Thursday, July 29, 2010

Drew McWeeny's List of Duh

Last night, I discovered that Drew McWeeny (@DrewAtHitFix) and William Goss (@williambgoss) have apparently been at this thing called The Basics for a few months now (explained in detail by Drew here, in which Goss goes through McWeeny's List of Duh (reprinted below, in chronological > alphabetical order) and watches the ones he hasn't seen.

Most of my paranoia about my work as a film critic being terrible comes from the usual lack of spread past films made during the years I've been alive, made in the country that I live in. Even if I've seen more films than most of the people I know, I'm still at the tip top of the iceberg when it comes to watching these things.

When I read the article yesterday, I thought it was new, which is why I'm starting now (shows how much attention I've been paying to things around me). There are 140 entries on the list. I haven't ever seen 52 of them, and there's probably only around that many films on the list I know well enough I could write about them without watching them again. In any case I figure I might as well review all of them. Who knows how long it will take. I don't think I'm planning to go in any specific order.

The General (1926)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)
Dracula (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
Freaks (1932)
The Mummy (1932)
Duck Soup (1933)
The Invisible Man (1933)
King Kong (1933)
Triumph of the Will (1935)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Dumbo (1941)
The Wolf Man (1941)
Bambi (1942)
Casablanca (1942)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Cinderella (1950)
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Peter Pan (1953)
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
Seven Samurai (1954)
Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Touch of Evil (1958)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Lolita (1962)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The Great Escape (1963)
The Nutty Professor (1963)
The Pink Panther (1963) films
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Mary Poppins (1964)
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
The Graduate (1967)
Point Blank (1967)
2001: a Space Odyssey (1968)
Easy Rider (1969)
The Planet of the Apes (1968) films
The Wild Bunch (1969)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Pink Flamingos (1972)
American Graffiti (1973)
The Exorcist (1973)
Mean Streets (1973)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Chinatown (1974)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Jaws (1975)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
All the President's Men (1976)
Carrie (1976)
Network (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Annie Hall (1977)
The Star Wars (1977) films
Suspiria (1977)
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke (1978)
Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Manhattan (1979)
Airplane! (1980)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
The Friday the 13th (1980) series
Raging Bull (1980)
The Shining (1980)
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
The Evil Dead (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and the Indy films
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
First Blood (1982)
Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan (1982)
John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)
Tron (1982)
Scarface (1983)
Ghostbusters (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Brazil (1985)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
The Fly (1986)
Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Hellraiser (1987)
The Lost Boys (1987)
Predator (1987)
Hairspray (1988)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
GoodFellas (1990)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Aladdin (1992)
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Unforgiven (1992)
Dazed and Confused (1993)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Clerks. (1994)
Ed Wood (1994)
Leon: The Professional (1994)
The Lion King (1994)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Friday (1995)
Heat (1995)
Se7en (1995)
Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999)
Fargo (1996)
Trainspotting (1996)
Boogie Nights (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Rushmore (1998)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
There's Something about Mary (1998)
Fight Club (1999)
The Lord of the Rings (2001) series
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) and 2 (2004)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Grizzly Man (2005)

Ready, set...