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

Yeah, sorry...hadn't thought about that.

A friend sent me PDF files of the print issue--I'll have to pick up a copy this week. All the ballots are supposed to go online on Wednesday. Finished Shoah, re-watched Mulholland Drive, started Satantango tonight.

A bunch of pals are now doing this and prompted me for one, so this is as good as any attempt of mine I guess:

The General
Sunrise
Man With a Movie Camera
In a Lonely Place
Les Bonnes Femmes
Seven Beauties
Days of Heaven
RoboCop
Grave of the Fireflies
Synecdoche, NY

“Sight & Sound needs to stop doing this. Now.

...Ten is moronic. You’re talking about condensing over 120 years of cinema into 10 single works. That’s beyond moronic, actually, it’s insulting.”

http://moviemorlocks.com/2012/08/01/ranking-the-greats-please-make-it-stop/

would hate to be the kind of person who gets insulted by that

First paragraph--his story's identical to mine, right down to The Book of Lists.

If his (and your) argument is that voters should be allowed to submit an expanded list, I'd agree. (Although with the voting list near 1,000, obviously a chore to tabulate.) Maybe as many as 25. But 250-500, like he suggests? That's ridiculous. The meaning of greatest/favourite is long past losing all meaning at that point.

I've seen a few bloggers suggest expanding ballots to 20 or more. I'm pretty sure that would make the results less, not more idiosyncratic.

Plus, the delight of the all-important "individual ballots" is in seeing how many concessions were made.

I'm just thinking of what a list of 500 films would mean for me. By #100, I'd be listing a lot films that I once loved but got tired of, or that just didn't hold up on subsequent viewings; by #250, I'd be listing films I like but wouldn't make any special claims for; by the time I got to the end, I'd be listing films I didn't hate.

yeah, I wouldn't go for 500, but I think any film 'scholar' should be able to list a top 100.

or better yet, not do one.

25 to 50 is the highest before I think it loses all personal meaning unless you're a slavish genre/avant/experimental/cult/queer connoisseur.

clemenza, you really don't like film much. Less than 100 all-time films hold up on 2nd viewings?

I could list however many are needed to get ten each by Hitchcock, Hawks and Fassbinder.

UPDATE: unless you're a slavish auteurist

That's an argument that I don't really want to get into, one that I've had for ages with music critics who brandish mammoth lists of albums and/or songs at year's end. I like lots. I love very little.

J.Rosenbaum submitted his third ballot of different titles, and I'm sure has two more in him, so which is he?

Less than 100 all-time films hold up on 2nd viewings?

Not quite what I said, which was "subsequent," not "second"--I might be referring to a fourth or fifth viewing--and I also said "I'd be listing a lot films that I once loved but got tired of," i.e., I still recognize them as great films, I've just seen them too many times and don't, at that particular moment, have any enthusiasm for putting them on a list. I've always treated lists as very much of-the-moment things, whether music or film.

Then Rosenbaum has submitted 30 different films, and has 20 more in him...equals 50 films.

Revive Your Enthusiasm.

also figure six Kubricks, eight Keatons, five Sturges, three Sembenes....

For the sake of our film threads, I beg you to watch every '70s NYC movie ever a dozen additional times by the end of the year.

The way I see it, one of you can't name 100 movies he loves. The other can't name 100 directors he loves.

This has gotten surreal--you've gone from "lists are an awful thing" to "let's list everything" in 60 seconds flat. (xxpost)

No way I could come up with a list of anything more than a hundred, in part because I don't give a shit arguing #54 versus #91. Besides, every list I submit changes the next day.

Lists should be no longer than what you'd take to the grocery store, ideally.

I can, I'm just getting started. xxp

Tashlin Aldrich Makhmalbaf Kiarostami McCarey Ford Dreyer Borzage Wilder E.May Cline C.Jones Bunuel Ozu Ichikawa Rossellini Rohmer Lang

The lists are unranked, Alfred.

The original Out of Towners did not hold up particularly well when I watched it a couple of months ago. They don't all get a pass.

every list I submit changes the next day.

And this is why Greg Ferrara's latest idea is the right one: Stop.

A 'must-watch' list of ten is for people who don't care all that much in the first place.

The Out of Towners always sucked.

The Sight & Sound lists are unranked, no? Everything gets a single point. So--as I continue to unravel this mystery--you're okay with that, I take it.

No canon = no history, I'm sorry to say.

100 is reasonable, anything more is ridiculous.

There are probably like a thousand movies I still need to see to feel anywhere near complete as a viewer, and even I could rattle off a list of a hundred that'd still leave me feeling like I've made some serious cuts.

A 'must-watch' list of ten is for people who don't care all that much in the first place.

Who are these people!? Not the people who consented to vote, else you'd be talking about Rosenbaum, Hoberman, etc. You must instead be referring to some imagined group of people who are looking at the Sight & Sound Top 10 and deciding "Good--I just have to see these ten films, and then I never have to see another film again." Even if they're looking at something that goes on to list the whole Top 50, or 100.

If it wasn't for movie lists I probably wouldn't have gotten into film to the degree that I did. The AFI list, as middlebrow as anything could be, turned me on to The Searchers, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Double Indemnity ... Sight and Sound played a similar role for me with films like Man with a Movie Camera. Who cares if the lists are authoritative or not? They're portals toward a better, richer understanding of film for people who may or may not have access, or someone to guide them away from the "slobcoms" Morbs hates so much.

if ya gotta put out a collective list of ten... then don't rank them, in the style of the AFI's annual ten. Right now at least a third of the debate is over which is better, Kane or Vertigo, and that's a waste.

6:35

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

people get all wound up because they want to see their little favourite do well and when it inevitably doesn't they call bullshit on the whole process (see also: every ILM End of Year Poll ever). this is a laugh that can have some benefits and hey, Man with a Movie Camera and Sunrise etc that's pretty good. Interesting shit probably always a bit further down the list. However you pick doesn't really make a difference, I guess. I like Igniaty's method.

Igniaty's method, tho, was to first draw up a list of some 135 or so movies.

Yeah. You gotta start somewhere.

God forbid you should link to "Igniaty's method" because GOD KNOWS we've all read every damn blog post connected with this decennial watusi.

He made a list of 135 movies and then picked ten out of a hat.

sorry Morbs: http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/video-sight-sound-film-poll-ignatiy-vishnevetsky-on-how-to-make-a-random-top-ten-list

I guess it was 90 titles in IV's case.

If I did that method, I'm pretty sure I'd end up doing 4 or 5 or 17 draws before winding up with a list I could live with. I bet he also did one or two extra draws.

Right now at least a third of the debate is over which is better, Kane or Vertigo, and that's a waste.

How is people debating the relative merits of Kane and Vertigo a bad thing? I know--you're going to say it's bad because it excludes the thousand other things they could be debating instead. But my guess is that you'd complain about 831 of those debates too.

it's because the qualitative difference between two of the greatest films ever made is too small to pick apart ad nauseum.

Based on the assumption that you agree with the premise. Not all of us do, so for me it's a debate worth having.

I agree with clemenza here. There's a good article to be written off the argument Owen G. only begins to pick at in that post upthread.

Eric, did you recognize all of the sl4nt listers? I don't read the site exhaustively, but jeeez....

(Revives self from heart attack induced by "I agree with Clemenza.") Another reason I think it's an interesting debate is the unusual path that Vertigo took to #1--not just difficult to see for an extended period of time, but literally out of circulation. There will always be a part of me that wonders how much films like Vertigo, L'atalante, or Napoleon (which seems to have disappeared) benefit from having a kind of mystique attached to them due to unavailability. I'm not saying it's a large factor, but I do think there's a little bit of that in there.

Some are HND contributors, not Sl4nt.

I'm sure the release of the full cut of The Rules of the Game in the early sixties secured its high placing. You can never count out extrinsic forces. I guess I'm not as bowled over by What Vertigo's Victory Means as some criics because Hitch's film has been a top ten finalist for a long time.