whole of world cinema and found it wanting? why His Girl Friday instead of its original, The Front Page? And so on. Worse, the question became entangled in my head with a "hundred best" show we stumbled into on Friday evening, home from walking and too idle to do more than fetch a bottle of wine, make some sandwiches and watch television. So I'm also debating the top 28 of a Hundred Best Musicals programme which seemed not to know whether the musical was the show, and could therefore be illustrated by a variety of stage productions and movies, or whether it was a single production and could therefore be praised for one individual performance. The actual listing seems to have vanished without trace, so I don't know what gems languished below the top 28, but how can I take seriously a list which has room for the complete oeuvre of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but no mention of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, only one Gene Kelly film (Singing in the Rain, and rightly so. But no American in Paris, no On the Town...), no Summer Holiday (I don't care, I like it... No? Oh, well, then, no Yellow Submarine).
It doesn't bear thinking about. So here, instead, is a taxonomy of birthday cards received to date (more are confidently expected: declaring a national holiday to celebrate one's birthday does interfere with transmission):
- Outdoor scenes with water: 2
- one oriental, with sampan, one Victorian seaside scene
- Outdoor scenes with blue flowers: 2
- one lavender fields, one bluebell woods
- Indoor scenes with cultural activities: 2
- one young woman reading, one elderly couple singing / playing the harmonium
- Cats: 5, on 2 cards
- Lesley Anne Ivory's Gemma, green-eyed and innocent on a rug, Ronald Searle's four tiny conspirators pushing their great Trojan bird towards the enemy stronghold
- Birds: 2
- one as above, one dodo (a William de Morgan tile)
- Other livestock: 2
- one otter, one (or rather, five) sheep
A remarkably well-balanced selection.
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Date: 2006-04-18 09:29 pm (UTC)Only one Gene Kelly movie? No On the Town, or Summer Stock, or It's Always Fair Weather? Bah. Nonsense.
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Date: 2006-04-19 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 09:43 pm (UTC)And what day is the actual day, so I can set myself a reminder for next year?
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Date: 2006-04-19 09:46 am (UTC)It's the 17th (Easter Monday, this time round).
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Date: 2006-04-19 10:11 pm (UTC)Date noted. Thank you. Oh! and we'll be staying on Tuesday the 2nd of May, if that's OK. We had to plan around the availability of sleeper tickets to Fort William, as it turned out. I hope the 2nd is OK.
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Date: 2006-04-20 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-18 09:49 pm (UTC)Les Parapluies de Cherbourg made it in at 92, Gene Kelly's For Me and My Girl at 88, Top Hat at 60, the aforementioned An American in Paris at 58, Hair at 55, On the Town at 54, Summer Holiday at 47 (what??? better than On the Town?), Jesus Christ, Superstar (Buy the ringtone, I kid you not) at 28.
Singin' in the Rain was 6 but should have been #1.
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Date: 2006-04-19 03:54 am (UTC)My virtual card has the Water-Rat, dancing a hornpipe.
Nine
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Date: 2006-04-19 09:46 am (UTC)