Once every ten years, the British Film Institute publishes in its Sight & Sound magazine a list of the top ten greatest films of all time. This year, Vertigo pulled off an upset, taking the number one spot from Citizen Kane, which had held steady at the top since 1962.

After the 2012 list came out in August, there was a bit of grumbling from certain corners about the rankings — the guy in charge had it in for Citizen Kane; there were no remotely new movies on the list; we shouldn't be ranking movies like this in the first place — but ultimately, it's hard to deny the merits of the BFI selections. There's a pretty straightforward calculus that defines what goes into a good movie: writing, acting, mise-en-scene, cinematography, complexity of themes, presence of a family-friendly rap over the closing credits (Lol ;). We like to have fun here, folks.). What actually makes a movie profoundly watchable is far harder to pin down.

The Thing is not necessarily a better movie than Tokyo Story — it definitely isn't — but it is far more watchable. Sometimes there's significant overlap between watchability and objective quality, as with the first two Godfather movies, but other times they're worlds apart. Barry Lyndon is good. Fast Five is watchable.

The only real trend I've noticed that seems to cut across all deeply watchable movies is that they tend to be more noticeably comprised of a series of almost invariably awesome and memorable scenes than a typical movie might be. When you watch Bicycle Thieves, the whole thing's of a piece. When you watch Goodfellas, every time the action shifts to a new scene, you go, "aw shit, aw shit, hold up, hold up, this is such a great scene. hey, hey, are you watching? god, i love this scene!" and then you start mouthing along with the dialogue and nervously looking over at anyone else who might be in the room to make sure they're paying rapt attention.

The most watchable movies are also such that any time you flip across them on TV, you feel compelled to watch them to the very end. Again, an example: If you come across Rashomon an hour into the movie but you're supposed to meet a friend in 20 minutes, you'll probably just go ahead and turn off the TV. You will not do so with The Big Lebowski.

So with all this in mind, I'm introducing Progressive Boink's first bracket. Together, we're going to determine the most watchable movie in the world. I've already tossed out a few initial nominations in the text (namely, Goodfellas, Godfather I & II, The Thing, The Big Lebowski). Use the comments below to nominate your own choices, briefly explaining them if you so choose (an impassioned defense, while not strictly necessary, might be a big help while I'm culling the picks for the first round of voting). You can also tweet them to me at @dalykyle or to Progressive Boink at @pboink. Voting will start once we've got a solid first round to go on. Gogogogogogo

In case you somehow missed it, Saturday was the inaugural DORITOS LOCOS THROWDOWN OH-TWELVE, an evening set aside for people on the Internet to eat as many Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell as they could in an hour. By any metric, the event was a rousing success. Particularly if the metric you're using is "total tacos consumed."

At the end of the evening, we had some people filled with regret and others filled with despair. Most of all, however, we were filled with tacos. Vaguely Doritos-flavored tacos. Increasingly soggy tacos. We crowned co-champions and we have tales to tell. Listen to them with us, won't you?

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The confetti was still falling when the local news broadcast cut in. Ann pressed the "mute" button on the remote control.

"Well, kiddo," said Mitt, patting Ann's knee as he rose from the couch, "I guess that's all she wrote."

"Mmm," Ann said distractedly. She continued to watch the newscasters as they performed their silent pantomime of the day's news.

"Heyyy, whatsamatta, you?" Mitt said. "Those jokers aren't in it to win it. This one's for all the marbles, and, uh, heh, I think they might have lost a few of theirs. This puppy is ours to lose" He let out a soft laugh and then chucked Ann's chin. She winced.

Mitt stretched and yawned theatrically. "Think I might turn in. I've got an appointment with Mr. Sandman, and he doesn't take kindly to me being late." He began to walk toward the stairs.

"Mitt?"

He paused and turned back to look at her.

"It's–." Her throat caught on something. "I love you."

"You're not too shabby yourself, mon cherie. Love ya, and no one else above ya," Mitt said, grinning. He made a little pistol with his fingers and mimed shooting it at her as he winked. He mounted the stairs. She could hear him whistling "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree" as he plodded around upstairs. She continued to watch the newscasters, losing herself in the soundless movement of their lips and, as her gaze began to lose its focus, the swirl of shapeless colors on the screen.

Her mind drifted back to an autumn morning many, many years ago, when she was just a girl. Mist clung stubbornly to the valleys, glowing gold with morning light. She stood ruddy-cheeked and muddy-booted before Augustus, her first horse. She gingerly brushed his forelock with her fingertips, but he twisted his head away, stamping his foot. He snorted and then sharply exhaled twin plumes of visible breath from his flared nostrils. She leaned in, closing her eyes and touching her forehead to his muzzle. He relented, moved into her. She could feel the throb of his pulse against her forehead. She patted his cheek. His hot breath tickled the inside of her forearm.

Minutes later, Augustus was carrying her at a full gallop across the tussocky plain. The wind whipped across her ears, a living silence. Augustus' hooves thumped rhythmically over the yellowing ground, flinging up a chaos of grass, weeds, and mud. Ann closed her eyes and drew in closer to Augustus. She was free.

"Ready, Freddy?" Mitt broke through her reverie. He was wearing his favorite set of pajamas: the striped button-up pair with 'WMR' stitched on the breast. She could faintly discern the outline of his temple garments underneath. "Last train to Tempurpedic Station. All aboard!"

Ann stood up, turned off the TV. Just as Mitt turned to walk back up the stairs, she caught him in an embrace.

"Hey, what's the big idea?" he said. Ann began to cry softly. Startled, Mitt began to stiffly stroke her hair. "Heyyy, honeybunch. It's not as bad as all that!" Ann looked up at him.

"Can you– Can you sing me a lullaby?" she said.

"Aaammeeerrriiica, the beeaauuuutiful," Mitt began in an unsteady warble. Ann buried her head into his chest.

It all started simple enough:

I kinda feel like seeing how many Doritos Locos tacos I can eat.

— Bill Hanstock (@sundownmotel) August 31, 2025

That tweet blossomed into a germ of an idea, which in turn blossomed into the inaugural DORITOS LOCOS THROWDOWN OH-TWELVE, which will take place on Saturday night. We would like as many people as possible to participate and we will have at least TWO Progressive Boink staffers taking part. Here are the particulars:

What: DORITOS LOCOS THROWDOWN OH-TWELVE

When: Saturday, September 8, from 7 p.m. ET - 3 a.m. ET

Where: The Internet

Hashtag: #DoLoThroDo12

Huh?: Eat as many Doritos Locos tacos as you can in one hour; provide proof.

More Detail: Okay so here's the deal: we're all going to use the magic of Twitter (AND THIS COMMENTS SECTION) to celebrate the absurdity of the Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco, which as you may know is a taco made out of "Doritos" (not really). It basically tastes like a regular taco, but with a hint of 'Ritos dust. The point is that it's stupid and here in America, we always do "stupidity" to excess.

The reason the contest takes place so late is to really embrace the Taco Bell concept of "FOURTHMEAL" so make sure you have three squares before embarking on this dumb thing (optional).

It's pretty simple, really. Eat as many DsLT as you can, livetweet it with the appropriate hashtag and provide PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF of how many tacos you have consumed, along with your final tally, on Twitter. The winner will be announced by me (@SundownMotel) on Sunday morning (during football!). Just for the record, I'm setting the initial "chump line" (the taco equivalent of the Mendoza Line) at four tacos.

Best of luck to everyone and eat a bunch of tacos!

You can expect a moratorium from myself and the esteemed Peter Holby after the weekend right here on the old Progressive Boink.

Welcome once again, friends, to LUNCH JUDGMENT! There's really no point to eating things unless they win you validation from others, and that's where this exercise comes in.

Leave a comment below that describes the lunch you had or are having today. I will then rate it from 1 to 10, and try my best to explain my ruling. Remember, as always, that I'm not out to hurt anyone's feelings, but neither will I hesitate to exact a frank assessment of your lunch. If it is crummy, I will tell you it is crummy. Fair?

I hope you ate better than I did today. I had a double cheeseburger from Wendy's and a water, and I forgot to ask them to hold the mayonnaise. Mayonnaise on a burger is ... well, it's a sickness is what it is. I ate it. I give myself a 4. It was the first time I'd eaten a fast-food lunch in at least a month, and I suppose it will be at least that long before I do something that dumb again.

Anyway! Enough of my shit lunch! Tell me about yours! I can't promise that I will be able to rate every lunch, but I'll get to as many as I can.

Every company must begin somewhere. When you're a fledgling business, you have to get people to pay attention and stick around long enough to sample what you're putting out. Way back when most big companies started out, they could get away with outright lies or claims of malady relief or hell maybe William Randolph Hearst would just send some dude to rough you up a little until you bought his paper.

Nowadays, most (probably all) of those things are pretty illegal. To make matters worse, the Internet exists, so not only can you read shitty Yelp and Amazon reviews of stuff, you can also click over to a better thing and forget about the first thing faster than you can imagine.

You know what most companies have to rely on now? Press releases. And hoo boy, can they be silly.

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I know we don't like to think about it much, but there was a time before the Internet as we know it existed. For a big portion of my life, the only way I knew of to make computers talk to one another was for a businessman or government guy in a movie to take the handset of a rotary phone and press it into one of those things that hooked up to a big fancy computer that had two round rubber parts for the speaker and receiver. I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about, but watch Tron or War Games sometime and you'll probably see the device in question.

Anyway, nobody I knew had one of those things, so the concept of "Internet" was still pretty foreign to me. In addition, I came to the Internet late compared to all my friends. I was the dude who always had to go to a friend's house if I wanted to see something online, but that was always just during my last couple years of high school (I AM OLD). Further, back then, "the Internet" was always just a weird bulletin board, or a super-pixellated crude animated GIF of boobs.

If you asked me in 1995 what the future of Internet was, I don't even know what I would have said. Maybe "Dave Mustaine rules." Luckily, no one asked me. Instead, they asked some other kids ... kids who turned out to be crazy geniuses.

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The Republican National Convention has spent the last several days teasing the reveal of a mystery speaker who will address the conventioneers tonight. Media speculation has largely circled around prominent Republican Clint Eastwood, but his participation is far from certain. Here are some of Progressive Boink's guesses as to just who it might actually be:

• Chris Christie's belly, painted to look like a face, with his nipples as the Marty Feldmanesque eyes and belly button as the mouth.
• Dennis Miller, who is lynched by an angry, confused audience furious that they don't understand his references to the Algonquin Roundtable and the War of the Roses.
• J.C. Watts, Artur Davis, Allen West, and Karl Malone rounded up and made to perform a group rap called "RHAT: Republican, Hot, And Tempting." Malone is wearing a dashiki.
• CGI miscarried Duggar baby extolling the sanctity of life.
• The can of tuna fish that Mitt and Ann Romney ate out of during their trying years as a young, struggling couple (who happened to be college students living off Mitt's investments).
• Newt Gingrich, in character as the protagonist of 1945, his alternate history novel exploring the possibility of Nazi superweapons. Speech heavily peppered with heavyhanded but veiled allusions to the Obama administration when discussing the Nazis.
• Ron Paul, announcing his surprise victory in securing the Republican party's nomination after a recount of delegates, and then the Internet libertarians wake up and it was all a dream -- or was it??
• Ooga-Booga, the witchdoctor who delivered the infant Barack Obama in the wilds of Kenya (comedy act performed by Jon Voight in blackface with a bone through his nose).
• An animated version of that painting of both Bushes, Nixon, Teddy Roosevelt, Ford, Reagan, and Eisenhower all playing poker and laughing like a CHiPS ending credits freezeframe.
• Just a big ol' garbagebag.