TOP romantic comedies

Now that it is Christmas time, more than ever we want love and happiness, including on screens! Romantic comedies are one of the most successful genre of the movie History. What are then the best romantic comedies? We have created our own ranking and after many, many discussions, we come to that TOP.

As the genre is very popular, you'll find a lot of different TOP romantic comedies : here, here or here for instance. All these lists are meaningful and with interesting choices. But the interest of our Top is that you can very easily create yours, add some movies we may have forgotten, change the ranking, add comments, and share it with your loved one!

Whatever, in all of our TOP 25 romantic comedies, we have identified three regular problems preventing full expression of love and creating the situation for a comedy.

- The difference of social backgrounds between the protagonists, as in "Roman Holiday "(our #1) : she is a princess, he is a newsman. As in "Pretty Woman" : he is a successful businessman, she is a prostitute. Or as in "My big fat Greek wedding": she is from a Greek family, he is not.

- The character of one of the"lovers", generally the male. In "About a boy", "As good as it gets"  or "High fidelity", the male character is so weird, or childish, or lunatic, that he does not see Love knocking at his door. It will take him 90 minutes to understand how to proceed.

- The "unavailibity" of one of the "lovers". In that case, unavailibility means preciseley "married" but to someone else, or "married very soon to someone else". That's the case, for instance, in "Four weddings and a funeral", "The seven year itch" and "The Philadelphia story".

Go and vote!

 -

TOP funny videos on Youtube

As you may probably all know by now, Youtube has published today its most popular video for 2009. These videos are :

# 1 : Susan Boyle -  Britain's got talent

The first TV appearance of Susan Boyle during which she instantly goes from a status of awkward provincial middle-aged woman to potential star. Moving.

# 2 : David after dentist

A young boy filmed by his father after a visit to the dentist. The young boy acts as if he was drunk, probably the lasting effect of the aenesthesy. Hilarious.

# 3 : JK Wedding entrance dance 

The name says all. Funny.

# 4 : New moon movie trailer

Twilight!!!

# 5 : Evian roller babies

The now famous add for Evian with many babies practising rollers. We still think these babies are not cute at all but scary!

If they are very popular it is of course because they are wether funny, wether moving, wether very very expected by young people (Twilight!). This ranking also gives us very good information about what the 2009 "buzz" has been. However we do not know if their viewers consider them the best of their category. That is why we have created a more personal and subjective "TOP funny video on Youtube", which contains a very different selection, our own!

# 1 : Bad day at the office

Some violent reactions to really bad bad days at the office, caught by security cameras. We all have known such bad days, we all have thought about the kind of behaviour shown in these videos, the only difference is that they did it.

# 2 : Karate casting

This casting is so funny taht we still wonder if it as a real casting or a kind of comedy show. In it the delicious : "You want me to show you tough, I show you tough"

# 3 : What they were thinking.

Strange actions made by strange people leading to funny results.

# 4 : Funny commercial

Incredibly clever way to promote a language school.

# 5 : Worst goal ever

For  sport practitionners, it is comforting - from time to time - to see that on a football field, even us can act like pros (and vice versa).

You have the possibility to add your own selection to this list, it will then be integrated in the average TOP.  Everybody could then benefit from your clever and funny selection.

TOP Products, services and Technologies of the decade

Ten years ago life was not as easy as today, more precisely daily life. I am not sure that with all the new great services & products which have been created since ten years, we are more happy now, but I am sure that many things are easier. If you look at the Top published by Pcmag.com, you realize that 100 times per day we use these products and services, that most of us would not have even imagined ten years ago.

Among this 10 great services, product and technologies, there are three kind of improvements and innovation :

1 - Things you did before but that you can do now more easily or more practically.

Ths is the case for the Ipod, Tivo and the Imac. Before them you had the possibility to record music and to listen to it wherever you want, you had the possibility to record TV program, and you had computers. But each of these objects make things deeper and smarter. Now you can have almost all the music you want in a very thin product, you can skip adds and record long in advance, you can surf the internet, edit photos and videos, even if you are totally techno averse. These products enable you to do more in an easier way : that should always be the case with technological innovation!

2 - Things with which other major innovations would be useless.

This is the case of Google, Wifi and broadband internet access. With them you can use fully all the resources of the internet, in all kind of situation.  Without them the Internet would still be what it was 10 years ago and not that ubiquitous technology we know : a kind of car without gas.

3 - Things totally new and whose usage was totally unpredictable 10 years ago.

This is the case of Facebook and the GPS. Ten years ago, nobody could have forecast them. Will there be so disruptive innovation in the next ten years? 

You have the possibility to create your own ranking very easily and add more innovation if you think PC mag has missed a major breakthrough : here!

Top Best Album Covers

Now that you can easily create your Top Best Album of All Times, let's have a look at the covers. Rolling Stones Magazine has created a list of their Best album covers of all time. It dates back a little bit as it was published in the 90's : you should probably add a few more recent covers. However, what can we learn from that ranking?

When you're good, you're good!

Sergeant Pepper is the #1, the cover is fabulous. But Sergeant Pepper is also ranked best Rock album of all times. Obviously, there was a incredible gathering of talents around that album. The very well known cover was created by Peter Blake and his wife Jan Hawortt. It is a big collage of life size models including more than 70 famous people of all kind : Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Oscar Wilde, Simon Burroughs, Jesus, Gandhi, etc...

This cover won a Grammy award in 1967, the year the album was released. According to the legend, Paul Mc Cartney selected another cover and the final choice was only due to the insistance of his friend the Art dealer Robert Fraser.

Once again, with the "white album" ranking #3,  two albums f the Beatles are among the Top 10. The rule is : whatever the ranking concerning music may be, The Beatles are several times in the Top 10!

1967/1977 : The glorious decade.

Most of the best covers are ranging from 1967 to 1977 : the Top 13 is only made of album released during this decade. To be fair, it is easier to reach a beautiful result with a vinyl size cover than with a CD size. Moreover a lot of the selected covers are covers of great albums which also appear in the Top Rock album of all times.

What to put on a cover?

The best thing to do is to avoid the classic picture of the performers. Out of the Top 20, 16 covers are pure work of art, wether graphic (#2, "Never mind the bollocks", no picture or drawing at all, just the title), wether paintings ( #10, "The Velvet Underground ands Nico" a painting by Andy Warhol!), wether pictures of totally unexpected things (#19, "Nothing's shocking", two naked ladies with their hair in fire!), wether nothing at all ( #3, "The white album").

What is your ranking? Create it easily and share it with friends!

TOP Christmas tradition

Is everything ready for Christmas? The Christmas tree finely decorated, the turkey already ordered, presents bought, and carols rehearsed? We have now so many Christmas traditions that it becomes difficult to know from where they come.


From where does it come?
Heritage key.com has published a list of these traditions with their origins. It appears a lot of them come from ancient Rome and Egypt and as many Christian traditions were re-adapted : wether it be Christmas tree, feasting, or Yule log. Some, as Christmas cards, are even said to come from old chinese traditions. Only two of them, Christmas crackers and attending "the Nutcracker", are quite "modern".

Which one is your favourite?
With so many traditions, it appears to us that we add to create a TOP Christmas tradition full of explanations and with, of course, the possibility to create your own TOP. We will finally know if we can, at last, change the menu and save some cute turkeys!

I could not live without it!

Some inventions are now so much part of our lives that we could not even imagine living without them. The Telegraph has published a TOP 10 inventions that changed the world established by scientists from the British Science Association.  About.com has also published a list on the same topic but completely different. Paradoxically, the scientists' list focuses much more on inventions that changed our daily lives  (electronic money, trainers, and even social networking ...), while About.com focuses on inventions that changed the society ( automobile, steam engine,...).

At Rankmill we have wondered what would be the invention that changed the world we cannot live without. Here is our list.

Our #1 is Penicilline : we realised that without it most of us would have had already died! In fact we had all diseases which are considered totally benigned today, and which could be mortal before the invention of penicilline. To be dead or alive, that's a difference! So no question for the first. And thank you very much, mister Fleming!

And you? What is your TOP 10 inventions that changed the world? Penicilline too, or computers, the Internet, television, camera, electronic money, steam engine, automobile, trainers, Tv dinners or something else?