The Lists Project

[matrixschmatrix]

I've been milling it over and am now morbidly curious how religion would go.

It would be amazing. Everyone vote for it.

By biggest problem, personally, would be in the needle thin differentiation between cultural representations of religion and actual religious works. Like, I don't believe that Exodus or Sunday Bloody Sunday are authored in a religious way, but at the same time they're made in a way only those who have intimately lived in that culture could portray them as. Just dealing with that sort of thing, I'm sure, could produce a lot of great discussion.

I'd be happy enough to have it include both works about religion- religious community, religious culture, all that sort of thing- works intended to represent foundational religious stories, which would be the clearcut sort of Last Temptation/Kundun kind of thing, and works that express a specifically religious sentiment (even if you can't define what that is) (because Tree of Life is clearly a religious movie, by my lights.) For good or bad, it's a genre that I would run as being highly whateverish.

I think that every time we do this, there should just be a Film Club-style vote (where you can change your pick) between a running list of all the options that people have recently suggested that have gotten some traction. Anything that doesn't get picked is in the running the next time.

Yeah, that's more or less my plan as long as I'm the point guy on these. Also, I'm going to try to describe how I would run a genre list for whatever's being nominated, so you guys are free to critique whatever aspect of my plan bothers you, and I'm happy to change as long as we haven't started it yet and there seems to be some reasonable consensus.

[domino harvey]

War was intended to be after Animation as it was the runner-up all those years ago, but it's no longer my show to run

[knives]

Rule of averages says we'll have it eventually.

[Yojimbo]

Rule of averages says we'll have it eventually.

Tomorrow is just another day

[jindianajonz]

I think that every time we do this, there should just be a Film Club-style vote (where you can change your pick) between a running list of all the options that people have recently suggested that have gotten some traction. Anything that doesn't get picked is in the running the next time.

If the Film Club is any indication, I'd be worried that you'll get people who don't participate voting because they want to see it discussed, even if the actual contributers don't have as much of an interest in the genre. It's not a big deal in film club because it'll be over in two weeks, but it'd suck to be stuck with a genre for 9 months that the contributors are only partially interested in.

It may be better for all if you hold the vote between people who are frequent contributers to the projects; their vote is certainly more valuable than people like me who just sit on the sidelines eating popcorn.

[swo17]

We already open it to a public vote. I was mainly just suggesting that people be allowed to change their vote throughout the process.

[Mr Sausage]

By biggest problem, personally, would be in the needle thin differentiation between cultural representations of religion and actual religious works. Like, I don't believe that Exodus or Sunday Bloody Sunday are authored in a religious way, but at the same time they're made in a way only those who have intimately lived in that culture could portray them as. Just dealing with that sort of thing, I'm sure, could produce a lot of great discussion.

Here's what I wrote earlier in the thread:

My provisional definition is: any film that contains theological or metaphysical elements as its subject is a religious film. So I would discount any film that merely puts one in a spiritual frame of mind or has what a viewer might feel is a transcendental atmosphere, but which contains no theological or metaphysical elements as its subject. But I would define a totally atheistic consideration of a religious or metaphysical subject as a religious film. The latter includes any depiction of an historically located mythology that, at one time, was part of a framework of real belief (euhemerism excepted). I am undecided on how to consider the creation of a personal mythology, especially one that isn't spiritual in any particularly metaphysical way.

Any film that contains a depiction of the afterlife I would include, so Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is in, for example. Life of Brian is obviously in, too. There are a number of science fiction films which are borderline--it's hard to judge how material vs. how metaphysical some of them are, like 2001 or Solaris.

I would distinguish a religious film (where metaphysics or theology or the history of the two is the subject) from a film that merely has a religious element in it (which helpfully excludes Star Wars or any film where someone goes to church at some point).

[knives]

That's pretty similar to what I'm working on now, though I'm also trying to consider the religiousity with which it is formed with hence why I'd probably be comfortable with a film like Sunday Bloody Sunday which is built at least in half as a personal examination of the relationship between a secularized person and the religion they can't escape from, but not Schindler's List which strikes me as devoid of any Jewish identity beyond the broad strokes of the subject. Hell, it would probably be easier to define it as a Catholic film if it had to be viewed religiously.

[Yojimbo]

I would distinguish a religious film (where metaphysics or theology or the history of the two is the subject) from a film that merely has a religious element in it (which helpfully excludes Star Wars or any film where someone goes to church at some point).

I guess that rules out 'Ace In The Hole', then, since Jan Sterling's character admits to having stopped going to church, for vanity reasons

[YnEoS]

It may be way too early to bring this up, and perhaps I'm the only person interested since I was kind of a newbie when the genre list project got going and didn't participate.

But at what point does the genre list project re-start like the decade list project, or when do we move on to doing something else like national cinemas? Would it just be whenever people would rather vote for a previously discussed genre or non-genre project over the remaining ones?

[knives]

In theory if we ever run out of genres, but I think by that point we should branch to something different (national cinemas?).

[bamwc2]

So then are we not going to do my suggestion of erotica/sex in cinema? I was really looking forward to that project for course construction and thought that it was happening.

[domino harvey]

I don't remember that being heralded as the next thing. Your best bet would be to put your energy behind Cold Bishop's idea of the psychotronic/exploitation/grindhouse/etc catch-all genre, which would encompass a lot of those films (but not all-- no one's gonna include, say, 9 1/2 Weeks in that list), or my proposal of Matt's accidental suggestion of "Romance" (which would no doubt exclude a lot of the more graphic films for most). If War wins, just call it "War on Conventional Morality" and watch your films anyways!

[bamwc2]

Domino, nothing would make me happier than carpet bombing the Hell out of conventional morality, but I would still hope that we could re-vote on the next project this time around. And, yes, I think that a real case can be made for sex/sexuality in cinema. Of course there are some real stinkers in the genre, but there are also some extraordinary films here as well. Large swathes of the back catalogs of filmmakers like von Sternberg, Malle, or Bergman would qualify. The topic covers works dealing with the identifications of masculinities and femininities throughout cinema. It also would give participants the chance to delve into fun topics, like the grindhouse cinema that gave us Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer, and Roger Corman's 70s productions. Queer cinema classics like Un chant d'amour, Pink Narcissus, and Mädchen in Uniform would also be in focus.

As a second choice, I kind of like the idea of investigating a national cinema as well.

[domino harvey]

Since by the time we finish with the 2000s list it'll be 2015, is there any interest in doing a "First Half of 2010s (2010-2014) List," which is half the decade, before cycling back to the Early years of cinema? Since another five years is a long time to wait for discussion/examination/listing of these titles, I think it'd have some value, but what do others/our listmaster think?

[swo17]

That's exactly what I was thinking of doing, and having it be like a Wonka office half-project (individual lists of 25, aggregate list of 50, duration of 4 months). It will also be far enough into 2015 that many of the 2014 stragglers will have had a chance to become more available by then.

[colinr0380]

Since by the time we finish with the 2000s list it'll be 2015, is there any interest in doing a "First Half of 2010s (2010-2014) List," which is half the decade, before cycling back to the Early years of cinema? Since another five years is a long time to wait for discussion/examination/listing of these titles, I think it'd have some value, but what do others/our listmaster think?

Definitely. I think we did that with the 2000s last time. It shouldn't be a problem since the thread just for the results gives details of when each poll was taken, so will make it obvious that the poll was taken halfway through the decade. It will let the forum have a vote without having to wait five years and it will be interesting to compare a mid-point poll with one once the decade has been completed to see which films stayed the course and which new films have joined them!

[YnEoS]

I'm heavily in favor of it, there's a bunch of big films I still need to catch up on from the past several years, and it would be nice to get a chance to clear some of them out so when we get around doing the full 2010s list, perhaps I can focus more on digging up some more buried masterpieces.

[TMDaines]

Since by the time we finish with the 2000s list it'll be 2015, is there any interest in doing a "First Half of 2010s (2010-2014) List," which is half the decade, before cycling back to the Early years of cinema? Since another five years is a long time to wait for discussion/examination/listing of these titles, I think it'd have some value, but what do others/our listmaster think?

I have been sitting on this thought for a few months too. Like you, I figured the first half of the decade (2010-14), half the time (3 - 4 1/2 months) and a half-size ballot of 25, which you would give you a top 50 and also-rans. By then the films of 2014 should be accessible to most in one way or another.

[knives]

Last time it was full ballot size.

[swo17]

My thought is that the last half of the decade will never see the benefit of a full-sized project, so why should the first half? Cutting everything in half comes closest to giving these films the same attention during a single decades project as any other group of films from a given 5-year period would receive.

[TMDaines]

Agreed. My reasoning was to keep ballots having the same rough quality and quantity threshold: on average five films from a year should still make an individual's cut.

[swo17]

The following are examples of multi-part films that may be voted for as a single film, or each segment as a separate film, if you insist (with all votes competing against each other): Heimat, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Dekalog, Shoah, Fanny and Alexander

This is such an incredibly foolish ruling that I can't believe it's actually a rule. Surely it hasn't come into play before, because there haven't been any miniseries with that kind of profile before the 80s list. To me, it's the equivalent of being able to vote for "the bit before the first intermission in Napoleon," or "the second mezzo of Otto e mezzo" - and since all of these films have screened theatrically, it's an exact equivalent.

Let's end this madness now!

We already discussed this issue before the '70s list, and you agreed with the revised rule language back then. I might better word this reminder though as follows:

The following are examples of multi-part films that are eligible to be voted for as a single film: Heimat, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Dekalog, Shoah, Fanny and Alexander. If you absolutely insist on voting for only one part of any of these films (because you can't stand/haven't been able to see the others), you can, but be aware that your vote will be kept separate from votes for the whole.

Yes, for each of these listed examples in the '80s, I can't see why anyone would want to vote for anything other than the whole, but there are other multi-part or portmanteau films where it's more up in the air. (For example, your vote for (nostalgia) as opposed to Hapax Legomena for the '70s list.) Rather than personally making the call as to which films can be split apart for voting purposes, I thought that leaving it open like this would let each person's vote decide, i.e. if it is silly to think of splitting apart Berlin Alexanderplatz, then this will be reflected by no one voting for it that way.

[jindianajonz]

So as a lists newcomer who would like to participate (at least before my lack of attention span gets the better of me), am I correct in assuming that "Also Rans" are films that recieved multiple votes but didn't make the top 100, while "Orphans" are films that only a single person voted for?

[knives]

That is correct.