McSpleen’s Top 20 Movie Challenge:

You have to name your top 20 movies but nobody starring or directing any of them can be starring in or directing any of the others. If you can’t tell, this begins to suck after about five items.

So if you use The Godfather, you can’t use  Scarface (Pacino), On The Waterfront (Brando), or  Joe Versus the Volcano (Abe Vigoda). If you use The Usual Suspects, you can’t use L.A. Confidential (Spacey), Casino (Pollak), and Joe Versus the Volcano is out again (on Don Hedaya, you know, the guy who played Nick Tortelli on Cheers).

Gets hard, doesn’t it?

If you use the new Ocean’s Eleven, then you can’t use Pretty Woman. If you use the old Ocean’s Eleven, you can’t use the old Manchurian Candidate. If you use the new Manchurian Candidate, you 1) have a problem and 2) would probably like to use Sphere, and you can’t. Ran and Rashomon would disqualify each other.

The rules are :

Credited performances only – so the traditional cameo of Hitchcock in Vertigo doesn’t disqualify Rear Window (but Jimmy Stewart does)
Voice performances count – Beauty and the Beast knocks out Gaslight. Dr. Strangelove knocks out four of the six Star Wars movies.
Directors who act count – Mystic River would knock out A Fistful of Dollars. Note, a movie can’t disqualify itself if the Director was in the film (Annie Hall, Blazing Saddles, Citizen Kane)

Good luck, kids!