Oprah has her O List, so now, as I am just as much of a publishing mogul as she, I am hereby instituting the highly influential E List [because my name is Elanor and Elanor starts with an E, you get me?]. I am an arbiter of cool. I am leading the vanguard, baby. And you all wanna be like me don’t you? So I’m gonna help you. The E List will let you know about all the things that I absolutely love. Commence tailoring your palette accordingly. I expect nothing less than mass paroxysms of assent to every idea I put forward. Here we go… ee ee, run on run on yeah ee ee…

Today’s topic on the E List is Movies That I Love [or Movies That Should Have Won Oscars Were Not the Academy Populated by Dunces and Mangy Curs]

Ride With The Devil is the best movie ever. Because of the subjectivities of taste, perhaps I should amend that remark to "The Best Film Ever I saw'd". I love it so much, you just cannot understand. My, but if it don’t verily have some mighty fine touches to it. And who knew Jonathan Brandis and Jewel could act? Their worthy cohorts include Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Simon Baker, James Caveizel and Tom Wilkinson in this Civil War era beautiful fabulous film directed by Ang Lee. I just love the language in it, the interchanges. Check this line out; "The stakes are most common these days and deadly for it". Swoon. Lordy me, but these southerners can talk. I have watched it seven times in the last week and still I'm a fiending for a hit. Sigh.

A Streetcar Named Desire, oh how I love thee. Let me count the ways. 1)Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski. Ignorant magnetic brute who I have a flaming crush on, which is troubling because he ends up a rapist. But he’s so utterly adorable. I am a traitor to womanhood. But you should see him speak with a mouthful of food. He’s so hot. 2)Vivien Leigh as the fragile tainted beauty Blanche Dubois. Life has ravaged her looks, her reputation and her heart. I love her eloquent melancholy and southern belle sensitivities. 3)You get to see the best of director Elia Kazan’s work, the quality of which makes you consider that maybe his decision to sell people out in the McCarthy era might have been motivated by a wish to ‘continue making art’. Or something. 4)Tennessee Williams’ words and stuff. Top shit. You gots to watch this film. I know it pretty much by heart. You should too.

The Grey Zone. I don’t think it’s been released here but this is the most excellent Holocaust film I have ever seen. It’s about the Jewish Sonderkommandos who worked in the gas chambers and incinerators, and the uprising they planned to disable the machinery of death. It’s just so good. Questions of complicity and guilt and courage and survival and a chilling understanding of the day-to-day operations of the place. And David Arquette can act. And the script is perfection. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Detroit Rock City, which tells the story of four friends who are in a Kiss tribute band, and of all their travails and adventures as they journey to see Kiss perform live in Detroit in the 70s. Edward Furlong and Sam Huntington. Best Teen Movie Ever.

Zero Effect in which Bill Pullman plays Darryl Zero, a private detective whose “supreme objectivity has, I dare say, made me the greatest observer the world has ever known”. He is satisfyingly odd, and completely dependent on his sidekick, Ben Stiller, who is amusingly so over it. Darryl Zero’s method relies on detachment, but wait, who is that pretty paramedic blackmailing Ryan O’Neil about past indiscretions? Where will his allegiance fall? Etc. It’s exceptional.

The Yards. Mark Wahlberg gets out of jail after taking the fall for his buddies and doing four years. Gets welcomed home and embroiled in criminality of his family benefactor. Jaoquin Phoenix breaks my heart as the bad guy who you can’t help but love, whose way is blocked and who is heading for inevitable tragedy. Charlize Theron, James Caan, Faye Dunaway and Ellen Burstyn also feature.

Plunkett and Macleane, a jauntily entertaining story of an unlikely pair of highway robbers, dastardly draconian law makers, decadent aristocracy and the love of a beautiful woman. It’s very funny with many modern touches and Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlysle, Liv Tyler, Alan Cumming, and Michael Gambon.

The Fifth Element. Bruce Willis is appealing in this movie as he works to save the planet from annihilation. But it’s actually a great movie. Chris Tucker is actually funny, Mila Jovovich is super dooper, and the costumes, my lord. Funny and repeatedly watchable.

The Bourne Identity. It’s Europe, it’s cold, Matt Damon has amnesia and he’s driving around in Franka Potente’s mini being pursued by Chris Cooper, Clive Owen and Julia Stiles. I love the understatement of this film, the feel of it, the tenderness that Matt Damon can give a performance, the car chase that features cars getting banged up rather than exploding. It’s a great action movie with smarts.

The Big Lebowski. Not only is it a Coen Brothers film but it features my lover man John Goodman. I really do love him and it’s a beautiful thing. And in this film he is hilariously ridiculous as a Vietnam War veteran who turns everything around him into a travesty. Hee hee. The movie is really about his bowling buddy, the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges, who is mistaken for Lebowski because “Your name is Lebowski, Lebowski” and then commissioned by Lebowski to find Lebowski’s truant trophy bride, get it? The people are crazy, the cast is great and I particularly love the Malibu sheriff ranting on about the sanctity of “my beach community” while beating the Dude senseless. I think it’s the best Coen brothers film, although Fargo is great, you know, with all the “Aw geez Margie. Ya, you betcha, ya”. Almost too close to call, but I think Lebowski wins for its variety of weirdness and pointedness.

A Night At The Roxbury. Two brothers, Steve and Doug Butabi, dream of striking out on their own to escape inheriting their father’s silk flower emporium. They love clubbing and want to be club owners, but the thing is, they are not even cool enough to get into the Roxbury, the coolest club in LA. Instead, they spend most nights stuck in line trying to impress the chicks with their story about sighting “the breakfast clubber himself” Emilio Estevez, “the mighty duck man I swear to god” at a public phone and going like, “Emilio. Emilioooo”. However, a chance meeting with Richard Grieco, forgotten star of 21 Jump Street, changes their luck. Now if only they could get it together and beat the forces out to stop their dreams from becoming a reality. This is an hilarious movie and it makes you love Will Ferrell. He does that good-hearted dunce thing so well, and has many great lines like “hey hot lady”. Also, for anyone deciding to write their own wedding vows, take note of Will’s estimable attempt at articulating why he’s marrying one particular lass; “We went on a couple of dates and you let me have sex with you”. Man I love that movie. I think it’s one of those SNL spin offs, and by golly it’s good.

There are no doubt more, and honourable mentions go to Igby Goes Down for Keiren Culkin, Donnie Darko for its great portrayal of the parents and also the horror of a PTA meeting, and that Patrick Swayze stuff, which reminds me that Dirty Dancing is fab with the “I carried a watermelon” and all, and I also loved Ghost because of that scene where Whoopi is talking to all the ghosts and there’s that one ghost that jumps into her body and says “Damn baby, what you do to your hair?”, to which his wife replies “Orlando you like it? It’s Autumn Sunrise”. Best Spoof Movie goes to Not Another Teen Movie, and don’t diss Sleepless in Seattle until you’ve seen it, because it’s great and the support cast is great and it’s just great okay? I found Swingers charming and Die Hard is a great Christmas Eve movie because it’s set on Christmas Eve so you can really feel part of it, you know? Out of the two Larry Clark films I’ve seen, I preferred Bully [the other one was Kids]. I think Con Air was a brilliant parody about the lameness of the macho man, with super-exagerration rendering many of the tough guys’ behaviours untenable and ridiculous. Also liked how it uses over-kill to critique that whole ‘protecting the sanctity of family rationalises any behaviour’ ethos, for example, Nicolas Cage murders the guy who touches his daughter’s bunny rabbit after ignoring his warning to “Put the bunny back in the box”, added to which, most of the people in the Las Vegas CBD die as a plane ploughs into them but it’s okay because Nic gets back to his family so the ending is actually scored as uplifting because it was all worth it. I think it’s a brilliant movie but nobody gets how subversive it actually is.

PS. Can I just add a quote of the week? It’s from CNNNN and it goes a little something like this; “Keith Windschuttle denies that Cathy Freeman’s Olympic 400 metre win ever happened”.

PPS. Can I just share with you what I consider to be one of the most beautiful moments I have ever seen on US television? I have been meaning to tell you about it for ages. Anyway, it’s Letterman and he’s going on about how great Denzel Washington is [because Denzel will be a guest that night]. He’s saying things like “This guy is so great, he could play any lead role and be perfect in it. He’s that great. Paul, pick any great classic movie and I’ll bet you that Denzel Washington would have been as good, if not better, in the leading man’s role. Pick any movie, any academy award winning movie and I’ll bet you that Denzel is good enough to be in it”. So Paul’s like, on the spot, and he’s saying “Any academy award winning classic movie, hmmmm. Um. How about Gone With the Wind?” I pissed my pants. There was like an awkward silence and laughter and people really not knowing how to react to that. Because clearly Denzel Washington could not have filled the Clark Gable role in Gone With The Wind because Denzel Washington is black, and black people were slaves in that movie because America had slaves and they were black people and it was bad. That just struck me as a beautiful moment of discomfort that came completely out of left field and highlighted how close to the surface of things the bad parts of America’s history are, despite whatever Lynne Cheney might have to say about it. Because, as if you wouldn’t say Gone With The Wind under those circumstances. It was on the tip of my tongue too, just before Paul said it and its import clanged into view. I just thought that was really great.