Yahoo film list decends from mediocre to absurd.

A new list pumped out by Yahoo presents their 10 most historically inaccurate films.

Utterly rediculous. As I'm persuing through the mediocre assemblance of rather recent films and sparese justifications, I'm thinking: What makes one film more historically inaccurate than another? What are the criteria, and how are they proporitioned? Why is there nothing from before the 90s on this list? Perhaps a 13 year old penned this.

Then I reach the final entry. 2001. The mere thought that this film was at all considered from a historical paradigm confuses and enrages me. I fear I lack the writing skill to capture my honest reaction to it. It's inclusion made another bullshit list into a catastrophe of film criticism. Worse yet is Yahoo's lack to provide an author, or any point of contact for that matter.

Let's take a minute to catch our breath here, and move on.

Back to the front nine, larger questions come to mind, such as, how historically accurate does a film need to be? What are cinema's obligations to history, and history's to cinema? It's an interesting topic, but I think that ultimately, in the larger scheme of cinema, superficial.

I recently took a History class look at these questions and many more, and I concluded that historians will never be content with a historical film. There will always be overlooked details, events that never happened, or sequence, or scale. Anachronistic results from the best of intentions. As a historian, it can be annoying, but only if the film isn't very good. Most historical films are using a real story to find dramatic action, and nothing more. Rarely do filmmakers seek to educate an audience. Films teach us, at best, a decent set of trivia for Jeopardy, but never have they been considered (rightfully so) as substantial sources of knowledge. Fiction seeks reaction, not retention.

However, an address on the genre of biofilm: misguided. These 'true' life stories often boil complex figures down to 120 minute servings. Cinema concerning the 'real' should be turned to as an afterthought of research. Cinema should reward knowledge. The people most deserved of remembrance are often the hardest to compress into film. The greatest biopic: I'm Not There. It appreciates Bob Dylan, rewards those who have followed his life and work, makes no definitive summary, no attempt at a thesis on his person or effect. The filmmaker is surely a supreme authority of Dylan, but acts as if in a room with other such fans, not at a podium before a crown of befuddled dolts.