December 2, 2008
Film Personality Test
Saw this at ToB yesterday before I hopped a plane:
It’s not strange to disagree about movies that are wildly different, and there are surely a few random movies that are very polarizing. What I find most interesting is which movie people consider the best movie from a particular director, as it is usually very telling and polarizing in a different way, so to this point I will propose a new personality test where you reblog your favorite movie from each of these directors:
1. Joel Coen: No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy, Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, etc
2. Wes Anderson: The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tennenbaums, Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, etc
3. Hal Ashby: Being There, Shampoo, Harold and Maude, etc
4. Kevin Smith: Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Dogma, Chasing Amy, Mallrats, Clerks, etc
5. Quentin Tarantino: Grindhouse, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, etc
And, today, I found Jason beat me to the punch, including Kubrick and and Anderson:
6. Stanley Kubrick: 2001, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Strangelove, Lolita, etc.
7. P.T. Anderson: Boogie Nights, Hard Eight, There Will Be Blood, Punch-Drunk Love, Magnolia.
8. Errol Morris: The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Mr. Death, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Gates of Heaven, etc.
My list is as follows:
1. The Big Lebowski
2. Rushmore (I stand firm on this one, no qualifiers)
3. Being There
4. Mallrats
5. Reservoir Dogs (The only Tarantino film I really like.)
6. 2001 (I have only seen about half his films and that half includes Clockwork Orange)
7. Magnolia
8. I have never seen an Errol Morris film
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22 Responses to “Film Personality Test”
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Oh, I need to play this game just as soon as I have two instants.
“I have never seen an Errol Morris film”. Dude. Please rectify immediately.
Where should I start?
You can’t go wrong with The Thin Blue Line or The Fog of War.
Got them cued up in netflix. Also, Jonathan McNicol made a great point:
“How does neither @jkottke NOR Ben Tesch include Spielberg (Jaws, duh) and Hitchcock (Rear Window, duh²) on those lists?”
Well, then, I mean, you left out Tarkovsky too.
So I’ll just play the Tarkovsky game, and say that Solaris is my favourite.
1. Miller’s Crossing
2. The Royal Tennenbaums
3. Being There
4. Dogma
5. Jackie Brown
6. Barry Lyndon
7. Magnolia
8. Vernon, Florida
1. Best – Fargo
Favorite – Big Lebowski
2. Best – Rushmore
Favorite – Bottle Rocket
3. Being There
4. Clerks, but I’m not a big Kevin Smith fan.
5. Pulp Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Pulp Fiction
6. Dr. Strangelove
7. There Will Be Blood
8. Best – The Fog of War
Favorite – Vernon, Florida
1. the man who wasn’t there
2. trt
3.being there
4.poop
5.pulp fiction
6. barry lyndon
7. twbb
8.vernon, florida
1. Barton Fink
3. Being There
5. Jackie Brown
6. Dr. Strangelove
7. Boogie NIghts
8. The Thin Blue Line
The Hitchcock Game: Vertigo
The Tarkovsky Game: Nostalghia
1. No Country for Old Men.
2. I. Hate. Wes. Anderson.
3. I haven’t seen enough to answer this intelligently.
4. Chasing Amy (though I struggled not to vote as Deron did, just to use the word ‘poop’—oh, whoops, I did anyway!).
5. Pulp Fiction. No, Reservoir Dogs. No, Pulp Fiction. Dammit. Pulp Fiction it is.
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey.
7. Magnolia.
8. I haven’t seen enough to answer this intelligently, either.
9. Jaws.
10. Rear Window.
And if the point wasn’t to include big, mammoth directors in the Spielberg/Hitchcock vein (and how did Kubrick get in there, then?), then I would say that Soderbergh would have to be included. In which case I would pick Out of Sight.
And either way, Soderbergh should’ve been included instead of Wes Anderson (who sucks my nuts, by the way), so there.
Since John Gruber just pointed out that we’re all idiots for not having included Scorsese in this (and, don’t worry, I know I’m gonna get killed for picking this one):
12. The Color of Money
Not to worry about getting killed for a pick: who would bother after hearing that Wes Anderson “sucks [your] nuts.”
What makes this work (or not work), I believe, is some degree of common ground with respect to a directorial pantheon. On that basis, you may generate some interesting, worthwhile conversation. Otherwise . . . fuel for silly arguments.
1. Fargo
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Reservoir Dogs
4. Clerks
5. Death Proof, I think. Although it was always Reservoir Dogs before.
6. Barry Lyndon (sorry, I’m not a snob, I swear)
7. Boogie Nights
8. Mr. Death
9. Goonies
10. Suspicion
11. He’s produced better movies than he’s directed.
12. The Last Temptation of Christ
To change the sausage fest ness?
Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity
To prove I’m a snob?
Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville
To prove I’m not a snob?
John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club
I could do this all day.
But I don’t know what any of this says about me. I am having paranoid visions of you all clucking and shaking your head now. Or yelling. Or shrinking away in fear and disgust. Can we get some pithy paragraphs about our personalities?
Great. now I’m ashamed that my #9 isn’t a Spielberg directed film. My error. I’ll go with Duel. Does that make me a snob?
Like Mary, I was hoping for pithy paragraphs. Fortune cookie wisdom. Bazooka Joe koans. Sydney Omarr psychoanalysis.
I don’t care that I’m late, I’m playing.
1. The Big Lebowski
2. Rushmore
3. Coming Home (I can’t believe that no-one has said that)
4. Mallrats
5. Jackie Brown
6. Paths of Glory
7. I dunno, maybe Punch-Drunk Love. PTA is a bit overrated IMHO.
8. Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Of the others:
9. Jaws
10. Strangers on a Train
11. Andrei Rublev
12. The King of Comedy
13. Out of Sight
I am going to chuck in some of my favourite directors too:
Krzysztof Kieślowski: Dekalog
Mike Leigh: Secrets and Lies
Werner Herzog: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Hal Hartley: Amateur
In highschool I only wrote papers about Mae West and the Shakers, and in college I only wrote papers about Kieslowski and Flannery O’Connor.
Amanda Mae: I must tell you about “Shaker Village Studies”. I must, and I shall. Soon. Not shortly, but soon.
I’ll bet Shaker dogs spin.