The Lists Project

[domino harvey]

Docs have a 3-2 mandate, I think you could get away with calling it. Or you could delay the inevitable and make a new poll. Or maybe it's still anyone's game. So, the answer is Sci-Fi.

[swo17]

For war to win, 10 of the 12 people that did not initially vote for war or documentaries would have to vote for it now.

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, sorry Gregory, but I think Documentaries have it- I was secretly just trying to make it possible that Religious might get it anyway.

[Gregory]

No problem, makes sense to skip the runoff.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, sorry Gregory, but I think Documentaries have it- I was secretly just trying to make it possible that Religious might get it anyway.

It may be the list tabulator's fate to be on the wrong side of the general sway: I definitely wanted War last time and we got Animation. I resign and decide I want Documentaries this round and look what happens! \:D/ This is so close to scientifically accurate data

[knives]

You could get a job at Harvard with that sort of statistic gathering skills.

[Lemmy Caution]

Looks like a fairly clear winner.
take a bow, Documentaries ....

[colinr0380]

Oh God, does this mean I have to dig out Tony Kaye's three hour black and white magnum opus on abortion, Lake of Fire, out of my kevyip now?

[MichaelB]

Oh God, does this mean I have to dig out Tony Kaye's three hour black and white magnum opus on abortion, Lake of Fire, out of my kevyip now?

I'm pretty sure I've got an off-air recording of that. Inexplicably, I've never got round to watching it.

[colinr0380]

On the other hand I would strongly recommend The Corporation (and Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media) as essential watches for this project. I'm open to anything wowing me but I can't see anything else toppling these from the top two slots on my list.

[Yojimbo]

Would my vote have swung it War's way?
(or votes, since it worked for Pat O'Connor Pat O'Connor)

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

If we voted for religious wars do we get 55% of the vote?

[Yojimbo]

If we voted for religious wars do we get 55% of the vote?

we might have to fight them for it!
(although one should never dismiss the power of prayer)

[zedz]

Yeah, sorry Gregory, but I think Documentaries have it- I was secretly just trying to make it possible that Religious might get it anyway.

It may be the list tabulator's fate to be on the wrong side of the general sway: I definitely wanted War last time and we got Animation. I resign and decide I want Documentaries this round and look what happens! \:D/ This is so close to scientifically accurate data

I'm perfectly happy for things to carry on as they are, but we should probably officially allow for the tabulator to step aside once a new genre is decided if they're not enthusiastic about it. If compiling these things isn't a labour of love, it's just going to be a labour of labour.

[domino harvey]

As far as I can tell Matrix has happily risen to the thankless position and doing a bang-up job at it, but I'm sure he knows that if he was ever less enthused it would only take a little prodding to easily pass the task back on to me or Swo or anyone else foolish enough to run one of these things!

[matrixschmatrix]

I'm actually pretty interested in doing Docs, and while I've been feeling like I'm not doing as good a job in driving discussion as other coordinators have I'm more than happy to keep doing this as long as people are happy with me. And you can drive your own goddamn discussions if you aren't happy, you ungrateful jerks.

[Yojimbo]

Although I'm a huge fan of the great historical series, such as, ahem, 'World at War', and I may love individual documentaries - even about topics that might not ordinarily interest me - I'm not as sold on the 'documentary as valid film art' concept as others seem to be these days. Still I'll keep an eye out for suggestions made and might just be persuaded to participate
...if yez'll all promise to stop fighting among yourselves! :-$

[matrixschmatrix]

Honestly, I didn't even know 'is documentary a valid form of expression within film' was an open question- I thought that was something that had been more or less settled with the creative nonfiction movements in, like, the 60s, if not earlier. Particularly as I imagine that nobody's going to object to putting the F for Fake and Exit Through the Gift Shop style hybrid documentaries in the mix, and if Welles' movie isn't valid film art than valid film art is uh not a real useful concept.

[knives]

That does strike me as a really weird stance since all cinema is de facto art (good art or not is a different story). Now the question of if documentary is a moral expression of art is a different matter all together and one that deserves a lot of thought applied to it.

[Yojimbo]

I don't know; I think its only in the past decade or so that I've noticed documentaries screening with any degree of regularity in my local art-house. And I can't recall did 'F for Fake' even get a first run cinema release here, backintheday.

I know certainly that in the late 70s through mid 80s - which was the period of my first art-house membership - no documentaries would have been screened. Documentaries tended to be regarded as the preserve of television, especially public television. I think that there's the danger now that many documentaries which would have only been shown on television during the 1970s and 80s, are now 'riding the coattails' of their more validly cinematic brethren.
It takes more than feature-length running time for a documentary to become valid cinema, just as with a filmed play.

[Yojimbo]

Now the question of if documentary is a moral expression of art is a different matter all together and one that deserves a lot of thought applied to it.

Good point; and fair point about the question of 'good or bad art'. But there's no question but the bar seems to have been lowered in recent years for documentaries to be accepted as cinematic art, rather than pure 'moving images' art, which would encompass televisual art, also

[knives]

If I get you properly I agree that the cinematic qualities of documentaries especially in recent years have generally gone down the toilet with bad Morris and Burns knock-offs comprising most of the medium, but that does not discount something like the Marc Isaacs films for example which are truly cinematic in a way that even most of fiction cinema does not reach. I also don't understand your seperation of cinematic art and televisual art beyond a fairly generic where they screened originally thing. Would you not consider War and Peace in a discussion of literary art because it was originally a magazine serial and so not literary?

[Yojimbo]

If I get you properly I agree that the cinematic qualities of documentaries especially in recent years have generally gone down the toilet with bad Morris and Burns knock-offs comprising most of the medium, but that does not discount something like the Marc Isaacs films for example which are truly cinematic in a way that even most of fiction cinema does not reach. I also don't understand your seperation of cinematic art and televisual art beyond a fairly generic where they screened originally thing. Would you not consider War and Peace in a discussion of literary art because it was originally a magazine serial and so not literary?

I'm not familiar with the Marc Isaacs films.
But to turn your last comment on its head, are you saying that there is, now, essentially no difference between cinematic art and televisual art, at least where documentaries are concerned?

Edit: as regards 'War and Peace', I haven't read it but wasn't Dickens also serialised?
In the context of subsequent period novels they might be regarded as 'lesser animals', if their authors were either 'making it up as they went along', or did not have an original grand concept, prior to allowing for the serialisation of their work

[knives]

I'd go beyond that and say that for finite works there's no difference between 'cinema' and 'television' and that has been so for at least a decade in America and more so in Europe. Certainly something like Scenes From a Marriage to arbitrarily pull something up has the same artistic merits of its cinema bound peers. Given the vast differences in story telling there's definitely something different between say Doctor Who and Solaris because of a difference in mediums, but I don't think I say that for a television movie or documentary and a cinema movie or documentary. There's of course going to be difference in quality amongst certain films, but the medium doesn't seem to be a factor right now.

[Mr Sausage]

Serializing novels in magazines was a wide-spread practise in the 19th century. As was releasing novels in installments. No one thought them lesser novels for that, or currently thinks so.

I don't understand the terms under which Documentaries are being excluded from the category 'film art.'