Lev Grossman (wiki) has picked the six greatest fantasy novels of all time to This Weeks "Best Books...chosen by" series. Grossman blogs that each one"absolute indisputable classic" that "completely changed the game." [more inside]
posted by shothotbot on Nov 30, 2009 - 144 comments

Wonderful documentary on the art inspired chain of Best retail stores designed by Site architectural firm in the '70s and early '80s. 1::2::3::4
posted by vronsky on Oct 12, 2009 - 17 comments

Best Science Visualization Videos of 2009 from Wired Magazine
posted by Confess, Fletch on Aug 26, 2009 - 8 comments

Meet Arlo Weiner, America's Most Stylish 8-Year-Old.
posted by miss lynnster on Mar 10, 2009 - 125 comments

Acclaimed Music: The 3000 most recommended albums and songs of all time. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Mar 9, 2009 - 43 comments

Rob O'Connor provides a list of the best 'Best Of' albums [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson on May 10, 2008 - 54 comments

The top 100 films According to The Times (UK) Another film list? The same old Citizen Kane? No - this one’s different, says The Times’s chief film critic James Christopher [more inside]
posted by dawson on May 2, 2008 - 92 comments

Emilio Navaira is a Grammy-winning Tejano and country singer. Navaira's tour bus was traveling north along west 610 Loop near the Southwest Freeway when it crashed into a set of freeway barrels shortly before 4 a.m. He is clinging to life in a Houston hospital. His fans are praying for him. Doctors say he is now stable, but he faces a difficult recovery at best, and may never perform again. [more inside]
posted by fourcheesemac on Mar 26, 2008 - 5 comments

Irritated and indifferent -- consumers in the Expectation Economy. [more inside]
posted by tkolar on Jan 23, 2008 - 20 comments

Design Patterns, Reuse, recycle, but don’t reinvent the wheel unless necessary. This collection captures findings of consistent, unique or interesting interfaces and design flows from across the web. One of the many tools, tutorials etc. from Smashing Magazine's list, Best of September 2007. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Oct 10, 2007 - 9 comments

The American Film Institute decided the need for more money an update to their 1998 list of the 100 Greatest Movies was so pressing that they made a new list. Ebert (and friends) ask where's Fargo?. The IHT wonders why the past decade has only spawned four new, worthy movies. And, generally, no one seems super excited about it. (some links go to wikipedia to avoid registration on AFI's site).
posted by ztdavis on Jun 21, 2007 - 88 comments

There's been plenty of Bullshit! on MetaFilter before, and now there's more: Boy Scouts [1, 2, 3] ("Duty to God ahead of country, others, and self, is the credo of suicide bombers."); Wal-Mart Hatred ("Wal-Mart is one of the great anti-poverty programmes in the country."); Circumcision ("By the end of this programme, one of these three will drop their pants and show us the restored foreskin on their penis."); and The Best ("Stupid? How many of you are searching for it on the web right now?").
posted by hoverboards don't work on water on Apr 27, 2007 - 46 comments

British bookseller Waterstones asked its 5,000 staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982, the date Waterstone’s opened its first store. These are the results.
posted by unSane on Apr 14, 2007 - 53 comments

Best opening (or closing) paragraphs of academic works, a discussion at Crooked Timber. (This is of course different from first lines of novels, as discussed here, there, and elsewhere.
posted by LobsterMitten on Feb 23, 2007 - 39 comments

Stephen J. Cannell has created/co-created over 40 TV shows, written over 450 TV scripts for shows like The Rockford Files and The A Team , and 12 mystery novels. What's the catch? He is dyslexic..
posted by CameraObscura on Jan 17, 2007 - 40 comments

Best Viral Videos 2006.
posted by hama7 on Dec 14, 2006 - 40 comments

The best job in the world... Jebus let it be true!
posted by xmattxfx on Nov 22, 2006 - 25 comments

The guy who does the xkcd webcomic is looking for the Best Thing (Evah!), The Fairest (of them all... may contain boobies but it's mostly scenery) and The Funniest (for MeFites suffering 'img tag' withdrawl).
His as-of-the-moment Top 20 Best, Prettiest and Funniest. YMMV (I'm counting on it).
posted by wendell on Nov 17, 2006 - 25 comments

IGN's top 50 DC Comics covers should satisfy those who didn't like the Marvel covers posted yesterday. Great art, traditional themes, and strange psychadelia.
posted by Kickstart70 on Sep 25, 2006 - 18 comments

Make mine Maakies Tony Millionaire (who also does related comic Sock Monkey) has all of his sea-faring katzenjammers online. No direct links (curse you, frames!) but you can browse from here. The later ones are better (especially in the 540 range), but all are fun.
posted by klangklangston on Aug 5, 2006 - 20 comments

Empire Online's 50 Greatest Independent Films
I had no idea The Terminator was an independent film but they explain (a little) how they choose the movies as being made with "an independent spirit".

And if you think they got some wrong or missed the boat entirely, let 'em know. I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with #1, though I'm sure some of you will not.
posted by fenriq on Nov 8, 2005 - 98 comments

Best Buy's highly skilled staff of cashier-working counterfeit detectors, "a little nervous in the post-9/11 world", has the Baltimore police department put customer Mike Bolesta in handcuffs and leg irons after he uses uncommon but legal US currency to pay his bill.

"Meanwhile, everybody's looking at me. I've lived here 18 years. I'm hoping my kids don't walk in and see this. And I'm saying, 'I can't believe you're doing this. I'm paying with legal American money.'" Bolesta was then taken to the county police lockup in Cockeysville, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called in.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on Apr 7, 2005 - 171 comments

best retarded cat ever
posted by timb on Aug 11, 2004 - 102 comments

indieWIRE's Top 20 Undistributed Films and Film Threat's 10 Best/Worst Unseen Films of last year.
posted by boost ventilator on Jan 7, 2004 - 24 comments

Worst place to be a mother: Niger according to State of the Worlds Mothers. Sweden (PDF) the best.
posted by stbalbach on May 10, 2003 - 20 comments

Which Country Has The Most Beautiful Women? The best quality of life? The most divorces? The most mobile phones? The highest cost of living? Which one is the most visited? Rank the bastards! After browsing through this website, I'm sure the conclusion that we're all living in the wrong one is inescapable. The statistics and sources may be questionable, but there sure are a lot of interesting lists here! Meanwhile my own country, Portugal, has just been denounced as the the laziest in Europe and the booziest in the world. They lie! They lie! [Actually, it's a fair cop, guv. And it was nice to drag down the Brits with us.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Apr 17, 2003 - 53 comments

SITE Environmental Design did some pretty cool things for now-defunct big-box retailer Best back in the '70's and early '80's. Unfortunately, all but two of their Best stores have been razed or transformed into plain boxes; and one of those is under threat. They may not have been Chartres Cathedral, but they were certainly more interesting than the standard Wal-Mart or Best Buy architecture.
posted by ukamikanasi on Apr 4, 2003 - 12 comments

Is This Finally The Best Of The Rolling Stones? Their website was redesigned earlier this month in preparation for Forty Licks, the upcoming anthology which is being touted as the definitive compilation of their best songs. Is it though? There have been, er, more than a few of them in the past - even (most shockingly!) a couple of very good ones. Nor do the four new songs exactly transmit over-confidence. More pertinently: does it (do they) still matter? [Or, are we better off sticking to the current Primal Scream reincarnation?]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Sep 13, 2002 - 51 comments

The Ramones named #2 band of all time by Spin magazine, following the Beatles at #1. I think we all can agree to disagree about the vailidity of the yearly Grammy nominations, but when given a little more time, you'd think that the editors of Spin could come up with something better than placing The Smiths at #21, or Fugazi at #31. In other news, Bruce Springsteen was left off the list.
posted by padjet1 on Jan 10, 2002 - 91 comments