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

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?