The Top Ten Films That Are on My Top 100 List, But Probably Aren't on a Lot of Other Top 100 Lists

Recently, Cahiers du cinéma published a list of the top 100 films of all time – or, more accurately, the "100 films for an ideal Cinematheque." Not surprisingly, the list was controversial. As a professor of film studies, I subscribe to a film-themed listserv, and there was general agreement that the list had too many Hollywood films, too many French films, and not enough Asian films. Perhaps the strangest choice: The Barefoot Contessa, a 1954 film by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. I have not seen the film, but Mankiewicz is rarely considered a major auteur, and The Barefoot Contessa is rarely considered his best film.

On the positive side, I just went to Netflix and put The Barefoot Contessa in the queue. That's the good thing about these Top 100 lists – they can get you to see films you might not see otherwise. In fact, I would say that a good Top 100 list is a list that has a few totally bizarre choices on it. Any film person can put the obvious choices on their list: Citizen Kane, Battleship Potemkin, Rules of the Game. It's the unexpected choices that keep the "Top 100" list worth reading.

I don't have a list of Top 100 films, but I do know that my list would have some weird choices on it, since I've seen some odd films and liked them a lot.

So, I give you another list: The Top Ten Films That Are on My Top 100 List, But Probably Aren't on a Lot of Other Top 100 Lists. Most of these films are generally considered great films, but I rate them even more highly than most people do. The list is in alphabetical order:

• Allonsanfan (Taviani Brothers, 1974) – the best film by two underrated filmmakers
• The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956) – incredibly sad WWII film, with a surprising amount of singing
• Gabbeh (Mahmalbaf, 1996) – when I saw it the first time, I couldn't wait to see it again
• Heat (Mann, 1994) – like Antonioni, but thrilling
• In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950) – another really sad one, with great performances
• Love Film (Szabo, 1970) – not to be confused with Love Story, made the same year
• My Best Girl (Taylor, 1927) – funny, with a great visual style – why isn't this film considered one of the silent greats?
• Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939) – Hawks's best film
• Signs (Shyamalan, 2002) – I show it every year in Intro to Film, and I still like it
• Toy Story 2 (Lasseter, 1999) – the first one's good, too, but the second one hits every emotion. Plus, Buzz and Woody go together like some of the all-time great silver screen duos, almost as good as milk and cookies.
  

I'm sure there are others that I am overlooking, but I will stand by every one of these films. Even if I recommended some of them to Lisa (my wife), and she hated them. She still hasn't forgiven me for Gabbeh.

-- Patrick

The Perfect Man

As a kid, I had a poster on my door with a picture of a gingerbread man and a caption that read “The perfect man…. He’s quiet, he’s sweet, and if he gives you any crap, you can bite off his head.” I thought it was funny when I was younger and don’t think I fully understood its implications as I had not started dating.

After some not-so-perfect cookies whose heads I would surely bite off, I can say I have finally found the perfect man! His name is Toby and he is very mature for his age….

Yes my 4 year old dog is the perfect man.

While at the dog park this weekend, an older woman remarked to me that she thought Toby was a perfect gentleman and said she wished she could find a man like him. He certainly is a gentleman – he has great manners, he minds his own business when he is around other dogs, he doesn’t bark much, and he just wants to cuddle.

I got to thinking about that poster that used to hang on my door…. Maybe there is something to be said about an ever-faithful companion that cannot talk back to you.

Go Shia LeBeouf Yourself

Like millions of other people, I really liked the 2007 movie Transformers. I mean, really liked it. Aside from rekindling my childhood fantasies of my mom's Oldsmobile turning into a butt-kicking ultimate fighter, it also left me more aware of how much I like things that are also other things.

Especially words.

I love "transformer words:" nouns that can be adjectives, verbs that double as adverbs, etc. Of course, this is more evidence of the casualization of our language, (see how casual it's gotten? I just made "casualization" a word!) but transformer words are everywhere. They're simply here to stay.

Here are some examples:

- Brand Names: You use a Xerox (proper noun) copier to xerox (verb) xeroxes (noun).

- Swears: We all need to pass solid waste by taking a $#it (noun). But $#itting (verb) doesn't just refer to fecal matter, as we've all been caught outside in $#itty (adjective) weather. Living in a rural state, I've even heard people refer to their buddies as "a good $#it" (noun), in what seems to me as a $#itty compliment.

- Everyday Words & Word Components: You jack (verb) up your car to fix your tire, and if you can do that with just your muscles, then you, ma'am, are jacked (adjective). But there are also jackhammers, jack-in-the-boxes, and jackrabbits, (all nouns) and those of us in long-distance relationships sometimes need to employ the verb version of the word jack to satisfy our adult needs. Of course, I chose this word to highlight because my name is Jack (proper noun).

How do I know it's natural that verbs, nouns, adjectives and all those other parts of speech should intermingle? Because the local news always tells me so. Imagine your favorite newscaster reading the following script:

“…a hair-raising story of unconditional love today in Toledo. It seems a mother chihuahua has adopted a baby squirrel whose mother had an unfortunate meeting with a concrete mixer. {chuckling} I guess you could say the fur was really flying there, huh, Connie? {more chuckling}”

If chihuahuas can adopt squirrels, then you can use Google (proper noun) to google (verb) up factoids on actor Shia LeBeouf or whatever else you may want to know. I am certain that googled (adjective) information would include teasers for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

A particularly uncreative user of transformer words was on the most recent season of Project Runway. This aspiring fashion designer was named Blayne, wore California surfer clothes, and was prematurely wrinkled due to years of artificial tanning. He added the suffix –licious to any word to make it into an adjective. “Leathericious,” “neonlicious,” and “tanning bedlicious” were the kind of terms he’d spit out almost every minute. He’d even transform an adjective into an adjective, as I recall. I bet he’d call himself “handsomelicious.” Don’t be Blayne.

Instead, here are some suggestions for how you can be more playful with language in 2009:

- Next time you're at the bakery in need of a soft-centered doughy bit of love to get you through a $#it-filled day at work, ask the girl behind the counter to "cookie you."

- If you attend a wonderful party where delicious food was served with a hearty side of dazzling conversation, describe it as a "total Lisa party," substituting the name (proper noun) of your friend who throws great get-togethers whom you'd like to properly adjectivize.

- After you were the life of that party, leaving the entire guest list laughing, admiring, and appreciating your place on the planet, leave and quietly say to yourself, "I totally Nathaned that $#it!" (Again, substituting the name of someone you adore for their charm and wit, or just use Nathan. He has ample supplies of both those nouns and more.)

If you don't like these ideas, or think communicating in this way is silly or downright unintelligent, I hope a Prius transforms into a giant ninja and gives you a wedgie.

- Jacktastic

Darth Tollhouse

In the eighth grade, my English teacher got me really into Star Wars. He was a fan and had used it in class to demonstrate plot lines and character development as we prepared for a module that would require us to pen our own short stories.

Mr. Publicover is a visionary educator, one of those instructors who sets expectations high and earns the respect to demand success of his pupils. I, along with hundreds of other students, idolized him for his expertise, his quick wit, and his ability truly to understand his students and engage them on a deeply personal level. Mr. Publicover lent me his boxed set of the Star Wars trilogy for the weekend and, recognizing my limited attention span, suggested I make some cookies while I watched it to pass the time.

I look back on that rainy weekend amused and nostalgic. I ran between the kitchen and the family room, emotionally engaged in the outlandish escapades of Luke and his comrades, pressing pause to measure out my very first cups of flour and sugar, much to my parents’ raised eyebrows.

Star Wars (the original trilogy, mind you; not the dismaying set of vapid prequel cash-cows that George Lucas turned out in recent years) and cookies are an incredible combination. There is something so wholesome about both. Baking in general makes a person feel very domestic and connected to the apple-pie Americana that embodies our idea of tradition. But a cookie! A cookie is a golden ray of gastronomic sunshine, especially on a cold or sad day, when things could stand to be a bit brighter. And Star Wars, in its simple juxtaposition of good and evil, its sensitive messaging of the interconnectivity of all life, and its profound statement of hope, is a rare moment of cinematic magic. I returned the trilogy to Mr. Publicover the following Monday with a dozen of my first batch of cookies.

Swiftly thereafter, I bought my own three-tape set, and that first weekend repeated itself frequently. With time, it became a social gathering of sorts for my friends from school, and a decade later, this same group that gathered around my cookie sheets are the ones with whom I am in touch, who are my friends, and whom I love. It is hard to say which played the most important role in those weekends, the cookies or the movies, for as much as a cookie is irresistible, Star Wars speaks to multiple generations on what it means to create and to destroy, to love and to hate, and how acts of kindness and bravery make history. Even Mr. Publicover would have trouble teaching eighth-graders lessons like those on his own.

Today, I have my cookie recipe perfected and can recite most of the trilogy’s nine hours from memory. And I invite people over whenever I make cookies because, thanks to Star Wars, cookies are my way to share love and kindness and to build the bonds of my community.

-- Nathan

Rudolph the Gray-Haired Reindeer

Remember those old Andy Williams TV Christmas specials? I can't say I do, as they're really relics of the late 60s and early 70s, and I am only 28. But I do remember the album covers of Andy Williams records from that era, complete with tacky theme sweaters. Pat Boone had a similar unfortunate holiday style -- his was the trademark white buck shoes.

My dad used to play those Pat Boone and Andy Williams records twice a year -- the day we set up our Christmas tree, and on the holiday itself. Even though we had several CD players, it was records he'd play on those days. Apparently to him, a sound that was old and scratchy, like Andy's sweaters themselves, was evocative of the season.

I've been thinking about old Christmas music these days, because our local adult top-40 radio station has gone to its all-Christmas music format. It struck me as peculiar that in the lead-up to Christmas, when kids ask Santa for Wiis, iPods, or other newfangled technological toys, this Christmas music is all really, really old.

ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) says its most-performed Christmas song is Winter Wonderland, followed closely by Christmas Song (the one with the chestnuts roasting on an open fire) and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. All of these songs were popular when my parents were my age.

So why aren't there new Christmas songs? I asked the morning radio DJ team that has to play this music non-stop for the next month, and the sweet-as-a-sugarplum female co-host chirped, "When you hear Burl Ives doing Holly Jolly Christmas, it just takes you right back to that time when you were watching Rudolph on TV, and eating cookies and milk."

She's certainly onto something. There is something comfortable and cozy about these songs. They're also so simplistic, they're easy to remember. If our national anthem was as singable as Jingle Bells, more Americans would certainly know the lyrics.

A where-is-he-now? performer named Billy Gilman and talk show loudmouth (she'd admit it, I'm sure) Rosie O'Donnell released a song a few years back called I'm Gonna Email Santa. Anyone able to hum that one?

Christmas music may last because it's handed down from adults. Before Christmas in schools became un-pc, teachers would encourage kids to recite holiday music. And the same traditions play out at home: A grandmother listens to Deck the Halls with her grandson, as dad sneaks extra rum into his egg nog, and mom strings popcorn and cranberries, privately wishing she had married that other high school suitor instead. This is music that bridges generations. Case in point -- my grandmother and I have never listened to Rihanna's Umbrella together, but we certainly have listened to Winter Wonderland.

The male half of that morning radio team pointed out "There is new Christmas music, performed by new stars, but they're recording old songs." The Kimberley Locke and Clay Aiken version of Silver Bells is a good example of that, but as their former taskmaster Randy "Dawg" Jackson would complain, "They really don't make it their own."

But those DJs believe the updates of old songs "help make new Christmas memories for today's kids and teenagers." Maybe one day, Kimberley Locke and Clay Aiken will seem as old to me as Brenda Lee now does. But their songs will surely still be familiar, as newer pop stars will also take part in this tradition of re-making old music.

Until then, I'm just glad Rihanna doesn't wear tacky Christmas sweaters and white buck shoes.

-- Jacktastic

...That's Good Enough for Me

Yesterday, I spoke with a very depressed friend. He just learned that his favorite cookies, a soft, buttery, jam-filled biscuit has been discontinued because the bakery, Archway foods, had filed for bankruptcy. Facing a serious void in his life, he has begun a quest to find the new, perfect cookie, a process that may take weeks, even months. As a starting place, I recommended the Pepperidge Farm Softbake Snickerdoodle, a staple evening snack in our house.

This discussion, in turn, spawned a longer conversation about the much-loved, googly-eyed, Seasame Street character Cookie Monster. There's a undeniable purity about CM. He has found the secret to life's true happiness and spends his days in a focused, uncluttered pursuit of chocolate chip ambrosia. He's eliminated the things in life that don't bring him joy. There's no drama with Cookie. He knows who he is, he knows what he wants, he goes out and gets it. Cookie's signature song says it all, "C is for Cookie... That's Good Enough for Me."

Although it may sound reductivist to say, there are so many days in which I could be so clear about my purpose, be intently focused on my desires, and live for hedonistic pleasures. This blog is a place and a way to share these thoughts and experiences beneath an umbrella.

A Note on Housekeeping
So friends & readers, you are invited to share your writing here. You need not feel any pressure to write "on topic," just add whatever this Cookie Monster ethos means to you. And yes, you can write about cookies. In fact, one of the rules of Cookie Monster blog is that writers must use sneak the word cookie into their post once. In order to keep the blog going, I think we should aim for one post a week. It's like a subscription. If you get inspired, put something together, and send it to me. I'll post the entries here once per week on Fridays. A whole new twist of TGIF.

If you'd like to write something, comment below/email me and I can give you permission to post your own entry / links / photos. Or, if you don't want to bother with the mechanics, email me your text and I'll post it for you. It's low-maintenance, low-commitment. First time bloggers are welcome!