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

sure, cuz the exercise is daft

i like any lists that ranks mary poppins and the new york ripper together!

Jeez, that list is programmed to piss everyone off.

"If your top ten is not daft then it is, by my definition, insincere." Basically what I said yesterday--I'd rather use boring than insincere.

love this list from another ilxor:

http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter/341

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, August 16, 2012 9:25 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

great comments!

here's zizek's

http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter/94

pretty similar to his 02 list

I'd rather use boring than insincere.

That's boring, tho not insincere.

That's silly--pithy, but silly.

> here's zizek's

no Kung Fu Panda?

Grrr ... I would've been the one to break S&S's Showgirls cherry after all. (I guess that alone explains why they misplaced my invite.)

I was wondering how old Philip French was--I've been seeing that name forever--but he answers it on his ballot: "I saw all these films when they opened," for a list with Stagecoach.

and he's still reviewing ten films a week. Someone really needs to tell him to take a break

He'll break when someone drops his body transporting it between cryogenic freezers.

He's got a Wikipedia page--79. So Stanley Kauffmann's got 17 years on him.

Doesn't appear Sarris submitted a ballot before he died.

Yeah, that was one of the first things I checked. I was feeling like a creep for wishing his wife had solicited one from him on his deathbed, like Joe DiMaggio signing baseballs for his scuzzy agent.

The New World got 1 vote to The Tree of Life's 16.

Good job, S&S voters!

I've spotted four Paulettes so far, lapsed or card-carrying. This may require a separate poll.

wkiw Slavoj Zizek!

Another ancient British guy: V.F. Perkins (76). There were already old paperback copies of Film as Film around when I was in university circa 1980.

Has mark s. written about Pirates of the Caribbean somewhere?

A little, here. Also else where he sez "get it" = grasp why i might vote for this without me explaining at length (and "everyone" is rhetorical)

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/30-essential-films-missing-from-the-sight-and-sound-top-100

La Terra Trema was Top 10 in '62.

Switching my favourite list to Josh Clover/Jane Dark: Nashville, Band of Outsiders, Ambersons, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

The rest of the top 250, for those who don't want to keep clicking "see more" at S&S's website:

102. -- 16 Votes
The Conformist (1970) Bernardo Bertolucci
Ivan the Terrible (1945) Sergei M Eisenstein
Last Year in Marienbad (1961) Alain Resnais
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) Maya Deren
The Travelling Players (1975) Theodoros Angelopoulos
The Tree of Life (2010) Terrence Malick
Two or Three Things I Know About Her… (1967) Jean-Luc Godard
Wavelength (1967) Michael Snow

110. -- 15 Votes
L'Age d'Or (1930) Luis Buñuel
Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges
Los Olvidados (1950) Luis Buñuel
The Passenger (1974) Michelangelo Antonioni
Performance (1970) Donald Cammell/Nicolas Roeg
Viridiana (1961) Luis Buñuel

117. -- 14 Votes
Amarcord (1972) Federico Fellini
A Canterbury Tale (1944) Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
A City of Sadness (1989) Hsiao-hsien Hou
Days of Heaven (1978) Terrence Malick
Dr. Strangelove (1963) Stanley Kubrick
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) John Ford
Mouchette (1966) Robert Bresson
Nosferatu (1922) FW Murnau
The Red Shoes (1948) Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ernst Lubitsch

127. -- 13 Votes
Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen
Apartment, The (1960) Billy Wilder
L'argent (1983) Robert Bresson
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) Jacques Rivette
Do The Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee
Don't Look Now (1973) Nicolas Roeg
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) Alain Resnais
Ikiru (1952) Akira Kurosawa
Jules et Jim (1962) François Truffaut
The Last Laugh (1924) FW Murnau
Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) Vincente Minnelli
Out 1 (1971) Jacques Rivette
Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
The River (1951) Jean Renoir
Spring in a Small Town (1948) Fei Mu
Three Colours: Blue (1993) Krzysztof Kieslowski
Tropical Malady (2004) Apichatpong Weerasethakul

144. -- 12 Votes
Blow Up (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
Chungking Express (1994) Wong Kar Wai
Diary of a Country Priest (1951) Robert Bresson
The Great Dictator (1940) Charles Chaplin
Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Napoleon (1927) Abel Gance
To Be or Not To Be (1942) Ernst Lubitsch
Vivre Sa Vie (1962) Jean-Luc Godard
The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming
A Woman Under the Influence (1974) John Cassavetes

154. -- 11 Votes
Black Narcissus (1947) Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
Brief Encounter (1945) David Lean
Chimes at Midnight (1966) Orson Welles
Come and See (1985) Elem Klimov
Cries and Whispers (1957) Ingmar Bergman
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) Terence Davies
The Gold Rush (1925) Charles Chaplin
Hidden (2004) Michael Haneke
In a Lonely Place (1950) Nicholas Ray
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) Max Ophüls
Marketa Lazarová (1967) Frantisek Vlácil
My Neighbour Totoro (1988) Miyazaki Hayao
Once Upon a Time in America (1983) Sergio Leone
Only Angels Have Wings (1939) Howard Hawks
The Shining (1980) Stanley Kubrick
Solaris (1972) Andrei Tarkovsky
Vampyr (1932) Carl Theodor Dreyer

171. -- 10 Votes
Earth (1930) Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Goodfellas (1990) Martin Scorsese
His Girl Friday (1939) Howard Hawks
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) Robert Hamer
King Kong (1933) Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack
Notorious (1946) Alfred Hitchcock
Star Wars (1977) George Lucas
Sweet Smell of Success (1957) Alexander Mackendrick
Tabu (1931) F.W. Murnau
A Trip to the Moon (1902) Georges Méliès
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) Jacques Demy
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) Béla Tarr

183. -- 9 Votes
Breaking the Waves (1996) Lars von Trier
The Conversation (1974) Francis Ford Coppola
Day of Wrath (1943) Carl Theodor Dreyer
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Luis Buñuel
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Steven Spielberg
Eraserhead (1976) David Lynch
Faces (1968) John Cassavetes
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) John Ford
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger
I Was Born, But... (1932) Ozu Yasujirô
Listen to Britain (1942) Humphrey Jennings/Stewart McAllister
The Music Room (1958) Satyajit Ray
Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tourneur
Paris, Texas (1984) Wim Wenders
Rome, Open City (1945) Roberto Rossellini
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939) Mizoguchi Kenji
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Tobe Hooper
The Thin Red Line (1998) Terrence Malick
A Touch of Zen (1969) King Hu

202. -- 8 Votes
Army of Shadows (1969) Jean-Pierre Melville
Badlands (1973) Terrence Malick
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) Rainer Werner Fassbinder
The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
Chelsea Girls (1966) Andy Warhol
Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) Agnès Varda
Daisies (1966) Vera Chytilová
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) Cristi Puiu
The Devil Probably (1977) Robert Bresson
Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey
The Exterminating Angel (1962) Luis Buñuel
Floating Clouds (1955) Naruse Mikio
Germany Year Zero (1948) Roberto Rossellini
Killer of Sheep (1977) Charles Burnett
Kings of the Road (1976) Wim Wenders
The Life of Oharu (1952) Mizoguchi Kenji
Love Streams (1984) John Cassavetes
Manhattan (1979) Woody Allen
Paisà (1946) Roberto Rossellini
Red Desert (1964) Michelangelo Antonioni
Russian Ark (2002) Aleksandr Sokurov
Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) Pier Paolo Pasolini
Shop Around the Corner, The (1940) Ernst Lubitsch
Spirited Away (2001) Miyazaki Hayao
La Strada (1954) Federico Fellini
A Tale of Tales (1979) Yuri Norstein
There Will Be Blood (2007) Paul Thomas Anderson
The Turin Horse (2011) Béla Tarr
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Videodrome (1983) David Cronenberg
WALL-E (2008) Andrew Stanton
Wanda (1970) Barbara Loden
West of the Tracks (2002) Wang Bing

235. -- 7 Votes
An Autumn Afternoon (1962) Ozu Yasujirô
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) Robert Wiene
A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick
The Double Life of Veronique (1991) Krzysztof Kieslowski
Gone with the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
The House is Black (1962) Forough Farrokhzad
Kes (1969) Ken Loach
Melancholia (2011) Lars von Trier
My Darling Clementine (1946) John Ford
The Piano (1992) Jane Campion
Red River (1947) Howard Hawks
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) Fritz Lang
The Thin Blue Line (1989) Errol Morris
Three Colours: Red (1994) Krzysztof Kieslowski
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) Monte Hellman
The World of Apu (1958) Satyajit Ray

from ilx and elsewhere, i get the feeling that this poll is def getting ppl to check out movies, maybe even 'obvious' classics, they've never seen before. i bet netflix (or whateves)'rentals' of eg MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA have shot up over the last month or so. there's about twenty films i've never seen out of the 100, one of which was, until the other day, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, which struck me as a perfectly 'nice' film but a bit underwhelming and not really top 100 material imho - still, another one ticked off (not really)

ITMFL is one of my favs but probably better after some chewing over imo, & on second/third/&c screenings. like i love it so much but part of what's so charming is knowing that it doesn't at any point go all out, which you only know after.

Thanks for the 101-250 list. I gave up clicking through--they've cross-formatted everything else really well, but the full 250 list is onerous.

Biggest gripe is that there are no director landing pages. I still haven't taken the time to see which Spielbergs landed in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, et al.

I'm not able to cut and paste from PDF files, but the print version has a bunch of appended lists after the critics section--by director, by decade, by country, by genre. The director list has the Top 25; here are the Top 10.

1) Hitchcock -- 318 votes
2) Godard -- 238
3) Welles -- 231
4) Ozu -- 189
5) Renoir -- 179
6) Ford & Dreyer -- 158
8) Kubrick -- 157
9) Tarkovsky -- 153
10) Bresson -- 149

Didn't know the fifth-place documentary, West of the Tracks, at all; going to see if the specialty video store I go to has it.

Jesus, Bunuel just can't catch a break, can he?

Sixteenth (114 votes), if that's any consolation--and ahead of, among others, Antonioni, Chaplin, Scorsese, Lang, Eisenstein, and Mizoguchi.

Yeah, Mizoguchi's another one that kinda got the shaft this time around, comparatively.

Academy-style aversion to comedy (the funny kind)

A bunch of Bunuel films in the lower half and hundreds.

the Academy isn't much a fan of comedy (the unfunny kind) either

The Artist!

I admit my compass is a little skewed, but ... that was supposed to be a comedy?!

love this list from another ilxor:

http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter/341

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 16 August 2012 13:25 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That list is some all-time challops.

― Eric H., Thursday, 16 August 2012 13:26 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...whose blurb doesn't mention Pirates of the Carribean....

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 16 August 2012 13:26 (9 hours ago) Bookmark

Oh, but it does.

Hmm. I've been following this thread with interest and intend to pick up the magazine, if I actually see it. By coincidence, I've very recently been discovering I completely adore the WW2 era Powell & Pressburger films, but I also mean to check out a lot of the other films listed. (non film nerd here)

One thing. Where is Mike Leigh? Is he not respected / known outside the UK? I would have thought Secrets & Lies or maybe Career Girls would have been nominated by one person, at least. Nuts in May? C'mon! I remember seeing Bleak Moments at the BFI a couple of years ago and was astounded by its, well, bleakness. Loved that film actually.

idn't know the fifth-place documentary, West of the Tracks, at all; going to see if the specialty video store I go to has it.

― clemenza, Thursday, 16 August 2012 18:56 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

advance warning in case you sit down to squeeze it in after a late tuesday night dinner it is nine hours long

Yeah, I was just surprised by the lack of Nuts in May. But then, Billy Liar only got one vote so the whole thing could surprise you all night.

Other surprises: Film Socalisme getting two votes, Chris Nolan only getting one (for Memento).

Interesting that four of the six people picking INLAND EMPIRE are Spanish

http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/film/4ce2b8bf0cf11

re: Leigh

as far as i can tell, he got the following votes:

#377 Naked (4 votes)
#447 Topsy Turvy (3 votes)
#588 Secrets and Lies (2 votes)

imho, over time Topsy Turvy will become the default Leigh 'classic' - it won't date because of the period setting, the millieu means it avoids problems of class and caricature that always count against Leigh, and it is a rare comedy about artistic creation and the nature of collaboration that communicates some of Leigh's obvious fondness for actors and performers.

but it's at least superficially an aberration, "problems of class" are what define him.

Think Topsy-Turvy got 4 votes last time around (which was, in '02, good enough for the top 100).

I love Leigh, but I simply wouldn't put any of his on a top-10 alltime list, which is my problem with "Where is..." reactions.

The Big Lebowski
Where Is My Friend's House?
All That Heaven Allows
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Husbands
The Puppetmaster
All About Eve
How Green Was My Valley
Belle de Jour
Sicilia!
The Band Wagon
The White Ribbon
F for Fake
A Moment of Innocence
The Wind Will Carry Us
Rocco and His Brothers
Blissfully Yours
Flowers of Shanghai
Colossal Youth
Death in Venice
All About My Mother
The Cloud-Capped Star
Pandora's Box
Le Samouraï
By the Bluest of Seas
Stromboli
A nos Amours
Throne of Blood
Umberto D
Les demoiselles de Rochefort
Sullivan's Travels
Shadows

These films also had 7 votes and are ranked at 235. I wonder what the rationale was for leaving them off the main list.