The Do You See Top Best 100 Films Of All Time Ever Anti-Canonical Canon Poll Thread

There is a big shock when we get to the end by the way.

I don't mind writing pithy short pieces to accompany your not at all silly choices Steve. E-mail now.

Enrique - yes it is, stop fronting.

Mary Poppins. No.

The canon that I suspect concerns him is that determined by the industry, so that Wilder is known and Tashlin is not -- that sort of thing, and also the ridiculous prevalence of US cinema in canons. I know Pete has a beef with modern French cinema, but in general it's a crippling problem that foreign films are a) smothered in high-art-wank praise and b) practically ignored unless they are c) corny twee fux.

NB: the later surrealists liked 'Mary Poppins' as an anti-photographic film.

And then I went and saw a good French film. (Since Otar Left, which is French/Georgian - but really rather good).

I think the proliferation of canons is also interesting. There is the academic canon (silent movie heavy), the movie buff canon (the academic canon with the silents taken out and the seventies added in) and the populist canon (defined by the Hudsucker Proxy). In as much as this is not a canon because its methodology is no way rigourous enough than to say three people liked it, the list is obviously pointless. And its very pointlessness makes the list useful.

Pete -- no-one flipping saw 'THP'. I stake my Pulitzer on it!

I would have thought the populist canon is more defined by The Shawshank Redemption.

The actual polling process was accompanied by the occasional kazoo solo, if I remember correctly.

Why were Toby's ideas chucked out?

"Bartleby" (1970) with Paul Scofield & John McEnery

Shawshank Redemption (not to be confused with this short film the Sharktank Redemption http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265738/) is still number two on the IMDB poll (and I believe is getting a cinematic re-release some time soon).

A lot of Toby's choices hit the veto rule in as much as no-one, or only one other person (prob me) had seen them, hence unable to judge whether they should be in the list.

Losing my shit over this.

[thx to AF]

This is way way way conservative, more so than any poll of critics I've seen.

Enrique: consider it value-for-money focussed.

The entire LOTR trilogy is in the Top 10.

The Usual Suspects and Memento in the Top 20.

Amelie is #25; City of God is #30

The Pianist is Polanski's highest rated one - over ten places higher than Chinatown alone.

None of these films are bad films, in my opinion. But they ain't among the greatest 50, much less 100 OF ALL TIME, AMONG ALL THE FILM THAT HAS EVER RUN THROUGH A CAMERA AND THEN BEEN PROJECTED IN THE LAST 110 YEARS.

Decade breakdown:

1890-1899: 0
1900-1909: 0
1910-1919: 0
1920-1929: 7
1930-1939: 18
1940-1949: 24
1950-1959: 34
1960-1969: 28
1970-1979: 25
1980-1989: 33
1990-1999: 45
2000-2004: 37

Okay, now that actually adds up to 251, so I gave someone one too many by accident. Short of that, though, it's kinda disgusting to look at. Am I surprised? No. Are most of the films on the list worth watching? Yes. But a lot of it looks more like the Top 250 Most Watched Films of All Time. To which I have to say - who gives a damn what movies have been seen the most? The other problem, which is just a statistical pickle, plain and simple, is that in order to cancel out random noise in the voting, a film needs to have 1250 votes minimum just to be considered for the list, based on Bayesian formulae. And based on a quick scan of the list, nothing had less than 3000-odd votes.

Personally, I'd be damned curious to see a list of top films that have more than, say, 250 votes, but less than 3000.

I have no idea why being constantly in flux should be a hindrance in a canon. It's not like any of these end up on movie posters.

And I have no doubt that a fair number of the recent films sitting near the top of the Top 250 deserve to remain somewhere on the list in some capacity. I just have serious doubts about their positioning, that's all. But there's a lot of material in the middle and bottom of the list that just has no business being there if you want to view it as the Top 250 movies OF ALL TIME....

Looking historically, I'd also say that if something equivalent had existed in the 1970's to compile a populist list of the Top 250 films of all time, it would have been a much more diverse and strong set of films, and at least to a certain degree it would have been more closely aligned with and therefore itself arguably be a canon.

Why? Because videotape didn't exist yet. I think it's hilarious and tragic that the very invention which made it possible to open up massive film libraries for worldwide public consumption ended up helping drive art films underground even further than they already were.

Or to paraphrase Floyd Gondolli (from Boogie Nights, a popular and very likely canon film not in the Top 250 either):

"I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth. That's just me. That's just something that I enjoy. I don't make the mistake of declaring it canon, though."

So that's my all-over-the-place rant. Flame on.

But why this pervasive, creeping fear of elitism?

Basically, it's a question of who's watching the watchmen. Probably my tastes would be regarded as elitist, but that isn't how I experience myself. What I dislike is the *alleged* populist stance that actually forgets what has been popular, so Wilder is today much better known than his mentor and idol Lubitsch -- an absurd scenario.

But the elitist version I think is false, because it tends to elide the personal experiences of the picker: picking on the basis of perceived importance-to-the-medium is to my mind something like death.

haven't we done the canon/anti-canon/what is canon discussion about a grillion times?

So much as I often get into idiotic spats here with amateur!st, he is genuinely committed to film in a way I think demands respect: seeking out stuff, arguing for other forms and experiences.

DVD is definitely making greater film literacy possible.

BTW -- there's nothing 'nice' abt 'The Godfather'!

(This is by its nature a very geezaesthetic argument). I just wanted an excuse to write about some interesting films (and also some less interesting films which are still interesting enough to write 200 words on). What is nice therefore about the process is that there are people who have seen quite a lot of films and are film literate (albeit in their areas sometimes) and other people who just see the big popular films. And at least one person who does not really like films at all. Part of the process is trying to negotiate the idea that everyones taste is equally important, useful.

Is the Seven Samurai THAT good or is it the film that the Tarnteenies have seen because everyone says it is really good. Why can't the same people get into Sunrise?