Shortcuts for my (and possibly your) convenience and/or attention:

top charts / general forum / off-topic / political
Genre charts: Classical (+live) / Symphony (+live) / Modern Classical / Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Hip Hop / Progressive Rock / Psychedelic Rock / Experimental Rock / Art Rock / Alternative Rock
[List506312] (RYM list by Nakkinak)
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/noname219
http://www.sputnikmusic.com/charts.php?genreid=0&type=1
acclaimedmusic.net / artist chart / album chart
DigitalDreamDoor / composers by era / symphonies / composer top tens
Google: classical music / "canon" / TalkClassical / Amazon.com forum
BestEverAlbums.com / artist ranking / album ranking
last.fm artist chart
http://www.kayodot.net
http://www.progarchives.com
[List130180] (by MrMungbean)
a superior listener's RYM ratings: 5 stars / 4.5 stars / 4 stars
P. Scaruffi / classical classical essentials / jazz / general music
http://5000best.com
http://1001beforeyoudie.com
Movies Movies2 / Books Books2 / lists / ranker.com

Misc:
(March '06) I'm at roughly the same stage with music knowledge as I was with movie knowledge 5 years ago, which is to say, not especially advanced, but getting there, with the excitement of new discovery that awaits the "newbie". I'm a lot more confident in my taste in movies (roughly 2,700 movies into it) than in music. Favorite film directors are Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Scorsese, Orson Welles, the Coens, Lynch, Weir, Roeg, Dreyer, Fellini, Woody Allen, Altman, Herzog, '70s Coppola, and Jan Svankmajer (Czech surrealist) to name the most significant in my hierarchy of preference. My top ten favorite movies are Barry Lyndon (Kubrick), Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara), Nostalghia (Tarkovsky), the Godfather saga, Schizopolis (Soderbergh), Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir), Hour of the Wolf (Bergman), The Big Lebowski (Coen), The Trial (Welles), and Team America: World Police. (My IMDb movie ratings, not updated for a while - IMDb login required) UPDATE: RYM list created Feb. 2013: [List379668]