Top Five XI: Posts That Aren't About What They're About

1. Music Review: Challengers
2. Weekly Wikipedia Find: Slattery Report
3. Top Five IX: J.D. Salinger Characters
4. Inspired Moments, Terrible Movies: Captain America
5. The Titular

Top Five X: James Bond Films

1. From Russia With Love
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. Casino Royale (2006)
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Goldfinger

Unseen: Casino Royale (1967)

Top Five IX: J.D. Salinger Characters

1. Zooey Glass
2. Buddy Glass
3. Seymour Glass
4. Franny Glass
5. Theodore McArdle, from "Teddy"

Unread: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction; Uncollected Work

Top Five VIII: Dustin Hoffman Performances in Film

1. Straw Dogs (1971)
2. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
3. Marathon Man (1976)
4. The Graduate (1967)
5. Hook (1991)

Unseen: Mr. Magorium's Wonderful Emporium, Kramer vs. Kramer, a shitload of others

Top Five VII: Simpsons Characters

1. Poochie
2. Mr. Burns
3. Ralph Wiggum
4. Lionel Hutz
5. Sideshow Bob

Top Five VI: Fears

5. Global Warming
4. Economic recession
3. The decrease in rights, freedoms, and privacy in the name of security
2. The Wolfman
1. When I'm dead, that people will say "He was a kind man."

Top Five V: The Films of Steven Spielberg

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
2. Jaws (1975)
3. Empire of the Sun (1987)
4. Jurassic Park (1993)
5. Munich (2005)

Unseen: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Amistad (1997), Always (1989), The Color Purple (1985), 1941 (1979), The Sugarland Express (1974)

N/A: Shorts, TV Films (Unseen: Duel (1971)), Anthology Films

Honourable Mentions:

• Minority Report (2002)
• "D-Day Invasion," Saving Private Ryan (1998)*
• Schindler's List (1993)*

*If this was an Essential Spielberg list and not my personal top five, these "important" films about WWII would have a spot.

Update 25/05/08: I have since seen 1941 (1979). Having seen it, I can say that the entire film is shot with a sickly, gauzy softness that tries to purpose itself as cinematic shorthand for nostalgia.

Top Five IV: Dream Jobs

Top Five Dreams Jobs: 1. Astronaut. 2. Old West Drifter. 3. Gentleman Hobo. 4. 1980 David Bowie from the Music Video Ashes to Ashes. 5. "Writer."

Top Five III: The Films of Stanley Kubrick

Mr. Kubrick died 9 years ago today.

1. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
2. Barry Lyndon (1975)*
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
4. Paths of Glory (1957)
5. The Shining (1980)

Unseen: Killer's Kiss (1955), Fear and Desire (1953)

*The first 30 minutes or so of Barry Lyndon (i.e. until Redmond Barry first leaves for the European continent) remain the finest, more perfect thing ever committed to film. Why yes, Mr. Kubrick is perhaps my most favoured filmmaker. Biased much? Heavens no.

Top Five II: Similes of Homer

1.The aged Priam was the first of all whose eyes saw him
as he swept across the flat land in full shining, like that star
which comes on in the autumn and whose conspicuous brightness
far outshines the stars that are numbered in the night's darkening,
the star they give the name of Orion's Dog, which is brightest
among the stars, and yet is wrought as a sign of evil
and brings on the great fever for the unfortunate mortals.
Such was the flare of the bronze that girt his chest in his running.
--Iliad, Book XXII, li. 25-32

2. Holding this shield in front of him, and shaking two spears,
he went onward like some hill-kept lion, who for a long time
has gone lacking meat, and the proud heart is urgent upon him
to get inside of a close steading and go for the sheepflocks.
And even though he finds herdsman in that place, who are watching
about their sheepflocks, armed with spears and with dogs, even so
he has no thought of being driven from the steading without some attack made,
and either makes his spring and seizes a sheep, or else
himself is hit in the first attack by a spear from a swift hand
thrown.
--Iliad, Book XII, li. 298-307

3. As when a man who works as a blacksmith plunges a screaming
great axe blade or plane into cold water, treating it
for temper, since this is the way steel is made strong, even
so Cyclops' eye sizzled about the beam of the olive.
--Odyssey, Book IX, li. 391-394

4. Now the son of Telamon with the long spear stabbed him under
the ear, and wrenched the spear out again, and he dropped like an ash tree
which, on the crest of a mountain glittering far about, cut down
with the bronze axe scatters on the ground its delicate leafage;
--Iliad, Book XIII, li. 177-180

5. so the rafts's long timbers were scattered, but now Odysseus
sat astride one beam, like a man riding on horseback,
and stripped off the clothing which the divine Kalypso had given him,
and rapidly tied the veil of Ino around his chest, then
threw himself head first in the water, and with his arms spread
stroked as hard as he could.
--Odyssey, Book V, li. 370-375

N/A: Homeric Hymns (for obvious reasons)
Note: All translations Richmond Lattimore.

Top Five I: The Films of Tim Burton

1.     Beetle Juice (1988)
2.     Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)
3.     Edward Scissorhands (1990)
4.     Batman Returns (1992)
5.     Mars Attacks! (1996)

Unseen: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Ed Wood (1994)
N/A: Shorts (likewise an honourable mention should be given to Vincent (1982), although it's been awhile since I've seen it)