Most of the calibration numbers are from a Hawkins lecture on April 24, 2004. I got the file from 'drhawkinsgroup' on Yahoo! Groups. And some of the high calibrating movies comes from:

http://de.spiritualwiki.org/Hawkins/Filme

In some cases it is unclear which verison of the film was calibrated.


700 - Big Blue, The [Note: This refers to the original U.S. release, no longer available (current video is of a subsequent release)]

550 - Brother Sun, Sister Moon

515 - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

499 - Dicken’s Christmas Carol
495 - Winged Migration
490 - Empire of the Sun

485 - Lost Horizon (1937)

475 - Ray
475 - Ben-Hur
475 - Color Purple, The
475 - Sound of Music
475 - Forrest Gump
475 - Fantasia

455 - Gandhi
455 - Amadeus
455 - What the Bleep Do We (K)now!?
455 - A Man for All Seasons
450 - Wizard of OZ, The
450 - It’s a Wonderful Life

445 - Little Buddha
440 - 2001: A Space Odyssey

425 - Terms of Endearment
425 - Chariots of Fire

415 - Doctor Zhivago
415 - Singin’ in the Rain
415 - Lion King, The
410 - Rain Man, The

405 - Hamlet
405 - Philadelphia Story, The
405 - My Fair Lady
405 - Titanic, The
405 - West Side Story
405 - Gone with the Wind,
400 - Yankee Doodle Dandy
400 - Citizen Kane
400 - Toy Story

395 - Shakespeare in love
395 - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
395 - From Here to Eternity
395 - Driving Miss Daisy
395 - Barefoot in the Park
395 - African Queen, The
395 - Saturday Night Fever
390 - Greatest Show on Earth
390 - Field of Dreams
390 - Shane
390 - Miracle on 34th Street
390 - Jazz Singer, The
390 - Out of Africa

385 - Funny Girl
385 - Bridge on the River Kwai, The
385 - Around the World in 80 days
385 - Chicago
385 - Raiders of the Lost Ark
385 - My Big Fat Greek Wedding
385 - Casablanca
385 - Grapes of Wrath, The
380 - Hello Dolly

375 - A Beautiful Mind
375 - ET: The Extraterrestrial
375 - Pretty Woman
375 - Gigi
375 - Dances with Wolves
375 - Jerry Maguire

365 - Cleopatra
365 - Murder on the Orient Express
365 - Oliver!
365 - American Graffiti
360 - Wuthering Heights
360 - Best Years of our Lives
360 - Breakfast at Tiffany’s
360 - Taxi Driver

355 - Tootsie
355 - An American in Paris
355 - Annie Hall
355 - Legally Blonde
355 - Some Like it Hot
355 - City Lights
350 - Giant
350 - Babe
350 - Way We Were, The
350 - Sleepless in Seattle
350 - Stagecoach
350 - Great Gatsby, the

345 - Willie Wonks
345 - Patton
340 - Seven Days in May
340 - North by Northwest

335 - Charlotte’s Web
330 - Ferris Bueller’s Day off
330 - Grease
330 - Jurassic Park

325 - Maltese Falcon, The
325 - Birth of a Nation, The
325 - Graduate, The
325 - Moonstruck
320 - Lawrence of Arabia

315 - Searchers, The
315 - Chinatown
315 - Double Indemnity
315 - Streetcar Named Desire
310 - Sixth Sense, The
310 - Rebel Without a Cause
310 - River’s Edge
310 - To Kill a Mockingbird
310 - Love Story

305 - Charade
305 - Manhattan
305 - Guess Who’s coming to Dinner
305 - Lord of the Rings
300 - Paper Moon
300- All About Eve
300 - Breakfast Club

295 - Sting, The
295 - On the Waterfront

275 - Braveheart
275 - You’ve Got Mail
275 - Ordinary People
275 - French Connection
275 - High Noon
270 - Lord of the Flies

270 - Wild Bunch, The
270 - Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
265 - Rocky

265 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind
265 - Crocodile Dundee
260 - Gold Rush, The

255 - It Happened One Night
255 - Bringing Up Baby
255 - Young Frankenstein
255 - Fall Safe
255 - Cool Hand Luke
255 - Spiderman
255 - Network
255 - Raging Bull
250 - English Patient, The
250 - Star Wars

245 - Bye Bye Birdie

235 - Ghostbusters
230 - A Fish Called Wanda

225 - Dr. Strangelove
225 - Blade Runner
225 - Wall Street

215 - Madame X
215 - Goldfinger
215 - Holy Grail
215 - Birds, The
215 - Harry Potter
210 - Place in the Sun, A
210 - Batman

205 - Caddy Shack
205 - Kramer vs. Kramer
205 - LA Confidential
205 - Rock Horror Picture Show
200 - Third Man, The
200 - Apartment, The
200 - Treasure of the Sierra Madre
200 - Valley of the Dolls

195 - Saving Private Ryan
195 - Easy Rider
195 - Tom Jones
190 - Passion of Christ
Dr. Hawkins mentioned if two 10-minute scenes of non-stop violence were removed from the movie, it would calibrate 345-350.

185 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
185 - Barbarella
180 - Beverly Hills Cop
180 - Godzilla
180 - Schindler’s List
180 - Jaws
180 - Platoon

175 - King Kong

165 - In the Heat of the Night
160 - Mad Max

155 -Godfather, The
155 - Godfather, Part II, The
155 - Carnal Knowledge
155 - Deer Hunter, The
150 - All Quiet on the Western Front
150 - Matrix, The

145 - Deliverance
145 - Aliens
145 - Notorious
145 - Predator, The
140 - Exorcist, The
140 - American Beauty
140 - Sex, Lies and Videotape
140 - Fatal Attraction
140 - Thelma and Louise

125 - Terminator
125 - It’s Alive

110 - Wait Until Dark
105 - Lethal Weapon
105 - Bonnie and Clyde
105 - St. Elmo’s Fire
105 - Vertigo
100 - Good Fellas

90 - Falling Down

85 - Halloween
85 - Omen, The
80 - In Cold Blood
80 - There’s Something about Mary
80 - Psycho

70 - A Clockwork Orange

65 - Apocalypse Now
60 - Rosemary’s Baby

55 - Shining, The

45 - Silence of the lambs

25 - Pulp Fiction

Some of those seem quite off to me...most notably the high calibration of 'Taxi Driver'...

Cool idea though...Once I get finished going through my books, and through doing some other calibrations that I've been planning on, I might just start going through the movie collections of myself, my girlfriend and my roommates.

-Rob

In the spiritualwiki it's got 'American Beauty' at 380 as opposed to 140 in the list above...

-Rob

Actually, TvF has Taxi Driver at 360 in Appendix D. Good size bunch of movies calibrated there, including American Beauty at 380.

I'm surprised by things like There's Something about Mary on the same level as Halloween, Omen, and Psycho. Not that I really liked the movie, but how'd it calibrate at the same level as slashers?!!

Eh, well...

Ah, I see... TvF has it at 105, so it looks like there might be some error mixed into the list???


Tim

I don't know about American Beauty and Something About Mary.. feel free to change it, so that it'll be correct. Or I'll repost.

This reminds me of the 'Great books of the western world' calibration

In a 2002 lecture:

feb 1/3 11:33 " the great books of the western world calibrate at 496"

Although, most of the time he calibrates/says that it calibrates at 460 or 470.. I don't know. It's kinda in the same ball park. Maybe he sometimes doesn't always hold in mind the newest editions or something.

Hmm...Taxi Driver still strikes me as odd...but yeah, there's definitely some stuff mixed up in there...

360...the level of acceptance...I can kinda see how that is an element of 'Taxi Driver'...but never would've thought of it as the essence of the movie. I suppose it makes sense though...that the character, Travis Bickle, could calibrate much lower than the film itself. In a way, the film shows how relative perceptions can be formulated...how heroes and the insane can be one and the same...depending on what one is aware of...and as such, acceptance might be appropriate?

Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

-Rob

Quote:

Well, it's not just about raw violence. The really perverse thing about "Psycho" (a brilliantly made movie, I think), is that it manipulates you into siding with the villain. The idea is that you think it's the mother that kills Marion Crane, the same mother that has her 'innocent' son imprisoned as her servant. We've already met the son and we're supposed to like him. Other than some hints of neurosis in his scene with Marion, he seems perfectly innocent. So, when our 'heroine' is killed, apparently by the mother, we're left to sympathize with the only character left, Norman Bates, whom we perceive to be a victim of the mother also. However, he, in fact, turns out the be the killer. So, it's a nasty trick on the audience. It isn't the actual 'slashing' that's really perverse. That only lasts about 30 seconds, and we never actually see the knife penetrate anything. That's why Hitchcock is definitely the most brilliant of suspense directors. He made a slasher and made it better than anyone ever did before or since.

I haven't seen Something About Mary, but I can imagine that there could be other factors involved than violence that would make it calibrate lower.

On another note, I can totally understand why Pulp Fiction calibrates so low. I hated that movie. Absolutely terrible. Not a single solitary character of any morality at all. And it just moves from one act of senseless violence to another. Tarantino does an excellent job of creating an apparently Godless world without even mentioning God, and all the characters spout meaningless philosophy inbetween murder like they're trying to be profound.

I was a bit surprised that two of my other favorite Hitchcock movies, Vertigo and Notorious, calibrated so low - especially Notorious. Vertigo I can kind of understand, because it's about obsession and control rather than love. Scotty's 'love' in that movie is cold and heartless. However, I definitely don't get how Notorious calibrates so low.

It's certainly interesting and thought-provoking, however, that discussing these movies and their calibrations helps to understand our emotions and what the movies are really saying beneath the surface. Don't you think?

Michael

Truth vs Falsehood has ‘There’s Something About Mary’ calibrated at 105. That seems to make more sense than 80, but it still surprises me a little. To me the movie seems to be soundly rooted in desire which would be a little higher than 105. I guess it does have a lot of ruthlessness in it as well.
Another calibration I found surprising is ‘All Quiet On The Western Front” at 150. Even though it’s a story that takes place in the midst of war the focus seemed to be more on the level of courage or even willingness.

Goodspirit

If somebody is looking for a movie with a higher calibration, I calibrated 'Into Great Silence' at 550. It's a really beautiful documentary about Carthusian monks living in French Alps.

http://www.diegrossestille.de/english

Something just occured to me: if the movie is rated R (USA rating) that's a good indicator that it's below 200.

What would you want the naive child inside of us watching? lol

Quote:

cool, it looks like a good film, I'll try to get it when I can.