17 December, 2005

Top 250, II

In February 2004, I participated in the 'top 250 films' meme, which involved copying the list of the IMDb's top 250 films (as voted by users) and highlighting those one has actually seen.  Almost two years later, I might as well repeat the exercise.  Rather than reuse the same list from 22 months ago, the following is based on today's:

The list

In Feb. '04, I'd seen 102 of the 250. Now it's 109, but to restate: I used the Feb. '04 list then, and the Dec. '05 list now. Different films have entered the list, at the expense of others. Using the 2004 list, I've seen 17 more of those films than I had then, but ten that I had seen are no longer in the top 250. There seems to have been greater volatility in the lower rankings, as one would expect, so I've actually seen no more in the range 101-250 than in 2004. That obviously means I've seen seven more top-100 films (59 of them).

I've added several of the omissions to my Amazon Rental queue, but a surprising number of highly-rated films are unavailable i.e. not included in the rental scheme. Maybe that's deliberate, and Amazon wish to force people to buy the big-name classics.

However, other gaps in my viewing are likely to remain. For example, 'Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King' is at no.4, but I have no interest in seeing it, and films like 'It's a Wonderful Life', 'Singin' In The Rain' or 'Some Like It Hot' really aren't my thing.

[Update: the exercise was repeated again in 2006.]