As I think I made clear, the story is told honestly and clearly. The men in the film could not possibly have been more forthcoming about what they did and how they felt about it. For instance, the first time they tried to eat small pieces of flesh cut from the frozen bodies, several of them retched and had great difficulty getting it down. But the salacious question of what the meat tasted like is not discussed. Do we really need to know that to appreciate the story?

As someone else pointed out, there have already been a Hollywood film and a couple of bestselling nonfiction accounts, which adequately cover the basic adventure-survival aspects of the story. This film is, in large part, about other questions.

Some accounts made by rescuers have suggested that they didn't eat the women's bodies, although that's never directly stated in the film. As I also made clear, the two men who prepared food never told the others whose bodies they were eating, and to this day are presumably the only people who know for sure.

Not trying to ennoble or demonize anybody, but I thought those were interesting details. Perhaps even in these extreme circumstances a certain South American chivalry and/or machismo was at work.

hey, thanks for bringing up that Eco story. I've heard of it, but never read it. Given some of Kaufman's past literary references (Being John M contains a clear not in the direction of Dadaist pioneer Alfred Jarry) I'm going to bet that he's read it. The similarity in terms of premise, theme and tone is pretty striking.

Great suggestions, so far. Remember, with that first list I was trying to reflect what I see as widespread consensus, and editorialize or inject my own opinion as little as possible. Of course I did decide to leave out "Rosemary's Baby" in favor of "Evil Dead" -- that was the final cut -- and some of you disagree. 'S fair enough.

I've never seen "Ju-on" ("The Grudge"). Heard a lot about it. Not sure I could take it. Sounds creepy as hell.

You know, on the critical comments about "The Haunting": OK, you could be right. I haven't seen it in many years.

@MisterMarker: I know you're constitutionally crotchety, but rereading my Bob Wilkins comments I think the affection comes through clearly. He was a whimsical, delightful guy, a genuine deadpan local-TV original. I loved his show, saw a lot of terrible movies and a few good ones. I'm sorry to hear that he's ill, but I wasn't insulting him. Merely pointing out that by his own admission he wasn't much interested in horror films.

Hi Karina!

From what I can tell, the docu-Oscar rules are stupider than ever this year. Karina's right that the Polanski doc and "Dear Zachary" were both eligible. (I had grave problems with the latter -- it's an audience-torturing bait-and-switch, and the filmmaker was too close to the material to see that.)

Broadcast no longer makes you ineligible, if you had a Manhattan theatrical run first. So HBO ran the Polanski doc in some weird theater, and I think the producers of "Made in America," which has no distributor, simply hired an NYC venue for a week. Given all the unreleased or virtually-unreleased films on this list (Fuel, The Garden, In a Dream, Blessed Is the Match), a lot of people must have pulled similar dodges. It's totally nutty, and only makes it worse that beautiful films like Order of Myths or The Unforeseen, which actually played for paying audiences, didn't merit further consideration.

As the director of one film festival told me later today, it's a "criminal offense" that the Academy is ignoring all the best work and most interesting trends in American film in favor of honoring "movies with the best intentions." But more on this later.

I can't find anything anywhere that supports the idea that the Polanski doc was ineligible. In fact, it's been widely discussed in other news reports & blogs as being among the prominent omissions. (In contrast, it's been reported that "Waltz With Bashir," the Israeli animated film, was ineligible because it didn't screen in US theaters before its NY Film Festival premiere in Sept.) So I'm assuming HBO managed an LA qualifying run as well.

As Karina said -- as, I believe, Karina reported on SpoutBlog -- the Polanski flick became short-lived news when Manohla Dargis reviewed its 1-week semi-clandestine qualifying run in March at a theater on 181st St. But producers have been doing quiet qualifying runs in LA theaters in August for many years (generally while the press looks the other way), and I would imagine something like that happened in this case.

The Harvard team, that year at least, was not dominated by New England prep-school types. Players like Tom Jones (before he became Tommy Lee), who was a public-school graduate from west Texas, were more the exception than the rule. There were several Boston townies from working-class neighborhoods, a group of rural Midwesterners and a couple of Southerners.

The Yale team, beyond Calvin Hill, was quite another story.

meant to say that modest-background players like Jones more the rule than the exception on that Harvard team. Need extra caffeine today.