Talk:The Fifty Worst Films of All Time

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Not neutral POV[edit]

The article presents a book's author personal point of view, which is of questionable objective value and appears biased. The comments about the films seem to be added by the (anonymous?) author of the article thus rendering the article to be double-POV.

There are other wiki articles on the "worst film" subject, such as listed below, both of which do include elaborate comments on taste and judgement being subjective:

  1. Films considered the worst ever
  2. The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made (Documentary)

– see also the May 2005 discussion (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made .

The comment about Zabriskie Point is plain propaganda thus qualifying this article for deletion. (WP:NOT)

- Introvert 28 June 2005 10:00 (UTC)

Agree. Strange list and absolutely non-NPOV. Is it allowed to propose deletion once again now? --CodeMonk 22:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That Votes for deletion thing is for a 2004 DVD documentary NOT this book. Other then the name there is little to connect them.--216.31.124.147 (talk) 16:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VFD debate link[edit]

Due to insufficiently strong consensus to delete this article at this VFD debate, the article has been kept. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:51, 21 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Accuracy question[edit]

While checking the Library of Congress to verify the publication information of this book, I found an oddity. The 1978 edition actually lists Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss as the authors — no sign of Michael Medved. However, later editions, listed under the shorter title and including the originally cited ISBN, list only Michael Medved as author. I confirmed this information with FetchBook.info and Amazon.com as well. I've added a references section that shows this discrepancy.

Could someone who has access to either or both of these editions make any necessary corrections in the article text? Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well I have the original book, copyright 1978 but my copy is from a 1980 reprint. It lists ISBN: 0 207 95891 2 (cased edition), 0 207 95892 0 (limp edition). The cover and titles pages clearly list authors as Harry Medved, with Randy Dreyfuss. It also pictures both authors: Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss. The ackowledgements page notes that "Harry's brother Michael Medved was involved in every step of the project and without him this book would not exist." The copyright notice says "Copyright 1978 by Michael Medved". Asa01 23:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The introduction to The Golden Turkey Awards states that Michael requested that his name be removed from the cover of Fifty Worst Films. The logic was that a book about bad movies seemed like a "mildly embarassing project" for someone aspiring to be a serious writer. Also, Michael had done some work as a screenwriter and the book might have made some "unnecessary enemies" among people who might hold future employment opportunities. Although the introduction isn't credited, it uses the editorial "we", so I assume it was collectively written by Harry and Michael. Just1thing (talk) 16:59, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Remove tags[edit]

OK I remove accuracy tags. Minor article about minor book. Article basicaly described the book well enough. I think the author problem has been addressed. Clearly the actual authors is somewhat murky (see talk above) but the article reflects this I feel. Asa01 23:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another removal[edit]

Removed text:

The list is largely restricted to sound films because the book predated widespread consumer use of videotapes and silent films were harder to find

Removed because this is completely wrong. There are in fact no silents in the book, and the reason for their exclusion is not that which is given here. In fact the authors consider silents as an altogether different artform, and say so in the book. Reference to consumer videotapes seems questionable: in 1978 when this book was written I think it is safe to say that over 90% of the films listed were not on video. Asa01 23:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WTF?[edit]

I don't know most of the films on the list given in this article, but how in the world did Eisenstein's Ivan Groznyi 1 & 2 get up there? It's usually considered among the very best of all time. Something seems fishy here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.125.46 (talk) 10:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The authors acknowledge in their introduction that Ivan The Terrible and Last Year at Marienbad are "the most controversial choices" in their book, but they included them because they are "over-rated art films". They also quote some negative reviews of both films that were published by professional film critics at the time of their release. --Muzilon (talk) 01:31, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
According to the reviewer Matherson (Rhinebeck) at amazon.com's Fifty Worst Films of All Time (Paperback): "Some of these line-ball calls are due to the fact that there was originally a core of about 20 really "good" bad films in the first draft - then the publisher insisted on 50." If true this would go a long way to explain some of the strange selections. It would explain the attitude with films like Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946) where character names are derided even though Gould himself had been doing much the same for years.
It is hard to take the jab of a jeweler being called Jules Sparkle seriously when you realize that the comic strip had a pianist called 88 Keys (1943) and the Summer Sisters (1944) May and June. This is all ignoring Gould tending to reverse common words for last names--a musician named Seton (1940) and a midget criminal named Trohs (1940) are good examples of this.
Similarly the plot is not as far off what Gould was writing at that time as the book implies. Between his better known stories Gould would have filler material like this and the quality did tend to be so so. It is clear to any Dick Tracy fan they were trying desperately to find things to poke fun at with this movie.--BruceGrubb (talk) 12:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of films[edit]

For anyone claiming the list of films reviewed in the book is copyrighted please read Feist v. Rural. That case made it clear that information in of itself is not copyrightable. The Wikipedia:Copyright in lists touches on this:

"The Wikimedia Foundation's associate counsel wrote in January 2011, "Unless you know the criteria involved in creating the list, it is impossible to even gauge the potential of a court finding that it warrants copyright protection. And unfortunately, even if you do know the criteria, it is very hard to predict what a court will say (especially because the courts vary in their opinions in different circuits on this matter) when there is a degree of creativity involved. You are really only safe if the list is purely formulaic.""--216.31.124.147 (talk) 19:16, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You did provided the correct links but really made the wrong conclusion. Per Feist v. Rural (there is creativity in this list) and Wikipedia:Copyright in lists this list is more than likely copyrighted. Per Wikipedia:Copyright in lists, can we safely use it. "ordered rankings based on judgement, such as the top 50 most influential Muslims" which is similar to this list. Garion96 (talk) 19:24, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please note your counter example was regarding rankings not chronological or alphabetic order. I'm not even sure if the book "ranks" the fifty films within it other then saying they were the "fifty worst".
Assuming the Feist v. Rural article is summing up correctly:
"In regard to collections of facts, O'Connor states that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself. If Feist were to take the directory and rearrange them it would destroy the copyright owned in the data."
I have therefore arranged the list in chronological order since the book lists it in purely alphabetic order. Per O'Connor this "destroys the copyright owned in the data."--216.31.124.147 (talk) 19:33, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Out of millions of films, the author chose these 50. That's the creative choice of what data to include or exclude. This is not comparable to a phone book listing which had no creative aspect. Don't re add the list again. Garion96 (talk) 20:30, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since there is now a link to the alphabetical list here is the chronological list as it originally appeared on the page with a little bit of reformatting:

If the structure of a list is copyrightable, which as the above says is doubtful (even the US Copyright Office states a list in of itself is not copyrightable) then certainly a link to the alphabetical list is not allowed. But since the above is transformable enough it shouldn't be a problem if we really want a list of the movies in the book. By the way if Bitlaw's "Works Unprotect by Copyright Law" page is correct (and I suspect "A Minnesota-based patent law firm serving clients from across the country" would make sure the information it provides on its webpages is correct) then a list is not copyrightable, period.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 22:28, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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