Greatest Films of All Time (Mid-Revision)

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Hayden




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  • #111
  • Posted: 07/02/2020 00:32
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AfterHours wrote:
Thank you for the reminder. Not sure. The main time consumer would be looking beyond my 7.3s for old notes and ratings of 7s that would deserve to be listed if the selections extend that far. And so many of those I havent seen in 5, 10, 15-20 years. But Im tempted. Maybe Ill cut it off at 7.3... How much longer do I have?


You got a month Smile

Hoping to see you whip something up.
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homelessking





  • #112
  • Posted: 07/02/2020 02:59
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About Metal Gear Solid, it was in a comment you made on lukeprog's game ratings on his Piero Scaruffi Notes's page. To quote the full comment:
Quote:

AfterHours
02/23/2006
I'm glad it was meant to be funny because, while it may not have shown in my last comment, I did find it very entertaining to read. I'm not a gamer at all, but I used to be a hardcore videot when I was a kid and on into my early teens. So you're history and selections were really nostalgic.

I thought Duck Hunt was one of the first home light gun games, if not the first. Shows how much I know. And that track & field game used the much vaunted "running pad". It was revolutionary, the grouping of athletic ability and video game nerdiness into a whole that today stands as the original spark leading to the idea that video games became cool. 9.5/10.

I do actually agree that Super Mario Bros. is a masterpiece. As you put it, it's perfect like a fig newton. I think it would be great if you continue your video game history all the way through the inevitable blasts you'd receive for rating Pong as the third greatest video game ever, boasting a godly presence with a rare 9.5/10 over the inferior Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, 7.5/10 each respectively. (:
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AfterHours



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Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

  • #113
  • Posted: 07/02/2020 04:09
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homelessking wrote:
About Metal Gear Solid, it was in a comment you made on lukeprog's game ratings on his Piero Scaruffi Notes's page. To quote the full comment:
Quote:

AfterHours
02/23/2006
I'm glad it was meant to be funny because, while it may not have shown in my last comment, I did find it very entertaining to read. I'm not a gamer at all, but I used to be a hardcore videot when I was a kid and on into my early teens. So you're history and selections were really nostalgic.

I thought Duck Hunt was one of the first home light gun games, if not the first. Shows how much I know. And that track & field game used the much vaunted "running pad". It was revolutionary, the grouping of athletic ability and video game nerdiness into a whole that today stands as the original spark leading to the idea that video games became cool. 9.5/10.

I do actually agree that Super Mario Bros. is a masterpiece. As you put it, it's perfect like a fig newton. I think it would be great if you continue your video game history all the way through the inevitable blasts you'd receive for rating Pong as the third greatest video game ever, boasting a godly presence with a rare 9.5/10 over the inferior Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, 7.5/10 each respectively. (:


Haha, dont remember that one but clearly its true!

Looks like I was just giving lukeprog some satirical jabs for putting together a video game list like Scaruffi's rock selections. Obv was kidding about most of what I said though I may have been semi-serious about Zelda and MGS as 7.5s (dont know if I would agree today. Bit more lenient back then than I am now. Same criteria for the most part but my assessments in relation to it have become increasingly strict over the years)
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AfterHours



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  • #114
  • Posted: 08/04/2020 16:37
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Partially because of Hayden's 2000s poll, I want to give a shout out to Nolan's Memento, his masterpiece. By that, I don't mean that it hasn't been selected enough for the poll. It seems to be on plenty of lists. I was just considering revisiting it and was thinking about how it is among the most original films of the decade, yet most of Nolan's films since have received much more attention (to be fair: Memento is a cult classic). Predictably, Nolan has become much more known for his blockbusters while his most creative and interesting films were earlier in his career.


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  • #115
  • Posted: 08/28/2020 00:50
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CITIZEN KANE ANALYSIS - MID RECONSTRUCTION

(Incomplete, with several updates to come. Will only be posted here temporarily, while its original thread is locked)



In 1941, Orson Welles directed Citizen Kane, perhaps the most influential and dramatic leap forward for filmmaking in the history of cinema. It successfully utilized and coordinated virtually every major innovation in film since its inception, into a flawless composition of past and budding technologies, emerging from which was an unprecedented form of filmic expression, a whole new gamut of emotional and intellectual symbolism that reached overwhelming depths of meaning. Amongst many examples of its innovation were its use of a subjective camera; unconventional lighting, including chiaroscuro, backlighting and high-contrast lighting, prefiguring the darkness and low-key lighting of future film noirs; inventive use of shadows and strange camera angles, following in the tradition of German Expressionists; deep-focus shots with incredible depth-of field and focus from extreme foreground to extreme background, emphasizing mise-en-scene; also in-camera matte shots; low-angled shots revealing ceilings in sets; sparse use of revealing facial close-ups (all actors “sharing” the screen); elaborate camera movements; over-lapping, talk-over dialogue; the sound technique termed "lightning-mix" in which a complex montage sequence is linked by related sounds; a cast of characters that ages throughout the film; flashbacks, flash-forwards and non-linear story-telling; the frequent use of transitional dissolves or curtain wipes, and long, uninterrupted shots or lengthy takes of sequences.

On the surface, Citizen Kane is about a reporter's search to find the meaning of newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane's final utterance, "Rosebud", with hopes that this discovery would help understand who he really was and explain the meaning of his life. The reporter attempts this through a series of interviews with Kane's closest friends, butler & x-wife. By the end, there is a conclusion revealed to the audience that Rosebud is the title of Kane’s childhood sled and that this is a symbol of his split from his parents into a life ruled by materialism, representative of when he lost his innocence. He wishes his childhood back, hence his nostalgia towards the sleigh. But if one reads the film closely enough it will be found that it’s not so easily wrapped up as this psychological reading presents.

This initial surface reading and psychological insight is not wrong. It is a valid element and it does apply. It’s also a very limited view of the film, and of Kane, and thus summarizes the film in a much more minimal light than the extraordinary expression and expansively intricate exploration of feeling that it actually achieves. Citizen Kane is a monumental sleight of hand: if one follows the film superficially, the viewer is not privy to the insights the film so elaborately develops throughout its entirety. That one is more easily steered to a rather superficial reading of the film is intentional, and its common acceptance among audiences as Citizen Kane’s emotional and psychological core or totality proves Welles a master of illusion, and a director and manipulator without peer in the history of cinema. The key filmic elements Welles employed to develop this illusion are primarily three-fold: first, he immediately follows Kane’s utterance of Rosebud with a newsreel giving a complete “surface explanation” of Kane’s life for the audience, as their first and most direct series of insights into him. Second, Welles nullifies identification with the journalist (Thompson, and his search for the truth) by continually hiding his face in shadow/darkness. And third: by not properly introducing Kane until almost 30 minutes into the film, after an elaborate series of sequences and several films worth of trickery and cinematographic effects have already occluded and distanced the audience from him.

***Note to self: following section probably needs some tweaks / updates***
The deeper subtext of the film can be seen in the revelation that the entire film is the dying Kane’s dream. The film is his last act, an elaborate, grandiose self-analysis. Rosebud really represents an unanswered question of Kane’s to himself: “Who am I? What happened? What explains my life?” He is continually asking these questions throughout each scene, each sequence. It is not so much about what the public (or the journalist) wants to find out, as it seems on the surface, but much more importantly it represents what Kane wants to know about himself. The film is steeped in this mystery, with each scene an analysis by Kane in an attempt to uncover the truth. The question remains unanswered throughout, and by the end the real conclusion being drawn is actually an extensive enigma from all angles, summed up by the reporter's statement that “one cannot easily explain a man’s life”. Seen in the revelatory conquest of Kane’s dying dream, the viewer can garner an endlessly profound and enigmatic portrait of him that reaches depths of meaning that conveys an infinitude of allusion. One engages in an elaborate, subjective journey through the nuances of his motivations and perceptions of himself and others around him, and in this final reverie, his search and ultimate failure to find an answer to himself and his life. Instead of resolving the mystery, the puzzle becomes a vast network of symbolism and the meanings and interpretations become increasingly dense as the film progresses. There are only greater questions, but never a finite, all-pervasive answer.

Orson Welles’ first film project, an attempted (but never realized) adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, was to be just such a subjective experience. Welles did not want a camera merely representing all that was seen by the protagonist, but one that showed what the character thought and felt, "capable of shifting its focalization within a single take, moving from literal point-of-view shots to poetic omniscience." He carried this plan into and through Citizen Kane, and is the impetus behind his use of Toland’s deep focus photography, as this depth-of-field allowed such subjective, omniscience of insight, whereas photography limited in its focus would’ve made this practically impossible to express to the degree Welles envisioned. Such aspects as character positioning, camera angles and the resulting point-of-view, lighting, proximity or distance, and several other factors throughout the film, were granted special importance and symbolism. Through the use of both free and sweeping camera movement, and penetrative, inspecting, subjective first person views, and a multitude of editing techniques, Welles achieved the point-of-view and momentum of a man searching through his own mental images, his own forward and backward sense of control over his interior time and space. Several scenes exist as if they are just there, without any previous physical linkage in space, as if brought to the fore by mental image causation alone. These pictures are often shrouded in a dense display of shadows around the main character, or the perimeter of the shot is fully surrounded by pitch black darkness, each evoking the effect of an image without foundation, arising out of nowhere, from the depths, elliptical. The “faceless” Thompson is never totally revealed. He is usually shown from the back, or partial views, or over-the-shoulder, and is constantly hidden by dimmed lighting, shadow, or total darkness. As Thompson has “no identity”, he is a surrogate representative of all viewers (the public), searching along with Kane for the truth of his life. Kane himself is the camera’s eye and movement, and his perspective has a profound expressive effect on the visualization of the film, all of the scenes being altered by his emotional pull. Moreover, each series of flashbacks combines simultaneously two main perspectives: Kane’s, (the subjective camera perspective, the entire film extending out from him), and the interviewee, usually shown from behind and in close, at the right corner of the screen during flashbacks (as if just inside Kane’s perspective, at the frame of the shot, the scene is also extending out from him/her). In between these flashbacks, Thompson is also present as the reporter/interviewer (representing the viewer/the public) usually positioned at the right side or corner of the frame at an angle as if (just “inside” Kane’s first-person view, at the foreground of the frame) the scene is extending from his viewpoint too. During the flashbacks, Thompson is represented by the real-life viewer (you), drawing conclusions, watching the film. During these same flashbacks, Kane’s viewpoint and the interviewee’s viewpoints are what are being shown on-screen. Even more compellingly, Kane’s thoughts and ideas are defined by and appear in and as the physical space of the shot, in unison to and impelling the choreography and action of the scene, and are elaborated and displayed in relation to whomever represents the “second” viewpoint (the interviewee during flashbacks, or Thompson in between flashbacks). Each scene then, becomes an interplay of these viewpoints, searching over Kane’s life. Kane (the first-person perspective of the camera) is by far the dominant force of personality within the scenes.

The film is encoded in this reading, Kane's dying dream, which is virtually imperceptible to casual observation. Its images are artificial creations, its narrative intelligence that of a solipsist. The places and scenes were once real, but in this dying reverie are seen through the visage of total solitude, a mental construct and prismatic entrapment. Every scene, its spaces, objects and people are read and marked emotionally and intellectually by Kane. All the visuals, its mise-en-scene, the editing, the camera movements, the entire construct of the film, is Kane himself. It is all his state of mind. The camera in its first person viewpoint is him, the film itself an extension of him, his vision, his grandiose self-analysis --- all of it the mental construct of a solipsist. Facing death, it is the final result of his narcissism, and in this harsh and lonely finality, an ultimate in solitude. The film is a massive monument of himself, a gargantuan prism of his visions, an elaborate display of his multiplicity. The infinite editing techniques employed, the infinite visual styles used, the rampantly changing soundtrack, the chaos of personalities Kane assumes, the endless symbolism and meanings. The whole film is an expression of his multiplicity, how unknowable he is, that he cannot be pinned down and explained. The pan-focus of the camera (Kane) collapses the picture of each scene into a cohesive vision where all things within each space are merged in a network of meaning, where the dimensions are distorted, where ideas and people are objectified. The environments of the film are framed as cages of possessions. They are lined by objects, furniture and/or characters framing the shots, the scenes seemingly extending from them. The film attains a visual claustrophobia, uniting the environment and characters into an “all-one”. The cages of possession become more majestic as the film progresses: from Kane as a boy playing freely in the snow, to becoming trapped by the mysterious and cavernous "otherness" of Xanadu, its towering walls, statues and structures, the crowd of people and attention now elusive and fading away, a replacement of his associates and friends and outside world with statues, material possessions and the “world” of Xanadu. Kane gradually becomes an expanding amassing of his possessions and throughout the film, concurrent to this, the people around him become increasingly viewed as objects, possessions. If one realizes that Kane is the viewpoint of the camera, and the visualization of the scenes his continual identification of things and spaces as that of himself, then one begins to realize that the film and the contents of its picture are an assumption and accumulation of being. The film, this artificial mental construct, is the final result of this accumulation of being. It is his prism of visions, his delusion of reality, through which he can never view the truth and answer to his life. It is representative of the eternal, existential void of Man, imprisoned in the shadows and mysteries of existence.

Citizen Kane begins in silence with a solitary, stark black and white title card. It then opens with a highly subjective series of shots, each an emotionally devastated contemplation upon Xanadu, Charles Foster Kane’s enormous estate built on a man-made mountain. The sign at the entry gate reads ‘No Trespassing’. Immediately, this is Kane himself, through the viewpoint of the camera. He is using an object (the sign) to communicate to us from his vantage point (the subjective camera). At the end of his life, he is telling us that we cannot know him, and that we will not be allowed to. The subjective camera creeps into the estate through various fence structures (a metaphoric physical representation of Kane’s multiplicity, of increasing complexity and entrapment). The camera views the top of the entry gate, titled “K” for Kane, in the foreground, shown in relation to Xanadu in the far background.

***ADD IMAGE GATE/XANADU***

The fenced “K” is shown to be the senior authority in the shot, at a higher point than the castle (the “K” is “above” the top of the castle). This is Kane establishing who owns the grounds, who allows admittance, and whose castle it is. It is him, at the end of his life, fully identifying himself with objects: the gate (his body, his form, his prison), the castle (his soul or personality, the window his “eye”) and the misty estate grounds (all his devastated emotions inside). The entry gate is framed inside the shot in the same way as, earlier in his life (but later in the film), that Kane identified with people. Near death, objects have fully replaced life forms. Slowly rising above the fences, he surveys different stages and elevations of his castle grounds: murky, blanketed by heavy mist, antiquated by failure and overwhelming loss. Again, these shots are framed by large scale objects, prominent and in the foreground. See the comparison below between the image overtaken by objects versus a seemingly unrelated screenshot, one dominated by characters as life forms (from much later in the running time of the film but actually earlier in the timeline of Kane’s life).

***ADD IMAGES: CAGED MONKEYS & XANADU ... KANE FIRING LELAND***

Notice how in the Xanadu shot, the monkey cage is framing the shot in the foreground, the entry gate is in the middle-ground, the misted depths of the castle grounds are further back, and the castle and its window are in the deep background. In the next shot, Kane’s body sitting at the typewriter is framing the foreground, Leland is in the middle-ground, the dark void and emotional gulf between he and Kane follows back to Bernstein, who is watching in the deep background. By the end of his life, his possessions have fully replaced people, including himself, and he is now a materialistic composite of all of them. As a matter of fact, there isn’t a single shot in this introductory sequence where Kane is explicitly shown as a whole person. The only detailed depiction of him in these shots is that of Kane as consumed by his possessions; these possessions personified, evoking his personality and emotions. As surveyed, the estate is a ghastly nightmare of forgotten, abandoned items, banished to a perpetual terminal condition. In each shot as we enter through the gate, off in the distance is the single, lit window at the top of castle Xanadu, watching and beckoning us; the “eye” of Kane from his deathbed. This entire introductory sequence of the end of Kane’s life is the most vividly expressionistic in the entire film.

***IMAGE: NEXT XANADU SHOT***

As we arrive at the top of the mountain we are coaxed through the lit window and inside Kane’s bedroom. A highly subjective shot shows Kane, and seemingly the whole room, immersed in falling snow, before pulling back to reveal that in his hand lies a snow-globe with a miniature house inside of it, and that it was not the room, but he alone that was immersed in its snow-filled memory. The snow-globe represents his lifelong regret, the psychology that set his personal misfortunes into motion. In extreme close-up of Kane’s mouth, he utters the word: “Rosebud”. There is no one else is in the room. The close-up of his face, and projection of Kane’s voice, emits the hushed tone, heightened sense of importance and compelling force of a deity, the spoken word which then sends the existence of the rest of the film into play. “Rosebud” is not so much what will become the question on the public’s mind, it is the question on Kane’s, a question he is still contemplating on his death bed and thereafter: “What was the meaning of my life? What happened to me? Who am I and how?” The next shot is crucial: in peering down at his hand as he drops the snow-globe, the visual style subtly changes into a surreal, weightless and dreamy white, expressing an intense ghostly solitude.

***ADD IMAGE: KANE DROPPING SNOW GLOBE***


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TiggaTrigga





  • #116
  • Posted: 05/22/2021 21:55
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Do you think highly of The Shining? There's a LOT of potential meaning and secrets within it. For example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJvE4QyBEOg . And of course, the metaphors for the genocide of Native Americans.
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AfterHours



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  • #117
  • Posted: 05/23/2021 02:27
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TiggaTrigga wrote:
Do you think highly of The Shining? There's a LOT of potential meaning and secrets within it. For example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJvE4QyBEOg . And of course, the metaphors for the genocide of Native Americans.


Last I watched it, I considered Shining 7/10. I've had it at 7.5 before and maybe even 8 years back. I don't have time to check that link out or go into cinema much right now, but I don't find many of Kubrick's hidden meanings very cinematically interesting. There are exceptions (2001 and Dr Strangelove are perhaps his best examples). I'm willing to have my mind changed but he tends too often to do little more than (more or less plainly) show allusions or evidence of these and applies very little in the way of visual art or techniques that might increase the immersion into them or make them more compelling so they tend to not be much more than a puzzle or trivia for bored film geeks to solve outside of the movie that might only add slightly to the impact of the actual viewing experience. The Shining's native american genocidal anecdotes are vaguely interesting, but hardly add to the film last time I looked into them (which probably included that video). I'm willing to see it differently. Maybe someone can explain what's more profound about them in a more cinematic sense. Maybe I'll check out that video and correlating studies next time I revisit the film but last I did it kind of felt like too much time for too little cinematic reward.
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TiggaTrigga





  • #118
  • Posted: 05/23/2021 20:25
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I see what you mean. You probably won't find much depth in that movie if you don't find the Native American thing very impressive. And especially if you don't have much time, I wouldn't bother with that link if I were you. Laughing

Off the top of your head, do you think there are any SHOWS that would be potentially eligible for a score of 7/10 or higher (e.g. Breaking Bad, The Wire, Cowboy Bebop,...Jersey Shore)? Obviously shows take up more time than movies so...
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AfterHours



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  • #119
  • Posted: 05/23/2021 21:41
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TiggaTrigga wrote:
I see what you mean. You probably won't find much depth in that movie if you don't find the Native American thing very impressive. And especially if you don't have much time, I wouldn't bother with that link if I were you. Laughing

Off the top of your head, do you think there are any SHOWS that would be potentially eligible for a score of 7/10 or higher (e.g. Breaking Bad, The Wire, Cowboy Bebop,...Jersey Shore)? Obviously shows take up more time than movies so...


Im not truly sure as it would also depend on how you rate them (Per season? Per episode?). I go back and forth on just how and what, but for comedies the likes of Arrested Development, The Office, Seinfeld, The Simpsons and Family Guy are not totally implausible.

I hardly ever watch TV anymore but those stand out from when I used to as a teenager and/or later when I gave some a shot.

For dramas, The Sopranos and The Wire are possibilities. Maybe Mad Men. Ive heard great things about Breaking Bad but I have no idea.

Perhaps surprisingly, I was kinda riveted by the OJ Simpson 10-part series (with Cuba Gooding Jr, Travolta, etc) though Im not sure how it would hold up in terms of depth (such as on a revisit) so its possible it was just a passing craze of the time so to speak (perhaps helped by how compelling that trial was in real time as I hit my teens)
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homelessking





  • #120
  • Posted: 07/07/2021 05:50
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Remember the Angel's Egg anime that I suggested to you a year ago? Scruffy finally rated it 7.2, maybe that would give some motivation to go watch it now?
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