I'm all for letting people express their preferences, but looking at the top 10: Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley...
I'm all for letting people express their preferences, but looking at the top 10:
Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)
Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, 1980)
Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1926)
Are critics deliberately obtuse to assert their expertise or authority? Is there anyone who seriously thinks it's a better comedy than, say, Life of Brian or Airplane?
Having said that I couldn't even pick 100 comedies, let alone my favourite.
Having a look at that list, I see that 'Some Like It Hot' got included on more individual Top 10 lists than any other movie. Doing a quick "Ctrl-F" for the various titles on that page produced the...
Having a look at that list, I see that 'Some Like It Hot' got included on more individual Top 10 lists than any other movie. Doing a quick "Ctrl-F" for the various titles on that page produced the following results:
Some Like it Hot = 100
Dr Strangelove = 76
Annie Hall = 62
Groundhog Day = 56
Duck Soup = 49
Life of Brian = 48
Airplane! = 51
Playtime = 43
This is Spinal Tap = 44
The General = 36
More people like 'Some Like It Hot' than all other options.
This article linked from that list singles out 'Airplane!' as an example of a comedy that doesn't fly in all languages or cultures (pun intended): It also says that American critics had a...
This article linked from that list singles out 'Airplane!' as an example of a comedy that doesn't fly in all languages or cultures (pun intended):
Airplane! is a film that appears to be largely lost in translation. How do you make a joke like the classic “Surely, you can’t be serious?”/”I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley” land with the same effect in any language other than English? Maybe that’s why Airplane! was ranked third among US and Canadian critics, while it moved down to number seven in the overall tally. The language barrier hypothesis is challenged, though, by just the sheer number of Latin American critics who voted for it – perhaps just the geographic proximity of Latin America to Hollywood and US culture in general means that the language gap is not an issue. Either way, critics in the Americas as a whole were almost four times as likely to vote for Airplane! as critics anywhere else.
It also says that American critics had a different choice:
The bottom line is that those 86 critics [from the US and Canada] voted for an entirely different number one – if they had been voting alone, Dr Strangelove would be the top film on the list.
So, it's worth keeping in mind that the final Top 100 was a global survey, not just limited to the U.S. or England.
I suppose my personal preference means nothing, but I always enjoyed "Signs" as the greatest unintentional comedy of all time. *Don't open my pantry, Father. I found one of them in there and I...
I suppose my personal preference means nothing, but I always enjoyed "Signs" as the greatest unintentional comedy of all time. *Don't open my pantry, Father. I found one of them in there and I locked him in. *
I'm all for letting people express their preferences, but looking at the top 10:
Are critics deliberately obtuse to assert their expertise or authority? Is there anyone who seriously thinks it's a better comedy than, say, Life of Brian or Airplane?
Having said that I couldn't even pick 100 comedies, let alone my favourite.
Having a look at that list, I see that 'Some Like It Hot' got included on more individual Top 10 lists than any other movie. Doing a quick "Ctrl-F" for the various titles on that page produced the following results:
More people like 'Some Like It Hot' than all other options.
This article linked from that list singles out 'Airplane!' as an example of a comedy that doesn't fly in all languages or cultures (pun intended):
It also says that American critics had a different choice:
So, it's worth keeping in mind that the final Top 100 was a global survey, not just limited to the U.S. or England.
I suppose my personal preference means nothing, but I always enjoyed "Signs" as the greatest unintentional comedy of all time. *Don't open my pantry, Father. I found one of them in there and I locked him in. *