I don’t find a lot of memes out there on the ‘net anymore — apparently they were just a fad that’s now on the wane — but every once in a while, I still run across one that grabs my fancy. Here, courtesy of Tosy and Cosh, is one that grabbed my fancy this morning. It’s one of those list-style memes that asks how many Oscar-winning films — i.e., winners in the category of Best Motion Picture of their respective years — I have seen.

The usual instructions apply. Oscar-winning films I have seen are italicized. Those I want to see are bolded.

1928 – Wings
1928 – Sunrise
1929 – The Broadway Melody
1930 – All Quiet on the Western Front
1931 – Cimarron
1932 – Grand Hotel
1933 – Cavalcade
1934 – It Happened One Night
1935 – Mutiny on the Bounty
1936 – The Great Ziegfeld
1937 – The Life of Emile Zola
1938 – You Can’t Take It With You
1939 – Gone With the Wind
1940 – Rebecca
1941 – How Green Was My Valley
1942 – Mrs. Miniver
1943 – Casablanca
1944 – Going My Way
1945 – The Lost Weekend
1946 – The Best Years of Our Lives
1947 – Gentleman’s Agreement
1948 – Hamlet
1949 – All the King’s Men
1950 – All About Eve
1951 – An American in Paris
1952 – The Greatest Show on Earth
1953 – From Here to Eternity
1954 – On the Waterfront
1955 – Marty
1956 – Around the World in 80 Days
1957 – The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958 – Gigi
1959 – Ben-Hur
1960 – The Apartment
1961 – West Side Story
1962 – Lawrence of Arabia
1963 – Tom Jones
1964 – My Fair Lady
1965 – The Sound of Music
1966 – A Man For All Seasons
1967 – In the Heat of the Night
1968 – Oliver!
1969 – Midnight Cowboy
1970 – Patton
1971 – The French Connection
1972 – The Godfather
1973 – The Sting
1974 – The Godfather Part II
1975 – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1976 – Rocky
1977 – Annie Hall
1978 – The Deer Hunter
1979 – Kramer vs. Kramer
1980 – Ordinary People
1981 – Chariots of Fire
1982 – Gandhi
1983 – Terms of Endearment
1984 – Amadeus
1985 – Out of Africa
1986 – Platoon
1987 – The Last Emperor
1988 – Rain Man
1989 – Driving Miss Daisy
1990 – Dances With Wolves
1991 – The Silence of the Lambs
1992 – Unforgiven
1993 – Schindler’s List
1994 – Forrest Gump
1995 – Braveheart
1996 – The English Patient
1997 – Titanic
1998 – Shakespeare in Love
1999 – American Beauty
2000 – Gladiator
2001 – A Beautiful Mind
2002 – Chicago
2003 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2004 – Million Dollar Baby
2005 – Crash
2006 – The Departed

I’m proud to see how much italicized text there is up there; I’ve seen a lot of stuff. However, the really interesting question about “best pictures” is not which films people have seen, but which remain relevant and respected after a span of years. For instance, I know a powerful backlash has built up against Dances With Wolves and Titanic, both of which many people now say shouldn’t have won. (To be fair, many people said this about them the night they did win; personally, I disagree in both cases, but especially so when it comes to Dances with Wolves. I’ve been catching bits and pieces of it on TV the last couple weeks — AMC and my local PBS affiliate are both playing the hell out of it right now — and I still find it as captivating and moving as I did seventeen years ago. And I’ve always liked Titanic and don’t care who knows it!) Of course, whether a movie earns respect or scorn is, to a certain extent, subjective — people view movies through their own personal lenses of experience, interests, and education. It’s a matter of taste; I myself loath The English Patient, Forrest Gump, and Annie Hall (and no, I don’t dislike AH just because it beat out Star Wars for the Oscar… although that certainly doesn’t help its cause in my eyes).

But relevance is a different thing, isn’t it? Movies and other art forms that seemed so significant and wise at a certain time often tend to lose their power as times change. The Deer Hunter drew much of its power from the fact that the Vietnam War was still very much an open wound on the American psyche; these days, with that wound at least scabbed over if not on the mend, it strikes me as rather ridiculous. Similarly, Kramer vs. Kramer was notable at the time of its release for being the first movie to honestly depict modern divorce; nowadays, divorce has been so commonplace for so many years, that it’s hard to see what the big deal was about this film.