Unsought Input

If you take a look at the CIA World Fact book, you’ll see that Turkey’s top exports include apparel, foodstuffs, textiles, metal manufactures, and transport equipment. What the United States government doesn’t know, or doesn’t want you to know, is that Turkey tops the world in a commodity not listed here: comedies.

In our ongoing quest to discover the greatest comedies of all time, I decided to take a look at what IMDB had to say. IMDB does have an official list of the top 50 comedies, but I wanted more. Many lists include 100 movies, so I went to the Advanced Search and searched for all movies in the genre “comedy”, with at least 1000 votes, excluding TV movies, TV shows, and direct-to-video releases.

The first thing I noticed is that IMDB’s search is broken, apparently “ignore TV series” really means “litter the results with lots of TV series.” The next thing I noticed is something even the CIA couldn’t discover: Turkish dominance of the top 3 comedies of all time.

At number 1, with a rating of 9.2, is Babam Ve Oglum (2005), also known as My Father and My Son. At number 2, with an 8.9 rating, is Tosun Pasa (1976), with Hababam sinifi (1975) just a notch below at 8.8. The Turkish dominance is finally interrupted by Dr. Strangelove (1964) at the number 4 spot.

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A few weeks ago JessB mentioned she had seen a list of the 100 greatest comedies (I think it was Bravo’s list) and that it was pretty lacking. The full list can be seen here, in Manroom Magazine, and no, I didn’t just make up Manroom Magazine, it actually exists.

At the time a few of us remarked that although constructing a definitive list would be difficult, we could come up with 100 that were, on average, much better than the Bravo list and even the fancy important AFI list.

So I am issuing two challenges:

1. To all Unsought Input writers: I am seeking your input to a list of the greatest comedies. Write a follow-up post with some of your picks.
2. To all UnsoughtInput readers: give us suggestions and critique our choices in the comments section.

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Recently I have felt that I have not been reading enough. I already feel that I have become very stupid since I graduated from college, but now I feel even dumber. My job is simple and under stimulating, so I really don’t have anything to keep me from becoming slightly less intelligent each day. Anyway, I just wanted a short introduction to why I am doing this, not a personal bio on myself which I am assuming you could care less about (I know I wouldn’t).

So….I have decided that I want to read the entire top 100 list for BOTH fantasy and sci-fi novels. I also think I would like to watch the top sci-fi movies. Now, mind you, I realize that this is quite a lofty goal seeing as how I have 200+ novels and some amount of movies ahead of me. And recently I have also come to realize that there aren’t a lot of authoritative lists of the top 100 novels in either category. I have found a few on the internet but I don’t know that I agree with the lists. I understand that these lists are all rated on someone’s opinion but I feel that it would be much better if we could come up with some way to create a rating system to make it a little more scientific.

Anyway, I am rambling. Basically through this blog I want to do three things: 1^st: I want to read and review the ‘supposedly’ top 100 novels in both lists (here is the link to my lists, if you wanted to follow along.

Top 100 sci-fi novels: http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html

Top sci-fi movies: http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_film.html

Top Fantasy novels: http://www.geocities.com/area51/cavern/6113/t100256.txt).

These are the best lists I could find, and actually my friend gave me the Sci-fi list. Anyway…

2^nd: I want to create a rating system to neatly rank the novels so the rankings are a little less opinionated and a little more scientific. It is science fiction. I am still playing around with the ranking topics but I think that basically it will fall into these categories:

-Overall readability (if you can’t get through it, it doesn’t matter how

good it is),

-Story quality (is it just cut and paste basic plot or is it creative and

different)

-Originality quality (have you heard this story before)

-Character believability (do you feel for the characters, sympathize

with them, love/hate them, feel part of the story because of them)

-Overall effect of novel (does it compel you to continue reading the series?

3^rd: I want other people’s opinions of my rating and possibly other people’s ranking of these novels so we can create an authoritative list. Also, if people have novels they want to add to the list (both of these lists aren’t exactly updated regularly anymore and don’t include newer books) that would be awesome.

Well, I think that’s it for my first post. It would be really cool if people wanted to participate. Please leave me comments!