The House Next Door

Gawdknows I hate Forrest Gump and A Beautiful Mind with all my heart.

That said, I didn't vote at Ed Copeland's poll because I didn't feel qualified enough. I haven't had the opportunity to watch the supposed mediocre fests like William Wyler's Mrs. Miniver 'n' The Best Year of Our Lives, Gigi, The Greatest Show on Earth, etc.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ed's poll results (and btw, kudos to Ed for tabulating all the results) seems to be a mirror reflection of most best lists. Recent films are always front and center for the honors (or um, infamy), while the older films tend to be neglected (or absolved from their crappiness - take your pick). This trend seems to be indicative collective memory and quite possibly the narrow selection of films seen (as previously mentioned, I'm not immune from this - I am definitely guilty of the latter).

Yeah, lists like these tend to be heavily weighted toward recent winners, but I am still intrigued by the apparent consensus that the recent winners aren't memorable and are, in fact, bad movies. I don't agree with every choice -- DANCES WITH WOLVES, for instance, still strikes me as an extraordinarily well-directed epic western, despite its PC sentimentality -- but then, the purpose of such polls is to prompt nitpicking and argument anyway.

Be careful not to extend the crapitude of William Wyler's "Mrs Miniver" to his sublime "Best Years of Our Lives". You should check it out - it's photographed by Gregg Toland, the genius who also shot Citizen Kane and The Grapes of Wrath.

Wyler was one of the great Hollywood directors - he made things like Dodsworth, Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes - all very elegantly put-together literary adaptations. It's a shame - though not a surprise -that instead of these, the Academy saw fit to recognise Miniver and Ben-Hur, probably his two crappiest pictures.

Also, Gigi is a cute little thing. Obviously it isn't better than Touch of Evil or Vertigo, but how anybody could muster up the energy to hate it is beyond me.

On the other hand, I'm of the opinion that Dances with Wolves very richly deserved a spot in the Top 10, purely for that first hour of Kevin Costner walking around trying really hard to look like he's in deep thought. And based of the 74 BP winners I've seen, Crash's no.1 slot was also very much earned.

"Be careful not to extend the crapitude of William Wyler's "Mrs Miniver" to his sublime "Best Years of Our Lives". You should check it out - it's photographed by Gregg Toland, the genius who also shot Citizen Kane and The Grapes of Wrath."

Despite Best Years of Our Lives being quite popular with the masses(it's include on the AFI and IMDb lists), I was always under the impression that BYOOL was just another post-WWII family weepie.

I shall probably check it out when it's on TCM or something, but I just can't seem to muster up excitement for William Wyler. Roman Holiday was merely a piffle of a star vehicle. And Ben-Hur was a snoozefest, plain and simple.

Wyler always struck me as an Academy friendly director in the blandest sense. As a filmmaker, he tackled everything that was conventional and safe (literary adaptations, popular social topics, propelling über-stah! turns from the likes of Davis and Oliver).

Though she was referring only to acting winners, I think what Katharine Hepburn said can also apply to some directors: "The right people usually won Oscars, just for the wrong movies."

tbn: Regarding Wyler, no, I wouldn't put him in the pantheon of all time greats, but "Carrie," ""Detective Story" and "The Heiress" are all worth seeing. And for my money, "The Best Years of Our Lives' is one of the best films ever to win the top Oscar, one of the only straightfoward "message" pictures that still stands up a half-century later, and one of the greatest films ever made within the Hollywood studio system. Also, the photography, by Gregg Toland, belongs on a short list with his best work, as great as, yet often subtler than, his work for Orson Welles.