Thursday Top Threes: Conspiracy Theory

burkie (filling in for mira this week):  conspiracy stories are big business in books, movies, and TV (not to mention journalism).  what are your top three?

burkie:
1. The Manchurian Candidate - the original film starring frank sinatra, laurence harvey, and angela lansbury.  thrilling stuff.  caught some of the remake with denzel washington on TV once, but it didn't come close.
2.  L.A. Confidential - conspiracy plus noir, so you know i like it. a great cast (russell crowe, guy pierce, and kevin spacey) and superbly directed.  one of my all-time favorite films.
3.  The Da Vinci Code - the novel by dan brown.  although i enjoyed Angels & Demons more from a story perspective, the sheer scope & magnitude of the conspiracy in The Da Vinci Code is fascinating.
honorable mention: The Chancellor Manuscript by Robert Ludlum.  not his best-known novel, but i love the conspiracy that he weaves around the death of j. edgar hoover.

Jennifer:
1. The X-files- Um, I watched all 9 seasons (plus 2 feature films) of this show and I can't really explain the conspiracy or how things ended up. But I did really like Cigarette Smoking Man and Krycek and the Lone Gunmen and all that stuff throughout the course of the series.
2. North by Northwest - Perhaps because conspiracy stories are usually twisty and confusing but I don't remember many details about any of my top three. I need to rewatch this...
3. The 39 Steps - I actually only watched the recent BBC version of this with Rupert Penry-Jones which supposedly paled in comparison to the Hitchcock version but I really liked the story. I'll definitely have to watch the Hitchcock film sometime.