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

no, out of life

Not as long as there are polls to keep approximately 250 movies from the entirety of movie history alive.

what is ur favourite movie Shawshank or Avatar

ha i meant your fav lists
xp @ JD

haha! i like whichever greil marcus list it was where he listed 'germfree adolescents' as the greatest album of all time.

in the last joan didion book a quotation was opened by a wrong-facing pair of inverted commas. a joan didion book.

wait wrong thread

but surely part of a similar decline in critical thought

haha! i like whichever greil marcus list it was where he listed 'germfree adolescents' as the greatest album of all time

Second Gambaccini Top 100 albums book...sorry; back to Sight & Sound.

i only have the first of those books! could you post marcus's list, clemenza?

if i recall GM's list from the first book -- from 1977, i think -- was pretty unsurprising, with 'let it bleed' at the top and 'more chuck berry' somewhere in there. ('more chuck berry,' a long-forgotten collection, wound up in a surprising number of lists.)

I just have the first one too, but I tracked his list down here: http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/steveparker/world_critics_lists.htm. Pertinent to this thread, wish I could find the list of 10 favorite American films for the years 1968-77 he contributed to a James Monaco book...I know Across 110th Street was on there, and I think Thieves Like Us.

thanks for that!

see, NOW lock thread

https://twitter.com/SightSoundmag/status/230267949649371136

With almost 850 critics in the mix (!!!), I guess I don't see how the law of averages doesn't keep S&S '12 big time status quo.

Also sort of bummed that only a fraction of the lists will be in print in the magazine.

there are too many 'critics,' obviously. NOW I'm pissed I wasn't picked.

Anyway, the newbies can't reach consensus. A quarter will make batshit picks, a quarter to a half will show the same level of imagination as the annual oh-eff-sea-ess awards, and the rest will be in the middle.

Love that Elise N picked 4 comedies, as you must be. :)

where is The Dark Knight on your ballot?

ignore my early morning syntax, plz

xpost I love diversity. It opens the door for me to be my batshit self.

NOW I'm pissed I wasn't picked.

Word on the street is that a ballot could've been had for the asking. GTK for '22.

speaking of bats

and hooray for the staus quo, considering the alternative.

To hear the word on the street I'd have to communicate with other writers. Doesn't happen much.

Considering the alternative is recognizing The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, F For Fake and The Trial are all roughly equally as great as Kane.

Do I need a Tweet account to follow Tweet countdowns? I don't have one.

Eric, I think you mean Othello and The Lady from Shanghai. You might have a leg to stand on with Ambersons if we actually, you know, had the film.

F for GTFO

Nah, their Tweets aren't protected.

That too. Point being, the longer Citizen Kane holds the top position when there are at least a half-dozen other films from Welles alone that are of equal stature, the goofier this "status quo" continues to look.

even if I ceded your point, which of those Welleses are the troops going to rally behind? and yr chief reason for dismissing Kane seems to be that you're tired of it showing up.

Isn't it just as goofy to play musical chairs with titles for the hell of it?

All part of the game, party animal.

yeah well, u know me. It's an echo chamber anyhow. The general public is sticking to Marvel adaptations.

Does Chris Marker generally show up on many lists? I don't mean to be crass, but if the voting had taken place a month from now, maybe La jetée or Sans Soleil might have made it into the Top 20. Pather Panchali jumped into the Top 10 the year Ray died (though I'm not sure how close the poll was to his death in April). Immediate sentiment can be powerful when it comes to polls and awards.

It's an echo chamber anyhow. The general public is sticking to Marvel adaptations.

Keep reaching for the stars. Maybe someday I'll give up this list-chasing and be the real critic you want me to be.

does S&S have a running-time requirement?

No, someone listed a TV commercial last time around, I think.

clemenza: apparently, in S&S 2002, La Jetee got 3 votes, Sans Soleil one. So as a commenter on a popular Hollywood blog wrote yesterday, "Who the fuck is Chris Marker?"

Thought Jetee had managed 4 votes, but maybe not. (Also, the pool in '02 was much, much smaller.)

Who is Sylvia?

the S&S/BFI site(s) are kind of a disaster to navigate.

Yes, but I'm also gathering from the tweets that they aren't even fixing to upload the database for a few more weeks. They're likely just counting down the top 10 tomorrow.

I thought I remembered Marker's name showing up in individual lists more than that--maybe there were other films of his that got a vote or two (or, more likely, maybe my memory is faulty). I wonder how big a story the list itself will be this time. You may have the paradox that, as the world in general becomes more list-happy, the Sight and Sound Top 10 becomes less of a big deal than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

nah, the 2012 poll will be a bigger deal than ever, precisely because it's been around so long. it has a historical backstory - and a list of contributors - that no other film poll can match

Did someone actually put Dark Knight on their ballot?

I hope you're right. I guess I'm thinking about the glut of lists, even all-time ones like S&S. I'm not sure if Pazz & Jop commands the attention it did 10 or 20 years ago (not a knock--I'm literally not sure), even though the voter's list is ever expanding. Or maybe a better comparison is the year-end film poll in The Voice, which hardly gets any notice at all. (xpost)

but that's largely bcz the VV has become a joke

Did the film poll ever really take off, even when Hoberman was running it? I was always surprised that it never seemed to. It just seems like a different time. But maybe you're right, maybe the Sight and Sound poll transcends that.

also, if citizen kane really is knocked off the top this time, won't that be a big deal?

Before the Film Comment poll became a big deal, the Voice one was probably the most closely followed of its kind.

is the Film Comment one a big deal? I know that mag's been going for a long time but I'm always expecting it to announce it's ceasing publication.

my impression is that the Indiewire one and FC count the most for film weenies.

as for the mag, I dunno, but it's the house organ of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which just opened 2 new screens. So that means it's safe, maybe?