SCFZ 6th Annual Top 100 Poll - Results!

[MrCarmady]

I've seen a semi-respectable 49 out of the top 100, 85 out of 175, and somehow, embarrassingly, end up on the same 85 out of 250. But that's good news as that means I've got loads of super-interesting stuff to explore!

https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/scfz ... mrcarmady/

[Monsieur Arkadin]

I feel like we should generate a follow up list, where everyone submits one film from their individual ballot that didn’t make the top 250.
I like this idea exclusively so that I can make an easy watchlist out of it.

[MrCarmady]

how many lists were submitted in total? 1331/55 means at least 24, but with all the duplicates it's probably 30-something?

[Umbugbene]

I count 33 lists, including Karl's which was counted but not posted, and Lineuphere's which was posted but not counted because of the new member rule. So 32 lists were counted in total.

Maybe I should add Lineuphere's films to the long list on lbxd... would that make sense?

[MrCarmady]

It'd be a nice gesture, certainly! And some of those films look very interesting so would only improve that version of the list. I like Arkadin's proposed 33 film corollary list to the main 250 as well. I'm gonna go for My Twentieth Century.

[flip]

Maybe I should add Lineuphere's films to the long list on lbxd... would that make sense?

i'm in favour of that idea if lineup is, i feel bad about not counting it, and there are some interesting very unseen films on there

[Umbugbene]

I just added Lineuphere's nominations, which brings the list to a nice round 1350. It also fills in a few great classics that no one else included.

My nomination for Mr. Arkadin's proposed list is Chase a Crooked Shadow.

[sally]

one other thing that surprised me was how well fellini fared in our poll. i would have said, prior to this poll, that scfzers generally like bunuel and don't care much for fellini, but fellini has three films in the top 250 and one in the top ten, while bunuel only has one top 250 film, and a low-ranked one at that.

i don't like fellini much. i do like bunuel, but i just couldnt decide which one to put on my list and in the end gave up. same for the zeki and a few other directors.

[flip]

thanks to umbugbene, i discovered i hadn't counted one 1-point vote for alone in the wilderness. i've fixed the tally now - that film enters the top 250 at #145, and with apologies to resnais fans, smoking/no smoking drops out of the top 250.

[---]

Yes!!! Alone in the Wilderness!!!! My baby!!! I love that movie, I discovered it via someone who joined this forum then hasn't posted much but I saw it on his lboxd

Thanks for all the work, flip!

[---]

one other thing that surprised me was how well fellini fared in our poll. i would have said, prior to this poll, that scfzers generally like bunuel and don't care much for fellini, but fellini has three films in the top 250 and one in the top ten, while bunuel only has one top 250 film, and a low-ranked one at that.

Holymanm could singlehandedly skew our forum towards Fellini, I imagine he voted for multiple

[ofrene]

with apologies to resnais fans, smoking/no smoking drops out of the top 250.

T_T

[kanafani]

Fellini in the top 10 is not acceptable. Can we redo the poll?

Great to see Pestonjee so high on the list. I think I watched it because someone voted for it in a previous poll (probably nrh?). The depiction of a sheltered, vanishing community really reminded me of certain branches of my extended family (minus the lavish elegance)

[Roscoe]

That's disappointing about CELINE AND JULIE.

[Holymanm]

5 fellinis on my list; go big or go home

[nrh]

Great to see Pestonjee so high on the list. I think I watched it because someone voted for it in a previous poll (probably nrh?). The depiction of a sheltered, vanishing community really reminded me of certain branches of my extended family (minus the lavish elegance)

i didn't realize you also had pestonjee on your extra 5 tier! i know seema and vikram are big fans but glad you like the film, it's the sort of movie i kind of depend on this sort of forum to find - seemingly small, not really a part of any major film historical movement, a director who didn't get to have a big auteurist career (most of her work was in theater and i think her other feature is simply unavailable in any kind of digital form). her depiction of the parsi community is very lovely in all its elegiac sense but it's also one of the great films i think about the way men look at women and a kind of longing turns poisonous over time.

when i think of movies i've found or associate with scfz or the better parts of the late mubi forums i often think of films like this or singing blackbird or in the white city or winter vacation.

[kanafani]

when i think of movies i've found or associate with scfz or the better parts of the late mubi forums i often think of films like this or singing blackbird or in the white city or winter vacation.

Yep, those are three other great movies I sought because someone championed them on this board!

[kanafani]

Some directors I was quite surprised to see did not make it to the top 250 (unless I am making a mistake, a very distinct possibility):
Hou Hsiao Hsien
Tsai Ming Liang
Claire Denis
Pedro Costa
Hong Sang-soo
Garrel
Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet
Claude Chabrol
Cassavetes
Monte Hellman
Pasolini

[rischka]

we're becoming too niche. but we got room for fellini

i voted for a denis and a costa

[sally]

we're becoming too niche. but we got room for fellini

have you seen city of women? chunter chunter chunter

[rischka]

yeah no i've only seen a few fellini and quickly lost the taste for it, never finished 8 1/2 despite marcello and its 35 official lists at ICM

oh! i vitelloni was good

[kanafani]

never finished 8 1/2

Same.

[nrh]

i like a lot of fellini, maybe more than most people i know, but 8 1/2 is insufferable despite marcello's usual charms. i keep thinking there is something more here than i want to engage with, but i find the attitude (if that is the right word) so off-putting i don't want to bother.

[greennui]

I've seen loads of Fellini but pretty much every film has faded in my memory.

In Denis' case I think it's just people voting for different films, I voted Friday Night but a lot of people probably voted for Beau Travail, US Go Home and etc.

Hong seems like a director who people appreciate without really having an absolute favourite film, liking his entire ouevre instead, seeing as they kinda blend into each other and all.

[flip]

all of the directors kanafani mentioned got a few votes each i think, though as greennui points out, they were spread among various films. i agree some are surprisingly absent from our top 250 though!

i haven't seen any fellini in a long time, but when i first started learning about world film, when i was so ignorant about it that i didn't realise how ignorant i was (now at least i have some awareness of the degree of my ignorance), i was under the impression, from whatever random things i'd been exposed to, that fellini, godard, bunuel, kubrick and bergman were something like the pillars of modernist cinema (following the more classical pillars hitchcock, renoir, kurosawa, rossellini and ford). that seems absurdly reductive and reductively absurd now, but i watched a lot of their films at the time, and i liked a lot of fellini (and disliked about an equal amount). 8 1/2 was one of the very first films i thought was brilliant, though i only felt that way the second time i saw it (the first time i couldn't make any sense of it). i haven't revisited any of his work in many years, and have no idea what i'd think of it now, though i wouldn't have any compunctions about voting for juliet of the spirits or ginger and fred in a poll.

reflecting on all that did make me wonder what other people thought when they first got into film - which directors people first thought were 'important', say, and how we arrive at those impressions. i'm guessing a lot of people getting into film these days are looking at canon-type lists (sight+sound, afi, tspdt) on sites like letterboxd.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

My wife just told me a story about her freshman year in college she made a conscious decision that Fellini was going to be “her filmmaker”. The only dvd her university’s library had was The White Sheik, which she was immediately bored by, and gave up on the whole endeavor.
It was funny to me though, how certain names take on an aura of excellence, even when you have no real connection to their work.
Similarly, I became enthralled with David Lynch in high school, so someone recommended 8 1/2, which decidedly did not hit the sweet spot I thought it would. Took me years to come back around to Fellini.

[sally]

My wife just told me a story about her freshman year in college she made a conscious decision that Fellini was going to be “her filmmaker”. The only dvd her university’s library had was The White Sheik, which she was immediately bored by, and gave up on the whole endeavor.
It was funny to me though, how certain names take on an aura of excellence, even when you have no real connection to their work.
Similarly, I became enthralled with David Lynch in high school, so someone recommended 8 1/2, which decidedly did not hit the sweet spot I thought it would. Took me years to come back around to Fellini.

lol, the white sheik is one of the fellini's that i can quite happily live with! (along with orchestra rehearsal, i vitelloni & casanova), didn't mean to totally crap on him. and i can watch marcello in anything, he's done much worse than 8 1/2

[sally]

reflecting on all that did make me wonder what other people thought when they first got into film - which directors people first thought were 'important', say, and how we arrive at those impressions. i'm guessing a lot of people getting into film these days are looking at canon-type lists (sight+sound, afi, tspdt) on sites like letterboxd.

i was thinking about this the other day, my generation's awe-induced 'Cinema As Art' virginity was sacrificed to, like you said, fellini, godard, etc and bergman, most all, bergman.

and nowadays it seems hardly anyone talks about ingmar like that (thank god!) i'd save godard from the subsequent iconocrash (i'd give godard a kidney if he wanted it) but the rest....pffft. maybe it's because internet availability but they seem to have shrunk in stature to their context and we can think of them along with their contemporaries, not towering above them.

but are there still entry pillars for the kids these day? i'm not sure we're capable of that perspective, but are there any newbies to movies here (or anyone know any) that can tell us who our gods are these days? i couldn't even guess. ozu maybe? erm...

[kanafani]

i was thinking about this the other day, my generation's awe-induced 'Cinema As Art' virginity was sacrificed to, like you said, fellini, godard, etc and bergman, most all, bergman.

It was the same for me in Beirut when I was 18 and just starting my “cinephile” career: Bergman, Fellini, and Kurosawa were the big starter three. And perhaps the one that preceded them and acted as a gateway from movies as entertainment to movies as art was Kubrick.

I didn’t mean to be too hard on Fellini btw. 8.5 is truly horrible as is his later stuff, but his very early career has some gems.

[MrCarmady]

I find Fellini quite difficult to get along with but La dolce vita is masterful. I had the opportunity to come to 8 1/2 way later than most cinephiles a few months ago and I found it simultaneously very sexist and very compelling, not threatening any of my all-time lists but still a very creative film. Roma bored my tits off though.