THE BLACK LIST

I'm a film nerd. Always have been and always will be. I used to spend at least an hour a day combing through various movie websites/blogs taking in as much as I could.

I don't do it so much anymore, because I'm at a point where I'd much rather the movie speak for itself and be what it is rather than what it could have been.

One of the few posts I still get somewhat excited for each year is the release of THE BLACK LIST. Usually put out in late November or early December, THE BLACK LIST was started in 2006 by a young exec at Leo DiCaprio's production company. He e-mailed a bunch of his peers and asked that they send him their favorite scripts that might be in development but definitely aren't in production. It started with around 100 people and now sits at around 250 and each year, everyone's suggestions get tallied up and they release a list of them. There's never a set number of how many are on the list, because each year more and more entries are on it, but the most popular ones are always the highest.

I always had a love/hate relationship with the list, but never for any very personal reasons. It's just that I'd see what was on the list, see what it was about and get equal parts happy and bummed. Happy because it would be a great idea with (apparently) a really clever, well written script. Sad because everyone in Hollywood was too busy trying to get a sequel or a remake off the ground to take any chances on really good scripts.

Then, a couple years ago, movies that were on the black list started getting made and coming out. That's when my opinion of THE BLACK LIST started to change. I used to think it would be an amazing movie, but that wasn't always the case.

Sure, there were a few that lived up to the hype, but a lot more that made you wonder how they made it on the list in the first place.

Here's a few movies that debuted on the black list and then came out in theaters a little while later.

JUNO, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (top vote getters the first year), CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR, STATE OF PLAY, FARRAGUT NORTH (re-titled IDES OF MARCH), THE ROAD, ADVENTURELAND, ZOMBIELAND, THE WRESTLER, I'M WITH CANCER (re-titled 50/50), INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, NOWHERE BOY, UP IN THE AIR, EASY A, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, CEDAR RAPIDS, CRAZY STUPID LOVE.

Good stuff, right? Not great stuff, but (mostly) all movies I've seen and liked. The problem is that for every good movie on that list, there's another movie that was on it that I didn't like at all. Like these.

THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE, FANBOYS, RENDITION, SEVEN POUNDS, SOURCE CODE, VALKYRIE, JENNIFER'S BODY, THE BEAVER, FUCKBUDDIES (re-titled NO STRINGS ATTACHED), A COUPLE OF DICKS (re-titled COP OUT), BAD TEACHER, TOWER HEIST.

See that last one? TOWER HEIST? Well, I saw that movie a few days ago and felt that before I dive in to writing about it, I had to give a little background.

THE BLACK LIST still has some good stuff on it (actually a lot more than I thought) but it's probably close to a 50/50 split on the good versus the bad.

But there are some really bad finished products.

For instance...