The Most Extraordinary ______ that Humanity has ever produced

[Toni]

Best female comedian must be Lucille Ball and a lot of recognition should go to Ball and Desi Arnaz who, believe it or not actually broke what was considered to be a color barrier with their marriage and partnership on camera and in their studio. Arnaz actually invented the three camera filming technique still used by television shows today. They were both innovators and extraordinary talents.

Other tremendously talented comedians include the incomparable Robin Williams as well as Eddie Murphy. Tina Fey and Jean Smart ( really, guys—you have to see Hacks) It is impossible to not include Charlie Chaplin as an epic, perhaps GOAT comedic performer, actor, innovator, writer, director and producer. It is impossible to mention Chaplin without mentioning the Marx Brothers.

Don't forget Carol Burnette, who is actually still working.

I was thinking about her! Such a talent!

 

[gmbteach]

Some great comedians have been named, however there is inadvertent parochialism with only mentioning American comedians.

The comedians I mentioned are British.

 

[Swammerdami]

Can anyone come up with a better, more accurate way to test the crown?

Assuming it has to be non-invasive/ destructive and was technically with reach at the time … not I.
So … what is it? A certificate of authenticity?

I love this anecdote, as proof that Archimedes and Galileo were both unusual geniuses. Take the 100 top Google hits, and 99 or so will repeat the "water displacement" idea. As I said before, that method is inconvenient AND too obvious to excite the great Archimedes. But the story gets repeated. Even now Galileo's simple solution is little known.

So with the hint that Galileo published a better method, Google "Archimedes pure gold crown Galileo." I thought the following hit wouldn't help ...

Archimedes and the Golden Crown — Long long time ago

www.longlongtimeago.com

... because the first half of the article was about the water-displacement method.

But I continued to skim, and halfway through the article came to this:

In 1586, Galileo wrote a short treatise called La Bilancetta, or The Little Balance, in which he expressed his scepticism of Vitruvius’ story and presented his own theory of how Archimedes might actually have detected the goldsmith’s dishonesty. He based his theory on the Archimedes Principle, and on Archimedes’ work on levers.

I'll stop the excerpt here in case anyone wants to rediscover the beautifully simple method of Archimedes and Galileo from this hint.

 

[Toni]

Some great comedians have been named, however there is inadvertent parochialism with only mentioning American comedians.

Gmbteach mentioned some ( I assume) Australian comedians or perhaps British? Not sure.

Which reminds me: Monty Python!

As for musicians: Joni Mitchell and Carole King.

 

[Swammerdami]

MY thread, so MY rules!! You're welcome to reject The Godfather, but you're then obligated to propose another candidate for the #2 movie of all time. If Monroe wasn't the sexiest actress, who was? If none of {Archimedes, Bohr, Darwin} deserves the #3 slot among great scientists, who does? (I could accept Galileo as #3 for his huge historic importance. He made mistakes, but he also demonstrated great brilliance.)

By the way, I'm much less fond of Godfather Part II, and don't like Part III at all. It is the change to Michael that is key; once he becomes the "Godfather", that interesting transition is over.

But why do I like The Godfather so much? Many of my favorite movies feature criminals! Fargo, Snatch, Goodfellas, The Good, Bad and the Ugly are just a few examples of crime-based movies that are personal favorites.

The movie strikes me as an epic and I like epics. (Googling just now, I see that Merriam-Webster et al don't use the word "epic" quite the way I do. Oh well.)

I do NOT envy or admire criminals. I've known very few real-life criminals. In fact I think it's the STRANGENESS (unfamiliarity) of criminality that makes the movies interesting to me. I like to hear them talk, learn how they think. And Crime makes the story-lines interesting.

But if I'm honest, there are long scenes in The Godfather that seem unnecessary or less than top-rate. Eliminate the very first scene, and the very last scene and the film would no longer qualify as an "epic."

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Some great comedians have been named, however there is inadvertent parochialism with only mentioning American comedians.

The comedians I mentioned are British.

My apologies. I forgot Sean Lock was British, and didn't recognize Horne's name.
Also regarding the mention of Charlie Chaplin by someone, I am so used to seeing him associated with Americans that I forgot that he is British also.

 

[gmbteach]

Some great comedians have been named, however there is inadvertent parochialism with only mentioning American comedians.

Gmbteach mentioned some ( I assume) Australian comedians or perhaps British? Not sure.

Which reminds me: Monty Python!

As for musicians: Joni Mitchell and Carole King.

They were British. We have a few Australian comedians, but they aren’t a patch on the ones I mentioned!

 

[bilby]

Some great comedians have been named, however there is inadvertent parochialism with only mentioning American comedians.

Gmbteach mentioned some ( I assume) Australian comedians or perhaps British? Not sure.

Which reminds me: Monty Python!

As for musicians: Joni Mitchell and Carole King.

They were British. We have a few Australian comedians, but they aren’t a patch on the ones I mentioned!

The best Aussie comedian by far was John Clarke, who qualifies as Australian by the usual route of being a New Zealander who's actually good at something.

 

[gmbteach]

Some great comedians have been named, however there is inadvertent parochialism with only mentioning American comedians.

Gmbteach mentioned some ( I assume) Australian comedians or perhaps British? Not sure.

Which reminds me: Monty Python!

As for musicians: Joni Mitchell and Carole King.

They were British. We have a few Australian comedians, but they aren’t a patch on the ones I mentioned!

The best Aussie comedian by far was John Clarke, who qualifies as Australian by the usual route of being a New Zealander who's actually good at something.

True.

Glenn Robbins wasn’t too bad either.

 

[Elixir]

Can anyone come up with a better, more accurate way to test the crown?

Assuming it has to be non-invasive/ destructive and was technically with reach at the time … not I.
So … what is it? A certificate of authenticity?

I love this anecdote, as proof that Archimedes and Galileo were both unusual geniuses. Take the 100 top Google hits, and 99 or so will repeat the "water displacement" idea. As I said before, that method is inconvenient AND too obvious to excite the great Archimedes. But the story gets repeated. Even now Galileo's simple solution is little known.

So with the hint that Galileo published a better method, Google "Archimedes pure gold crown Galileo." I thought the following hit wouldn't help ...

Archimedes and the Golden Crown — Long long time ago

www.longlongtimeago.com

... because the first half of the article was about the water-displacement method.

But I continued to skim, and halfway through the article came to this:

In 1586, Galileo wrote a short treatise called La Bilancetta, or The Little Balance, in which he expressed his scepticism of Vitruvius’ story and presented his own theory of how Archimedes might actually have detected the goldsmith’s dishonesty. He based his theory on the Archimedes Principle, and on Archimedes’ work on levers.

I'll stop the excerpt here in case anyone wants to rediscover the beautifully simple method of Archimedes and Galileo from this hint.

Yeah, sounds messy to me.

 

[Swammerdami]

Assuming a 2-kilogram crown -- and I don't think I'd be comfortable with even that much weight on my head -- a 5% adulteration with silver would mean the crown displaces an extra 4.4 mL of water (if my arithmetic is correct) out of almost 108 mL total. Wouldn't that measurement be very difficult? Why did people accept Vitruvius' solution for almost 2000 years???

... Archimedes Principle ...
I'll stop the excerpt here in case anyone wants to rediscover the beautifully simple method of Archimedes and Galileo from this hint.

Yeah, sounds messy to me.

It really is beautifully simple (and would quickly detect an adulteration even smaller than 5%). I'll leave it unspoiled in case anyone wants to duplicate the genius of Archimedes and Galileo.

- - - - - - - - - -

Here's another anecdote suggesting Galileo was clever. He was observing the phases of Venus; these phases provided the definitive proof of Copernicus' claim that the Earth and Venus both rotated about the Sun! He wanted to wait for more observations before publishing, but was afraid Kepler might beat him to claim this prize!

Today someone might mail a sealed letter to his patent attorney or such. But what Galileo did was to construct a 35-letter Latin sentence which translates roughly as "Venus imitates the Moon" -- the Moon's phases were of course well understood. What he published was an ANAGRAM of that claim, a 35-letter sentence meaning "Now I bring these unripe things together in vain."

 

[Swammerdami]

Please don't hold back, folks. Let's get some STRONG opinions, even if they're wrong.

Rita Hayworth is #2 sexiest actress, or at least a top candidate. Choose among Sophia Loren, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, Raquel Welch and Liz Taylor for the #3 slot. Kim Novak deserves an honorable mention since her pulchritude is the only plausible explanation for the bizarre promotion of Vertigo -- a trite and boring film -- to near the very top of many "best film" lists.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly may be the 3rd best movie ever, with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Lord of the Rings (pick a part) candidates for #4. Fargo deserves special consideration as the best Coen Brothers film. Dial M for Murder is the best Hitchcock film.

Breaking Bad and The Wire are respectively the #1 and #2 TV series ever, with candidates for #3 including Sopranos, West Wing, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and Succession. Willie Mays is the greatest baseball player; John Brown the great American hero.

 

[Politesse]

Vertigo -- a trite and boring film -- to near the very top of many "best film" lists.

Wtf? You're mad. And wrong. Vertigo is the fourth greatest film ever put to screen.

 

[Swammerdami]

First of all, We all have different tastes in movies. When I say "Godfather is #2" it goes without saying that I am giving MY opinion based on MY tastes and preferences.

Vertigo -- a trite and boring film -- to near the very top of many "best film" lists.

Wtf? You're mad. And wrong. Vertigo is the fourth greatest film ever put to screen.

The way you phrase this, without naming your #1, #2, #3 films, makes me wonder if you're referencing a slightly "authoritative" list which ranks it #4. I Googled just now trying to recall the specific list and this turned up:

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has replaced Orson Welles's Citizen Kane at the top of a poll that sets out to name one film "the greatest of all time".
The British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine polls a selected panel once a decade and Citizen Kane has been its top pick for the last 50 years. This time 846 distributors, critics and academics championed Vertigo, about a retired cop with a fear of heights.

To support my claim that Vertigo is VASTLY over-rated, let's compare TWO Hitchcock-directed films, each about a man who wants to murder his wife, with the crime eventually solved by a detective. (For brevity I will write "Milland" to denote the character portrayed by Ray Milland, and so on.)

In Dial M for Murder Milland designs a clever approach to murder his wife, Kelly. In Vertigo the "perfect murder" plan makes no sense. It relies on Stewart NEVER seeing the husband at the critical time, NEVER getting a glimpse of the corpse, NEVER seeing Novak after the murder, and so on. Even with his disability, these "Nevers" could NOT be relied on. For example, it is most likely that a real-life Stewart would have stayed around to talk to investigators, and would have caught a glimpse of the corpse and seen that it was not Novak.

In Dial M for Murder the clever London detective solves the crime, tests his theory, explains all this to us. The movie ends with that detective proudly twirling his moustache. Vertigo's crime is solved only when Stewart chances upon Novak by coincidence. (And that scene is unrealistic; Stewart KNEW she was Novak, or an identical twin.) It makes zero sense. The whole reason for Stewart's involvement at all was to have a "witness" saying the wife had fallen to her death. But this "witness" had no idea what the wife looked like, and never viewed the corpse whose circumstance he was attesting to? Nonsensical!

The story in Dial M for Murder is interesting, partly because it is somewhat intricate. Vertigo -- What story? Man wants to kill his wife. He pushes her off the top of a building, after wasting GREAT effort -- it's almost all the whole movie is about -- setting up his old buddy Stewart in a nonsensical witnessing scenario.

Dial M for Murder has interesting scenes that contribute to the crime and its detection. Milland has a long conversation with an old college chum, coercing that guy into committing the murder. Vertigo? A typical scene is Stewart and Novak staring at the ocean. We stare at them wondering when one or both will get wet. Whippeee!

Dial M for Murder doesn't even appear on some "Top 10 Hitchcock Films" lists, while Vertigo is rated #1 by the British Film Institute. This certainly proves that opinions differ!!

I am BAFFLED by Vertigo's high ranking. (It may be sexist for me to admit that some actresses are beautiful, but I do wonder if Kim Novak's photogenicity contributes to the high regard for this film.)

 

[Swammerdami]

Here's Roger Ebert's personal list of his Top Ten favorite movies:

1 Citizen Kane​

2 Casablanca​

3 La Dolce Vita​

4 The Third Man​

5 Raging Bull​

6 Notorious!​

7 2001: A Space Odyssey​

8 Essential Art House: Floating Weeds​

9 28 Up​

10 Gates of Heaven​

#9 and #10 are documentaries. I've seen neither, nor #8, nor IIRC La Dolce Vita. Among the remaining six, only one makes my personal Top 30 Movies list. And one -- guess which -- I consider HUGELY over-rated (though many adore it).

One way that my preferences differ from professional critics like Ebert is that experts are delighted by excellent or ground-breaking cinematographic techniques, while I focus on story, dialog, and sentiment.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No, I'm afraid I must label your promotion of Galileo over Newton to be incorrect. I agree that Galileo's recasting of natural science and cosmology into scientific terms was hugely important. But I do not see his specific contributions as having singular importance. The laws of motion were developed independently by several thinkers but the grand codification was Newton's Laws of Motion.

Nikola Tesla was a scientist and engineer. Newton jointly invented Calculus. Tesla invented Alternating Current power.

Tesla didn't merely get science, he knew how to exploit it.

Archimedes would be my number 2.

Overall, it could be argued few people provided more to the world than Newton did. He did so much, well beyond science and mathematics. But science wise, Tesla, Archimedes are tops.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Here's Roger Ebert's personal list of his Top Ten favorite movies:

1 Citizen Kane​

2 Casablanca​

3 La Dolce Vita​

4 The Third Man​

5 Raging Bull​

6 Notorious!​

7 2001: A Space Odyssey​

8 Essential Art House: Floating Weeds​

9 28 Up​

10 Gates of Heaven​

#9 and #10 are documentaries. I've seen neither, nor #8, nor IIRC La Dolce Vita. Among the remaining six, only one makes my personal Top 30 Movies list. And one -- guess which -- I consider HUGELY over-rated (though many adore it).

One way that my preferences differ from professional critics like Ebert is that experts are delighted by excellent or ground-breaking cinematographic techniques, while I focus on story, dialog, and sentiment.

Any top 10 without Life is Beautiful isn't much of a list. I'd argue it is the only beautiful film I've ever seen. The subject matter, with comedy injected with utter perfection and maturity to the subject.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Best female comedian must be Lucille Ball and a lot of recognition should go to Ball and Desi Arnaz who, believe it or not actually broke what was considered to be a color barrier with their marriage and partnership on camera and in their studio. Arnaz actually invented the three camera filming technique still used by television shows today. They were both innovators and extraordinary talents.

Other tremendously talented comedians include the incomparable Robin Williams as well as Eddie Murphy. Tina Fey and Jean Smart ( really, guys—you have to see Hacks) It is impossible to not include Charlie Chaplin as an epic, perhaps GOAT comedic performer, actor, innovator, writer, director and producer. It is impossible to mention Chaplin without mentioning the Marx Brothers.

Don't forget Carol Burnette, who is actually still working.

I was thinking about her! Such a talent!

I was watching one of the Omnibus episodes (old arts program from way back for the people like me who are too young to know about it). It was one of the Leonard Bernstein episodes. I think they were doing American Theater. For whatever reason that escapes me, he had a a person sing (bellow) effectively a single note. And I saw the person and... "Was that Carol Burnett?" Sure looked like her, obviously much younger. And in the credits, her name rolled. I don't much know the timeline of that show and her work on Broadway, she might have been someone at that point. But it was unexpected to see.

Burnett is definitely one of America's best talents. Tends to overdo it in the drama scenes (see The Front Page), but she is typically all-in or not in at all.

 

[Politesse]

First of all, We all have different tastes in movies. When I say "Godfather is #2" it goes without saying that I am giving MY opinion based on MY tastes and preferences.

Vertigo -- a trite and boring film -- to near the very top of many "best film" lists.

Wtf? You're mad. And wrong. Vertigo is the fourth greatest film ever put to screen.

The way you phrase this, without naming your #1, #2, #3 films, makes me wonder if you're referencing a slightly "authoritative" list which ranks it #4. I Googled just now trying to recall the specific list and this turned up:

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has replaced Orson Welles's Citizen Kane at the top of a poll that sets out to name one film "the greatest of all time".
The British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine polls a selected panel once a decade and Citizen Kane has been its top pick for the last 50 years. This time 846 distributors, critics and academics championed Vertigo, about a retired cop with a fear of heights.

To support my claim that Vertigo is VASTLY over-rated, let's compare TWO Hitchcock-directed films, each about a man who wants to murder his wife, with the crime eventually solved by a detective. (For brevity I will write "Milland" to denote the character portrayed by Ray Milland, and so on.)

In Dial M for Murder Milland designs a clever approach to murder his wife, Kelly. In Vertigo the "perfect murder" plan makes no sense. It relies on Stewart NEVER seeing the husband at the critical time, NEVER getting a glimpse of the corpse, NEVER seeing Novak after the murder, and so on. Even with his disability, these "Nevers" could NOT be relied on. For example, it is most likely that a real-life Stewart would have stayed around to talk to investigators, and would have caught a glimpse of the corpse and seen that it was not Novak.

In Dial M for Murder the clever London detective solves the crime, tests his theory, explains all this to us. The movie ends with that detective proudly twirling his moustache. Vertigo's crime is solved only when Stewart chances upon Novak by coincidence. (And that scene is unrealistic; Stewart KNEW she was Novak, or an identical twin.) It makes zero sense. The whole reason for Stewart's involvement at all was to have a "witness" saying the wife had fallen to her death. But this "witness" had no idea what the wife looked like, and never viewed the corpse whose circumstance he was attesting to? Nonsensical!

The story in Dial M for Murder is interesting, partly because it is somewhat intricate. Vertigo -- What story? Man wants to kill his wife. He pushes her off the top of a building, after wasting GREAT effort -- it's almost all the whole movie is about -- setting up his old buddy Stewart in a nonsensical witnessing scenario.

Dial M for Murder has interesting scenes that contribute to the crime and its detection. Milland has a long conversation with an old college chum, coercing that guy into committing the murder. Vertigo? A typical scene is Stewart and Novak staring at the ocean. We stare at them wondering when one or both will get wet. Whippeee!

Dial M for Murder doesn't even appear oni some "Top 10 Hitchcock Films" lists, while Vertigo is rated #1 by the British Film Institute. This certainly proves that opinions differ!!

I am BAFFLED by Vertigo's high ranking. (It may be sexist for me to admit that some actresses are beautiful, but I do wonder if Kim Novak's photogenicity contributes to the high regard for this film.)

I didn't have any specific "list" in mind, my choice of number was arbitrary. I do think that Vertigo is a very good film though, which isn't to say that Dial M for Murder (and though you did not mention it, my other favorite Hitch films, Rope and Rear Window) are not.

If we're going to critique the man's ouevre, I feel that Psycho and The Birds make it a bit farther up these lists than they quite merit. Hitchcock is second to few when it comes to crafting a memorable scene, but patching those scenes together into a cohesive film doesn't always follow from there.

 

[Swammerdami]

Any top 10 without Life is Beautiful isn't much of a list. I'd argue it is the only beautiful film I've ever seen. The subject matter, with comedy injected with utter perfection and maturity to the subject.

Yes.
Life is Beautiful is #20 on my personal Top Movie list, ahead of Apocalypse Now, Lawrence of Arabia, and Casino Royale. Is that good enough for you?