Top Ten Lists – Page 3 – GringoPotpourri

Another Ten Great Stephen King Books (#21-30)

The sheer number of page views for my Top Ten Stephen King Books and my Ten More Great Stephen King Books blog posts from January, 2015 and April, 2015, respectively, surely say more about my readership’s love for King’s writing than for my own.

I recently breezed through Mr. King’s most recent novel, “Finders Keepers,” as well as his latest short story collection, “The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.” Good reads both. I am currently reading, for the third time, King’s third novel, “The Shining,” and will likely follow that up with its stellar 2013 sequel, “Doctor Sleep.” In other words: I simply can’t get enough of SK’s writing.

I thought I would continue my literary ranking of his body of work with the next ten best Stephen King books. To whit:

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Top Ten Sports Movies

I believe that a man can be either a sports geek or a movie geek, but not both. This sentiment is sort of like that deleted scene from “Pulp Fiction,” in which Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) interviews Vincent Vega (John Travolta) before their big date, and asks him if he is an Elvis fan or a Beatles fan. “Elvis fans can love the Beatles, and Beatles fans can love Elvis, but no one loves them both equally,” she says. I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment (and I’m a Beatles fan, for the record), and I believe that the sentiment applies to sports/movie geek-dom as well.

You can put me firmly in the latter category. I like sports…but I love movies. I don’t follow NFL football or NCAA basketball, but I’ll happily see a movie on the subject. I have never attended a boxing match, but I always enjoy watching a good mano-a-mano, pugilist drama on the big screen. It does seem to me that boxing and baseball movies strive for greater realism than other sports films, and you won’t be surprised to find three of each on the list below.

With the advance disclaimer that I have never seen “The Bad News Bears” (gasp!), I present my ranking of the top ten sports movies:

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Top Ten Screen Biopics

I recently watched the film “Mr. Turner,” a biopic from director Mike Leigh about the last 25 years in the life of British seascape painter HMW Turner. Although I love art, I must confess that I wasn’t too familiar with Turner’s work, as the majority of his collection is housed inside the Tate Britain, a museum that I have yet to visit. The movie suggested that Mr. Turner (played by Timothy Spall) was always composing art in his mind, and that he failed at most other aspects of life, including relationships, until he finally settled down with a widowed innkeeper late in life. The “script” for the film was conceived by Leigh yet was comprised largely of dialogue improvised by the cast during rehearsals prior to shooting. The result is a long movie of vignettes, some of them funny, linked by some of the most painterly cinematography I’ve seen in a film in a long time.

Naturally, I started thinking. What are the best screen biographies to come out of Hollywood, or out of cinema in general? The aforementioned, at times aimless “Mr. Turner” wouldn’t quite make the cut, but the “artist” category no doubt produced at least one-half dozen contenders in a single sub-genre. Ditto for the categories of actor/actress, singer/musician, athlete, politician/war hero, physically/mentally challenged, etc.

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Top Ten Films of 2015

Although there are good movies every year, it seems that we have a banner year for cinema roughly once every two or three years. 2014 was one of those years, with “Birdman,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Whiplash,” and “The Imitation Game” being just a few of the year’s stellar releases. 2012 was another; “Lincoln,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Amour,” “Skyfall,” “Django Unchained,” “The Avengers, “Wreck-It Ralph” and one of my personal all-time favorites, “Cloud Atlas,” were among that year’s better releases.

2015 cinema, as a whole, wasn’t nearly as memorable. We had another Bond movie, another Tarantino film, and the first true sequel to “The Avengers”…yet none of these films were quite on par with their predecessors. Sure, a small film called “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens” continues to slay box office records like Kylo Ren’s lightsaber as it plunges through _____’s stomach, but I wasn’t as taken by its unoriginal story as some fans were.

Still, I’ve been on a major movie-watching kick of late. I have finally seen most of the 2015 releases that interest me, and I’m fairly certain that I’ve caught up on the majority of Oscar contenders. (I will find out for certain once the nominees are announced next week.) There certainly are enough good films to compile a top ten list, something I am wont to do. Here goes…without spoilers!

GringoPotpourri’s Top Ten Films of 2015:

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Ten More Holiday Songs (11-20)

It is Christmas Eve. The wine has been uncorked to breathe, the oven is preheating, and Molly the Dog is sleeping by my side as I proof-read this entry, my last post for 2015.

The weather is humid and uncharacteristically warm, so I don’t foresee any snow falling between tonight and tomorrow morning. Either despite that or because of that, I have been in a real “sounds of the seasons” mood. Yesterday, I got home from work and gave a listen to each of the songs in last year’s blog post, The Top Ten Holiday Songs. I might jostle a few of those rankings around, but I still find it to be a good, diverse list. And of course, with so many seasonal songs to choose from, I couldn’t stop at just ten.

Ten More Holiday Songs (with YouTube links):

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Top Ten Bond Theme Songs

As a movie buff, travel-holic, and music lover, the James Bond films hold a special place in my heart. They feature scenery-chewing villains, exotic locales, and memorable opening credit sequences (not to mention cool cars, hair-raising action scenes, and gorgeous female co-stars).

“Spectre,” the 24^th Bond film not counting the one-hour TV movie “Casino Royale” from 1954 nor the 1983 “Sean Connery returns” vehicle “Never Say Never Again,” opened last week. I was fortunate to catch it during its Thursday, 11/5 sneak preview. While not the best in the franchise, it is a solid follow-up to 2012’s “Skyfall” and, if the rumors are true, a nice swan song for Daniel Craig’s James Bond. The song that plays over the opening credits, “The Writing’s on the Wall” by Britain’s Sam Smith, is worthy of inclusion among the pantheon of great Bond songs. I don’t know if Smith’s falsetto was the right touch for what is supposed to be a somber tune, but you can decide for yourself here.

Smith’s song, like so many others, opens with a full orchestra. Oscar-winning film composer John Barry scored most 1960’s – 80’s Bond films and wrote many of the title tracks as well. The strings and horns are commonplace in many (though not all) 007 songs, and Smith pays heed to the tradition. But there are better Bond songs out there. Below, with YouTube links to the opening title sequences from each film, are my picks for the Top Ten Bond Theme Songs:

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Top Ten Spooky Places around the World

Do you like haunted houses? Graveyards? Abandoned buildings? Have you ever hiked through a desolate canyon, the only sound being your boots crunching fallen leaves? Would you spend the night on the 13^th floor of a hotel? If so, this post is for you.

Think of this top ten list as a work in progress. I hope to have ten more spooky places to write about by next Halloween. Until then, here are my Top Ten Spooky Places:

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Ten More Horror Movies (11-20)

Another spring and summer have come and gone and autumn is already upon us. My second-favorite holiday, Halloween, is just three weeks away. Although AMC Network isn’t repeating last October’s 31 days of horror movies, other cable networks are doing their part – SyFy, TBS, even ABC Family! This, of course, pleases me (as it does for many other night owls too, I suspect). Over the last several days I’ve watched “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “John Carpenter’s The Thing,” and “April Fool’s Day,” to name just a few.

Last fall I published the ranking of my top ten horror movies. That list ran the gamut from vampire art house flick to slasher movie to black-and-white Alfred Hitchcock thriller. I had fun compiling said list, however I know that it barely scratched the genre’s surface. As such, I thought I’d pad it by writing about ten more genre films that I like or at least respect.

Without any further ado, here are another ten horror movies that I love:

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Top Ten Songs about America

After a year of Tennessee living, I continue to have mixed feelings about America as it is today. That statement isn’t directed at The Volunteer State in particular; it’s just that with defense spending out of control and with an ever-widening partisan divide, I cannot help but feel as if this nation of mine is falling woefully short of its potential for greatness.

Although I wasn’t alive at that time, it seems to me that America’s general fall from grace occurred during the late 1960’s, when we fought in the streets over the color of our skin while politicians escalated an overseas war that didn’t really concern them in the first place. And all of this not long after we lost a president, his brother, and a civil rights leader to assassins’ bullets.

In compiling a list of the ten best songs about “America,” I kept coming across songs that were unflinching in their portraits of America coming apart at the seams. Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” comes to mind, as does “Let’s Get Together,” by the Youngbloods. Other, later songs echo the sentiment but update the anger to reflect the Iraq War and the big bank-orchestrated financial crash of 2008. I am thinking of “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” by Bruce Springsteen, or of Neil Young’s damning “Let’s Impeach the President.” Even more songs pay tribute to our hardworking rail splitters and truck drivers. “Driving the Last Spike,” by Genesis, strikes a chord, as does “Cold Shoulder,” by Garth Brooks. Fortunately, there are fun songs about the American experience as well. These tunes, Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” and Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” to name just two, are not to be discounted.

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Top Ten Museums

Ten days ago I visited the Knoxville Museum of Art. This free museum, built on a bluff above World’s Fair Park, houses five galleries over three floors. As art museums go, the exhibits are only so-so, but it does include a nice collection of 20^th-century art by Tennessee artists and/or about Tennessee itself. Most of what remains is abstract contemporary in nature – in other words, the kind of art that you don’t immediately “get” on a first viewing.

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