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

I know at least a couple people voted for Outer Space. Which is incredibly awesome.

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

My pretend ballot, for 2022 I guess.

La Règle du jeu
The General
The Empire Strikes Back
Seven Samurai
It Happened One Night
Groundhog Day
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
The Princess Bride
My Dinner With Andre
The Gold Rush

I was thinking about Gance's Napoleon film last night (which I've never seen)...seems to me that it may have done fairly well in the '82 or '92 poll, whichever one came after the Coppola re-release. Has it completely disappeared from voter's lists?

speaking of Sembene, I wonder how many African films got votes?

i feel like he always does pretty well w/S&S/critics lists &c; i guess he might be hindered by choice, since xala, black girl & moolaade each are p frequently cited as his masterpiece

I admit I have no idea who Ghatak is.

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 2 August 2012 01:01 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i only know him from xyz's killer film recaps; he made a film about a car that's <2hrs & i thought might be a good place to start, i can't remember what it's called

Not to get all A.J. Weberman, but here's Sarris's handwritten list from the '62 poll:

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/sarris.jpg

http://www.awardsdaily.com/blog/2012/08/01/sight-sound-poll-2012-top-10-films-of-all-time/

One that I'm surprised to see so high is Le Mépris - I like earlier Godard, but I found it rather sterile and joyless.

Not 100 percent on why that one gets so much love, either. I'd opt for Weekend, tho, over Breathless.

Anne Carson does have some interesting remarks about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb6JW89EF5U

One that I'm surprised to see so high is Le Mépris - I like earlier Godard, but I found it rather sterile and joyless.

my complaint about Godard generally, with exceptions

I obv get some of the most joy when he's at his angriest, with exceptions.

are his films – even the ones from the seventies – ever angry?

The guy has made a fetish out of the contemplative gaze.

Weekend is a very angry film.

yes. xxp

Notre Musique (what, 2001?) was angry.

Probably my favorites are still Masculin-Feminin, JLG/JLG, 2 or 3 Things...

I don't see it. He's having a ball while the world self-destructs.

or, rather, watching the destruction through sunglasses

That's just it. There can be joy in anger.

You just don't destroy the world without hating it.

too bad Gore Vidal never worked for him

The only part of Mepris I really liked was the big famous sequence in the apartment. All the stuff with Jack Palance felt flat to me.

There's still plenty of Godard I haven't seen, but if there's anything more fun than Bande a Part I'd like to know.

we better stop turning this thread into a Smashing Pumpkins lyrics depository

we are destroying the world, he's doing play-by-play.

tipsy, have you seen Uncle Jean-Luc eating reels of celluloid? is that King Lear?

re: la mepris

feel like it earns some love as a sorta landmark film - just a timely example of colour and the free association of godard towards other media - lang, bardot - at that time. the godard picks are def interesting - like it's great that histoires is in there - & some degree of "i'd sub la petit soldat for _____" is inevitable, but mepris feels like a different category of outsider, yeah.

on looking a lil more closely at the list, la regle du jou is the one that most surprises me, being so high -- i thought if some kind of contemporary mood was going to dictate the additions and disappearances to the list, the rise of sunrise, &c, the synaesthesia of vertigo over the klout of cain, it would've drawn away from renoir's film. but maybe not. i haven't seen it in a while.

I like most Godard films but they all run together for me except Contempt/Mepris--it's his only film that strikes me as melancholy.

Godard directing a Vidal script sounds like one of the great missed opportunities.

I like most Godard films but they all run together for me except Contempt/Mepris--it's his only film that strikes me as melancholy.

― ryan, Thursday, 2 August 2012 20:31 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, otm. whenever anyone posits an alternative to breathless appearing in the list, of the other early '60s films, i just have to piece together a madlib of oh right with karina & the walter benjamin quote & godard killing the heroine in the last minute.

I always feel like critics/directors are going to gravitate towards films that are about filmmaking, and while arguably every JLG film is about that in one way or another, Le Mepris is very explicitly so. All cinemascope and vivid colours, plus as mentioned Lang etc. Also that argument scene with Bardot in the Karina wig. And it was pre-"political" JLG, and therefore less divisive I guess.

I've always found him to be angry in one way or another. Tout Va Bien still plays like a polemic to me.

So the top-rated comedies are The General at #34, Some Like It Hot, Playtime (tied at 42) and City Lights (50). Where are all the ILE poll faves?

In ILE pollsters' DVD players, being watched, perpetually.

I always feel like critics/directors are going to gravitate towards films that are about filmmaking,

which might explain why I dislike those movies except Irma Vep.

White Hunter, Black Heart

Liked that one OK. Have absolutely no desire to ever see it again.

Eastwood's accent rivaled Christian Bale's Batvoice.

Godard is angry but I think he is aware of the futility of carrying these gestures through in a film, and to just let film be that and nothing else. He loves the movies too much.

re: Ghatak. Ajantrik is the car film. I found it quite a revelation, admire him even more after I watched it recently.

Surprised people around these parts don't know him. A River Called Titas is a personal favourite. Cloud-Capped Star would probably be the film by him that would make a list. I expect to see that in the top 100.

53= Rear Window
North by Northwest
Raging Bull

56= M
Touch of Evil
The Leopard

59 = Sherlock Jr
Sansho Dayu
La Maman et la Putain
Barry Lyndon

63 = Modern Times
Sunset Blvd
The Night of the Hunter
Wild Strawberries
Rio Bravo
Pickpocket

69 = A Man Escaped
Blade Runner
Sans Soleil
Blue Velvet

73 = La Grande Illusion
Les Enfants du Paradis
The Third Man
L'eclisse
Nashville

78 = Once Upon a Time in the West
Chinatown
Beau Travail

81 = The Magnificent Ambersons
Lawrence of Arabia
The Spirit of the Beehive

84 = Greed
Casablanca
The Colour of Pomegranates
The Wild Bunch
Fanny and Alexander
A Brighter Summer Day

90 = Partie de Campagne
A Matter of Life and Death
Aguirre, Wrath of God

93 = Intolerance
Un Chien Andalou
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Madame de...
The Seventh Seal
Imitation of Life
Touki-Bouki
A One and a Two

no rivette :-(

QT and Edgar Wright both list Carrie. Nice.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/read-new-all-time-top-10s-from-martin-scorsese-woody-allen-francis-ford-coppola-quentin-tarantino-more-20120803

53= Rear Window
North by Northwest
Raging Bull

1 that was on my own fake list and 2 that I'm waaay relieved didn't make the top 50.

Thanks for posting the rest, WF. Glad to see Nashville's on the map.

Michael Mann
"Apocalypse Now" (1979, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
"Battleship Potemkin" (1925, dir. Sergei Eisenstein)
"Citizen Kane" (1941, dir. Orson Welles)
"Avatar" (2009, dir. James Cameron)
"Dr. Strangelove" (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
"Biutiful" (2010, dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
"My Darling Clementine" (1946, dir. John Ford)
"The Passion Of Joan Of Arc" (1928, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer)
"Raging Bull" (1980, dir. Martin Scorsese)
"The Wild Bunch" (1969, dir. Sam Peckinpah)

michael mann listing avatar is some srs trolling xp

Would not be at all surprised if The Shining is top 25 on the director's overall list.

La Maman et la Putain

^no, this making the top 5,0000 is some srs trolling

how many 1990-or-later is that, in total? 4 or 5?

And aside from Close-Up, I'm seeing no Iran. Ludicrous.

the eustache is def in my top ten, no trolling