Last Post: 12:17:12pm, 08/05/2021
A lot of really interesting conversation going on here, and I do plan to weigh in more thoroughly later today. This just happens to be the single busiest week of the last 2 years of my life, and I'm working around a tech week schedule for a show that opens tomorrow.
I will say this much right away, though: I have a long-standing distaste for John Ford movies, and that does not only extend to his Westerns. (Though even I'll admit The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is pretty good, but alas, that one is being saved for the next list.) There are many of his contemporaries (Huston, Wilder, and Wyler come to mind) whom I greatly prefer. I can only speak for myself, but I definitely have a healthy respect and love of many classics from the '30s-'50s that is not generally shared by my fellow longtime Gauntleteers... and that's okay! Part of the beauty of these projects is the spanersity of opinion, and if I've also sometimes found myself frustrated by some (though obviously not all) of the super low-ranking results for certain older movies, it's ultimately fine because not every classic ages well, and not every movie is for everyone. Not everybody is able or willing to place a film in the context of its time while watching it, either, and that has to be fine, too.
Anyway, I've got to get going to rehearsal, but I just felt compelled to say that much. Like I said, I'll weigh in on some more specific subjects of conversation later, but I do think there's some gatekeeping and smugness going on in the peanut gallery that's uncalled-for (even if I do personally think that Shane placement is brutal and largely undeserved).