Also, for reference, here’s a definition of “original”:

Fresh, different, pioneering

I do not think it means what they think it means.

You won’t be surprised to learn that my tracking of this project involves a spreadsheet full of colours and formulae. There’s even a pie chart depicting the fractions of movies seen by me, Eileen, both of us, or neither of us.

Yes, I have managed to find a girlfriend who’s willing to collaboratively update a spreadsheet of movie-watching history with me. That feeling you’re experiencing is either intense jealousy, or intense pity.

Since I already have a digital copy of the movie list in a form amenable to machine-reading, I thought I’d grab some stats from the list.

Greatest directors

There are 294 directors in the list, if you count directing teams, like Joel and Ethan Coen, as single directors. The majority of these directors, 194 of them, have only a single movie on the list. The other 100 directors account for the remaining 306 movies between them, with 27 directors having at least four movies on the list. Here are those 27, in order from most to least:

I’m as big a fan of Steven Spielberg as anyone, and surely no-one would deny that Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Schindler’s List are deserving of their places on this list, but even I wouldn’t claim that a full eleven of Spielberg’s movies should be there. AI: Artificial Intelligence and the fourth Indiana Jones film are conspicuously out of place in that crowd.

Greatest decades

The modern bias in the selection of these movies is very obvious when you look at their distribution over time.

There are representatives of every decade of film since the 1920s, yet more than a fifth of the movies in the list are from this decade, before it’s even over. No recognition is given to the well established fact that Hollywood reached its peak in the mid-1980s.

However wrong I might think this list is—and I find it hard to imagine anyone ever getting it “right”—I’ve definitely found some real gems while watching the highest-rated movies. Most of the best one’s I’ve discovered, though, were not made in the 00s by Steven Spielberg.

It’s an interesting list, despite falling down in two crucial respects. First, I have seen one of the movies on the list (and I suspect you’ve seen at least one also, if you’re a movie fan); and second, I’m reasonably confident that these movies didn’t all come out in 2008, at least where I live.

The one film on the list that I did see is Choke, directed by Clark Gregg and based on the book by Chuck “Fight Club” Palahniuk. The article describes it thusly:

A devious and fun exercise in adapting the dark musings of the great Chuck Palahniuk, Choke explores the life of a sex addict trying to deal with a mother who is slipping away. With great performances from Sam Rockwell and Brad William Henke combined with twisted humor that can only come from the mind behind Fight Club, Choke is easily one of the most unique and authentically dark comedies of the year. If you dig deviance, this is one you shouldn’t let pass by.

I agree completely. Choke is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last few months. It wins on being both funny and dark, and on being quite unlike everything else showing right now.

Despite what most modern commentators would have you believe, there are actually some new movies being made right now that aren’t remakes, sequels, or copies of existing movies. Choke is one of them, and it looks fro the rest of that article that it’s not alone.

There are some films mentioned that I intended to see but haven’t got around to yet. There are others that I specifically decided not to see, and I may or may not change my mind on some of those. There are also quite a few that I never heard of at all, or at least forgot about quickly.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is already on my list to see, and I believe it’s due out here soon (I can’t find a date for it, but I’m pretty certain it hasn’t been and gone.) I’m also going to have to seek out Charlie Bartlett, given Robert Downey Jr.’s hit rate for the rest of the year. Speaking of Kirk Lazarus, there seem to be quite a few movies due out this year that are sure to benefit from his presence.

The extra good news, which I hadn’t noticed before, is that it will be out in time for my birthday.

Also, drink Coke Zero.

Still, the urge to see Platoon remained, so it got thrown on the DVD pile during one of my then-frequent purchasing sprees. And there it remained until today. I was looking through the available films on ScreenClick (our poor-man’s Netflix) compiling my wishlist, when I realised that I had an unwatched classic sitting on the shelf.

Not just one classic, actually. Today’s viewing was a toss-up between Platoon and Goodfellas—I know, I know, I suck at movies.

So that’s how my Sunday evening turned into a viewing of a bloody war movie filled with death, and guns, and War-is-Hell, and betrayal, and honor, and deceit, and that one guy with a massive scar, and McGinley—I swear to God this is true—saying the line, “Hey their Bob-o,” in exactly the same way he delivers it in Scrubs, and napalm, and the quiet religious guy who goes crazy.

Now I don’t want to give that whole spiel of an introduction and then finish with a one-line review. So I’ll do a two-line review instead. Here it is:

Well worth the wait.

Best. Death. Ever.