I would second Robert on this one.
On one level the relationship between list-making and serious writing is like
that of candy bars to real food -- not much nutritional value but as my mother
always says, once in a while won't kill you. (And she is an excellent cook.)
I would add this; studied longitudinally, lists are very useful for judging the
process of canon-making and, regardless of how one feels about the canon(s),
it's useful to see how they evolve.
Just don't do it as a substitute for dinner, as Mom always told me.
George (His mother's son) Robinson
Robert Koehler wrote:
> Richard asked: Why this worldwide obsession with lists? Are we supposed to
> be engaging in considered responses to cinema and the issues it raises or
> are we compiling ephemera?
>
> One, lists are fun. Flat-out fun. Two, lists trigger further, deeper
> discussions better than any other tool I know of. Three, you can't fight
> 'em: They're here to stay, like the weather. Four: They provide an entryway
> into considering an entire year, or an entire body of work, or a country, or
> a genre, or a form, or a decade, or a century. Five: They're a snapshot, but
> not the whole picture, and I think that nobody who plays in the list sandbox
> thinks otherwise. Six: They're telling. Sight and Sound's recent listings
> re-confirmed that critics are, on whole, far more adventurous in their
> tastes than filmmakers, whose selections were generally far more
> conservative and canonical than critics. (Exceptions included Haneke and
> Scorsese, whose own best-of-'90s list on Roger Ebert's show at the end of
> that decade put Ebert to shame for its originality and freshness. Scorsese,
> if I recall, named at least one film by Hou, who I venture to guess Ebert
> hadn't even seen at that point, as well as ``Eyes Wide Shut.'')
> Robert Koehler
--
Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense,
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
who are cold and are not clothed. The world in
arms is not spending money alone. It is spending
the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children.
--Dwight David Eisenhower
President of the United States
General of the Army
April 16, 1953
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