30 Jan 2012 - Top ten movie births

I was reading The Age online and found a link to The Vine's list of top ten movie births. I thought, okay this might be interesting, but it turns out that it wasn't really all that interesting. It was a random list of movies that spanned a few decades, but it appeared that the author of the article had just decided what he thought was the best births and included very little information, if any, as to how he had come to his conclusions, or as to why one birth was higher up on the list than another. The number one movie was a horror movie called 'The Fly' with Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum. The reason that this movie was number one was because Geena Davis dreams that she gives birth to a maggot!

Reading this list got me to thinking, what makes a good top ten list? Based on the evidence it seems that anybody can create a top ten list. The problem that I see is that nobody seems to explain how they got to the conclusion that these items beat all the other items who could content for inclusion on the list. I believe it comes down to the type of list, for example the other day I was reading about the top ten largest public companies. This list was made up of quantitative data and so there was a tangible reason and a list of criteria that each company is measured against in order to make the top ten list. I understand this list and it makes sense to me. However when it comes to a qualitative lists such as the top ten all time greatest movies or the top ten movie births, what is the criteria that measures these lists? You never get to know how each item reached their lists most of the time, in some cases they say, 'a list as voted by you,' but usually it just appears to be one person's opinion. If that is the case then I could come up with a top ten list, how about the top ten all time greatest blogs, I know which one would be number one! I guess what I have learnt today is that The Vine believes that The Fly contains the all time greatest movie birth, but the lesson I am taking away is that anybody can make up a top ten list about anything they choose. I guess this should have already been obvious to me considering David Letterman has been doing it for years!

The top ten list was on The Vine website.