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

Even those among us who, you know, actually may get one.

Pick only one Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll.
Which Sight & Sound all-time top 10 list is the best?

Like how conservative or how totally idiosyncratic would you let your list get?

The Godfather Parts II & III as one entry, just to fuck with them

I'd probably exclude all three movies as one entry.

is there any particular criteria for the ballot?

Someone put a TV commercial on their ballot in '02, so I'd say not.

depressing as hell and sign o the times to think anyone here could vote in the sight and sound poll (is this how vertigo leapfrogged rules of the game???)

if i was voting i'm pretty sure my ballot would be very conservative (serving the poll's purpose - establishing film's canon - and usefulness - for 13-15 year olds who care about film criticism). it would give a somewhat misleading picture of my taste (if not my judgment) and i'd be amazed if two movies post-1970 made the list.

tokyo story
stalker
celine and julie go boating
the apu trilogy
ordet
8.5
dr. strangelove
persona
written in the wind
vertigo

a combination of movies i love, but arent necessary perfect and movies which i (and not only i of course) think are masterpieces and i might love them a little less - those couldve been 2 completely different lists!

air bud
air bud 2
michael jackson thriller video
david at the dentist
field of dreams
barely legal #15
citizen kane
bringing up baby
esteban buttez: the first ten posts
goonies

haahahaha

mmm.. on 2nd thought all of them are masterpieces i love, except from the Sirk one maybe.
here is an alternative list of favourites, who aren't the best:

stroszek
written on the wind
love streams
claire's knee
mullolland drive
bande a part
los olvidados
rio bravo
peeping tom
touch of evil (kane is better but i love this one more)

My pretend ballot:

1. Nashville (1975)
2. Rosemary's Baby (1968)
3. The Godfather I & II (1972/74)
4. Double Indemnity (1944)
5. Spellbound (2002)
6. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
7. Goin' Down the Road (1970)
8. The Conversation (1974)
9. Boogie Nights (1997)
10. Zodiac (2007)

I’ve been circulating variations on this list for a long time. I tend to reshuffle the same 25 or so films, adding a couple of new ones every few years, and I often end up listing things past the point where I’m actually sick of them. So while I know the last two picks especially wouldn’t endear me to Ozu lovers, at least they’re sort of new.

8.5--I love the look of that. It’s like making reference to 84/7 Angry Men.

ok slight digression - can anyone explain to me 12 angry men's continuing high placement on imdb's top 250. i can only figure that it's not prominent enough to draw challops or ppl determined to take it down a peg but widely seen enough to get votes (i'm picturing a huge segment of it's high ratings coming from high schoolers who had to watch it in class and were surprised they actually liked it) but this describes A LOT of movies and every other old movie there - casablanca, some hitchcocks, citizen kane, to kill a mockingbird, etc - is pretty much what you might guess would pop up if you polled a million or so people on the internet.

Zeno, your more personal list is predictably much better and more interesting than the canon-hewing one.

Without thinking too long:

Playtime
Out 1
Showgirls
Nostalgia (Frampton)
39 Steps
Poto and Cabengo/Routine Pleasures/My Crasy Life
Le joli mai
Platform
Jeanne Dielman
Man With A Movie Camera

first ten that came to my head:

cries and whispers
dead presidents
five easy pieces
interiors
jules et jim
all above eve
rope
taxi driver
birth
rosetta

Sherlock Jr.
The Mirror
A Moment of Innocence
2001: A Space Odyssey
L'Atalante
Vertigo
Europa '51
Black Girl
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Fires on the Plain

and about 200 others, rotating

It's really an indefensible process. I mean, I left Rose Hobart and The King of Comedy off.

Eraserhead
The Seventh Seal
2001: A Space Odyssey
City Lights
Seven Samurai
The Thin Red Line
Crash (Cronenberg)
Battleship Potemkin
The Godfather
The Brown Bunny

you guys ... you guys know you have to vote for kane, right

(serving the poll's purpose - establishing film's canon - and usefulness - for 13-15 year olds who care about film criticism)

is this based on anything specific, out of curiosity?

blanche
playtime
the conversation
michael clayton
the thing
floating weeds
thin red line
le samourai
crank
l'atalante

crank!

think it's based on what's-his-nuts's intense, unexplained rage/resentment issues?

the point is simply that I don't see enough fun action films

so this thread is "pox: movies of ALL FUCKING TIME"? I'm not even going to take a stab at it.

oh wait, it's if you had a ballot. I see.

The Seventh Seal
Days of Heaven
Le Samourai
The Third Man
Kings and Queen
Once Upon a Time in the West
2001
Passion of Joan of Arc
Rushmore
Taxi Driver

where's gamer?

Mine:

The Rules of the Game
Early Summer
The Lady Eve
The Leopard
The Naked Gun 2 1/2
McCabe & Mrs Miller
Mulholland Drive
Rear Window
Only Angels Have Wings
My Own Private Idaho

Hmmm I hate lists

M
Mishima
Simon del Desierto
1st verzh of Man Who Knew Too Much
1st 2 Godfathers
For a Few Dollars More
A Canterbury Tale
Zodiac
Zéro de conduite
Carry On At Your Convenience

Five Easy Pieces, Taxi Driver, Rushmore, and Rear Window are all part of that revolving-door group of films that go onto and drop off my Top 10. (McCabe & Mrs. Miller also, to a certain extent, although there are three other Altmans ahead of it.) I'm very happy to see Zodiac on someone else's list, but I'd be very surprised if it gets a single vote in 2012.

Sans soleil
Showgirls
Do the Right Thing
Dressed to Kill
Un chant d'amour
Inland Empire
Women in Revolt
Make Way for Tomorrow
The Rules of the Game
Satantango

Obv, I want to see Rules of the Game ascend back into its place position, after showing in '02.

Night of the Hunter
Touch of Evil
Harold and Maude
Nosferatu
Psycho
The Royal Tenebaums
Patton
Dr. Strangelove
Natural Born Killers
Videodrome

finished tied for 4th in the voice's best of decade poll so i could imagine it getting a vote though yeah no way it's hitting the top ten.
re: purposes of poll, along w/ of course the intense and unexplained rage and resentment i feel towards the british film institute apparently, i think these kind of polls can have a certain usefulness as a taking stock of criticial cw, tracking of cw over the years (bicycle thieves was #1 in the first poll and hasn't appeared in the top ten in decades), but most esp as establishing as a sort of guide to adolescents just picking up a love for film - 'seek out and familiarize yrself w/ these movies'. the first time i watched the rules of the game i know it was because of the sight and sound poll. caring a very great deal about the sight and sound poll, giving it a LOT of weight when you're 14 = understandable, maybe something to be encouraged. caring a very great deal about the sigh and sound poll, giving it a LOT of weight when you're an adult = being the filmnerd version of the type of person who freaks out for days that 'gold soundz' won the pfork poll, unbecoming. when you're an adult the individual ballots are where the fun is (there isn't a list here that's not gonna be more interesting than the actual top ten), when you're an adolescent the main poll is what matters.

dur xpost

Absolutely, which is why, had I a ballot, I have to assume I'd be way more idiosyncratic and personal about my picks than strategic (i.e. putting Rules of the Game on my ballot and snubbing Citizen Kane, Vertigo and Potemkin in order to hopefully push the Renoir up in the rankings).

(meaning "absolutely, it's all about the individual lists for me now")

Absolutely, which is why, had I a ballot, I have to assume I'd be way more idiosyncratic and personal about my picks than strategic

Am I reading this wrong, or did you mean the opposite, that you'd be more strategic if you had a ballot? Even if I did have a ballot, I'd just vote for my favorites. The Godfathers would do quite well with or without me, and I don't know that there's anything else from my floating group of 25 where a single vote would make a difference. To impact the results, I'd literally have to start voting for stuff I like rather than love.

Okay, now I see--the parentheses explain what you wouldn't do.

"The Sigh and Sound poll"--nice Freudian slip about how little the Top 10 changes from decade to decade...

what i thought at some point in 2002

if i was voting for reals i'd probably do some dumb mix of love and strategy so let's say

the rules of the game
pierrot le fou
the big sleep
bringing up baby
vivre sa vie
only angels have wings
weekend
red river
breathless
madonna: truth or dare

the red and the white
vertigo
sansho dayu
the magnificient ambersons
andrei rublev
god and the devil in the land of the sun
eureka
dead man
red desert
the shining

These lists are all really good imo.

could see vertigo getting #1 in 2012

One can fucking hope.

tokyo story will be higher too, i guess and hope.

These lists are all really good imo.

Yup -- good job, guys.

It's impossible really tho, could easily make another 4 or 5 lists of different films that I love just as much.

in terms of influence upon art house cinema in recent years -
vertigo, 8.5 and tokyo story from the latest 2002 list should be the top 3 in 2012.

These lists are all really good imo.
― Eric H., Sunday, September 12, 2010 6:34 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thanks, crank is A+++ heavily dialectical stuff it's troo

8-1/2 (8.5!) has been much bigger with directors than critics the last two polls. That's one film that goes right past me. I tried again this summer, at least the fifth or sixth time since I first saw it 30 years ago. Fellini in general loses me. The ending of La Dolce Vita is nice. (He did inspire one of my favorite SCTV parodies.)

hugely influential in the doing-amy-smart-in-public movement xpost

8-1/2 (8.5!) has been much bigger with directors than critics the last two polls

The directors poll was a bad idea. They should've had a cinematographers' poll instead.

That'd be a good idea too, but I've loved scanning the director lists. (And regret it when there's no list from certain people.) Weirdest juxtaposition I remember from 2002: Tarantino picking They All Laughed.

the top films in 2012 will have very few votes apiece.

basically the founding fathers (in 1952 and 1962... there was actually a bit of a straw poll in 1941-2 that no-one ever mentions, not on the same scale but illuminating) relied on memory above all; the 1972 and 1982 guys had a more solid repertory culture to work with (and television); the 1992 and 2002 voters had video, and, just about dvd.

but since then the amount available has been insane.

also see: S. Reynolds on best of 2000s polls

I mean, I guess it's not weird in that Bogdonavich was a critic and an auteurist, and Tarantino sort of comes out of that tradition, but I don't remember a lot of blood, AK-47s, or ruminations on Madonna and big dicks in They All Laughed.

I think the proliferation of availability has, if anything, been shown to stodgen up the canon.

i dunno. we'll see. i'd say that 'tokyo story' is no longer a lock now that more ozu is available. personally im interested in how avant-garde/underground cinema fits in; can't remember if there are rules about run-time, etc. ditto documentary, really.

Women in Revolt

thank you! i think this would quite possibly make my top ten too.

"-1/2 (8.5!) has been much bigger with directors than critics the last two polls. That's one film that goes right past me"

just watched it again (3rd time i think) a week ago.

even if you don't like it, you got to be at least impressed by Fellini's ability of controlling frame-space and mise en scene

Yeah, Ozu could fall victim to Buñuel syndrome (too much, too good, too similar).

Difficult to say with these lists whether you're voting for your favourites or the most "important", i.e. someone else's favourites...anyway, these are probably the 10 films I like to watch the most

Carnival Of Souls
Kwaidan
The Seventh Seal
The Third Man
Spirited Away
Tetsuo : The Iron Man
A Canterbury Tale
This Is Spinal Tap
The Thing
2001 : A Space Odyssey

clemenza tarantino had the proposal as one of his best movies for last year (and shame on me for watching it as a result).

Ugetsu Monogatari (Japan, 1953)
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (USA, 1954)
Psycho (USA, 1960)
Persona (Sweden, 1966)
Mouchette (France, 1967)
Out 1: Noli me tangere and Out 1: Spectre (France, 1971)
La Maman et la Putain (France, 1973)
Suspiria (Italy, 1976)
Dawn of the Dead (USA, 1978)
The Shining (USA, 1980)

really liked your list till i got to Suspiria, and started wtf'ing?

Such bright people inexplicably fond of arty, dull horror.

alternate ballot for the crapped-on comedy:

the Chaplin Mutual shorts
You're Darn Tootin' (Laurel & Hardy)
Trouble in Paradise
Duck Soup (Marxes/McCarey)
The Bank Dick
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
Son of Paleface
Playtime
Female Trouble
A Private Function (Mowbray/Bennett/Palin/Smith)

ward fowler and dr morbius' main list are both v good

well, they are dull.

absolutely haven't seen enough films to do a list like this

DUDE YOU ONLY NEED TO HAVE SEEN 10

yeah i haven't seen that many films, my concentration levels are usually pretty bad. films i didn't bothering watching til the end even tho i actually liked in most instances could easily be an entrant here.

the godfather part II
funeral parade of roses
satantango
short cuts
pickup on south street
hiroshima mon amour
flowers of shanghai
the exterminating angel
f for fake
a canterbury tale

for shame

ok fine but bear in mind my list in a year's time will be RADICALLY different

also I'm discounting films like Network and w/e because it's basically not one of the 10 greatest films ever, even if it is chemically-engineered to make me slaver

That Obscure Object Of Desire
La Ronde
Alphaville
Mulholland Dr
Rear Window
The Rules Of The Game
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoise
The Exterminating Angel
The Conformist
Night Of The Hunter

^^^boring

Would watch movies with Zeno and balls tbh

oh lol @ nakh NOT FINISHING The Exterminating Angel

also F for Fake is in my next 10 (as are Ugetsu Monogatari and Pierrot Le Fou of stuff already named)

was more sad at him not finishing Canterbury Tale tbh

awful confession of my own: fell asleep during His Girl Friday

I was tired ok

for shame

― Eejit Piaf (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 12 September 2010 21:42 (40 seconds ago)

yeah but u probably grew up in the olden days when there were trams and tea clippers and patience was necessarily more ecouraged

also i can watch those films any time if i can actually pay attention

I am interested in the beauty and therapeutic value of "boredom", this is true.

the godfather part II -- dude really?
funeral parade of roses -- had to google this
satantango -- not my kind of thing
short cuts -- it's ok
pickup on south street -- it's ok but not a big deal
hiroshima mon amour -- dude really?
flowers of shanghai -- yeah... not easy
the exterminating angel -- i like it well enough
f for fake -- (sheepish) not seen
a canterbury tale -- dude really?

yeah i mean i love a lot of rly long/boring films if i can actally concentrate, tho on another day i can't even finish a samuel fuller film (and i love samuel fuller films)

it's not like living in a provincial town in the 70s and waiting years for a mizoguchi retrospective, you can watch dvd/blurays whenever

pre-1930

Intolerance
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Navigator
Nosferatu
Greed
Easy Street
The Last Laugh
Safety Last
Mikael
Cops

hiroshima mon amour -- dude really?

no shame in that being in a top 10

don't see how zeno's list is any more exciting than morbs' or ward f's

I think the "dull" comment was in re: Morbs's snipe at horror flicks

ah I see, apols

yeah, i forgot the sacred "xpost"

no shame in that being in a top 10

totes -- i was dude-reallying his failure to stay awake through it

or have i misunderstood

hmm

didn't fall asleep just stopped watching (as w/ the others i listed)

i'm guesing the misreading was gukbe's not yrs

id definitely include a resnais. not sure which.

yeah, my misreading. thought you were saying that there were others you didn't make it through that could make the list, then i thought mayne was being all wtf

got it wrong. carry on, gentlemen.

is this Pasolini's Caterbury Tale being listed?

Powell and Pressburger.

Pasolini's is in the plural iirc

also damn i shd probably have had Gospel According to St Matthew in my list going toe to toe with Simon

I'd normally come on here and give my...less than enthusiastic appraisal of F Is for Fake, but acoleuthic voted for it, so I'd better not open that door.

dude your vendetta is fucking ludicrous and also I didn't put it in my top 10, learn to read

also feel fucking free to say what you want to say, I'm not gonna bite your fucking head off

Oops--it was someone else, not acoleuthic. So: I saw it last winter for the first time and thought it was sad. (Sorry.) Bad-sad, not good-sad. Except for a short passage where he got very Ambersons-like nostalgic, which was good-sad. I know it has a major following.

Charming as ever.

Considering a thread called "Surprise Beef" y/n?

clemenza you should be honoured as nowadays you're the only ilxor of the many thousands who post to this site whom I'm compelled to speak to in anything like this fashion

Duly honoured. And as a major Godfather fan, I love being involved in a vendetta!

yeah um don't take it too far, I have so many films to see before I die

"Out 1: Noli me tangere"

Amazing, but Size does matter.

should get a tv screening. (along with a re-run of Berlin Alexanderplatz)

I'm about an hour into Singin In The Rain and this is honestly one of the most joyous, purely entertaining films I've ever seen. Face is aching from grinning.

If ever a film deserved to have the 'see before you die' designation..

you millennials, with you posting mid-film!

r

it's good! it's even better if you stop reading the web btw.

xp lol

It's exceedingly cute and well-executed. Other MGM musicals are deeper.

xxxp

Sorry I just had to take a little break to recover and take stock from how much I was enjoying it...

...and where better to spend it than an ILM film thread.

how is on the town viewed by critics? it's the only one that really connected with me beyond sort of cheerful admiration

xp Morbius which musicals would you say are 'deeper'?

As good but not great. xp

Meet Me in St Louis. The Band Wagon. The Wizard of Oz. An American in Paris. even Gigi!

jean hagen's so awesome in that

i love those donen-kelly pics - big ups to it's always fair weather - but minelli really is another level

an american in paris sucks balls in hell imo

sucks balls = sb

xp obv I've seen and adore The Wizard of Oz...but I'll look into those amidst all the other stuff I like watching.

Other MGM musicals are deeper.

How does this matter?

Also, those of you who are turning in multiple lists, let me know which one I should include in my inevitable spreadsheet.

useful for jaymc also^

Another ten:

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Bitter Tea of General Yen
Twentieth Century
La Belle Noiseuse
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Heiress
All About Eve
The Dream Life of Angels
Grand Illusion
Orpheus

just offa top of my head i guess:

the abyss
clean, shaven
cría cuervos
edge of heaven
fanny & alexander
le samourai
third man
throne of blood
wages of fear
youth of the beast

Two days into this, and the only vote for Citizen Kane shares space with Air Bud 2 and Barely Legal #15. This is very ominous for 2012. (Or maybe very promising for Air Bud 2 and Barely Legal #15.)

Cue hand-wringing "why aren't more britishes pornos making the list?" accompanying article.

The Maltese Falcon
Rear Window
Godfather I & II
The Man With No Name Trilogy
The Third Man
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rio Bravo
Singin in the Rain
Serpico
2001

OK, I know there aren't rules or anything, but I still say it's not OK to list the first and second Godfather movies in one slot. Use two if you want to pull that crap imo.

hmm haven't they done that themselves?

ok then, Godfather Two, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly so

Nah, I'm just being a dick. You can have them in one slot. I think it's BS that S&S did it that way, tho.

I know you don't agree--we went over this on a different thread--but I think you have to accept, or at least recognize, that for some of us they exist as a single film. Especially as you get farther and farther away from them. I'm sure they seemed very distinct when they were first released; now, for me, they blur into one another. The fairness issue in the real poll is another issue, as is the problem for anyone who has a marked preference for one of them

tbh i'm with eric on this one

I don't like the Kill Bills at all, but if they start turning up double-listed on polls 15 years from now (please no...), it'll make sense to me. But I do get your objection.

back to the futures, then? how d'you make the call?

Well...realistically, there are probably very few candidates for these kinds of polls that present a similar problem. The first two Godfathers might not be unique, but they're close.

Merging the two Godfathers was nothing but a callous move by S&S to stiff them up in the rankings. They were not filmed concurrently.

That said, no rules on these ballots.

That said, do I feel this way because I think they're both overrated? Probably.

I've got the print issue somewhere around here. I can't remember if you did this or not, but I'm going to take a quick count of separate votes tomorrow. Why do you think they had a vested interest in bumping up GF's totals--to get something more current in the Top 10? You may be right, I'm just not sure what their motivation would be.

I did split the votes out, and The Godfather would've made the top 10 (just barely) and Part II would've been, I think, 11th.

I guess that would rule out currency as a cause. I dunno, maybe they did it to engineer at least one major shake-up in the rankings.

That's even weirder...It tells me that the decision was based on the unusual 10th/11th finish, for better or worse. If they finish 6th and 17th, or 8th and 29th, I don't think they would have done it.

Watch The Godfather Parts I & II ascend to the number one slot in '12.

When you present it that way, I may have come around to your way of thinking. Here's what I think: that if, like me, you want to cast a double-vote, and only use up one slot, you should be allowed to, and each one should have that vote counted towards its total. I know that gives some people 11 votes if they want to exercise that, but so be it. But if x number of people voted for I and it finished 10th, and y number of people voted for II and it finished 11th, and it's two different sets of people, then combining them into one total makes some huge assumptions. So I agree, that's not right. I think I thought that people were actually sending in ballots that had I & II as one film

I'm pretty sure they weren't. If, for instance, you think the first one is one of the 10 greatest movies of all time and the second one is merely a really good sequel, or vice versa, it's sort of disingenuous to have your vote for the former end up going toward the totals of the latter.

But I admit there probably aren't that many people who really love one and really dislike the other.

Now I'm suddenly worried that they're going to combine votes for Barely Legal #14 and Barely Legal #15.

Good night all.

I favor merging Tokyo Story and Vertigo into one movie.

i know ppl that really love part one and have no use for the sequels and obv 'part two is better than part one' is almost conventional wisdom now, though that's not the same as dismissing part one. i've pretty much always leaned towards two (and if clemenza had been in it it might be a runaway decision), but lately the pulp blockbuster novel roots that show in one and the somewhat unmet higher aspirations toward a higher station in two make me lean toward the first one (plus brando).

to be fair barely legal 14 and 15 were shot concurrently.

Well...realistically, there are probably very few candidates for these kinds of polls that present a similar problem. The first two Godfathers might not be unique, but they're close - hello ivan the terrible

they were cumshot cumcurrentwatly

i haven't seen it, but is the inclusion of showgirls on two lists anything other than challops?

berkely's second best role until curse of the jade scorpion.

No way, First Wives Club was way better than Jade Scorpion.

Love that we've had Air Bud, Naked Gun 2 1/2 and actual porn on ballots and it's Showgirls that gets called out.

Other MGM musicals are deeper.

How does this matter?

― Eric H., Sunday

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

bcuz deeper films are better, Mr. The Fury

Love that we've had Air Bud, Naked Gun 2 1/2 and actual porn on ballots and it's Showgirls that gets called out

But is that because it's any better, or because they're all equivalent?

Showgirls is deeper.

Go deeper into Showgirls.

Also, I'm pretty tired of hearing how The Band Wagon is somehow deeper than Singin' in the Rain. The reason I like The Band Wagon is that it ends with the admission that it's all about the show, g-d it.

morbs, diff strokes and all that, but the funny thing is, Suspiria sorta has more in common w a musical than it does trad narrative cinema - its all about colour, light, stylised movement, and the interrelationship btween image and soundtrack, imho - its like the Red Shoes w added blud! The Shining also is an incredibly CHOREOGRAPHED film

'Showgirls is deeper' is verging on some non sequitur truthbomb fundamental meaning shit

tbh it wasn't really a joke

Ward, Morbs has no use for choreogriffany.

I was waiting to see how long I could get away with The Naked Gun 2 1/2. Airplane! was Gore Vidal's favorite comedy, so.

I'm just way more partial to the first Naked Gun. Tho the third one has that great Academy Awards setpiece.

Thin Red Line
The Passenger
L'avventura
8 1/2
Seven Samurai
Stalker
Vertigo
Magnificent Ambersons
Au Hasard Balthazar
Tokyo Story

Love that Kane is on a grand total of 1 ballots. The ballot with Esteban Buttez: The First Ten Posts on it.

took Naked Gun 2 1/2 as a troll of every great film comedian ever

Kane is in my second 10

Eyes Wide Shut is at least as "choreographed" as The Shining and much less dumb.

i haven't seen it, but is the inclusion of showgirls on two lists anything other than challops?

No more than the fucking Godfather.

^ challops

Well sure, but The Godfather is some lugubrious garbage, and unless you're Michael Medved, it shouldn't be all that surprising that a lot of people like Paul Verhoeven.

this is what I came up thinking about for about 5 min

A Woman Under The Influence
2001: A Space Odyssey
Persona
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Le Mépris
Mulholland Dr
Andrei Rublev
There Will Be Blood
Tokyo Story
Blade Runner

oh shit- blade runner definitely gets in for me, prob at expense of serpico

The Godfather is some lugubrious garbage

I think I'm guilty of detouring too many threads into Godfather talk, so we're lettin' that one pass!

Leave the post. Take the cannoli.

I can understand lots of reasons for not being into the Godfather movies, but being "lugubrious" is the most WTF flown-in-on-a-meteor-from-the-other-side-of-the-galaxy reason I've ever heard.

it insists upon itself

Toronto's Cinematheque has moved into a new splashy building, and to launch everything they're starting with a series of "essentials" voted on by critics and members. Not sure how it was weighted, but here's the Top 20:

1 THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2 CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles)
3 L'AVVENTURA (Michaelangelo Antonioni)
4 THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola)
5 PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson)
6 SEVEN SAMURAI (Akira Kurosawa)
7 PATHER PANCHALI (Satyajit Ray)
8 CASABLANCA (Michael Curtiz)
9 MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)
10 BICYCLE THIEVES (Vittorio De Sica)
11 ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
12 8 ½ (Federico Fellini)
13 BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Sergei Eisenstein)
14 RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa – 2)
15 TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu)
16 THE 400 BLOWS (François Truffaut)
17 UGETSU (Kenji Mizoguchi)
18 BREATHLESS (Jean-Luc Godard)
19 L'ATALANTE (Jean Vigo)
20 CINEMA PARADISO (Giuseppe Tornatore)

The full 100's here.

I've got tickets for a couple of speakers (which they charge way too much for--$18.75): Michael Murphy's there for Nashville (#71), and Bogdonavich is introducing Citizen Kane (also The Searchers at #41).

Could this portend De Sica's triumphant return to S&S's top 10?

... no.

Y'know, I love 8 ½ but it's such a ramshackle construction I feel like it's not ever gonna be top 20 material.

Funny list - mostly critical canon with occasional jarring interjections from the members - Slumdog Millionaire?!

Also, Cinemwahahaha Paradlolso

think the list is fine and 'representative' but

11 ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

the eleventh best film of all time? get real.

think filmmakers who make tons of classics are discriminated against. vigo has it easy. wonder if an e-consensus will be built up for powell and pressburger.

the eleventh best film of all time? get real.

No -- it means that ten other films got more mentions.

think filmmakers who make tons of classics are discriminated against.

This. I wonder if it partly accounts for the rise and rise of Vertigo - critics settling on one Hitch they can all get behind but really voting for his body of work. As far as P&P are concerned, ILX seems to be mostly about Canterbury but ILX ain't the outside world, where I'm guessing Red Shoes is probably still the front-runner? You could make a case for at least 5 imo.

i think 'red shoes' will be 'the one', yup, but 'peeping tom' is a fave of academics and there are plenty of others.

"Peeping Tom" is sans Pressburger tho.

as we're all getting greedy here IS my next 10, again, excluding films I love but which clearly aren't classics

Pierrot Le Fou
Citizen Kane
Ugetsu Monogatari
F For Fake
North By Northwest
Bringing Up Baby
Spirited Away
The White Ribbon
Diary Of A Country Priest
The Phantom Of Liberty

should I watch Peeping Tom tonight y/n

Y

YES.

P&P support in S&S '02 was just all over the place!

oh okok cool gotcha

had it lying around for months - I'm really bad at watching movies on my own

(By the way, I'm not joining in with this listing malarky as I can't separate my favourites from 'objectively best ever'. If that is indeed what we're supposed to be doing.)

I never try and figure out whether something is "objectively best".

I'm basically writing up my favourites but vetting it for stuff I love for its greatness as film as well as its enjoyment, and stuff I'm simply thrilled by - only really Network, Oldboy and Being John Malkovitch have suffered such omission

(By the way, I'm not joining in with this listing malarky as I can't separate my favourites from 'objectively best ever'. If that is indeed what we're supposed to be doing.)

It's not. It's simply make a S&S ballot, whatever that means to you.

basically be really rockist :D

The most jarring for me in the Cinematheque Top 20 is Cinema Paradiso. I've never seen it, just assuming (unfairly, and it would seem incorrectly) that it was the kind of feel-good film I avoid, not all that different than The Majestic (which I also haven't seen...) or some American equivalent. The Fassbinder votes seemed odd too: I would have thought Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Merchant of the Four Seasons, Maria Braun, or 13 Moons.

11 ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

Is your hatred of Sirk so strong?

i remember liking 'ali' well enough (it's a decade since i saw it), possibly fassbinder's best (need to re-see 'the third generation' and a few others), but it categorically is not the eleventh best film of all time

Neither is The Godfather Part II, so they're even.

I don't think any of these movies are the eleventh best of all time

which is why my ballot would go, unmarked, into the shredder

Sorry you're all so butthurt over not getting 11 slots.

give them 11 next time, they'll be butthurt over not having 12. marginal extra butthurt, that's ilx

This from the guy who tried to sneak thru the Man With No Name movies as 1 vote.

they merge into one 4 me

the myriad problems with all-time 10 includes great filmmakers being loved for different works. Fassbinder's career is just one long film to me, and my fave Archers is I Know Where I'm Going!

The Third Man
The Red Shoes
The Philadelphia Story
Playtime
Bande a Part
Touch of Evil
Inland Empire
The Hour of the Wolf
Daughters of Darkness
Dementia

sliding off into the personal there at the end, can't be helped

what is it everyone finds so great about touch of evil when plainly opening shot aside that movie is set up entirely so that the last twenty minutes can be pretty much the best last twenty minutes in film but the rest isn't actually all that

is the payoff THAT good

twenty mins of ' the best in film ' and you're moaning?

Here's Ten, the first 2 are my very top - the rest are just anywhere and may not even get in on another day. on the other hand only four of five jumped out to me as definite. feel free to lol at my lack of knowledge of old black and white things.

Come and See
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Solaris
La Jetee
My Dinner with Andre
Women In Revolt
Safe
Code Unknown
Grey Gardens
Andrei Rublev

haha it's only a minor gripe but they might as well have called it Orson Welles Externalises His Innate Guilt While A Dude With A Recording Device Pursues Him Through A Junkyard And It Is Rad

think mine includes 'cleo de 5 a 7' and 'point blank'

^ good list (jed's)

i like touch of evil because it's so dissonant and jarring, because the pieces don't really fit together. it's lurid, exaggerated, poker-faced funny, strange, campy - some of my favorite qualities in storytelling.

ALSO, totally cheating, 20 more:

night of the hunter
once upon a time in the west
la vie de boheme (kaurismaki!)
valerie & her week of wonders
rashomon
aguirre: the wrath of god
trouble every day
breaking the waves
man with a movie camera
excalibur
last year at marienbad
the three crowns of the sailor (sometimes the best movie ever made)
my winnipeg
repo man
the royal tenebaums
the wayward cloud
lucifer rising
who's afraid of virginia woolf
in the mood for love
and....

cruelly slighting depalma: problem with winging this shit. throw in body double and that's probably the pool of films from which i should be selecting...

putting breaking the waves and man with a movie camera one after another is a sin!

touch of evil is consistently great, there's scarcely any fat in the re-edit(aptly)

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/out-of-the-shadows/Content?oid=897261

i haven't seen the re-edit since it was in the cinemas -- basically coz i like having the music over the opening bit.

the only version I've seen is the re-edit! I probably need to see it again but it seemed to me an above-average thriller with some compelling characters that launched into brilliance towards the end

yeah it's certainly more than that, the camper review is worth reading

if channel 4 did a top 100 things of any description ever, but with good things rather than shit, 'hank quinlan' would be a shoe-in

had a little skim of the review and was all "oh. ok. oops" - the movie will certainly receive another sitting

oh yeah and hank quinlan is never less than great whenever he's onscreen - the bit where he strangles that dude is awesome as well, and his air of attempted insouciance is constantly gripping

are there still any people who haven't been given a film crit salary through corruption/nepotism/blackmail etc who believe welles never made a great film past the age of 26?

it's not as if touch of evil or chimes at midnight are somehow partial or esoteric works of genius, they're transparently great films

hahaha as intimated upthread I'm calling F For Fake as his truly great later movie, but then I am unusual

I only quibbled TOE because the ending did things to me that the rest of the movie didn't - it held me absolutely rapt where the rest had entertained and cajoled me - perhaps that still makes the whole a great, climactic movie

^ yeah, that's the way i see it. TOE's climax rivals that of the third man, and the opening shot is stupendous, but i agree that the material in the middle is quite digressive and even bizarre: campy, self-sabotaging, oddly formed. in the sense that the third man is a triumph from front to back, this makes TOE seem like something of a failure. it's not at all consistent. but if eccentric inconsistency can be seen as a valid formal aesthetic, then TOE succeeds brilliantly on its own terms.

i'd agree that F is for fake and citizen kane are more and better controlled, perhaps even "better movies" in some ultimate sense. but i prefer TOE for personal reasons. and i tend to shoot for the one-by-one thing...

also also: peter greenaway - the falls

Still prefer the pre-1998 version of TOE.

haha and you know - eccentric inconsistency is a MASSIVE draw for me in various art forms including film - so to view it as a smorgasbord of tones and opposing forces will quite probably elevate it for me

the opening shot IS stupendous, it's like the opening shot of Crank in some ways. ha but srsly it's like a computer game starting. ready, set, go! the bomb is aboard. the wheels are in motion.

TOE's climax is better than The Third Man's climax IMO but then I haven't seen TTM in yeeeeears

wtf ppl loving F is for Fake?

think mine includes 'cleo de 5 a 7' and 'point blank'

I could too, on a given day.

nice to see ppl picking things that oh so nearly made my ten - Andrei Rublev, The Hour of the Wolf (my favourite Haneke), The Red and the White.

think the thing i most regret abt my list is not finding any space for a britishes movie - really wanted to put fisher's The Devil Rides Out in there, but the final sequence w the giant spider does drag the movie down. shocked at noodle vague picking the most reactionary Carry On!

films that i'm sorta surprised nobody has voted for so far (unless i've missed em) - The Double Life of Veronique (any Kieslowski? or is he yesterday's man?), Werckmeister Harmonies, Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which I personally prefer to Aguirre

considered werckmeister, but would have to see it again. love kaspar hauer, but prefer aguirre. TCM is not a personal favorite and i basically forgot to think about keislowski. and taste of cherry (WTF, me?)

the hanneke you're thinking of is time of the wolf, right? i meant bergman's gothic. time of the wolf is great though - my favorite hanneke, too.

I've seen Touch of Evil both pre- and post-restoration, and I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly: the opening shot in the original comes with jazzy music (great) and credits overtop (distracting), while the restoration loses the credits (good) but also, to its detriment, the music? It's been a while--is that right? Anyway, I love it. The De Palma thread has some back-and-forth on Raising Cane; Touch of Evil, for me, is an example of a great director veering off into delirium and making it work brilliantly. I think you could also lose yourself in it with the sound off, even though you'd lose great lines like "You're a mess, honey." And in terms of Welles pondering his own career, it's so much smarter and more moving than F Is for Fake.

the enigma of kaspar hauser is easily herzog's best pre-cage work

i saw the opening scene on tv as a kid and was transfixed by the swaying wheat and pachelbel! so nice to discover later on what it was, and that i hadn't imagined it

easily herzog's best pre-cage work

lol

wtf ppl loving F is for Fake?
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Monday, September 13, 2010 9:35 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah seriously, it's like repping for Jade as the best Friedkin.

because it's one of the most wonderfully grand, sly and overwhelming depictions of artifice in cinematic history? plus it has the chartres cathedral bit which is proper hairs-on-neck-stand-up material

F is for Fake is fine, but I can't rewatch it like I can Ambersons, TOE, or Chimes of Midnight.

I've seen Touch of Evil both pre- and post-restoration, and I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly: the opening shot in the original comes with jazzy music (great) and credits overtop (distracting), while the restoration loses the credits (good) but also, to its detriment, the music? It's been a while--is that right?

Yup. Also: the Grande-Suzie stand-off and the walk across the Mexican border in the first third play out in natural time without cross-cutting. Not an improvement, in my view.

Which may or may not say something about the limitations of the auteur theory. The music was presumably a crass, studio-imposed contrivance. It's great.

lol duh at confusing the bergman and the haneke (they're both horror movies!)

the music may be great but the ambient soundtrack is great also

not sure it matters ~that~ much anyway

Chimes at Midnight srsly handicapped by Keith Baxter and the fly-by-night financing. My three fave Welles remain Othello, Kane, Lady from Shanghai.

man no ambersons?

The first 2/3, yeah. We really don't have his film.

*Keeping fingers crossed that Metropolis guy in Argentina can find some footage*

See, Baxter's terrific; it's Welles who's the trouble.

Truncated Ambersons is better than intact Kane.

eric h = eric hearst

don't wanna know what rosebud equals

shocked at noodle vague picking the most reactionary Carry On!

They're all pretty reactionary :) Convenience just shows it more clearly cos of the contemporary setting, which is one of the reasons I love it + more or less ideal Carry On cast + hugely moving & nostalgic portrayal of a chunk of working class life that's more or less dead dead dead + genuinely sweet unrequited love story between Sid and Joan Sims.

It seems like insanity to put up Ambersons on these lists to me. The ending is atrocious.

Well, it's not Welles' ending at least.

besides, lots of the finished films on this list have more problems than Ambersons.

Fires on the Plain

watched it yesterday - great stuff!

It's a shame that it got butchered and the studio changed the ending, but it's still the film we've got. xpost

Tim Holt is about the least interesting lead actor in a Welles film 'cept maybe the Mr Arkadin guy

I know that Holt's performance is generally considered a major flaw, but I always found him oddly effective. His tentativeness and awkwardness, like he never quite seems to know what's going on around him, fits George Minifer.

so he's Kim Novak Amberson

Which is preferable to Ruth Gordon Anderson.

It seems like insanity to put up Ambersons on these lists to me. The ending is atrocious.

― a cankle of rads (Gukbe), Tuesday, 14 September 2010 16:49 (2 hours ago)

don't watch the ending then

perhaps that's the best approach.

i think most fans (me included) sorta mentally tune out the ending.

my boring, pedestrian list:

Vertigo
Lolita
Mulholland Drive
Alien
Love and Death
Manhattan
Taxi Driver
All About Eve
Fantasia
Rosemary's Baby

Lolita

Which verzh?

Kubrick - I forgot about the other one

I was joking.

straight down the lyne

ha! xp

My take on the two Lolitas:

Swain > Lyon
Winters > Griffith
Irons = Mason

(Don't really remember Langella's perf in the '97 version, so can't compare him to Sellers.)

Kubrick >>>>>>1 Billion>>>>>>> Lyne
Nabokov >>>>>>>>> Infinite >>>>>>>>> Schiff

my take on jaymc

you = fucking crazy dude

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?

I mean, you did notice that the last third of AN just sucks?

i haven't seen it in a while but i think the first two-thirds of 'apocalypse now,' at least, are great. as someone who's never understood the appeal of any of the 'godfather' flicks, i think AN is probably the only coppola that's ever been a big deal for me (apart from 'rumble fish').

will be a reinvigoration of impressionistic styles, driven by the integration of video-game and powerpoint type media

curious for you to expand on this, remy

re: bresson - i'm not sure, but i think 'man escaped' wld prob be the brit consensus choice, maybe in france, too? the national film theatre in london's programme notes for 'l'argent' always used to claim that it was the best film ever by the best director, ever, and so... seems like 'pickpocket' is the american consensus pick, prob cos of schrader repping for it hard in 'transcendental style', tho i've always thought it was one of rb's less satisfying pics (relatively speaking, obv.) and of course, the correct ans. anyway is 'mouchette'...

Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang

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

they're both flawed in interesting ways but I prefer AN's interesting ways.

ha, ward, that all sounds right. think that's probably true of a man escaped, & it sorta ticks the right boxes to be considered his definitive pick - as spare as any of them, as serious and as singular.

ages since i've seen mouchette. i think i actually have kinda conflated it w/onibaba. & i still for the most part haven't seen his historical films ...

Also: Antonioni's reputation has been more uneven than any other major director in these polls.

fuck, been thinking too much about this so now i have to do one. these are the movies i'd want to give a push, even if they'd never make the top hundred

spirit of the beehive
killer of sheep
my neighbor totoro
koyaanisqatsi
playtime
dekalog series
the iron giant
ikiru
the seventh seal
blade runner

that's 10 but wings of desire and russian ark and probably some more films are equal. gummo got a vote in 2002 and i might hypothetically vote for it in contrarian solidarity. or maybe i'd throw a vote to shawshank, which might be more contrarian in this context.

"semi-honest" ten
Scarface (1932)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Night and the City (1950)
Vertigo (1958)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Playtime (1967)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)
Crumb (1994)
Sin City (2005)

"strategy" ten
Sunrise (1927)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
The Third Man (1949)
Vertigo (1958)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Playtime (1967)
2001 (1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Mulholland Dr. (2001)

i think i could be reasonably comfortable with a top 20, but a top ten is just brutal; everything that's an exemplar of great, well-executed narrative stuff gets pushed into 11 - 20 because i feel like the top ten should be populated by kinda sui generis weird stuff that's more about cinema as a medium (can't really explain this distinction, but something about montage & communication as priorities rather than narrative or performance).

is there any "action" movie that would ever have a shot at the top 25 or so? The Road Warrior?

The Opening of Misty Beethoven

battleship potemkin

seven samurai, duh!

Seven Samurai was tied for 9th last time in the directors' poll

xp!

Wages of Fear should get more votes.

Seven Samurai is a total duh, of course. I guess i was fixated on a particular post-70s idea of an action movie.

Any post-70s movie getting into S&S is sort of a quixotic proposal.

guys, the sight and sound poll has just become officially irrelevant. we are finally getting The New Canon.

Any post-70s movie getting into S&S is sort of a quixotic proposal.

i think we might've touched on this upthread, but isn't one of the perks of anticipating 2012 the 'changed viewing landscape' & you know celebrating that we live during the third act of kiarostami's career, with everything that means about recent films entering the canon?

Question for Eric, Morbs, etc. If you had to pick one film post 1989 to vote for in S&S, which would it be? What about post 1999?

I wouldn't give up on Raging Bull yet in terms of a (barely) post-'70s film. It tied for 6th in the directors' poll last time; probably its biggest obstacle in gaining further ground this time would be Scorsese's mediocre output the past 10 years.

i think i'd probably take issue with the idea that it totally works that way, but more immediately you're forgetting that this poll will be conducted post-hugo

Hugo will likely trigger a major re-evaluation of Scorsese's entire filmography...I can see where a mediocre decade could cut both ways. Maybe all the recent mediocrity makes Scorsese's earlier films stand out all that much more; but I also think there's a general loss of enthusiasm about someone when they play out the string, and that that can impact how you feel about the earlier work. I can think of musicians where it's worked one way with me, and others where it's gone the other way.

that GQ piece is vile.

if Sight and Sound isn't gonna honour movies post-1986, someone has to. I'm glad she's there, not giving a shit about Rules of the Game.

I wouldn't give up on Raging Bull yet in terms of a (barely) post-'70s film.

Yeah, not counting Raging Bull placing as a victory for post-'70s movies, Biskand.

Don't know if I'll get a ballot -- maybe they already went out -- and I'm too flibbertygibbet really to be much cop at these kinds of anti-historical monumentalisation, as the S&S peeps know, but I should totally rep for The Thing if I do.

Also Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.

Any ilxors get invited to participate? I promise not to (admit to) be(ing) jealous.

Question for Eric, Morbs, etc. If you had to pick one film post 1989 to vote for in S&S, which would it be? What about post 1999?

Respectively, Showgirls or Eyes Wide Shut and Inland Empire, probably.

first thoughts:

A Moment of Innocence

Mulholland Dr.

Recent films I'd back for all-time best: the Lynches, The Tree of Life and Être et avoir.

Être et avoir

English title: Come At Me Bro

Wow, that completely changes the tone of the film!

'double life of veronique,' 'my neighbor totoro'

lots of otm already. i can't really remember what 2002 included but i'd imagine that this poll will canonise a bunch of iranian stuff, maybe some slow Asian stuff like Hou.

when i think about post 89 films id vote for i get a little embarrassed at how conventional my taste is, but id vote for:

The Thin Red Line
A.I.
Eyes Wide Shut
Zodiac
In the Mood for Love
maybe Flowers in Shanghai?

trying to remember some more Euro or artier stuff but my mind's a-blank...

alternates to my two above wd be Close Up and Munich

i think part of my problem is that some of the movies post-89 that are real touchstones for me (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring, uh, springs to mind) aren't exactly what I'd call flawless masterpieces.

Question for Eric, Morbs, etc. If you had to pick one film post 1989 to vote for in S&S, which would it be? What about post 1999?

fantastic mr. fox, a scene at the sea, 35 shots of rum, the portuguese nun, through the olive trees...

more: giliap, take care of your scarf tatiana (or maybe ariel), looking for mushrooms, black rain

probably lots of others

ok more: nouvelle vague, commingled containers, long day closes, spirited away, the thin red line...

er giliap is 1975, i meant songs from the second floor

chungking express, heat, the blade, god knows what else

so many to pick from

Of the films you guys have listed, how close do you think they'd come to actually making your real ballots? Not even close? Kinda close?

a scene at the sea

this is such a rad movie!!

My post-'89 picks:

My Own Private Idaho
Carlos

If I had an actual, real ballot, I'd list Zodiac for sure. I'd probably do something I never do, which is try to be mindful of the poll's lineage and pass over Spellbound as too subjective a pick. (I realize Zodiac's pushing it.)

i'd throw 'an angel at my table' in there, but i'm inclined to put it in pretty much any movie list i make.

yeah that one. i love that movie.

Of recent vintage, would be tempted by Wong, but not sure which. In the Mood, Happy Together, Fallen Angels, he's the kind of guy (maybe like Tarkovsky too) where lack of a consensus "masterpiece" could keep him off a list like this.

http://www.tnr.com/article/film/102885/the-godfather-anniversary-restoration-cinemark-coppola

I stress the unity of the two films because later this year the British film magazine Sight & Sound will have its once-a-decade poll of film critics to find the ten best films ever made. It’s a game, of course, yet the poll has become a cultural standard because Citizen Kane has won five times now since 1962 and must be considered favorite to win again.

Fair enough, if that’s what people think, but maybe it leaves cinema looking a little passé if our dominant film is 71 years old. Has nothing come along as great since then, not even with all the technical plushness? But the editor of Sight & Sound, Nick James, has advised the electorate that every vote must go to an individual film. You can pick The Godfather and Part II but not as the two halves of one work. I regret that because I think it misses a quality in the work, and diminishes the chances of the total Godfather being voted best film—I’ll guess it’s the most likely threat to Kane.

Boo hoo.

The "total" Godfather now seems to willfully exclude Part III.

fair enough tbh

they shd be 2 movies tho, to pretend they're 1 long movie is to ignore the way that the second undercuts and inverts the first

Thanks, MZS's FB feed, for distracting me with this ongoing geekery:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/predictions-you-cant-refuse-previewing-the-sight-and-sound-greatest-films-poll-part-iii

my top candidates for #1 are all older than Kane.

but younger than Abel.

#teamvertigo

Well, #teamrulesofthegame really, but let's be realistic.

I wonder what made S&S reverse course on The Godfathers? Pushback from voters? From readers? From the estates of various directors who fell back of the combined entry last time?

Because so many of them are still alive.

The more people I find out have ballots in this thing, the more I have hope that there will be major upheavals.

Why so invested? All this all-time polling crap, about films utterly opposite in style, historical context, and aims, is even more of a parlor game than year-to-year lists.

"Major upheavals" would be just so much redecorating.

my top candidates for #1 are all older than Kane.

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, April 24, 2012 2:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but younger than Abel.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, April 24, 2012 2:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

niche lols

i for one am looking forward to finding out what the best film is later in the year

it's definitely not king of new york because the original bad lieutenant is better

Based on the coverage in S&S it seems that 'Beau Travail' and 'Mulholland Drive' are the most likely contemporary films to place.

got a kick out of lookin at the voting breakdown from 02. zizek voted for dune and some nazi kitsch that ive never heard of.

james toback voted for get shorty

I think younger critics are less apt to hold specific titles in esteem that older ones, or if they do, in a less herdlike manner (ie the voters this time for TP: Fire Walk with Me will get nowhere). So I wouldn't guarantee a ton of upheaval.

i for one am looking forward to finding out what the best film is later in the year

lol

otoh when i was a teenager i def used the s&s list as viewing guide so idk

i would still but now i just watch youtubes

Why so invested?

Like I need to tell a baseball fan.

Plus, games are awesome, parlor or otherwise.

for younger crix the alogorithm is usually

1 x silent film that isnt potemkin sunrise or w/e
1 x bresson/dreyer
1 x japanese
1 x godard else maybe eustache or markers or suchlike
2 x ford/hawks/sirk/&c
2 x hitchcock/welles/kubrick
1 x tsai/breillat/&c antiseptic post 95 arthouse
1 x avantgarde

Yeah but in baseball the best team actually wins most of the time!

xp

also the '55 Dodgers don't play the '98 Yankees

1 silent, preferably in which an elephant dies on camera
1 fruity early sound musical
1 first wave a-g
1 newer a-g, preferably a horror movie in disguise
1 golden age of horror
1 French 60s (maybe Bresson)
1 French 70s (maybe Bresson)
1 movie with men kissing, but they're actually killing each other unless one is underage
Satantango
2 girls, 1 cup reax YouTubes

^outlier

Reseeing it on Super Bowl Sunday, I found I have no particular affection for Satantango at all.

Cold.

It is.

It's so cold in the Dr

Tarkovsky would be my Tarr.

Smacks of tarkonism.

tarrnished angels

i was going to watch satantango last week, it's satantango kind of weather

more ppl itt should post their pretend ballots

really don't care about the final list at all and kinda can't believe anyone really does (in fact i'm dreading the idea of 'kane' getting pushed off the top spot if only because of the completely pointless backlash/debate it'll generate) but i do always love browsing the individual lists.

yeah i would cosign that, i remember assiduously poring over the 2k2 top 10 ballots

unless 8-1/2 counts, has a comedy by anyone except Chaplin ever made the top 10?

surely 'the general' made it at some point?

It did, twice, yeah. Also Le Million and Singin' in the Rain if you count musicals.

i can't really rationalize my interest in these lists (other than, as said above, it was basically the start of my film education). but it's always fun to see what places around 50 and later.

i feel a little bad admitting it but i basically have no desire ever to watch 'satantango.'

Screw that noise, I obsess over every single-slot shift in the top 10 like a madman. Things that place below 10, much less 50, do not count.

The movies that have been on more than one ballot itt so far.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Atalante, L'
Conversation, The
Godfather I & II, The
Mulholland Drive
Playtime
Rules of the Game, The
Samourai, Le
Seventh Seal, The
Showgirls
Taxi Driver
Thin Red Line, The
Touch of Evil
Zodiac

Ebert

Replacing just one movie? (also, bad form to reveal one's ballot early? I suspect others will leak too.)

at least he didn't put Juno on there

The Decalogue is one work, so S&S can suck it (if Rog is representing their rules accurately).

Think he's just bending over backwards to find some way to justify to himself not simply re-running his '02 ballot with no changes.

Of course, I have no idea what the editor specifically told contributors, or if specific titles were named as examples.

And that kills me.

did any of the actual real working film critics here get a ballot?

history maybe

mayne!

Ebert's juxtaposition of Synecdoche New York and Tree of Life is kinda inspired.

he shoulda made all ten films maudit

Ballots are apparently due today.

Well, I only know of one voter with whom I am acquainted, and I'm just glad there are no Family Guy feature films he can include.

He might make a case for Breaking Bad S3 tho.

haha nrq:

1 the social network; 2 ferris bueller’s day off; 3 bad santa; 4 zoolander; 5 die hard; 6 wayne’s world; 7 heat; 8 dazed and confused; 9 step brothers; 10 satanstango; honourable mentions: trailer for miami vice; lebowski; grosse point blank; harold and kumar trilogy… aaand SEND

couldnt yr estimable friend nominate individual family guy episodes

guessing there will be 4real porn in ballots this time not just seventies big bottom bird stuff

also gifs

nakh, S&S has not yet sunk to ILEvels

theres a fair bit of random/contrived ephemera in the 2k2 ballots, esp from academics

KJB to thread (and poll, hopefully)

With all the online-only people I know that are involved, I wonder if this year S&S isn't opening up a third category exclusively for the new breed.

separate and inequal?

frogbs, ilx magazine

J. Lewis got at least one vote, allegedly: http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1046

ilx is my favorite blog

New school in anti-musical non-shockah:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/the-criticwire-survey-the-sight-sound-greatest-film-poll

jesus those ppl have terrible taste.

However, let's be real: the one to cut is 'Tokyo Story.' Maybe because I'm consumed with parental guilt and don't like thinking about it."

i mean i just

"I couldn't finish Citizen Kane. It's not that it's not fun -- it's that the state of journalism is so bad that I couldn't stand to watch what Welles thought at the time."

Aside from a couple specific voices there, I'd prefer to blame the canonization of a real good musical like Singin' in the Rain for the distaste/indifference.

"I'm not going to beat around the bushes with this: 'Jurassic Park' remains a modern marvel to me. In this cinematic age where substance subsides to style among the masses, Spielberg's blockbuster masterpiece seamlessly blended a rich and fantastic story with incredible special effects that continue to awe and inspire. I truly believe it deserves a spot amongst the top 10. That being said, I've never been that fond of 'Singin' in the Rain.' Though I'm not disputing its significance in cinema's history, I'd probably bump that one to make room for 'Jurassic Park,' especially since it's ranked tenth."

I suspect I am going to vent my anti-Shining mania for publication before the summer is out.

if only the sight and sound list more closely resembled every 15-year-old's list of interests on myspace.

"Anyone who knows me could see this answer coming a mile away. I'd remove 'Singin' in the Rain,' on the grounds that I can rarely tolerate musicals. And I'd add director Darren Aronofsky's 'The Fountain,' my personal favorite movie of all time.

I suspect I am going to vent my anti-Shining mania for publication before the summer is out.

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Monday, April 30, 2012 1:34 PM (1 minute ago)

can't wait

"I'm that awful human being that doesn't love Francis Ford Coppola's 'Godfather' trilogy in the same way that most do, so I'd remove the two-fer of 'The Godfather Parts I and II.' Much like 'The Rules of the Game' and 'Sunrise,' they're films that I appreciate more than I outright enjoy, but they don't give me the same sort of artistic appreciation that these other works do, so my apologies to Coppola (who won't likely be sending me any of his wine anytime soon), but his films is an offer I'd be able to refuse...sorry for the pun. As for what to replace it with, I have to go with my favorite film of all time: 'The Shawshank Redemption.' It's everything that you go to the movies for, and if it's not quite as historical a film, it more than makes up for it with quality. Perhaps not a highbrow enough pick for some, but it's the most honest choice that I can make."

I suspect I am going to vent my anti-Shining mania for publication before the summer is out.

You starting a blog?

how the fuck was Ric Delgado allowed to nominate films

yeah, I guess most of the good film bloggers were out picnicking last week.

o hell no Eric

eric, aren't you going to make a cannes 2012 poll/thread this year?

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=92008

You know me too well, et al.

cheers ;)

http://blog.josephjonlanthier.com/post/22194982495/why-myra-breckinridge-belongs-in-the-sight-and-sound

Will Leitch, Deadspin:

"I would take out 'The Godfather Parts I and II' because that is cheating: You can't put two movies in one spot, even if you want to. WHAT ARE WE, SAVAGES? I would replace it with 'The Godfather.'"

Now this I like.

Still reeling from the idea of anybody's all-time favourite movie being The Fountain, let alone someone who writes about film for a living, albeit for HuffPo.

Mine hasn't changed in a while.

1. Some Call It Loving (James B. Harris, 1973)
2. The Hart of London (Jack Chambers, 1969-1970)
3. Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
4. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
5. Blow Job (Andy Warhol, 1962)
6. Thanatopsis (Ed Emshwiller, 1963)
7. Submit To Me Now (Richard Kern, 1987)
8. Illusions (Julie Dash, 1980)
9. Angel Face (Otto Preminger, 1953)
10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975)

since i never posted mine, here goes:

1. a taste of honey (tony richardson, 1961)
2. city lights (charles chaplin, 1931)
3. daisies (věra chytilová, 1966)
4. loves of a blonde (milos forman, 1965)
5. persona (ingmar bergman, 1966)
6. an angel at my table (jane campion, 1990)
7. l'avventura (michelangelo antonioni, 1960)
8. my man godfrey (gregory la cava, 1936)
9. stranger than paradise (jim jarmusch, 1984)
10. fanny and alexander (ingmar bergman, 1982)