What the Heck is this all about?

As the brief description at the top of the page suggests, the purpose of this blog is to document the adventure of a guy and a gal watching the 125 (actually 123, but more on that later) movies that make up the two AFI "100 Years… 100 movies" lists.  Why are we doing this?  For the same reason why people climb mountians -- becuase the lists were there. That, and the fact that it sounded like a good idea when we out drinking with our friends one night.  :) 

For those of you that do not know about these lists, a brief description is in order.

In 1997 and again in 2007, The American Film Institute created lists of the 100 greatest American movies (One could argue that movies such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man are more accurately described as British movies – they simply had Americans producing and / or acting in them – but that is a discussion for another post).  As one would probably guess, these two lists were obviously not the same.  Not only were the rankings different but each list contained 23 movies that were not on the other one.  So, to make things easier on ourselves, Beth and I decided to create one list.  We combined these two lists in the follow manner:

First, the twenty-three movies that did not appear on the 1997 list, but did appeared on the 2007 list, were given ranks of 101 - 123 based on their position in the 2007 list.  For example, The General (ranked 18th in 2007), did not appear on the 1997 list, but since it was the highest ranking "new" film on the 2007 list, we placed it on the 1997 list as if it held the 101st position; Intolerance (ranked 49th in 2007) was placed at 102nd; Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (ranked 50th in 2007) was placed at 103rd on the 1997 list, and so on.

Second, the 23 movies from the 1997 list that did not make the 2007 list were assigned ranking of 101-123, based upon were they ranked on the original 1997 list. So, Doctor Zhivago (ranked 39th in 1997) was assigned the 101st position on the 2007 list; The Birth of a Nation (ranked 44th in 1997) was assigned the 102nd position on the 2007 list; From Here to Eternity (ranked 52nd in 1997) was assigned the 103rd position in the 2007 list; and so on.

Third, the numerical rankings given the combined list of 123 movies was then averaged, to come up with a single value. I then re-ordered the list based on that new “combined” ranking.

Then we added the other two Lord of the Rings movies to the list (giving them the same value as The Fellowship of the Ring). In our opinion, more so than any other sequels we can think of, those three movies are much more one really long single movie than three separate ones – plus it made the list the 125 movies long, which feels more “complete” than 123. :)

Finally, I adjusted the list slightly for "continuity". For example, if you were watching the movies in ascending order (starting with # 125, obviously) -- which is what Beth and I are doing – watching Godfather II before The Godfather would be chronologically incorrect. So, despite the fact The Godfather ranked higher on the list than Godfather II, I moved The Godfather, Part II up about 20 spots to be ranked "ahead" of The Godfather, so that we would end up watching The Godfather first.

This little odyssey of ours started back in December, 2009, and as of today, Beth and I have watched movies #125 - #101 already, but fear not, we will be posting our views on those movies as well the movies #100 - #1 as we watch them from now on. We invite you to watch these movies along with us and comment on them as well.

There will likely be some additional “preliminary” posts to follow before we get into the actual movie discussions – but we will get to the movies soon enough. :)

John