P.S. on the Empire Magazine List
In which the news gets worse. Because the list gets longer.Turns out ol' Ingmar does make the roster after all, down at #36, and Charlie's right above him at #35. Let's not get carried away, though. These pipsqueaks ain't got nothing on Robert Zemeckis (#22), Tony Scott (#28), George Lucas (#31), or Ron Howard (#33), and they're both huffing and puffing to keep ahead of M. Night Shyamalan (#37). Non-Anglophone directors merit a whopping 5 out of 40 berths (Kurosawa, Leone, Truffaut, Lang, and Bergman). Jesus.
It has been pointed out to me that this list is a poll of Empire's readers, not an editorial edict, but I still blame the editors. Remember when people used to read a magazine to learn something, instead of using it as a wicked-queen mirror to reflect whatever it is we already think? Empire can now sell a bunch of copies with a list that's even more wack than I thought, when, at least presumably, they might have had an opportunity to teach their large audience something about film instead of assuring them that they have little or nothing left to learn. (How do I know that Kevin Smith is just bubbling under at #41?)
Anyway, as I suspected, the people at Cinemarati are generating much more interesting alternate ballots.
(Anybody think I got the Dwarf-o-Meter wrong today? Maybe it's 90% Grumpy and 10% Bashful after all.)
Labels: Soapbox
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 10:14 PM
7 Comments:
Ron...Ron Howard, the ENEMY? He beat Ingmar Bergman and Charlie Chaplin (and don't get me started on Tony Scott, "the guy who made that okay Denzel movie"). Ugh...this is preposterous!!!
I think that next I'd like to see a list of the top 10 novelists of all time:
1) Stephen King
2) J. K. Rowling
3) Ernest Hemingway
4) the guys who wrote the Left Behind books
5) Shakespeare
6) F. Scott Fitzgerald
7) Mitch Albom
8) David Sedaris
9) J. D. Salinger
10) Toni Morrison
with Michael Crichton, John Grisham, and Nicholas Sparks following right on up, tied at #11.
Does this look about right? :(
(Please note, just in case I'm not making my joke correctly, that I think Toni Morrison would almost certainly be on this list, if I were going to make it for real. Please also note that *I* know David Sedaris isn't a novelist.)
ditto about knowing that Shakespeare isn't a novelist, either; this genre confusion comes from years of teaching autobiography and then getting papers that refer to so-and-so's "novel."
Dr. S = Genius
Hahahahahahahahahaha
The only person you're leaving out is Dan Brown.
Damnit, I knew there was someone big I forgot. I checked the Amazon bestsellers' list and everything.
Dan Brown is tied with Dan Brown and Dan Brown for first. He's so awesome!!!1!11! He like writes so you can understand him, kay? He speaks to me.
(God I hate that effing guy. Although I did manage to wade through all of The Da Vinci Code and its 135 cliffhangers. I shore can't wait for the Ron Howard film to come out next summer, if only so I can throw my empty $8 Coke cup at the screen when the closing credits roll.)
@ Dr. S - No worries, cuz Mitch Albom was way funnier anyway.
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