Sub Titles was inaugurated in a bad year in order to do what we hope is a good thing:
talk about music and movies without becoming hamstrung by what dusty gatekeepers insist on discussing.
Matt (music) and Tim (movies) sought out “Best of” lists from providers who are alternately inspiring and frustrating, and decided to go about replacing them bit by bit. Tim went basic and chose to replace the 100 movies on AFI’s 100 Years...100 Movies list from 2007. Matt got complicated and took the top 100 from the 300-strong albums list created by Spin to commemorate their first three decades (1985-2014).
methodology
Each host comes to the table with three albums or movies, respectively: one comes from the original list he’s replacing, and the other two are brought in because they bear some thematic similarity to the title to be replaced. During Matt’s half of each episode, he discusses the album from the Spin list, and then presents two possible replacement albums which share that theme of his choice.
Afterwards, Tim makes a decision about which one will be the official Sub Title and join the Sub Titles Album List. Then, in Tim’s half, he does the same: talks about the AFI entry, offers two possible replacement movies which share a theme of his choice, and leaves it to Matt to choose the Sub Title joining the Sub Titles Movie List.
Because music is not Tim’s speciality and movies are not Matt’s first love, the criterion for selection is not how “good” or “important” the replacements are, but how well they fit the theme presented by the host.
limitations & considerations
This is probably minutiae, but if you’re like us the minutiae is half the fun. Both of us went into our selection process with some limits on what we would choose.
Matt’s Brakes
Keep the replacement albums to roughly the same time period as the Spin list (1985 to 2015)
Only one album per musical artist/band.
Limit the total number of albums from 101-300 on the Spin list
Resist the temptation to overload the list with giant names
Tim’s Process
No movies which made the 1997 AFI list but not the 2007 AFI list
Movies need to be American, not fake American like the AFI likes to do
No documentaries or shorts, in order to keep in the spirit of the AFI list
No limits beyond personal embarrassment on directors or decades
future sub titles games
When both top 100 lists are finished, we’ll play some games with the Sub Titles. We’re still working out the details, but we speak as the guys who have, among other things:
Committed to college dining hall napkins exercises such as “Which figures from our university would we draft to form a strike team to destroy the shield generator on the forest moon of Endor?”
Complete an NBA fantasy draft for the whole NBA once a year.
Ran a bracket ranking Disney characters in which the Hungarian Pill Bugs made a borderline idiotic run, we feel qualified to make up silly games.
Had the audacity to create a “Best Rock Song Ever” bracket that one time.
where to find us
matt
Matt is the guy in high school who always wanted to tell you why Tool is the most profound and important band of our lives. In fact, he even wrote a paper in 11th grade about the very subject. He wears his guilty pleasures on his sleeve, from Def Leppard’s Pyromania to all manner of emo, and has firm opinions on everything from the best Britney song to the best Queens of the Stone Age lineup. If you want someone as excited by Nena as Nina Simone, by P!nk as Pink Floyd, by OK Go as OK Computer, or by Weird Al as by Al Green, Matt is your man. Still don’t give him the opening to talk about Tool, though, he won’t shut up. You can find his writing, primarily about music, at Hullabaloo and Ballyhoo. You can also check out what he’s listening to as well as see Sub Titles related playlists by following him on Spotify.
tim
Tim’s first favorite movie was Gettysburg with Tom Berenger and Jeff Daniels. Then after never doing more than dabbling in movies for the next twenty years (and still shaking off the delirium of a brief Glee phase), he all of a sudden found himself with way more free time and a Filmstruck subscription (RIP). Since then, he’s been trying to make up for those lost two decades. He’s discovered that he’s the kind of guy who thinks Topsy-Turvy is Mike Leigh’s apogee, prefers Jean-Pierre Melville to any nouvelle vague master, and gloms onto any religious movie like Willem Dafoe gloms onto Christ roles. You can find his writing, which is primarily about movies, at Seeing Things Secondhand; you can find his dumb reviews on LetterBoxd.