Motion Picture Meme - 15 in 15

[altivo]

I'm not a paid account, so I can't post polls here. If you're interested in today's poll about silent films of the 1920s, feel free to pop over to my LiveJournal entry to see or answer it.

Instead, here I'll put a meme I picked up from my friend Charlie on Facebook.

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen movies you've seen that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no... more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what movies my friends choose...

(Tagging is optional, as far as I'm concerned, but I'd like to see what you pick. If you post the list to your own journal or another place, please leave a link to it in a comment.)

I couldn't come up with 15 films myself in less than 15 minutes. I'm far from a motion picture junkie or even a fan. I see perhaps three films a year in the theatre, if that. I did come up with a list after thinking about it for a day, and I'll post that in a comment so as not to influence you. No peeking now!

Comments

My answer to Charlie

[altivo]

Well, it was a squeeze to get to 15, because I'm just not a film sort of person. (I'd have trouble limiting a list to 15 books, on the other hoof.) In no particular order:

Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron
Balto: Wolf Quest (aka Balto 2)
Brother Sun, Sister Moon
Watership Down
The Virgin and the Gypsy
El Cid
Last of the Mohicans (Daniel Day Lewis version)
How the West was Won (Cinerama)
Oliver and Company
Brother Bear (and the sequel)
Fantasia (the original version)
Treasure Planet
Barbarella (so campy it rates)
Yellow Submarine
Jeremiah Johnson (yes, Robert Redford)

Sometimes the musical score is the crucial thing that sticks with me. Historical scenery and costuming may do it, too. Dialog rarely matters, but artwork in animated features is critical. You'll notice that 8 of these are animated features. Yes, I'm a fan of that genre, but NOT animé.

And though silent films are very important to me as art, none of them got onto this list. I think that happened mostly because I think of them as something quite different from "motion pictures" in today's sense of the word.

Re: My answer to Charlie

[frith]

Spirit! Yes! Great artwork, horrid narration (Matt Damon) and so-so Bryan Adams. We had a nice Spirit fan-forum going for a couple of years but it fizzled and died (no new Spirit material from Dreamworks to fuel the fire).

Re: My answer to Charlie

[altivo]

Yeah, the instrumental score to Spirit was really great, and so was the artwork. Bryan Adams I could mostly do without, though "Get Off of My Back" is just so appropriate to the action on screen that you could never cut that one. I liked the way they didn't have the horses actually talk, but used real horse sounds instead.

[rebelsheart]

The Hunt for Red October
Ladyhawke
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Kaena: The Prophecy


Those are four that will stick with me. I remember seeing the other two Lord of the Rings movies, the Star Wars prequel trilogy (Best line: So this is how democracy dies... with thunderous applause.), Star Trek VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X, but those first four stick with me.

I distinctly remember Disney's version of Beauty and the Beast, mostly thinking how beautiful it was.

[frith]

I distinctly remember Disney's Rescuers Down Under and how I was struck by the artful marriage of slick 80's computer-generated backgrounds and action animation with 60's era bare-boned color palettes and raw xerox inking. Post-modern Disney!

[altivo]

We really like both the Rescuers films, for both the clever characterizations and the scenery. Some of the Australia backgrounds are spectacular.

[altivo]

Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a horrid disruption of the actual fairy tale, but the musical numbers are indeed good. Besides, I just love Beauty's horse, Philippe.

I agree that the first Lord of the Rings film was the best. After that it was all downhill. I've seen Ladyhawke twice, and fell asleep partway through it both times. About all I remember is that big Friesian stallion (which is why I bothered to try the second time.) ;p

[frith]

Skimming through a list I made in 2004 or 2005 (AKA cheating):

Bambi
The Secret of NIMH
Land Before Time
Aliens
Jumanjii
Midnight Run
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Groundhog day
The Matrix
Starman
Terminator II
Princess Mononoke
Fight Club
Gladiator
Koyaanisqatsi

[altivo]

I can say I've been entertained by some of those at least. Bambi is certainly a classic not to be forgotten, and I've seen that one many times. The most notable memory I have of it, though, is from the first time. I was probably about four or five years old, but I understood exactly what had happened when Bambi's mother was killed. I started bawling so loud that my dad had to take me out of the theatre and sit in the car with me. He was a great Disney fan himself, and knew that particular film by heart, but I've always felt a twinge of guilt about disrupting his enjoyment of it that way.

[frith]

Bambi is my all-time favorite film and I didn't see it until the 1988 re-release when I was well over 20. Since getting online I've accumulated a nice Bambi collection (mostly figurines) including a first and a second edition print of Felix Salten's book, translated into English and published by Simon and Schuster. The best theatrical showing that I attended was at a local university in 1989. By then I'd probably seen Bambi 10 times and I could let myself be distracted. It was a treat to hear other adults enjoying the film too.

What I remember feeling guilty disrupting at about age 7 was crabbing. Someone was showing me how to catch blue crabs in a creek, and the sight of a blue crab desperately clinging to a piece of chicken meat while getting slowly reeled in made me burst out laughing. The crab got away.

[altivo]

Crabs are tasty but I prefer not to see what they looked like before they were crab cakes or chowder. My stepmother took me to a place in Florida once where they had a specialty of softshell crab sandwiches and served beer in Mason jars. I was careful not to look too closely at the sandwich, though. Afterwards we went out back where they raised or at least kept hundreds of crabs in long troughs just waiting to be eaten. They were ugly as sin but I still felt bad for them.