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

About a year away now I think. It's a little sad how excited I am for this.

"this" = Vertigo finally overtaking Kane

you think so? i remember last time there was so few films from 1975 to 2002 that they had a separate poll, which Apocalypse Now won. Will be interesting to see if that's any different this time.

I don't remember that--are you sure it was S&S, and if so, do you have a link for it online?

I remember that (and being glad something other than Raging Bull won).

about the the 1975-2002 poll? yes here's the link: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/63

oh it says "last 25 years" so i guess it was 77 to 02

tbh almost none of those films deserve to be in the overall top 10, Do the Right Thing excepted

id consider Yi Yi and Apocalypse Now

though i haven't seen A Brighter Summer Day so maybe that's a more worthy Yang

Thanks--I have the issue, so I guess I forgot about that. Not sure what to say about the list, other than I can think of many films I'd rather see on there instead (including a documentary or two).

looking beyond the 2002 top ten is interesting: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/topten/poll/critics-long.html

I predict: the likes of Antonioni, Dreyer, Bresson, Mizoguchi will (sadly) fall, if not drop off entirely. I expect some recent US auteurs, like prob PT Anderson or Fincher, will place pretty high. I think a Malick movie will place in top 50 (Days of Heaven?).

malick probably a lock. be interesting to see where TWBB ends up... maybe nowhere. think zodiac has developed a following.

i would be very happy if Zodiac made it (i'd put it on my imaginary ballot). TWBB will make it, unless there's a better "American movie of the last 10 years"--no others that have a considerable following spring to mind.

'role models'

a lot of bloggers involved in this?

i do fear that a lot of critics who have risen to prominence in the last 10 years (the type to write about "cultural vegetables") are gonna get ballots for this.

i doubt it. i don't think there are many bloggers with profile who aren't also published somewhere tho. obvi 'profile' is doing a lot of work there.

i do fear that a lot of critics who have risen to prominence in the last 10 years (the type to write about "cultural vegetables") are gonna get ballots for this.

is this really a big worry? i could name a bunch of young critics i dislike, but can't say the 1990s appear as any kind of lost eden.

xpost

I thought Kois was pretty roundly beaten by his fellow critics for that. xxpost

you're probably right (the 90s is largely pre-cinephilia for me).

now im actually curious as to how they decide who gets a ballot.

I think I'd be more interested in a list by the Vishnivetesky's of the world than one dominated by the Lemire's.

imo it should be, should be, p interesting coz dvd and rapidshare have 'changed everything' to an extent

apart from the scrap with ayo scott and manohla dargis, tbh i had never heard of dan kois, idk if he'll make the cut

ditto at eric at being really excited about this - have you been reading the essays agitating on behalf of other contenders? i made it to the cinema to catch vertigo, which i hadn't seen for years, didn't remember so well & couldn't judge, partly compelled by being able to then read the recent piece. l'avventura next, i guess. (& vertigo was terrific, obviously - it's sort of an interesting companion piece to kane itself, in a way, given they're both such all rounders. the colour pops, too).

i don't especially have predictions re: 2012 but i'd sorta be surprised to see bresson fall markedly?, maybe that's just me ..? i don't know whether that's floated as some sort of recognition of his sensibility not totally being in vogue right now, but i would've thought he'd be a lock amongst the kind of voters s&s is polling (which itself is usually a p interesting list ...), he's as clear a 'the best at that kind of thing' field leader as any of the others i can think of.

i was gonna predict something like "20 criterion titles in the top 50" but thought better of it.

imo it should be, should be, p interesting coz dvd and rapidshare have 'changed everything' to an extent

yeah this is v true. i wonder whether there are cinemas that would've still been too present to be safe bets in the last round, also - thinking of like kiarostami's films in the years prior, etc.

That honestly isn't off the mark. Criterion releases reinsert films into the present consciousness, especially the ones whose remastering has included a theatrical rerelease (that usually bring along critical write-ups). xpost

Yi Yi
Fanny and Alexander
7 Up Series (Apted)
Duck Soup
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Jules et Jim
something by Powell and Pressburger or Pasolini or Louis Malle
Rebecca
Pinocchio

7 Up Series (Apted)

somehow, in spite being primed by the docu thread, including this feels slightly lawless to me

I've been doing a Facebook countdown with some friends and just listed Zodiac tenth on my list. I hope you're right about it getting some support, but I still think it's too recent--I'd be surprised if it got more than two or three votes this time around.

I'd agree that, deservedly or not, Malick will do well this time. Bergman and Antonioni may get a bump from their deaths--Bergman seemed to have been steadily falling since the '72 poll.

i'd sorta be surprised to see bresson fall markedly?

yeah his book did very well in this recent s&s 'best books' poll

another new factor may be, well, not vote 'rigging' as such, but... email and blogs will presumably increase the amount of 'comparing notes'

i feel like Antonioni's reputation has been steadily falling as well (though i despair at that development) but maybe that's a false impression.

glad to see my feelings about Bresson might be wrong.

(Contentiously, one critic had three Mann films on his list.)

nrq?

wdn't rule out that being the editor!

glad to see my feelings about Bresson might be wrong.

glad to be erroneously thought of as having deep inside knowledge, ha. idk, i think between there being a school of guys to whom he's still a god, a byword for a certain approach - as a religion to someone like eugene green or as an inspiration to someone else - and another set for whom he just a past master, i figure he should do okay. and rightfully, for me. pickpocket would make my list for sure.

not totally convinced that malick will suddenly shoot up on account of his recent spike, tbh? maybe, even, getting deep here, on account of the fact of a bunch of fraternal films from the same era, near enough, also competing for that kinda reevaluation spot - i forget the name of the studio criterion just reissued the set of, w/head & five easy pieces & all, but i feel like there's a lot of american stuff around from there which people might want to throw a vote to. maybe it's been too long since i've seen days of heaven though, or maybe he'll eat up some of altman's share, malick probably being more contemporary.

it is strange considering the approach, because i'm not totally sure that people are going to have the impulse to go for the things you feel you have to, this time around; like it must feel more and more limiting knowing that kane is your apex when you also have rivette in your back pocket or something else that'll be an emblem for where cinema can take us rather than how it is best practiced.

nick james is a ed yang stan, what a guy.

will you get a ballot hm?

bresson is one of those geezers who suffer from not having one consensus pick from a generally p flawless filmography

REALLY hope that S&S don't treat first and second Godfather as one film this time round, that's such bs.

otm

xpost

idk

jed's gonna intercept your e-mail

and then write in his own list

with #1 donnie darko

and only five other films

#2 The Box

i'm sure hm would be fine with it.

yep!

Slightly lawless how, schlump? I think the films are interesting as projects, not necessarily as films themselves

i think Malick was relatively obscure prior to 1998 and TTRL, and considering that the next poll was 2001, i just feel that his profile is a lot higher, if probably pretty divisive.

thought the consensus Bresson was Au Hasard Balthazar...or Pickpocket. though I'd rep for a LOT of them.

ha, well; i think i just think of the s&s top 10s as quite a particular thing, maybe on account of the fairly canonical dominance of stuff like kane - of it being some kind of enquiry into the basically auteurist craft of feature-making. and so i think i'd feel daring putting 7Up in there because, vis a vis its TV origins & the nature of the project, they feel like they fit more neatly into a different box - that as much as s&s is going for a 'greatest films' list in one sense, it's really more about who used the toolset the best against different historical backdrops. this is obviously no reason not to vote for it, however, & i'd be including docus (gates of heaven) in my list, too, & included the Up series in my list for clemenza's thing. it's just a feeling (that i find you heretical).

i saw nick james talk, a while ago, at a thing that reviewed the last decade in film, not long after the most recent (and great) list of 30 films they put together was published in the magazine. and he'd tried to get yi yi, to screen, both as a highlight of the decade and as a representation of what he saw as a dying breed - he felt like making that kind of opus, on that scale, or on the scale of WKW's stuff, say, was not something that cinema was going to continue doing, that it would probably pad out in different directions. and while i don't think that's necessarily borne out by the facts - i think there are films from argentina & elsewhere that've basically taken the same approach, and not in small numbers - it does feel like there's some kind of truth to it, and i feel a shift in what making a film might mean, now, i guess in the same way that there are those occasional paradigm shifts in what the novel seeks to reflect about society (for me, w/films, it is more using the camera unobtrusively, as an eye, to paint portraits rather than to track action or tell stories, though i think that's probably me being overly gung-ho in appreciation of slow cinema, on account of having in a short spell got hip to a bunch of asian film that i'd slept on and suddenly feels like the future). & this kind of delineation of the shifting aims of films to me kinda exposes the older models, that i feel like the top 10s try to encapsulate - not really docus, not really newer impressionistic stuff but specific, systematic films that were made solidly with a command of their ingredients.

the most recent (and great) list of 30 films they put together

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49591
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49593, btw

^^^ great post. I'm feeling convinced lately that the next great thing in film – obv. not mainstream, american film – will be a reinvigoration of impressionistic styles, driven by the integration of video-game and powerpoint type media

wondering if killer of sheep is ever gonna get S&S love, or ilx love really

It got a few votes in the 2002 poll (four or five maybe?) To Sleep with Anger got a vote or two too.

Jesus God, what kind of maniac thinks Apocalypse Now is better than Raging Bull?