11 rad songs that missed triple j's Hottest 100 of 2000

"Dear triple j, why don't you play Eminem any more?"

There were a lot of great songs in the 2000 Hottest 100 (and you can hear them on Monday when the countdown is replayed on Double J). But there were also some not-so-great songs (I'm looking at you, Limp Bizkit).

So what if some of those not-so-awesome tunes made way for some bona fide classics? Here are 10 songs that you won’t believe missed the triple j Hottest 100 of 2000.

READ MORE ABOUT SONGS THAT MISSED TRIPLE J'S HOTTEST 100 COUNTDOWNS OVER THE YEARS HERE!

At The Drive-In - One Armed Scissor

This song was all over triple j in the latter half of 2000 but it took some now legendary Big Day Out shows that summer and At The Drive-In's subsequent burn-out break-up to get them into the Hottest 100 in 2001. While Pattern Against User and Invalid Litter Dept made that countdown, it was too late for this incendiary first single off their all-time classic album Relationship Of Command, even though it was listed in the voting guide.

Bonus fact: Members of At The Drive-In would return to the Hottest 100 as The Mars Volta in 2003 with their track Inertiatic ESP, which snuck in at #99.

Eminem - Stan

Marshall Mathers III had a good year Hottest 100-wise in 2002, getting three songs into the countdown, including Lose Yourself at #7. But those are his only appearances in the poll. That means classic singles My Name Is and The Real Slim Shady never made the cut, but the biggest crime has to be the omission of Stan, which is arguably Eminem's best tracks and one of the greatest hip hop songs of all time. 

Bonus fact: The song Eminem sampled in Stan - Dido's Thank You - made it into the Hottest 100 of 2001, three years after it was first released on the soundtrack of the Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Sliding Doors.

Machine Gun Fellatio - Not Afraid Of Romance 

Machine Gun Fellatio scored two songs in the countdown of 2000 - the surprisingly beautiful and poignant Unsent Letter reached #16 while Mutha Fukka On A Motorcycle landed in the bottom half of the poll for the second year in a row (one of the few songs to achieve this feat). But this brassy, sample-heavy track could have easily been a third. MGF had a solid run on the Hottest 100, polling nine times in six years (although two of those are Mutha Fukka On A Motorcycle) before combusting in 2005. 

Bonus fact: Mutha Fukka On A Motorcycle is one of three songs that polled in both the 1999 and 2000 countdowns - the other two are Metallica's No Leaf Clover and The Whitlams' Thank You (For Loving Me At My Worst). What was going on in 2000? Were we all drunk? No, triple j mistakenly listed them all in the 2000 voting guide, despite them having already polled the year before.

PJ Harvey - Kamikaze

Though not a single, this track from PJ Harvey's awesome 2000 album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea attracted plenty of triple j airplay. While Kamikaze missed out on the Hottest 100, the record's first single Good Fortune did make the cut, scraping in at #90. Oddly, this was Polly Jean's first entry into the poll, despite having released four critically acclaimed albums before this. For such an important artist, Harvey is sadly under-represented in the Hottest 100, with just three entries over the years.

Bonus fact: Non-single This Mess We're In, her duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke from Stories From The City..., made the countdown the following year, landing at #23.

Queens Of The Stone Age - Feel Good Hit Of The Summer & Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret

Here's one of my favourite bizarre Hottest 100 facts - QOTSA's drug-lovin' anthem Feel Good Hit Of The Summer is including on the 2-CD compilation released to coincide with the 2000 Hottest 100 despite not making it into the Hottest 100. This has led some people to surmise that it landed at #101. Whatever the reason, it's surprising the song didn't make the cut, especially given the Hottest 100's love of a good drug song (The Reefer Song, (You'll Never Be An) Old Man River, Flippers, etc...). Perhaps even more surprising is that Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret also missed the cut. This stylish groover is a highlight of QOTSA's second album Rated R, which yielded exactly zero songs in the poll.

Bonus fact: QOTSA had five songs off their next album Songs For The Deaf in the 2002 Hottest 100. Silverchair also had five that year, which was a record at the time. The record was equalled the following year by Powderfinger and The White Stripes, and then broken by Wolfmother in 2006 with six entries - a record which still stands.

Doves - Catch The Sun

Triple j's listeners voted Doves' album Lost Souls in at #8 on their best albums of 2000 poll. But that generosity didn't extend to the Hottest 100, with not a single song off that acclaimed album making the countdown - not even this summery head-bopper, which got a substantial amount of airplay at the time. In fact, Doves have never made it into a Hottest 100... except for 1993, back when they were called Sub Sub and their track Ain't No Love (Ain't No Use) made the countdown.

Bonus fact: Sub Sub turned into Doves in 1998 after a studio fire destroyed all their equipment and the bulk of an album they were working on. The disaster led the band to completely change tack, switching from an electro-dance outfit to an indie-rock group and renaming themselves Doves.

Kinobe - Slip Into Something More Comfortable

Remember those Cafe Del Mar CDs that were big in the late '90s/early '00s? If you have no idea what I'm referring to, this mellow mix of strings, flutes and waves is a pretty good indication of their chillout ambitions. British group Kinobe are still around, though they've not reached the heights again of this first single, which samples an Engelbert Humperdinck tune and got a lot of triple j love in 2000.

Bonus fact: Cafe Del Mar is a bar in Ibiza that starting releasing CDs in 1994 inspired by the chillout sets of resident DJ José Padilla. The first Cafe Del Mar compilation featured Underworld, who made the Hottest 100 two years later with Born Slippy, a decidedly un-chill tune.

Outkast - Ms Jackson

Outkast's Stankonia hit the shelves in October 2000, with this and the other singles B.O.B. and So Fresh, So Clean hitting radio around the world about the same time. It wasn't until January 2001 that Ms Jackson finally got a single release in Australia - a little too late to help it into the 2000 Hottest 100. The song bubbled away on radio, finally breaking through on the ARIA charts in the middle of March and spending 14 weeks there, including four weeks at #2. But for some reason it didn't make the 2001 Hottest 100 either, despite being a hip hop classic. Go figure.

Bonus fact: The Vines' cover of Ms Jackson reached #30 in the 2002 Hottest 100. Meanwhile, Outkast has only made the countdown once - Hey Ya! hit #2 in 2003. 

Len - Steal My Sunshine

This summery bop was released in October 1999 - just in time for the Aussie summer. By Xmas it was in the ARIA top 50 and by the end of January 2000 it was sitting pretty at #3. Someone in marketing deserved a pay rise for that level of perfect timing. Canadian band Len are regarded as a one-hit wonder on the strength of this song, which spent almost half a year in the Aussie charts yet couldn't crack the Hottest 100. While triple j initially played Steal Me Sunshine, they soon tired of it, happy to leave it to the mainstream stations to play.

Bonus fact: A lot of Canadians have made the Hottest 100 - from kd lang to Drake - but only one has ever cracked the top 10 and that's The Weeknd. He reached #9 in 2015 with Can't Feel My Face and #10 in 2016 with Starboy.

Peaches - Fuck The Pain Away

Fair to say this was way ahead of its time. Watch Cardi B's WAP go high in the 2020 countdown and then listen back to this and tell me Peaches wasn't hitting in the same ballpark 20 years earlier with her femme-forward sexuality. You can practically hear Peaches grinning as she sings lines like the title of this track. I guess it was too much for triple j listeners at the time.

Bonus fact: Peaches has never been in the Hottest 100, despite releasing such killer tracks as Set It Off, Kick It, and Boys Wanna Be Her.

Who will win triple j's Hottest 100 of 2020?

Glass Animals are favourites to win this year's Hottest 100.

It's Hottest 100 time again. It's on January 23 and will once again deliver what triple j listeners deem to be the best songs of the past year, creating a musical time capsule for decades to come.

It will also bring with it much debate. There will be the typical whingeing from people who don't listen to triple j anymore and who preferred it in the '90s when they played more Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers and who haven't caught up to the fact that triple j is the national youth broadcaster and thus keeps up with the youth and not ageing morons whose musical tastes haven't moved with the times. Get over yourselves, haters. (Oh, and listen to Double J on Monday, January 25 when they replay the Hottest 100 of 2000 in full.)

We finally got a female winner in last year's countdown, with Billie Eilish taking top spot. She wasn't the favourite, making picking a winner tricky last year. It may be even trickier this year - there were reportedly only a couple of hundred votes separating the top two songs as of last week.

When it comes to picking a winner, there are three key indicators - the bookies, social media vote counter 100 Warm Tunas, and ARIA chart performance. The first two are somewhat obvious and are usually pretty close (although 100 Warm Tunas was wrong last year and in 2016). ARIA chart performance is the icing on the cake - only six times out of 27 has the Hottest 100 winner failed to chart in Australia.

Let's look at who might win this year.

(All stats and odds were correct at time of publication.)

Glass Animals - Heat Waves

100 Warm Tunas: #1

Sportsbet: $1.50 (favourite)

ARIA: #17

Why it will win: This British art-pop four-piece has landed five songs in the Hottest 100 in the past six years, and their track Gooey made it into the Hottest 100 of the 2010s last March. They've never cracked the top 10 before but you could argue they're due. The bookies and Warm Tuna algorithm certainly think so - it's status as favourite has been strengthening over the past few days. This is one of the few songs expected to go high that has actually appeared in the ARIA top 50, which is usually a good indicator. It's going to be heard to beat - that undeniably catchy chorus gives off some serious winning vibes.

Why it won't win: Voting is reportedly close this year, and 100 Warm Tunas was wrong again last year. So were the bookies, in fact. So being favourite may not be the sure thing it was in 2017 and 2018. Glass Animals would also be bucking a bad run for English bands if they win - the last UK act to top the poll was Mumford & Sons, way back in 2009.

Spacey Jane - Booster Seat

100 Warm Tunas: #3

Sportsbet: $2.85 (second favourite)

ARIA: N/A

Why it will win: Spacey Jane are as triple j-approved as a band can be. They won a triple j Unearthed competition to play at Falls in 2018, were nominated for J Awards in 2019 and 2020, and listeners voted their album Sunlight as the best record of 2020. They had a track (Good For You) in last year's countdown, so they haven't totally come out of nowhere, and in an apparently close race, they're close enough to snatch victory with this laidback summery indie-rocker.

Why it won't win: Outside of triple j, Spacey Jane don't have a huge profile, and there's typically a crossover element to winners (hence the ARIA singles charts usually being an important indicator). Their album Sunlight did reach #2 though - maybe that will be enough. But it feels like this Perth band might be too fresh to win - while the likes of Billie Eilish, Chet Faker and Vance Joy reached #1 with songs off debut releases, they had significant ARIA chart and mainstream radio prominence that Spacey Jane is yet to achieve.

Ball Park Music - Cherub

100 Warm Tunas: #2

Sportsbet: $7.50 (third favourite)

ARIA: N/A

Why it will win: Cos it's one of the best songs of the year, or of any year in fact. This euphoric slow-burner is a thing of beauty, drifting across angelic melodies until it eventually explodes about four minutes in. With nine songs over the past nine countdowns, Ball Park Music are much-loved by triple j listeners, who voted their self-titled album into #4 on the 2020 best album poll. The highest they've reached in the Hottest 100 is #18, so they've been knocking on the door. Last year's winner was also predicted to finish at #2 by 100 Warm Tunas, so this could be Ball Park Music's year.

Why it won't win: As beautiful as this song is, it doesn't sound like any other winner in the past. The production and arrangement is bold, and its (mostly) wistful and chill vibe doesn't scream #1. Ball Park Music's music hasn't historically crossed over into the mainstream either. But it would be a pleasant and welcome surprise if it won.

Flume feat. Toro Y Moi - The Difference

100 Warm Tunas: #4

Sportsbet: $11 (fifth favourite)

ARIA: #45

Why it will win: One of the few EDM tracks predicted to go high, The Difference is the latest Flume song with a serious shot at the top spot. The Sydney producer has had a remarkable 13 songs finish in the past eight polls. Even more incredible is the fact that five of those have landed in the top 10, including the winner in 2016. If there's anyone bringing some good form into this countdown, it's Flume.

Why it won't win: Flume would be only the second act to win the Hottest 100 twice if he wins again (Powderfinger has won twice, and their frontman Bernard Fanning has also won as a solo artist). It seems like a tough ask to top the poll again with the way triple j moves through artists - Flume has only been among the top 50 most played artists on triple j once in the years since winning the countdown. He still manages to poll well each year, but this isn't quite the banger that Never Be Like You was.

Tame Impala - Lost In Yesterday

100 Warm Tunas: #7

Sportsbet: $17 (equal seventh favourite)

ARIA: #65

Why it will win: While critics didn't rate Tame Impala's The Slow Rush as highly as previous albums, triple j listeners lapped it up, voting it to #3 on their 2020 album poll. They were also triple j's most played artist last year. With 13 entries since 2008, Kevin Parker's band has been one of the big players in the countdown over the past decade. They've never won an annual Hottest 100, but finished on top of the Hottest 100 of the 2010s earlier this year. Like Flume, Tame Impala are countdown veterans that could still take the cake.

Why it won't win: While boasting a classic Tame Impala sound, this has been slipping with the bookies, and isn't a top five prospect with 100 Warm Tunas. It's worth noting that the Tunas algorithm had The Less I Know The Better landing at #5 in the Hottest 100 of the 2010s, but could the algorithm be this wrong?

Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion - WAP

100 Warm Tunas: #16

Sportsbet: $10 (fourth favourite)

ARIA: #1

Why it will win: The late money has been flowing like a wet-ass pussy (sorry) for WAP, and its been rising up 100 Warm Tunas chart as well. Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and NPR named this the best song of 2020 - would it really be surprising if triple j listeners crowned it as well? After all, this the station that built its reputation on playing the likes of Fuck The Police and You Just Like Me Cos I'm Good In Bed when no other radio station would, and triple j was the only major station playing WAP uncensored. Topping the ARIA charts never hurts - Bad Guy, Never Be Like You, Thrift Shop and Somebody That I Used To Know all topped the charts prior to winning the Hottest 100.

Why it won't win: It's possible that there's enough of a backlash against WAP to stop it getting across the line. The backlash comes from a range of places too - people put off by its femme-focused sex-forward lyrics, people who don't think Cardi B is triple j material, and people who just don't dig it. But if Cardi and Megan win, it would be a whole lot of firsts - the first women of colour to win, the first female double act to win, the first female hip hop artists to win. Are the triple j listeners ready?

Mashd N Kutcher feat. Dan Andrews - Get On The Beers

100 Warm Tunas: #15

Sportsbet: $15 (sixth favourite)

ARIA: N/A

Why it will win: It's been that kind of year. Man, we've needed a laugh. So is there another song likely to be in the countdown that represents 2020 better than this club banger that slices up one of the Victorian Premier's pandemic pressers and turns it into a drinking anthem? This is peak 2020.

Why it won't win: It's only funny the first couple of times. And a novelty song hasn't won since Denis Leary's Asshole in 1993 (unless you count Thrift Shop or Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) as novelty songs). In fact, novelty songs have been conspicuously absent from past countdowns - last year's Pub Feed by The Chats stood out like the proverbial. Sure, Get On The Beers has been turned into a Xmas lights spectacular, but is it worth voting in as the best song of the year? Yeah nah.

Also expected to poll well:

Jack Harlow - What's Poppin

100 Warm Tunas: #62

Sportsbet: $17 (eighth favourite)

ARIA: #8

G Flip - Hyperfine

100 Warm Tunas: #5

Sportsbet: $19 (ninth favourite)

ARIA: N/A

Mallrat - Rockstar

100 Warm Tunas: #9

Sportsbet: $21 (10th favourite)

ARIA: N/A

Hilltop Hoods - I'm Good?

100 Warm Tunas: #6

Sportsbet: $29 (11th favourite)

ARIA: #41

The Jungle Giants - Sending Me Ur Love

100 Warm Tunas: #8

Sportsbet: $31 (equal 12th favourite)

ARIA: N/A

Bring Me The Horizon - Parasite Eve

100 Warm Tunas: #11

Sportsbet: $81

ARIA: #82

Eves Karydas - Complicated

100 Warm Tunas: #10

Sportsbet: $41

ARIA: N/A

The Smith Street Band - I Still Dream About You

100 Warm Tunas: #15

Sportsbet: $34

ARIA: N/A (EP reached #9)

Birdz feat. Fred Leone - Bagi-la-m Bargan

100 Warm Tunas: #14

Sportsbet: $41

ARIA: N/A

The Avalanches feat. Rivers Cuomo & Pink Siifu - Running Red Lights

100 Warm Tunas: #12

Sportsbet: $46

ARIA: N/A

And for what it's worth, here are my predictions:

1. Glass Animals - Heat Waves

2. Ball Park Music - Cherub

3. Hilltop Hoods - I'm Good?

4. Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion - WAP

5. Tame Impala - Lost In Yesterday

6. Spacey Jane - Booster Seat

7. Flume feat. Toro Y Moi - The Difference

8. Eves Karydas - Complicated

9. Mashd N Kutcher - Get On The Beers

10. Billie Eilish - Therefore I Am 

11. Lime Cordiale - Reality Check Please 

12. G Flip - Hyperfine

13. DMA's - Criminals

14. Jack Harlow - What's Poppin

15. Glass Animals - Tangerine

16. Bring Me The Horizon - Parasite Eve

17. The Jungle Giants - Sending Me Ur Loving

18. The Avalanches feat. Rivers Cuomo & Pink Siifu - Running Red Lights

19. Tame Impala - Is It True

20. The Smith Street Band - I Still Dream About You

Soul

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on January 22, 2021.

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Pete Docter.

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Graham Norton, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Phylicia Rashad, Donnell Rawlings, Questlove, Angela Bassett.

The acid was kicking in hard.

In recent years, Pixar has pushed into some stunningly deep territory for so-called kids films, dealing with grief, complex emotions and even the future of humanity over the past decade and a bit. 

But in Soul, Pixar tackles the biggest question of them all: why are we here? It's a question tackled in a beautifully rendered existential style not a million miles away from Inside Out (which is the greatest Pixar film of all time), taking us into visual representations of philosophical ideas that are breathtaking, ingenious and funny at every turn.

The film's central soul is Joe Gardner (Foxx), a music teacher still chasing his dream of being a full-time jazz musician. When his big break finally arrives, he finds himself stuck between life and death after an unfortunate accident. As Joe wanders the various planes beyond the physical realm, wondering if he ever really "lived", he meets an old soul (Fey) content to have never really lived.

Once again, Pixar has done the impossible. Not only does it examine the purpose of life and how one finds that purpose, but it does so through a lens of jazz music and a bizarre range of astral existences. It's almost as if Pixar picked the hardest thing they can make a movie about and then asked "how can we make this harder?".

In Joe Gardner, Pixar not only have their first black protagonist (finally) but they have a wonderfully complex character. Extremely talented and hard-working, Joe's near-death experience forces him to look at a lot of "what ifs", and question what is really important in his life and what his life has amounted to. These are powerfully deep questions and so Pixar balances the heaviness by using a cat-human body swap, a weird sign-slinging tripper, and a bean counter named Terry to inject laughs.

These aspects of light shade work wonderfully well, and so does the exceptional voice cast. Also outstanding is the music. Jon Batiste's jazz work and a surprisingly new-agey score from Nine Inch Nails duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are at another level. 

The visuals are also exceptional. From its abstract Picasso-esque soul counselors to its plodding doomy lost souls, the film continually finds fascinating ways to draw fascinating concepts. Its animation of new souls is obviously deliberately cutesy to offset the heaviness, it all works in a beautiful way. From its New York City streets to its Elysian-like fields, the look of the film is exemplary. 

Pixar remain an amazing filmic institute, and this is yet another example of their prodigious ability to elevate CG animation to a level of art that is astounding, thoughtful, emotive, and profound.

The Dry

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on January 22, 2021, and ABC Central Victoria on January 18, 2021.

(MA15+) ★★★½

Director: Robert Connolly.

Cast: Eric Bana, Genevieve O'Reilly, Keir O'Donnell, John Polson, Joe Klocek, BeBe Bettencourt, Claude Scott-Mitchell, Sam Corlett, Matt Nable, Julia Blake, Bruce Spence, Miranda Tapsell, James Frecheville, William Zappa.

Nice day for a visit to the silos.

Jane Harper's dust-and-blood crime thriller The Dry is one of the best Aussie debut novels of all time, and its success is absolutely warranted. Tightly plotted and deeply evocative of drought-stricken Australia, it's a helluva read and well deserving of a cinematic adaptation.

Up on the big screen, the taut storyline sings as sweetly as it did from Harper's pen, and its themes of rural hardship are just as poignant. But crammed into a two-hour runtime, character motives don't feel as settled or developed as they could be, and the main character in particular seems too aloof and distant to really get behind.

The story centres on the fictional Mallee town of Kiewarra, where an apparent murder suicide leaves the community shaken. The funeral brings Federal Police officer Aaron Falk (Bana) back to his hometown and stirs up memories and rumours surrounding another death - that of Ellie Deacon, some 20 years earlier. Falk, against his better judgment, finds himself digging into the past as he tries to help a grieving family get to the bottom of what really happened. 

Bana is a talented actor, but his rendition of Falk is too cold. He captures the haunted aspects, but not so much the heart of the role. Bana is still a magnetic presence though, and keeps us watching, even with we seem to only barrack for Falk by default rather than emotional compulsion. 

Better is O'Reilly as Falk's old friend Gretchen, nailing down the emotional anguish of the piece, even if the script doesn't quite nail her motivations. The young performers, Klocek and Bettencourt in particular, are also great, as are Polson as the local principal, O'Donnell as the local cop, and Nable as the local dickhead. A cameo from Tapsell is also welcome, as is the steady gravitas of Spence.

Connolly's direction is sound, and does a good job of capturing the isolation, if not the oppressive heat, of rural life in a drought. See Wake In Fright for a great example of how the intense intangible hotness can be brought to the screen - in The Dry, those high temperatures never quite register, despite the parched landscapes, which are beautifully filmed.

The dueling timelines are juggled well, and the regular flashbacks don't become annoying because the story is so compelling. It's only a few inconsistencies in character and an apparent lack of motivation at times that hamper proceedings.

But these are all minor problems, and perhaps my judgment is coloured by a love of the novel. The film does a fine job of capturing what makes the original story so strong, and the flaws don't detract from that. Like a good cover song, the film has understood what made the original work so well, even if this version is a little pitchy at times.

AFI #33: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on December 11, 2020.

This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas were closed and I had to review something, and I can't stop now until I finish.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Miloš Forman.

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Will Sampson, William Redfield, Brad Dourif, Sydney Lassick, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Dean Brooks, William Duell, Vincent Schiavelli, Michael Berryman, Nathan George, Marya Small, Scatman Crothers, Alonzo Brown, Mwako Cumbaka.

"Dude. Your breath."

Many great films continue to ask questions, decades on from their release. One of my favourites is "Is Nurse Ratched evil?". Equally poignant is "Is Randall P McMurphy a good man?".

After yet another viewing of Forman's anti-authoritarian masterpiece One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, I'm no closer to an answer on either of those questions. It's very easy to call Ratched - played with quiet power by Fletcher - a villain. Indeed, the American Film Institute put her at #5 on their list of the greatest villains of all time. That's higher than the shark from Jaws, the alien from Alien, and Amon Goeth from Schindler's List.

But part of the beauty of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is its complexity, particularly evident on repeat viewings. Ratched and McMurphy are two ends of a grey spectrum spanning good and evil, with Ratched most certainly at the evil end and McMurphy at the other. But neither one is a perfect embodiment of those black-and-white notions. (In the book, Ratched is far more explicitly evil.)

It's possible to view Ratched as merely a cog in a broken machine. She lacks the intent to do evil - one could argue she is actually trying to do the best for her patients within the limitations of scientific understanding at that time regarding mental illness. When she does cause horrible outcomes for patients, it's arguable she is still trying to do the right thing by them. The system is evil and the methods available to her would be proven evil, but she isn't necessarily evil.

Similarly McMurphy - played with calculated exuberance by Nicholson - is not a hero. He had sex with a 15-year-old and is trying to game the (admittedly broken) system to dodge serving his time. He's selfish and dangerous to be around. Predominantly, the good things he does for his fellow "inmates" are a side effect of his own gratification, and it's debatable how helpful some of his actions really are, especially in the long run.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Either way, these are fascinating things to think about and re-examine when re-watching this remarkable.

Ultimately, Ratched and McMurphy have come to represent the opposing forces of order and chaos, of authority and rebellion, of the establishment and the oppressed. The book's arrival in 1962 coincided with growing discontent against the institutionalisation of the mentally ill, as well as the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the counter-culture. By the time the film came out, those conversations were still happening along with others; the Vietnam War and Watergate helped further entrench a distrust of American authority. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - book and film - was the perfect allegory for that distrust, suggesting that maybe those with the power were running a broken system.

"(It's) one of the most uncompromising and radical films to have emerged from contemporary Hollywood and postulates a marvellous triumph for the human spirit over the dehumanising forces of repression and enforcement," wrote Allan Hunter in The Wordsworth Book of Movie Classics.

This spirit of rebellion finds its wings in Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman's faithful Oscar-winning adaptation, Forman's astute-but-unflashy Oscar-winning direction, and the electrifying cast. It's a perfect storm that culminated in the film becoming only the second film (of three films to date) to win the Big Five at the Academy Awards - that is Oscars for best film, director, screenplay, actor and actress (the other two are It Happened One Night and Silence Of The Lambs, both of which are on this list).

The most noteworthy of its winning elements has to be the cast.  

Both Fletcher and Nicholson's turns regularly end up on lists of the greatest performances of all time for very good reason - they're a perfect yin and yang, and their shared scenes create the sparks that set the film alight. But the supporting cast is also perfect. From the towering Sampson through to newcomers Lloyd, DeVito and Dourif (all in their first film roles), there isn't a dud among them. 

It's easy to celebrate the "us vs them" nature of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but it's actually more nuanced than you might expect. Yes, the oppressive system ultimately crushes and destroys the free spirit trying to fight back, but don't forget this is a man who likes, by his own admission "to fight and fuck too much" (including a 15-year-old girl). Yes, McMurphy helped Billy Bibbit (Dourif) briefly discover some self-confidence, but is doing so through engaging the services of a prostitute going to achieve realistic and long-lasting outcomes? There are no easy answers here.

I say all this because I love One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and because I see something new on every viewing. This time, what I saw was the imperfections in the characters in its morality play, which just made it all the more fascinating. 

From its opening with its subtle hints at the key role Chief (Sampson) will play to its horrible/sad/powerful ending, this remains one of the greatest films of all time for its tonally perfect examination of power, authoritarianism, oppression, mental illness, morality and more.