The Top 5 Project is Baaaaaack!!!!!!

Hello there true believers (a little Stan Lee moment for ya). After a long time away from Blogsville, it apperas as if I am back. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, The Top 5 Project - that little parlor game that took the Summer of '05 by veritable storm - is also back, with all new topics such as Top 5 First Films and last week's Top 5 Road Movies.

Many noted film critics and scholars have been participating and you can too be going over to The Cinematheque and naming your Top 5 Films set in New York (the current week's topic).

What the Top 5 Project essentially is, is a way to see what others are thinking about cinema - at least from a purely list-making perspective (although there is some commentary to go with). What I am proposing over here in Blogsville is more of a dialogue on the subjects being breached over at The Top 5 Project. A place for cinephiles and the like to exchange ideas, views, theories and perhaps even smack talk about the various Top 5 topics.

In starting us off, since this last week was The Top 5 Road Movies, let us look at a recent comment I recieved via e-mail about the final results (of which you can see here). So it goes.

Comments on the previous list - top 5 road movies: The nominees/results don't have well-defined boundaries. "Road movies" was mixed with "allegory movies". Examples of the latter: "Men With Guns", "The Searchers", "Apocalypse Now", "Lost Highway" (cat.: acid-trip/mind-f^%k/neo noir), "Grapes of Wrath" (this prompted me to write these comments).

Perhaps a "road movie" could be defined as a film that contains at least 50% running time depicting or implying movement towards an unintended physical location.

The previous comments were from Khoo Guan Soon, an Adjunct Faculty Member in Communications at Susquehanna University in PA, and a semi-regular contributor to The Top 5 Project (as well as a participant in the somewhat related Top 10 Project - check that out too).

So there you go, the possible beginnings of a cinematically-obsessed dialogue here in Blogsville. Send in your own thoughts and comments - either in the comments section of the blog or via e-mail at kevynknox@thecinematheque.com.