UtSGFoOG – Wild Card!

We’re almost done! The years’ respective winners have been announced! They are:

Home Alone, The Mighty Ducks, Point Break, Jurassic Park, Speed, Independence Day, and I Know What You Did Last Summer

I find it satisfying that each year’s winner has been my pick, except the Point Break year (I still vehemently and ridiculously stand by Hook). And technically I voted for D2 for the year of Speed, but you may remember I was torn between the two – secretly I am happy that Speed won. I think this speaks not of my superiority in choosing, but of my utter mainstreamness in all areas of pop culture. I admit it.





Anyway, on to the point of this post! Being that Chris held a lot of power to define the scope and rules and nominees in this search, he has opened up a wild card round. Now’s our chance to vote for any movies we feel he left out of the previous lists (Lane is going to fight to her death for Free Willy).

Chris’ post is well-written and enjoyable, so I suggest you to go to his post and read it yourself (and if you wish to vote you have to do it there anyway), but I will copy and paste the bottom half of his blog which contains all the rules and some suggested wild-card noms to get your brains noodling:

There is another, more treacherous element of democracy that we indeed must consider as well. The Wild Card. As your benevolent dictator of cinema nostalgia, I must at least let you grovel for a bit until the final voting period opens up. So let this be your forum. What films from your youth signify not only a time and place in which your tastes were unbound by artfulness or intelligence, but also now represent a conscious shift in movie enjoyment? What cinema treasure beckons you to find its curious entertainment value all over again 11-19 years-ish later, only to be rejoiced with crowded apartment viewing featuring snide comments and snobbish laughter? The joy is still there for me when watching these movies, it just manifest itself in a new and exciting way, equally as relentless, but magnified through a different lens. You are by no means required to follow my convoluted mess of rules when nominating Wild Card candidates, but in case you’re curious, here are my guidelines once again…

-Released between 1990-1997, the most vividly joyous years of adolescent cinema-viewing, in my estimation
-Must be in the Top 50 of the Box Office for its year, to satisfy the argument of universal cultural relevance
-Must have been viewed at least three times during the years in question, plus at least a desire to rewatch again as an adult must be prevalent
-The first viewing(s) must be concrete nostalgic memories of epic proportion, constituting an impactful childhood movie-going/renting experience
-Cannot be genuinely good, meaning the emotions derived and artfulness learned from said film in one’s youth cannot be directly similar to the emotions derived from or artfulness appreciated from viewing as an adult

Let the Wild Card ranting begin! Fill the comments with the films that have not been mentioned that you would like to make one final argument for including the final nominations. I will choose between 1-3 of the best arguments (or most backed up, so second someone else if you agree with them) from the comments section to add to the current list of seven. Here are some examples that have come up throughout the Quest to start you off…

Mrs. Doubtfire, Free Willy, Under Siege, Little Big League, Dave, Sleepless in Seattle, Rookie of the Year, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The American President, Apollo 13, French Kiss, Now and Then, Mallrats, Sneakers, The Fifth Element (begrudgingly)

And some others grabbed from Googling the Box Office receipts for 1990-1997…

Ghost, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Flatliners, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, City Slickers, The Addams Family, Father of the Bride, Backdraft, Hot Shots!, Lethal Weapon 3, Sister Act, A League of Their Own, Patriot Games, Honey I Blew Up the Kid, Cliffhanger, Cop and a Half, The Three Musketeers, The Santa Clause, The Flintstones, Clear and Present Danger, The Mask, Maverick, Batman Forever, Casper, Waterworld, Species, Mission: Impossible, The Rock, The Nutty Professor, Phenomenon, Eraser, Men in Black, Liar Liar, Conspiracy Theory, Dante’s Peak, Anaconda

Personally, I’m having a hard enough time deciding between the current final nominees that I’m not sure I’ll vote in this round. But were I to do so, I would totally be fighting for the following movies:

Kindergarten Cop
Flatliners (the ultimate move for playing 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon)
Father of the Bride
Casper
TMNT
Now and Then, or
Mrs. Doubtfire (it ushered in an unbearable amount of men dressed as women gags that while not particularly bringing me pleasure, they certainly do say something about our generation)

Vote here. There will be one more voting post before this sucker wraps up. Then we’re going to have to think of something else I can blog about bi-weekly.