Best Film List, by Alphabet
Thom at Film of the Year tagged me for the Alphabet Meme. I've posted a list at Dr. Mabuse's Kaleidoscope, in the comments to Dave's post, but will go ahead and list the films here.
Here are the rules:
1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.*
2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don't know of any films with those titles.
3. Thanks to some clarification by The Siren, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release.
4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number's word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under "T."
5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type "alphabet meme" into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.
6. If you're selected, you have to then select 5 more people.
To these I added the guideline that with foreign titles I would rely on the original title if in Roman alphabet, the translated title otherwise.
L'Année Derniere a Marienbad/Last Year at Marienbad
The Big Clock
Crimson Kimono
Dead End
L'Eclisse
Faustrecht der Freiheit/Fox and his Friends
Gertrud
Happy Together
In the Year of the Pig
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Klute
Late Chrystanthemums (1954)
Ménilmontant
La Noire de… /Black Girl
Only Angels Have Wings
La Pointe-Courte
Le Quai des Brumes/Port of Shadows
Rebel Without a Cause
Safe
Twice a Man
Underworld (1927)
Les Vampires (1915)
Written on the Wind
The X-Files
Y tu mamá también
Zorn's Lemma
Not surprisingly, the list skews canonical. And I will admit X-Files, while I like the film, would not make any top-26 list of mine were it not for the alphabet conceit. And other choices were affected: of Pakula's work, I like The Parallax View and All the President's Men better than Klute, but competition for K was not as still as for P or A. I originally had Querelle for Q but Thom reminded me of the Carné film, which I love.
OK, as far as tagging others goes, well it always feels a little chain letter-y, but if they're so inclined as to share, I'd be curious to see what Paul Harrill at Self-reliant Film, the Cinetrix, Bob Rehak, Catherine Grant, and Channel Zero's "Zolok" would put in their list.
Here are the rules:
1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.*
2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don't know of any films with those titles.
3. Thanks to some clarification by The Siren, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release.
4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number's word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under "T."
5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type "alphabet meme" into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.
6. If you're selected, you have to then select 5 more people.
To these I added the guideline that with foreign titles I would rely on the original title if in Roman alphabet, the translated title otherwise.
L'Année Derniere a Marienbad/Last Year at Marienbad
The Big Clock
Crimson Kimono
Dead End
L'Eclisse
Faustrecht der Freiheit/Fox and his Friends
Gertrud
Happy Together
In the Year of the Pig
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Klute
Late Chrystanthemums (1954)
Ménilmontant
La Noire de… /Black Girl
Only Angels Have Wings
La Pointe-Courte
Le Quai des Brumes/Port of Shadows
Rebel Without a Cause
Safe
Twice a Man
Underworld (1927)
Les Vampires (1915)
Written on the Wind
The X-Files
Y tu mamá también
Zorn's Lemma
Not surprisingly, the list skews canonical. And I will admit X-Files, while I like the film, would not make any top-26 list of mine were it not for the alphabet conceit. And other choices were affected: of Pakula's work, I like The Parallax View and All the President's Men better than Klute, but competition for K was not as still as for P or A. I originally had Querelle for Q but Thom reminded me of the Carné film, which I love.
OK, as far as tagging others goes, well it always feels a little chain letter-y, but if they're so inclined as to share, I'd be curious to see what Paul Harrill at Self-reliant Film, the Cinetrix, Bob Rehak, Catherine Grant, and Channel Zero's "Zolok" would put in their list.
Comments
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
The Big Combo
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
Double Indemnity
Elephant
F is for Fake
Grizzly Man
Halloween
Intolerance
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Killers
Leadbelly
Moonrise
Nanook of the North
Orphans (2007)
Pumping Iron
Queen Christina
Return to Oz
Stella Dallas
Touch of Evil
Unforgiven
Vagabond
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
XXX
Yojimbo
Z (Costa-Gavras)