Pretend you have a ballot for the 2012 edition of Sight & Sound's top 10 movies of all time list

I don't think I would ever put Battleship Potemkin and Seven Samurai in a top 10 though I think they are both "great" -- and I'm not sure how "boring" enters into it, anymore than "asinine" necessarily does with something written by Joe Eszterhas -- but some films are canonical whether you like them or not.

also WTF Seven Samurai is less boring then every comic-book hero film ever made.

^^^^^

Whatever, you will all bow down before the superiority of my taste.

I might list Potemkin if I was making a conscious attempt (as opposed to my unconscious attempt above) to make a list of 10 great gay movies.

Sight and Sound is asking for "best", which is obviously a can of worms, but a lot of critics seem to be voting for films that are historically significant or formally innovative, whereas others are just voting for their favorites. I'm not really sure what the value of a poll is if the voters are not using the some criterion for their selections.

Anyway, my list would be 1. Shawshank Redemption, 2. The Fountain ....

What's gay about it -- sailors complaining about bad food?

xp

xp the "same" criterion

I have less interest in Kurosawa's samurai shit the older I get, i.e. less embarrassment admitting they bore me. I prefer the crime dramas/noir.

If pressed, I'm sure I could write a few thousand words about why Showgirls is one of the greatest movies about/embodying "the dream factory." And did.

So why did you dock it half a star?

Actually, I think that would be the movie I'm most equipped to defend on my list next to Chainsaw. Selling Narcissus would be a tougher sell. I suppose if it would make more people comfortable, swap that one out in your mind for Cocteau or something.

So why did you dock it half a star?

You mistake my methodology. Every time I watch that movie, I add stars to its rating. Right now, it's sitting at something like 73 and a half stars.

any time i try to make a list like this it becomes somewhat biographical (ie, maybe even narcissistic) but you want to balance that with a pretense to "objectivity."

So Seven Samurai appears because I got that first Criterion DVD in college and it was one of the first japanese films I ever saw and it put me in touch with a sense of film history that i didnt have before. and it was long and in black and white and I loved it anyway. it's a touchstone for me.

on the other hand there are other movies from that era of my life that don't hold up--too much of their time perhaps, they dont speak of anything beyond that moment. that one does, so on the list it goes.

impossible to be "objective" and discuss personal tastes

Which is part of the point, otherwise just let robots pick like they did in 2002.

In no order:

Taxi Driver
Vertigo
2001
Sansho the Bailiff
Playtime
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Third Man
A Brighter Summer Day
The Wizard of Oz
Andrei Rublev

Eric Harvey is selling some back issues:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140747591068#ht_734wt_1000

some ppl are just LIST QUEENS

(prompted by yet another solicitation in my inbox)

I have less interest in Kurosawa's samurai shit the older I get, i.e. less embarrassment admitting they bore me. I prefer the crime dramas/noir.

Pretty much what I think as well. I can watch High And Low, Ikiru (not noir, but mod. day), Stray Dog, and even the wonky overlong scrambled-Hamlet of The Bad Sleep Well repeatedly, while the period samurai stuff is a chore.

I'll just get my sword.

Some days I think Ran is his best.

I can't remember it too well but the florid nihilism of Kagemusha seemed pretty compelling at the time. I think if I don't count Seven Samurai then Throne of Blood might be my favorite. Not as big a fan of the non-period stuff for some reason.

High and Low and Ikiru were always my favourites of the non-period stuff. The only one I remember really disliking was Red Beard, but I think I might not have been in the mood. I've seen Seven Samurai a lot of times, and I still love it, but Ran and Throne of Blood are just as good imo.

some ppl are just LIST QUEENS

So don't contribute.

(This solicitation was strictly in the interest of driving traffic tho.)

Still, that I am far more into lists than criticism should not even be a question by this point. Criticism is so, like, just make a movie already.

i gotta say unless they really expand the number and variety of people polled this is gonna be boring just like the last one. with the explosion of great filmmaking in asia, in particular, scarcely any asian directors--and just a handful of critics/scholars--were polled. it would be great to get all the major "festival" filmmakers from wherever, plus a good handful of more commercial filmmakers, not just from US/UK/France but from taiwan, china, hong kong, india, indonesia, germany, scandinavia, russia, africa (nigeria!), latin america, etc. i don't think the top ten will change much--that only happens glacially--but the individual lists could be somewhat or more than somewhat interesting.

anyway i guess are some peoples that i'd put on a list. maybe i can boil them down to ten later...

take the 5:10 to dreamland (bruce conner)
they were expendable (ford)
me and my gal (walsh)
les vampires (feuillade)
the navigator (keaton)
stranger than paradise (jarmusch)
the man from laramie (anthony mann)
the black stallion (ballard)
vampyr (dreyer)
fantastic mr. fox (anderson)
prénom carmen (godard)
straight time (grosbard)
snow-white (fleischer)
back to the future (zemeckis)
a scene at the sea (kitano)
on dangerous ground (nick ray)
man's castle (borzage)
gueule d'amour (grémillon)
flaming creatures (jack smith)
the exiles (kent mackenzie)
the fall of the house of usher (jean epstein)
too early too late (huillet/straub)
a canterbury tale (michael powell)
earth (dovzhenko)
dr. mabuse the gambler (fritz lang)
the best years of our lives (wyler)
two-lane blacktop (hellman)
ingmarssönerna (sjöström)
on the bowery (rogosin)
days of heaven (malick)
good morning (ozu)
rear window (hitchcock)
etc.

oh and

au hasard balthazar (bresson)
distant voices still lives (davies)

take the 5:10 to dreamland (bruce conner)

Yes! This or maybe Breakaway.

fine here's ten

ingmarssönerna (sjöström)

dr. mabuse the gambler (fritz lang)

vampyr (dreyer)

me and my gal (walsh)
a canterbury tale (michael powell)
they were expendable (ford)

good morning (ozu)

au hasard balthazar (bresson)

prénom carmen (godard)
back to the future (zemeckis)

So don't contribute.

Take it easy... As you know, I am nearly as ambivalent about criticism as lists. Need to get back to just watching things for the last time.

Well, I didn't say you were wrong. I am an unabashed list queen.

my new one:

anything but Celine and Julie Go Boating

That's the spirit.

That reminds me of the one thing that criticism is fun for. Starting Jets vs. Sharks dance riots.

I don't consider Ran a samurai drama though.

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpVYhH9ITvo

i'm also a bit mystified by the love for celine and julie.

i'm not going to say it's a bad film, but it's certainly an awkward one and i find it extremely irritating. i've liked some other rivette films, though, like secret defense.

a superfan informed me after my first viewing that it was "a puzzle," I had no idea and was horrified.

Don't get the mystification around Celine and Julie go Boating as top 10 material. You can make a fairly good case. Agree there are better films by Rivette (but only a couple), however its the one which is most available.

Quite enjoying S&S series looking at an alternative top 10:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49831

Hour of the Furnaces would be a good one to fuck w/ppl.

s&s essay on listology was really interesting, I thought

where was that?

a superfan informed me after my first viewing that it was "a puzzle," I had no idea and was horrified.

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 6 May 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, I see what the 'superfan' said and all but its not a puzzle to be worked out and put together - but it has elements to be mulled over that hardly add up to a puzzle. To be 'horrified' is an overreaction though.

it's in the new issue, amateurist, by michael atkinson. tracks when we became interested in listmaking, & how the list ends up being more useful as a gauge of topical mood & trend than as an actual canon.

My ballot would probably be something like this:

1. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
2. Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956)
3. Down by Law (Jarmusch, 1986)
4. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)
5. Human Resources (Cantet, 1999)
6. Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)
7. Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
8. Farewell, My Concubine (Kaige, 1993)
9. Show Me Love (Moodysson, 1998)
10. La grande bouffe (Ferreri, 1973)

Depending on my mood, I migth switch The Philadelphia Story for number 10. The only post-1999 movies I could consider including are Songs from the Second Floor (Andersson), and Letters to Father Jaakob (Härö).

celine and julie is a game rather than a puzzle, and it invites you to play, too

how the list ends up being more useful as a gauge of topical mood & trend than as an actual canon.

well of course, and the top ten is only occasionally interesting (such as the many restorations/revivals of vertigo helping to propel it upward, ditto sunrise)--it's the individual ballots that are usually most intriguing.

celine & julie just struck me--the two times i sat through it--as flat-footed cinematically, and yet so impressed with itself.

Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956)

love this film so much.

as my list might indicate i kind of have a slight aversion to "visionary" postwar art films. they just seem too polluted with self-conscious striving for masterpiece status to be top-rank. i'd apply that to tarkovsky, antonioni, fellini, bergman... all of whom have made films i like a lot.

although i do have some prewar art films: epstein, dovzhenko, etc.