Notes from dissertopia

***** On hiatus until after baseball season. Back in the fall with a few new wrinkles, though there may be occasional updates here.******

Connie’s top 100 movies of all time go something like this:

• 1.     Bull Durham
• 2.     Hoosiers
• 3-99 Doesn’t matter
• 100. The Wedding Crashers (the repetitive schedule of Indian cable gave me a simultaneous hatred and love for this movie, as well as a deep knowledge of its plot, characters, and sense of comedic timing).

In perusing the Village Voice list of the top 100 films of the twentieth century, we were shocked (shocked!) to see that none of her selections had made the cut and decided that we would fill in the blanks between 3 and 99.

Here’s how it works.  We’ll randomly select a movie by a process that includes a deck of cards, the fan in the living room, and the unerring mystical properties of gravity.  Connie will make a prediction concerning the plot of the movie and the reasons for its greatness. These predictions will be based solely on her own film viewing history, which is to say that in almost every case it will be based only upon the title and the year of release.  Then we will watch the movie and she will write a post-movie assessment—a “reflection” let’s call it. We’ll post the prediction, the reflection, and a clip from the movie.  We encourage you to make predictions along with us.  A collection of the previous predictions and reflections is here.

The Village Voice 100 Best Films of the 20th Century:

12/5/08:  A new wrinkle.  I’ve blanked the list so that (unless you’ve looked ahead of time) you won’t be able to cheat on predictions by watching all of the movies before us.  The list below represents the movies we have seen so far.

23. The Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurasawa (Viewed October 14, 2008)

25. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles) (viewed 27 December 2008)

28.  Greed (1924, Erich von Stroheim) (viewed Feb. 2 2009)

29. Ugetsu (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi) (viewed October 3, 2008) recommended replacement: Gerry (Gus Van Sant)

34.Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese) (Viewed 23 November, 2008)

37. The Bicycle Thief (1949, Vittorio DeSica) (Viewed October 29, 2008)

47. The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut) (Viewed 9 November, 2008)

61.Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson) (Viewed 13 December 2008)

71.  Performance (1970, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell) (Viewed 23 December 2008)

74. Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966, Jean-Luc Godard) (Up Next)

79. Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein) (Viewed 23 January 2009)

85. Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)  (Viewed 14 November, 2008)

92. Nosferatu (1922, F.W. Murnau) (Viewed 30 November, 2008)

95.  Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale) (viewed October 7, 2008)

99.  Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock) (viewed Feb 14 2009)

100. Suspiria (1977, Dario Argento) (Viewed October 20, 2008)

79. Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein) (Viewed 23 January 2009)

unranked. Star Trek (2009, JJ Abrams) (up next)