Wait, were people voting for the greatest movies, or the movies they'd most want to see?

Assuming the latter, there may be other motives behind the omission of Do The Right Thing, which is certainly an iconic movie, if not a great one.

A few weeks ago, my wife and 10 year old son happened to watch that movie. I declined to join them.

Every YouTube video featuring real black people being killed or unjustly arrested leaves a dark cloud in my head that doesn't clear up for days. Rage, hopeless, fantasies of revenge, anxiety that I'm entertaining such fantasies, and just a general sense of blah. I didn't want to a watch movie that would bring all that back. I mostly watch movies for the brief escape they provide from my life's cares.

I did go to YouTube to rewatch Rosie Perez dancing to Public Enemy over the opening credits. That left as big an impression on me back in the day when I saw the movie in theaters as did the movie's themes.

If this is enough to make you upset, you must live a very unhappy life.

DTRT is DATED> If released today, it wouldn't make the Top 10 box office it's opening weekend.

It only made $27.5 mil lifetime U.S. gross. NOT a lot of money for a so called important movie. Not too many people saw it. it opened 8th that weekend. It'd do less today.

I dunno.

I re-watched DtRT not long ago and I don't think it holds up all that great.

I used to love that movie but... I guess I never noticed before that Rosie Perez is just fucking AWFUL. I mean, my god, ever second she is on the screen is agony.

And so much of the rest of the movie, while visually beautiful, is dated as fuck. And SO god damned heavy handed. Like hit you over the head every ten seconds screaming: "THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT RACISM!" heavy handed. But. Eh. It's really pretty.

I think most people still hold it in such high regard for political nostalgia and because - in order to be "good people" - their supposed to love it.

But it's no 2001: A Space Odyssey that's for sure.

@3 Oh, I guess if it didn't make a lot of money it must be garbage. You know how smart people are. They only spend money on great movies. The Box Office is the best marker of quality!

and IS it dated? I think recent news events show it isn't.

Charles is a troll and a creep and a barely functioning alcoholic, BUT he is right here. And you are wrong.

The list is a bunch of blockbusters they show all the time anyway. I'm sure the people who voted for Raiders of the Lost Ark have no actual intention of going out to see it. They show it everywhere all the time. For one example.

Apparently most of my choices were outvoted, DTRT included.

"If I love you, I love you. But if I hate you...
I love you, Mookie."

DTRT should have been included. content-wise, i feel like it's a relevant as ever. but ignoring the content and just considering the cinematography and audio mix alone... it'd still be a masterpiece.

Did you contact the Cinerama and ask them why they proposed that particular list? It might have been more about film availability than anything else. There are some films that are simply too expensive or just not available.

Sometimes there isn't a lack of will or racial sensitivity: It's just pure logistics.

I can never utter a bad thing about that movie. I saw it the weekend of its release in the theater. I was 14, and coincidentally (or not) it was also one of the hottest weekends of the summer in Chicago. I basically went and saw it because I needed the a/c, and I really liked Public enemy. That was the first movie that taught me movies could be art...and I watch it at least once a year now.

Frankly, I think it has aged great. The message still resonates today (at least imo), but what I've grown to love it just how classic it is stylistically.

It looks like it was shot in brilliant technicolor. The cadence of the dialogue is reminiscent of Shakespeare. It even has a Greek chorus in Robin Harris and his crew. It's joyous, and funny, and sad, and depressing. I fucking love that movie....still one of my favorites.

I've said it maybe twice before, and I'll say it again: this is one time I agree with Charles.

"We want some black movies on that Cinerama Wall of Fame NOW!"

word Stranger....word.

Charlie Charles, don't you know
Your average Seattle Slogger-cum-progressive
Can not see the mote in their own eye
As they envision the log
In the eyes of their enemies

@5, What the box office take means, is that a whole lot of people chose NOT to see it.

And, by contrast, some terrible or middling or worthless movies that did make the cut:

Forrest Gump; Harry Potter and whatever; Inception; Almost Famous; Moulin Rouge; Die Hard; Big Trouble In Little China; The Hunt For Red October

@15, Hey, don't you go dissin' Big Trouble! That movie rocks. The other ones, though, yeah, right on board with ya.

Isn't it a list of movies that people want to see/see again? Citizen Kane usually lands in the top 3 of people's best-of-all-time lists, but are you itching to see it again? It's not in my collection at home. "Great," "important," and "fun to see over and over" are not the same things.

I find "Metropolis," Gary Cooper, Steve McQueen, and Doris Day (to name just a few icons) to be unwatchable. But saying that doesn't mean that I don't get why they have the stature that they do.

I saw DTRT when it came out, in an almost empty theatre, but I can't recall ever seeing on TV in the years that followed. I think it's film people prefer to talk about rather than watch.

@9-He says in the 2nd paragraph that the list was about availability at the time of the festival. Apparently the Cinerama is supposed to perform magic to get socially relevant movies if they aren't otherwise available. Unless he is saying that DTRT was available and on the list (I don't remember) and Seattle didn't vote for it. In which case, this article needed another edit because that is not clear.

It was on their list. I voted for it.

Who really wants to see Top Gun at Cinerama?

Boo hoo, your choice didn't get picked by "Seattle". Um, first off, the Cinerama didn't exactly put the list to a citywide vote. It was online voting only, went out to the people on their email list, was advertised on their website, and, I assume, in publications likely to be read by moviegoers (but not expensive to advertise in). In other words, the voters were a small self-selecting portion of the populace. I was part of that group, and I didn't vote for DTRT. While I thought some of the choices (and winners) were head-scratchers, I voted for the movies on that list that I was most likely to want to see (again) on the big screen, that would compel me to shell out the admission and drive a couple of dozen miles from my house and deal with the parking. There weren't ten on the list I was interested in; I used write-ins for some of my selections. I would never have voted for DTRT as a) I didn't think it was all that great a movie when it came out, and I saw it then b) having seen it since, I still am not overly impressed with it, and c) it's a movie that is not especially enhanced by being seen on the big screen. While I would argue that all movies are best seen in a movie theatre, for some it is integral. Bladerunner, which I voted for and went to see last night, is one of those. So is Lawrence of Arabia (not on the list, but made the cut), 2001, and plenty of others. Do the Right Thing? Not so much. Neither is Casablanca, which I didn't vote for, but it made the cut (and, IMO, is a better movie than DTRT). Top Gun, which made the cut, is a mediocre movie, but is definitely a better experience on the big screen than on tv. It didn't get my vote, either, but if somebody forced me to watch TG and DTRT and told me I could watch one in a theatre and the other had to be on tv, I'd vote for TG for the theatre. I'm sure other voters had their own criteria. The selection says nothing about the people of Seattle as a whole, just the choices of a limited number of moviegoers from a preselected list.

Ironically, or not, your Chinatown pun defeats the best movie on the list. I'd like to have seen the following among the 40, not only for their greatness, but also to bask in the exotic locales (in parentheses) of: Vertigo (50s SF), In a Lonely Place (noir LA), Sideways (wine country), and Lost in Translation (Tokyo).

And I loved DtRT, at least when I first saw it 25 years ago. Time to check it out again.