Considering that my reliance on making references to movies and songs to communicate meaningfully with other human beings makes me a shorter, less metallic version of the live-action Transformers version of Bumblebee, it’s no surprise that Flickchart is the most powerful timesink to exert its force over me since Peggle and/or Bejeweled. The site (which is still in beta) lets you rank movies by forcing you to choose between two films at a time. This creates a list of your personal rankings and contributes to the global rankings and it is so difficult. It is like Murtagh trying to figure out which wire he needs to cut, except that there are always more bombs to defuse.
The site is basically hypnotic, it just makes you keep clicking, clicking, clicking. And because of its random nature, you can get some uncomfortable results in your personal rankings. For instance, here is my Top 20:
1. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
2. Star Wars
3. The Dark Knight
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Wall-E
6. Love Actually
7. Army of Darkness
8. Shakespeare In Love
9. Psycho
10. Grosse Pointe Blank
11. Pulp Fiction
12. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
13. Chasing Amy
14. About A Boy
15. 12 Angry Men
16. Clerks
17. Office Space
18. Finding Nemo
19. The Goonies
20. Apocalypse Now
This list is at once shockingly accurate and horribly flawed. For instance, there’s no Casablanca, there’s no Empire Strikes Back, no Incredibles or Iron Giant. However, the 20 movies there are all certainly movies I love (though I might quibble with the individual numbering there). Except that Pirates of the Caribbean is still number one. I love the PotC films (all three of them, though At World’s End is pretty bloated), but it is not my most favoritest movie ever. The problem is, it was the first movie I ranked, and every time it’s shown up since then, it’s against a horrible film like Taxi.
If you’re using Flickchart, feel free to comment on how disastrously Solomonic some of the choices you get are (The Great Escape vs. Army of Darkness? Halloween vs. The Royal Tenenbaums?) or your own private rankings embarrassments. If you aren’t on Flickchart but don’t want the hassle of waiting for a beta invite, I have 5 of them, so let me know and I’ll send one your way.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, man, that sounds like something I could play with all day. (I wouldn’t mind an invite, though I can wait for the site to send one if necessary.)
I’m kind of afraid of what my list would look like.
the Joker….then Wall-E. ROCKS….LIKE A BOSS
Oh my god, that sounds so fun. And I have two extra days off this week and a pirated internet connection … if I got an invite, I might never leave the house…..
I will admit, I’ve had harder times with deciding which movies I hate worse, but Commando vs. Raiders of the Lost Ark was harder than deciding what to name either of my children.
One great thing about Flickcart is that it makes me recognize how much I love certain movies. About A Boy is a movie that I always thought I “liked” a lot, but now, I see that I fucking love it.
I’ve already written about my initial thoughts on Flickchart over at my own site (http://www.filmbuffonline.com/FBOLNewsreel/wordpress/?p=4497), but after more than 300 rankings, Army of Darkness is STILL at the number 1 position, simply by virtue of being the first film I voted for.
Also, I’m still not seeing much of an influx of foreign and classic titles. For classics it comes down to a small handful – Casablanca, Some Like It Hot, North By Northwest, The Wizard of Oz and Citizen Kane.)
Beyond the initial burst of curiosity as to how your list will shape up, I can’t see spending more than two or three hours of my life on it.
I’ve discovered that you can filter the results, so if you want to change the order of something in the top 20, you can focus only on your top 20 films, or only on certain genres, etc.
BTW, I’ve got 2 invites left.
I am intrigued by your top 20. There’s a good mix of quality films and celluloid indulgence up there.
If you still have one of the beta invites, I’d love one.