There was a Christmas party in Melbourne in mid-December, and a lot of film studies academics, writers and students were there. Somebody had the bright idea of circulating lists for nominations for the millennium’s “best” and “worst” films, directors, screen performers and film theory. Reading over these lists, it is pretty clear that some of the nominations at least are tongue-in-cheek. Initials and other identifying marks of the party guests have been eliminated – and it is possible that the lists have been tampered with in other ways as well. All in all, it is hard to say what these lists actually represent.
Best Director of the Millennium
Worst Director of the Millennium
Best Screen Performer of the Millennium
Worst Screen Performer of the Millennium
Best Film Theory of the Millennium
Worst Film Theory of the Millennium
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Alien 2
L’Armee Des Ombres
Asphalt Jungle
L’Avventura
La Belle Noiseuse
Black Narcissus
Boogie Nights
Conan, The Barbarian
Contempt/Le Mepris
Dead To The World
Diner
E.T. (and I don’t care what anyone says otherwise)
Fires Were Started
The General
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Gun Crazy (40s)
Heat
Husbands
Hypocrites
Illustrated Auschwitz
In A Lonely Place
India Song
Jeanne Dielman
Jules Et Jim
The Land (Robert Flaherty)
Man With A Movie Camera
Mary Poppins
Metropolis
The Mirror
Night of the Hunter
Ocassional Work Of A Female Slave (Kluge)
Out of Sight
Pandora’s Box
Point Blank
Rebecca
The Right Stuff
Sally Marshall Is [Not] An Alien
Saturday Night Fever
Shop Around The Corner
Showgirls
Spinal Tap
Stairway To Heaven
Starship Troopers
Stella Dallas (any version)
Sunless
Sunrise
Thin Red Line
Tokyo Story
Two Lane Blacktop
Undeground
The Wizard of Oz
World War Two
Zero De Conduite
(Each “+” indicate one more vote)
Acid House
Bad Boy Bubby
Bigger Than Tina
The Bodyguard
Body Of Evidence
Boogie Nights
Born On The Fourth Of July
Cape Fear (Scorsese)
Citizen Kane +
Dead To The World
The Haunting (remake)
Isabelle Eberhardt
Iycror And The Lunatics
Kundun
The Last Test (English)
Leaving Las Vegas
Lost Highway
Lost Horizon (remake)
Love Serenade
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Shaded Places
Showgirls
Spawn
Starship Troopers
Tomorrow Never Dies
True Lies
Twister
Underground +
Welcome To Woop Woop
BEST DIRECTOR OF THE MILLENNIUM
(Each “+” indicates one more vote)
Michelangelo Antonioni
Gillian Armstrong
Jack Arnold
Tex Avery +
Joel Coen
Bruce Connor
George Cukor
Brian De Palma
Marguerite Duras
David Fincher
Howard Hawks
Hitchcock imitators
John Hughes
Stanley Kubrick
Sergio Leone
David Lynch
Michael Mann
Jean-Pierre Melville
Russ Meyer
Andy Milligan
John Milius
Kenji Mizoguchi
F.W. Murnau – for City Girl
Mikio Naruse
Yasujiro Ozu +
Sean Penn
Michael Powell
Jean Renoir
Douglas Sirk
Alan Smithee
Agnes Varda
Josef von Sternberg
Jean Vigo
Wong Kar-Wai
Ed Wood Jr.
WORST DIRECTOR OF THE MILLENNIUM
(Each “+” indicates one more vote)
Woody Allen
Paul Anderson (Event Horizon, Soldier)
Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights)
Nick Broomfield
James Cameron
Noel Coward
Paul Cox ++
Norman Dawn
The person who did Twister ( – Jan de Bont – don’t you know anything about Bad Directors?)
Mike Figgis
Ross Gibson
Peter Greenaway
George Lucas
Chris Marker
Russ Meyer
Tracey Moffatt
Alan Parker
Ken Russell +
Joel Schumacher
Martin Scorsese
Tony Scott
Kevin Smith +
Quentin Tarantino
Frank Thring + (dirty bastard)
Paul Verhoeven
Whoever directed The Celebration – avoid it!
BEST SCREEN PERFORMER OF THE MILLENNIUM
(Each “+” indicates one more vote)
Animal (TV)
Drew Barrymore
Clara Bow
Charles Boyer
Louise Brooks
Steve Buscemi
The cat from The Long Goodbye
Marilyn Chambers
Annabel Chong
Peter Coyote
Bette Davis
Alain Delon +++
Sandy Dennis
Debbie Diamond
Clint Eastwood
Emilio Estevez (Repo Man)
John Fernside
Ridge Forrester
Lillian Gish
Cary Grant (as PK puts it, the prince from dream city)
Gustav Grungden
Charlton Heston (pre NRA)
Sam Jaffe
Buster Keaton +
Harvey Keitel’s penis
“Beat” Takeshi Kitano
Alexandra Kluge (for Occasional Work Of A Female Slave)
Burt Lancaster
Marfa Lapinka
Marlena (when she was possessed by the Devil in Days of Our Lives)
Dean Martin
Toshiro Mifune
Warren Oates
Michel Piccoli
Zana Que
Jean Reno
Jasmin St Clair
Susan Sarandon
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sam Shepard
Michel Simon in Boudu
Homer Simpson +
Sally Spectre (Bold + Beautiful)
Barbara Stanwyck (but for one film only ) (No! I don’t agree!)
James Stewart
Sharon Stone’s beaver
Nigel Terry (Excalibur)
Gene Tierney (Leave Her To Heaven)
Tribbles (from Star Trek)
John Turturro
Conrad Veidt
Christopher Walken
Lau Ching Wan
Peter Weller
Orson Welles
Peta Wilson (TV Nikita)
James Woods
Chow Yun-Fat
Kitty Yung
The guy who plays the head of the resistance in L’Armee Des Ombres
WORST SCREEN PERFORMER OF THE MILLENNIUM
(Each “+” indicates one more vote)
Woody Allen
Patrick Bergen (except his todger)
Nick Broomfield
Sandra Bullock +
McCauley Calkin
Jim Carrey
Kevin Coster
Tom Cruise
Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas’s buttocks
Marianne Faithful
Sally Fields
John Flaus
Richard Gere
Elliot Gould
Steven Guttenberg
Darryl Hannah
Charlton Heston (post NRA)
Alan Jones
Nicole Kidman
Spike Lee
Jennifer Jason Leigh
John Malkovich
Kylie Minogue
Demi Moore
Roger Moore
Gwenth Paltrow
Bill Paxton
Priscilla Presley
Keanu Reeves
Winona Ryder
William Shatner
Sylvester Stallone
Donald Sutherland
Keifer Sutherland (proving hereditary theory)
Quentin Tarantino
Dick Van Dyke as an auteur
Mark Wahlberg
Orson Welles
Robin Williams + (bring back Mork!)
BEST FILM THEORY OF THE MILLENNIUM
“One from the Heart” Serge Daney
Gilles Deleuze
Derrida – I know it isn’t film theory but it should be!
“Lulu and the meter man” Thomas Elsaesser
Jean Epstein
Manny Farber (article on Preston Sturges)
Formalism changed my life
“Nobody knows anything” including William Goldman
Linda Hutcheow: Irony’s Edge
Aldous Huxley
Pauline Kael‘s anti-auteurism – even though she doesn’t live down to it
Friedrich Kittler
Jean-Jacques Lecercle
Emmanuel Levinas
Miniaturization
Mulvey: “Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema”
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean Louis Schefer
Hardcore: Linda Williams
“Is there such a thing?”
WORST FILM THEORY OF THE MILLENNIUM
Auteur stuff
Bordwell, the bore
Noel Burch
Noel Carroll (Philosophy of Horror)
I’m prepared to admit that I don’t know enough film theory to comment but some early feminist stuff fills me with pity
Freud - Jokes and the Sub(UN)conscious
Marxism (“Du…!”)
Christian Metz
The Imaginary Signifier
“Visual Pleasure …” / Laura Mulvey
Vera Oika on Slasher movies
That silly “Suture” article by someone male and French – Jean-Pierre Oudart
Narrative theory
Psychoanalysis – but only applied to cinematic spectatorship
Kaja Silverman: Male Subjectivity at the Margins
Cinematic realism