Matt is a librarian and loves British female-led post-punk groups of the early 1980s.
On 1/18/04 7:24 PM, “Matt Bailey” wrote:
I’m not submitting a list and would like to take this opportunity to announce my retirement from making lists of my favorite movies. In preparation for this feature, as I looked over the list I made just last year of my top twenty films, I realized that there were many films that I truly, honestly, and unabashedly love missing from the list, and in their place films that I might have put on the list simply because I felt they needed to be on the list. In attempting to rectify these injustices, I became even more conflicted. How could I quantify and compare the very different pleasures given to me by such diverse films as The Exorcist and Cleo from 5 to 7? Scorpio Rising and Twentieth Century? What possible rationale could I use to select one Luis Buñuel or Robert Bresson film over another? How would I reconcile my need to make a list that reflects the refined taste of someone who writes on film and has an advanced degree in the field with the fact that Don Knotts makes me laugh really, really hard and that I’ve seen Auntie Mame somewhere around 25 times? How do I finalize something that will remain static and public for some time to come when, in reality, it changes every day? How do I defend a list against criticism when I am perhaps the person most critical of it? The more I looked at my list, the more I realized that the answer to all of these questions is, “I can’t.” So, I’m throwing in the towel. I like what I like and I don’t feel a need to quantify and qualify it. I’m not saying that making lists isn’t fun or worthwhile. It’s just that I am no longer mentally prepared to tell Murnau or Antonioni that they didn’t make the cut this time around.
Matt
| Unfaithfully Yours | 14 Sep 2005 11:16 PM |
| Lenny | 14 Sep 2005 11:59 AM |
| They Died with Their Boots On | 11 Sep 2005 11:15 PM |
| The Holy Girl | 10 Sep 2005 10:17 PM |
| Three on a Match | 31 Aug 2005 11:20 PM |
| Clash by Night | 29 Aug 2005 11:06 PM |
| The Man and the Monster | 16 Oct 2009 3:00 AM |
| The Haunting | 02 Oct 2009 3:00 AM |
| Scaramouche | 29 Jun 2009 2:00 PM |
| Our Dancing Daughters | 18 Feb 2009 8:48 AM |
| Girl in Room 2A | 04 Oct 2008 12:03 AM |
| A Warning to the Curious | 08 Oct 2007 3:00 AM |
| 2000–2009: The Decade in Review | 10 Jan 2010 11:47 PM |
| 31 Days of Horror VI | 28 Sep 2009 11:48 PM |
| Favorites: The Action Movie | 22 Jun 2009 12:24 AM |
| The Silence After Sound: Hollywood’s Last Silent Movies | 08 Feb 2009 10:45 PM |
| 31 Days of Horror V | 29 Sep 2008 12:40 AM |
| 2007 in review | 30 Dec 2007 2:44 AM |
| A.I. | 20 Mar 2010 2:55 PM |
| Jaws 2 | 10 Mar 2010 2:13 AM |
| 2001: A Space Odyssey | 10 Mar 2010 2:06 AM |
| Taken | 04 Mar 2010 12:47 AM |
| 2010 | 05 Jan 2010 10:44 PM |
| The King of Kong | 25 Dec 2009 9:02 AM |
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