My 100 favorite movies from the past 25 years

So there’s been a good amount of chatter since Entertainment Weekly released its list issue, featuring the best of everything entertainment related in the past 25 years. Much like Paul Wall, it indeed has the whole Internet going nuts. And much like the short-lived “People’s Champ,” it’s largely stupid. The merits of the lists have been argued in deep philosophical fashion by many. My buddy over at Check the FIen Print wrote about the "Best 100 films of the best 25 years" quite eloquently.

I don’t do eloquence, unless it’s particularly self-serving. However, I do have an affinity for lists, so I made my own, for no other reason than to spend time to do something else when I should be studying technical editing.

For this list, I didn’t base the rankings on any great importance and impact on the history of film since 1983. These are just based on what I enjoyed.

So, Jesse Ducker's 100 favorite films from the last 25 years:

1. Goodfellas
2. Do the Right Thing
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Miller’s Crossing
6. Midnight Run
7. Shawshank Redemption
8. Three Kings
9. City of God
10. Back to the Future
11. Ran
12. Dark City
13. Blood Simple
14. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
15. Hoop Dreams
16. Fresh
17. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
18. City of Hope
19. Princess Monoke
20. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
21. Schindler’s List
22. Dazed and Confused
23. Before Sunrise
24. Quiz Show
25. Reservoir Dogs
26. Platoon
27. LA Confidential
28. Lone Star
29. Deep Cover
30. Se7en
31. Raising Arizona
32. Untouchables
33. Menace to Society
34. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
35. Memento
36. Big Lebowski
37. Ghostbusters
38. Saving Private Ryan
39. Crimes and Misdemeanors
40. The Usual Suspects
41. Finding Nemo
42. The Incredibles
43. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
44. This is Spinal Tap
45. Casino
46. Children of Men
47. In the Name of the Father
48. A Fish Called Wanda
49. Short Cuts
50. Toy Story
51. The Lion King
52. Kingpin
53. Out of Sight
54. Searching For Bobby Fischer
55. True Romance
56. Beverly Hills Cop
57. Bullets Over Broadway
58. Coming to America
59. Malcolm X
60. Heat
61. Monsters Inc.
62. Aliens
63. Fight Club
64. Say Anything
65. Black Hawk Down
66. No Country For Old Men
67. Unforgiven
68. Boogie Nights
69. Full Metal Jacket
70. Terminator 2
71. Pan’s Labrynth
72. Terminator
73. Princess Bride
74. Silence of the Lambs
75. Rushmore
76. Toy Story 2
77. Royal Tennenbaums
78. The Departed
79. Trading Places
80. Purple Rain
81. Trainspotting
82. Traffic
83. The Fugitive
84. The Big Night
85. The Limey
86. Fletch
87. Carlito’s Way
88. Donnie Brasco
89. Collateral
90. Batman Begins
91. 28 Days Later
92. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
93. Amelie
94. Heavenly Creatures
95. Die Hard
96. Old Boy
97. Dead Man Walking
98. Jackie Brown
99. Master and Commander
100. Silverado



And here’s another 20 movies I couldn’t fit it but felt like listing anyway, in no particular order.

Nixon
Being John Malkovich
Ghost World
Casualties of War
Minority Report
Good Will Hunting
Sixteen Candles
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Big Trouble in Little China
Breakfast Club
Hunt for Red October
Crimson Tide
Unbreakable
Sexy Beast
Bring Out the Dead
Bugsy
JFK
Layer Cake
The Inside Man
Battle Royale
Infernal Affairs

Sign of the Times

A few weeks back I bitched about feeling old when I went to concerts. That was mostly because my legs hurt like Hell and most of the people that attend them are born after 1983. Well, now I feel too old for an entirely different reason: I can’t stay awake.

In about two days I’m going to turn 33 years old. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not really that old, but I sure feel otherwise. I’m sitting here, now, typing this, even though just an hour ago I was out in San Francisco at concert. A concert I left just as it was starting, because I was about to pass out from exhaustion.

Some background: this Monday I started a new job as a tech writer at a Bay Area pharmaceutical company, which requires 8 to 5 shifts every day. So it goes. But a few weeks ago, before I had the job, I said agreed interview Dilated Peoples for STASH Magazine at a concert they were doing in San Francisco. Now, this week has been inordinately busy for me, with a night class on Monday and an A’s game last night, and as a result I’m a hair away from burn out before I can even bother celebrating my this weekend. But I knew I had to be a responsible adult and interview Dilated. Besides, I’ve met them once or twice, and they’re genuine cool people.

So I drive out to SF after coming back from work and briefly relaxing on my living room futon, zoning out while the NBA draft plays out on ESPN (Anthony Randolph is probably a decent pick, but he needs to gain like 100 pounds). After getting to the venue, I hook up with my editors and the photographers, and do the interview. That works out peachy: Dilated are really cool and the interview goes well, despite (or because of) the fact that Evidence spends a lot time trying to bullshit me with tales of how they’re going to sign with Jay-Z and be on Roc-A-La-Familia 3 album. On a side note, I find that rappers are always excellent at lying with a straight face. After the interview is over, Nino and Arlene, editors/publishers of STASH, ask me if I’m going to stay for the show, and I pause for a sec. I’ve got work in the morning, complete with an 8 a.m. conference call with someone on the east coast. Only ten years ago though, this would have a no-brainer: I would have decided In an instant that I could stay for the entire show, get a max of four hours of sleep, and been chipper as Hell for the early morning call. Now I’m not so sure.

I decide to give it a shot, and hang around for a lil’ bit. But as soon as the first ac hits the stage, any remnants of energy I may possess leave me body. And it has nothing to do with the act that was on stage: I was just fricking exhausted. I could barely keep my eyes open. Shoot, I can barely keep my eyes open now typing this blog entry.

I knew this was coming: many people I’ve known tell me that the first thing to go with age is ability to stay up late. A part of people is annoyed with myself for not sticking around, and laments that I’m not still in S.F. right now watching Dilated Peoples and Aceyalone perform instead of typing t this. But a larger part of me really needs the sleep.

Summer Music Madness

Summer officially begins tomorrow, although just about every state in the Union has already been suffering through stifling heat. In music there’s always been an obsession with summer albums and summer tours, and in hip-hop, there’s always been a strange obsession with a “summer banger,” a universally loved song that comes out near the beginning of each summer that can presumably be heard in every car throughout June, July, and August. The idea never made that much sense to me, to tell you the truth. I’m a man of habit who likes to return to old standards and tradition. There are a few albums that I always associate with summer that I also try to come back to when June rolls around. And wile the list of these albums grows each year, there are always some albums that I have to play.

So, below are a few examples of stuff I listen to when the weather gets hot. I tried to stay away from obviously stuff or albums with obvious titles. And most of these albums are still in print and readily available should you choose to check them out.



Pete Rock & CL Smooth – Mecca and the Soul Brother
This one is sort of obvious, but it epitomizes summer music for me. I remember going to the sadly departed Leopold’s Records early on a Wednesday morning and buying this before I had to take my Art History final, the last final of my junior year. Considering how much I tried to stay focused about taking my finals, it shows how much I felt I NEEDED this album that I went to buy before my final started. Despite the fact that side-trip to the record store required me to park pretty far from my high school, the distance likely leading to some asshole breaking one of my car’s windows (only to steal absolutely nothing), it was worth it. After sliding that tape into my car stereo that June afternoon, I don’t think it left the deck until July. I’d compulsively listen to Side A, flip it, throw on Side B, rinse, repeat.

There was a time I knew every note of that 87-minute album, from “Return of the Mecca” (still my favorite song on the album) to “Skinz,” and all the interludes in-between. It’s the perfect marriage of one MC and one producer: CL Smooth sounds perfect rhyming over Pete Rock’s beats, and Pete Rock’s beats sound like they were creating perfectly for CL’s lyrics. It’s among my ten favorite albums ever, and as soon as I see I cloudless sky in late May, Mecca and the Soul Brother gets played.



The Studio One and Trojan Records collections
It’s probably the association with the tropical island of Jamaica that makes these collections sounds so good during the summer months. For those who don’t know, Studio One and Trojan Records were two of the preeminent record labels, for Jamaican music, pioneers in the realms of reggae, dancehall, ska, and dub. Studio One, founded by “Coxsone” Dodd and considered by some as the Motown Records of Jamaica. Trojan Records was actually a British record label that specialized in distributing reggae, dancehall, ska, and the like across the pond. Both are best known today for reissuing collections of their music, which was mostly made and originally released during the 1970s.

For the last week or so, I’ve begun my annual revisiting of the Studio One albums, listening to them on my iPod while driving from place to place. I bought the first one, Studio One: Rockers, back in 2001; the album served as kind of a “sampler” for what the label had released in its hey day, with subsequent compilations are loosely built around a theme or “style,” like say, “DJs,” or “Roots” or “Scorcher,” etc. Regardless of the “style,” there’s still something about the rumbling bass and the skanking grooves the make songs like The Brentford All-Stars “Greedy G” ideal for rolling down the highway on a sunny day. Studio One still reissues compilations, but the prices seem to be increasing. I remember the first batch cost the same as a regular CD, the newer ones seem to be selling for more than $20. Frickin' imports.

With Trojan Records’ compilations, I never have to worry about consistency price: the three CD, 50-song “box-sets” consistently cost around $17.99. But at the same time, you get what you pay: a hastily thrown together collection of 50 tracks even more loosely based around a “theme,” with shoddy packaging and little effort thrown into their production. Personally, I don’t make care about the shoddy production and album “construction.” I’ve loaded 12 of these box-sets into my 200-CD player, and on a lazy summer weekend afternoon, I push play on my CD player, lay down on my futon with a glass of lemonade, and pretend I’m listening to commercial free Jamaican radio.




Johnny Five – Summer
I said I was going to TRY to avoid choices with obvious names; I made no guarantees. I have no idea who the hell Johnny Five, the hip-hop artist, is. I don’t’ know, what, if anything, he’s done before or since this album dropped in 2004. Sure, I just know he’s likely not the talking robot that starred in two movies with Fisher Stevens doing glorified blackface.

I vaguely remember getting Summer sent to me by some publicist. I also remember sweating out the hot afternoons in my second floor room of a shared apartment in San Jose, during the misbegotten period of my life when I lived in the South Bay, listening to this album. I probably also can’t tell you why I like it so much; Johnny Five is not a very good rapper. He’s pretty corny to tell you the truth. It’s probably the beats that makes this sucker such a winner, with the mellow vibes the songs create set my adrift on memory bliss.


Bone Thug N Harmony – E. 1999 Eternal
I know people stereotype summer music is “light” or “airy” or happy in some way, and E. 1999 is exactly the opposite of all that: It’s dark, creepy, and filled with gun talk and homicide. Still, I can’t remember the last time I listened to this album when the calendar didn’t read June, July, or August. The heavy murkiness of tracks like “Down 71,” “No Shorts, No Losses,” “Die Die Die,” “Mo’ Murda” are aural versions of the oppressive summer heat, while “Budsmokaz Only,” “Mr. Bill Collector,” “Buddah Lovaz,” and the once-ubiquitous “First of the Month” all have an odd ethereal quality. And the whole thing sounds damn good when driving wherever during the small hours of the night.



The “middle” period BBE albums: DJ Spinna – Here to There, DJ Jazzy Jeff – The Magnificent, King Britt – Adventures in Lo-Fi.
These are a set of albums I associate with my misbegotten years I spent in the South Bay, particular the summer of 2003. A year before I heard Summer, I spent many a July night sweating in my west-facing room in the apartment. West-faced room plus heat rising = a lousy combination. Still, these three albums particularly Here to There, frequently relaxed me.

The basic behind these albums released by BBE (Barely Breaking Even) Records was to showcase hip-hop producers. The label would give them relative carte blanche to put together an album showcasing their production skills, and let them pair up with MCs, singer, vocalists, etc. the felt like working with. The first two releases in the series, J Dilla and Pete Rock, were honestly pretty boring. Which was disappointing for me, considering those are two of my favorite producers ever. But when the second wave of albums hit in 2003, they really found their groove. All three albums were a strange brew of hip-hop, neo-soul, electronica, and house. And considering I tend to hate the later three of those genres, it’s amazing I like these three albums so much. All three producers created music that sounded great when MCs like Bahamida, Last Emperor, Freddie Foxxx, Quasimoto, and Apani B. Fly MC were rapping over it, and just as good when soul singer Jill Scott was doing spoken word to it. These were a good combination.

All hail Jonah

See this little guy? He’s my nephew, Jonah. Jonah Joaquin Netburn-Ducker, to be exact. He was born almost a month and a half ago, on April 28. Cute, ain’t he? And see how he’s giving the thumb’s up while he’s asleep? Absolutely adorable. I love him. I maintain he’s the cutest baby ever born. My father backs me up on this, and he’s a pediatrician that’s seen thousands of babies over his career. So if anyone should know, it’s him.

I don’t have any deep thoughts to share now that I’m an uncle, other than I feel sort of generally happier. I feel indifferent the odd “Uncle Jesse” pop-culture association that comes with this, via either Dukes of Hazard or Full House. But I know the next “Jesse and the Rippers” joke I get is gonna set me off. Still, I occasionally think about what “kind” of uncle I’m going to be. But regardless, I’m just happy to see the little guy whenever I can. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Cool Kids The Bake Sale EP Review

Grade: B-

There’s this whole world of ’80s worshipping hipster hip-hop that I’m only now becoming aware of. It’s created by Eighties babies who were probably only vaguely aware of crews like Run-DMC and the Juice Crew while growing up, but now make music that draws heavily form the aesthetic that they created. One of the most well known of these young up and comers are the Cool Kids, a Chicago-based duo made up of Chuck Inglish and Mikey Rock. They’ve spent the better part of year bubbling on the mixtape and MySpace scene, before touring to spread the word. The Bake Sale EP is their first official release.

I’m generally all for “throwback” hip-hop that harkens back to the days of yesteryear before MTV and Sprite and ringtones. I’d hazard to say I’m even more in favor of “throwback” rap than most, but like everything else, it’s not that you do it, but how you do it. I’ll even give the Cool Kids credit: everything they do on The Bake Sale EP sounds like authentic late 1980s hip-hop. The problem is even though the crew went through great lengths to make the music and lyrics sound legit, the results often sound empty and soulless.

Well, that’s not completely fair: the beats, provided by Chuck Inglish, are quite good. The snares pop, the kicks hit, and the bass rumbles, evoking the solid boom-bap of the era they pay homage to with their music. On the EP’s opener, “What Up Man,” Chuck creates a beat “with my mouth and bell,” resulting in one of their more entertaining tracks. Chuck is good crafting the slow-as-molasses muddy-thump of the era, shown on “Gold and a Pager” and “Jingling.” The beat on “What It Is” has the energy of the 110+ BPM beats that littered 12”s put out by obscure artists from NY and NJ, while “Bassment Party” unashamedly evokes 2 Live Crew’s heyday, without the overt demands for oral sex

It’s lyrical end where the Cool Kids falter. For a pair of MCs that proclaim to be the “new Black version of the Beastie Boys,” they’re awfully boring on the mic. Their anti-hipster/swagger-jacker anthem, “A Little Bit Cooler,” really isn’t as interesting as they seem to think it is. There’s a couple of bright spots, found in the goofy-fun of the aforementioned “What Up Man” and “Bassment Party,” and a verse or two on “88,” but the majority of their lyrics disappear into a fog of Cooley High and vague old school references.

As much as I’d like to commend the Cool Kids for their good intentions, I can’t. I feel bad knocking them because they’re largely innocuous, but there’s little beyond their beats that make them interesting in any way.

It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

Well, the primary season is finally over, and while it overstayed its welcome, at least the system worked. I just returned from voting in the “proper” California primary (like everyone else, we bumped up the presidential primary to be more “important”), but while I was there to vote against some sort of proposition that would limit rent control or something, the good voters of Montana and South Dakota were casting their votes for the presidential candidate of their choice. They, of course, are the final two states to so. And now, finally, it appears the Barack Obama has secured the Democratic presidential nomination. Hilary Clinton is supposed to give a speech tonight In New York, not to actually concede, but just to acknowledge that Obama has enough delegates to earn the nomination. That’s awfully big of her.

While we all know that the writing has been on the wall for at least a month or so, now with all 50 states and miscellaneous territories voting, there’s no way to explain away Barack’s victory. Some months ago, I wrote here that I was annoyed that states as inconsequential as Iowa and New Hampshire had a disproportionate amount of pull when it came to deciding who would run for president in November. Well, my wish came true. Every single state, including the one’s who’s delegates only sorta get counted, had some sort of impact in deciding who got the Democratic nomination. Even Puerto Rico, normally an afterthought, had an impact was it’s fairly anemic turnout. So never let it be said the Barack wasn’t the people’s choice.

Admittedly, the process wasn’t always pretty. There was a lot of dirt, false accusations, and other general bullshit thrown around (mostly by the Senator of NY and her supporters), and I wish people who should know better conduct themselves with a little more dignity and class, but Obama has emerged form the whole process pretty intact. Likely nothing came out during the primary process that wouldn’t have come out anyway, and the same stupid rumors linger, but I imagine he’ll get as fair a shake as African-American man with the name of Obama can expect to get to in this country. Now comes the tough part.