UPDATE:
TL;DR: Daily Grindhouse is making a list of the top 100 genre films of all time (action, horror, martial arts, Westerns, etc.) and we need YOU to send us your personal favorite top ten genre movies! Quick requests:
1. Put them in order, #1-10. (It’s excruciating, but this is how we will determine the top 100.)
2. If you can, put movie titles in site format (all caps and bolded, i.e. KING KONG. If you forget, we’ll do it for you, no sweat!)
3. Feel free to write a couple sentences along with each choice explaining why you chose it. NOT necessary, but some people like to do it.
4. Please let us know your real name (not just your Twitter/“X”/whatever handle) and feel free to let us know what social media profiles you’d like us to publish.
That’s it! Have fun, happy choosing, and please email dailygrindhouseonline@gmail.com NO LATER THAN SEPTEMBER 1st AT NOON EST!!!
And now here’s the full original post, for those curious as to know this project came about:
Hey, remember this? Some of you might! Quick recap: At the end of last year, Sight & Sound Magazine set film culture on fire with its new list of the 100 greatest films of all time. With sincere respect, Daily Grindhouse decided to do our own list, asking friends and strangers to submit their top 10 films of all time so we could compile them into an alternate top 100. We just figured our crowd would have a very different, extremely funky top 100. Sounds like fun, right?
We did not end up running the feature in early 2023, as planned. A lot of less-than-fun things happened. This project was spearheaded by myself, as in Jon Abrams, DG editor-in-chief, and 2023 has not been a walk in the park. I have been in two separate car accidents, one on New Year’s Eve of 2022, the other this year, and I have been absolutely shellacked by grief, including the sudden loss of the man who was like a father to me. That’s not all, but you’ve already read enough about me and my problems, no doubt. (Another, even less-intriguing-to-the-masses fact is that compiling these lists is way more work than we ever expected. Again, respect to the people at Sight & Sound!)
Here’s the thing: I don’t like to leave a job unfinished. Beyond that, I still am really fascinated by the idea of what a top 100 list would look like when voted on by genre-film people, rather than AFI people or Best Picture people or even Sight & Sound people. Absolutely, yes, there’s overlap. The crowds intermingle, and that’s beautiful. Even on this site, we write about Academy Award winners and TCM Noir Alley type stuff as much as we do Pam Grier and Sonny Chiba. As I have always envisioned our work at Daily Grindhouse, we might go uptown to see documentaries at the Mayles Center or world film at Lincoln Center, or downtown to the Angelika to catch indies, or a festival at BAM, even though our home base is always gonna be 42nd Street and we are always gonna end up back in the gutter at the end of the night.
So let’s try this again. Let’s focus in on our love of genre cinema. Feel free to include any type of movie on your Top Ten. All we ask is that you go with your heart… or any other major organ.
Below is the original post calling for submissions, with all the information you need:
This past winter, Sight & Sound released its list of the top 100 Greatest films of all time, sparking many days’ worth of conversation, and counting. The list was compiled using top-ten ballots submitted by working filmmakers, established filmmakers, and “Film Twitter” luminaries. The ballots are as fascinating to consider as the list itself — who wouldn’t want to know what living legends like John Carpenter or Joe Dante or Walter Hill define as all-timer Greats? (Still a ton of dudes!) Of course, there’s really no way to make a definitive list about something so subjective as cinema, which runs as much on inspiring emotions as on mastery of technique, although I personally do subscribe to the belief that filmmaking craft is objective in many ways and there’s solid reason why a “canon” tends to form — SEVEN SAMURAI and VERTIGO and CITIZEN KANE will always pop up on (relatively) mainstream lists like these, although to me it’s cool as hell that there’s a new #1 this time out.
I, obviously, was not invited to vote. That’s okay! I spend way too much time advocating for the pleasures of junk, and maybe more frustratingly and hopelessly, advocating for the merits of films that may look like junk to many, but which I insist aren’t. But I couldn’t help but start to think about what I would have put on my own ballot, were the world to suddenly awaken to my genius, and I have to bet that some of you did too. My first thoughts went instantly to my all-time favorite movies, but as I thought harder (usually a bad idea), I started to stray back towards more “canon-friendly” choices. I started to wonder why I do that. I started to think that the most interesting lists are the ones we come up with the quickest, upon instinct. What are those movies that are on the tip of my tongue, and at the bottom of my heart?
I asked some of our Daily Grindhouse writers what they think. A few of them even responded! (I rudely posed the question on a Saturday night, when many decent people are out doing things other than sitting around and thinking.) I started to wonder, if we were to expand the field, what other people, those who didn’t get a chance to send in a ballot but those who have ballots at the ready, would be willing to share. I started thinking about you.
So here we are, asking you to send us your top-ten Greatest films of all time. Don’t worry what anybody else thinks or says. Let’s see those private picks! Daily Grindhouse has your back. Send your top 10 to dailygrindhouseonline@gmail.com. If we get enough replies, we will run the ballots. Feel free to write a few sentences explaining your love for each pick. We will run everything you send us, within reason. If we really get enough replies, we’ll compile them into an alternate Top 100. (Placement on the list will be determined by how often a film is mentioned and by how highly it’s ranked on each list, as S&S did.) We need to add one request: Please rank your top-tens, as difficult as that may be, because when we get ’em all in, we are going to use big math and bring you our own #1.
Deadline: Friday September 1st, 12pm NOON EST.
I read and respect Sight & Sound Magazine, keeping my copies stacked alongside those of Videoscope and Shock Cinema (Karen Allen on the latest cover!), so don’t take this the wrong way for a second. There’s no argument with the list, just an interest in what other people would have done with it, and a desire to give as many people as possible a voice, which has always been the reason Daily Grindhouse continues to exist.
Email us today! (Or tomorrow. Just make sure to hit that deadline.
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