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TMDaines wrote:

zedz wrote:Edit: And for the record, I'd personally classify non-English-language films influenced by American films noirs as neo-noirs, even if they were released before the curfew (e.g. Bob le flambeur).

Aren't you contradicting yourself there? On one hand, you want to define noir films as being made unconsciously, but on the other you still wish to separate non-American films that were made in the same vein, even if they were not conscious of how they were to be defined. How can, say, Ossessione be a neo-noir?

I'm always puzzled by the want to define noir as purely American, yet hold The Third Man up as an example of the pinnacle of the genre. It's like those guys we had a good laugh at who got offended by the Western list that the forum drew up because it contained so many Italian spaghetti Westerns, yet the Leone films are arguably quintessential of the genre. Sure, Noir is most closely associated with Hollywood, but the films had their roots and influences in much of European cinema, thanks in large part to the influx of Europeans to Hollywood. The idea that a group of American films, in retrospect, had a number of characteristics that strictly set them apart from a number of contemporary European films never bears much scrutiny.

I always feel as if the attempt to more closely define film noir than simply being black and white crime (melo)dramas from a particular period is forced. As you say, film noir is very much a retrospective term — it was not an idea, movement or a set of principles that anybody held in mind at the time. At best films considered to be film noir have a general disposition and a group of elements, but is English-language or American truly a defining characteristic? It seems more prescriptive than descriptive.

Film noir is a specifically American genre as far as I'm concerned (and I wouldn't include The Third Man in the genre). Historically, I think that's pretty clear in terms of how it was originally defined. And to me it's as territorially specific a genre as French Poetic Realism, Italian Neorealism or German Expressionism. You can see films from all over the world that adopted the tropes and principles of Neorealism, but if they're not Italian, they're not il neorealismo. There are maybe a few British examples that slip into film noir, like Night and the City, which is a film by a director of American films noirs that just happened to be made in London.

But there are a lot of broadly similar films from all around the world that people like to tar with the noir brush, and I think that often disguises more natural and fruitful stylistic allegiances (with German Expressionism and 20s/30s crime melodrama, for example, or with French Poetic Realism). But Melville is a director who seems to me to be very clearly drawing inspiration specifically from American crime films of the 40s and 50s, just like later purveyors of neo-noir, so I don't see why he should be ruled out of neo-noir simply because he was ahead of the curve and French. Ossessione, on the other hand and for all its similarities, really can't be defined as any kind of noir without being historically bogus, but it does show that all the components of the genre were already floating around (e.g. a gritty, location-based, poetic realist crime film gets you a long way there).

By the way, defining film noir as simply "black and white crime (melo)dramas from a particular period" seems to me to be willfully ignorant. The genre has always been defined in terms of very particular stylistic and thematic characteristics (and some content ones, like 'crime'), so I don't know what purpose it serves to pretend that's not the case. The term you're looking for is 'crime film'. Just because a genre's boundaries might be ambiguous doesn't mean you have to throw away its core.

bamwc2 wrote:

mfunk9786 wrote:Bam, please don't hit on the other members. This is your final warning.

I'll try, but crying by while saying "we can finally do sex/sexuality?" Has been my strongest pickup line over the years.

That was you?!

Swiping left, sorry (Like all future genre possibilities we'll discuss its candidacy when the time comes. This is not the time)

TMDaines wrote:I hope we will do a clean first half of the 2010s next year (2010-2014).

That's the plan.

TMDaines wrote:Here are handy IMDb lists of the results of the first and second round of the 2000s list project.

The first one is really whacky because of when it was made, serving as first half of the decade list with a couple of films from 2005. I hope we will do a clean first half of the 2010s next year (2010-2014).

I think we might as well just do the 'decade to date' whenever we happen to get to it. Division by decade is dubiously arbitrary enough already: I don't think half-decades have any inherent integrity as a unit that needs to be preserved. It's also much, much easy to enforce 'any and all films you've seen this decade' than to try and make boundary calls for dozens of films, especially since a lot of the 'new' films we're seeing for the first time in 2015 are 'technically' 2014 movies or earlier.

Disagree, makes complete sense to do a half list with a half decade, not some amorphous six year thing.

Yeah, my main thoughts are that:

1. Listing 50 films from a 10-year period suggests a certain level of quality for each film, i.e. only the top 5 from each year on average. So in theory it would make sense to do a top 25 for 5 years (aggregating to a combined top 50), or a top 30 for 6 years (for a combined top 60), the former option being "cleaner."

2. Obviously this isn't true for every film, but generally, the majority of reasonably high-profile films that don't get a large worldwide release tend to trickle out the following year. So by the time we get around to the 2010s, I would expect that most such films that IMDb classifies as a 2013 or 2014 release will have had a chance to find a wider audience. Whereas if we included 2015 and 2016 films in the mix, mainstream American stuff would have an unfair advantage.

I'm with Zedz. Any film from the decade should qualify if it's a look at the decade's film. Why penalize an entire year's worth of films for the sake of symmetry? It smacks of the sort of OCD organizing that I constantly battle.

I completely agree with swo on this question. It should only be a Top 25 for five years, because personally I tend to make those lists not least for myself, with the aim to include only films on them that I would see as competitive in any decade (let's say, my #1 of the 2000s should at least be as great for myself than anything in the Top 10 in the 1920s, which is my favourite decade). Putting 50 films on the list for a five-year period would mean to include a lot of films which wouldn't normally make my personal pantheon. Okay, probably my own problem entirely.

Swo's second point, however, should be more generally true. Many films indeed only get belated international distribution or a home video release, and thus, many fine films would perhaps remain unseen. There's enough of a chance to talk about the very latest 2015 films in the 'New Films' section.

I'm 100% with swo, Domino and Tommaso. This isn't out of a sense of OCD (although a neat half-decade is more attractive than some "so far" thing), but instead I don't wish to feel pressured to beg, steal or borrow films from 2015 that will still not have naturally made their way to the UK or the English-speaking world. I don't want to feel compelled to watch some poor low quality rip of a much anticipated work that still has a cinema/Blu-ray release to come, in order just to be able to vote for it. There will obviously still be odd stragglers from 2014 that may have not made their way out by mid-2016, but the number of these will be much lower. Kon-Tiki (2012) did not get a UK release until two-and-a-quarter years after its premiere, for example!

I'm fully in favour of top 25 ballots forming a top 50 list to maintain the same sort of relative quality threshold. I'd even advocate even having the project run for only half the length of time: a) to not have it drift, and b) most are probably watching a lot of contemporary cinema anyway.

I don't see any problem with boundary calls, in fact there will surely be less than in previous decades: in 99.9% of cases we go by year of world premiere, i.e. IMDb year, and IMDb's data is more comprehensive for this half-decade than any time prior.

The Noir List rules wrote:If you already submitted a list last time and do not desire to send it in again, your old list will still be in play for the final voting (minus any films voted on made after 1969). But please consider using this new period of discussion and reflection to submit a new list with rankings that reflect your current tastes/exposure/&c

I believe I initially suggested this approach a while ago, and I think it's still probably a fine idea for the noir list where there's a year cutoff as part of the genre definition, but what about genres whose ranks keep expanding each year? Like if we eventually redo horror in a couple of years, are lists that people made in 2012 still going to count even though they were compiled without considering several years worth of subsequently eligible films?

swo17 wrote:

The Noir List rules wrote:If you already submitted a list last time and do not desire to send it in again, your old list will still be in play for the final voting (minus any films voted on made after 1969). But please consider using this new period of discussion and reflection to submit a new list with rankings that reflect your current tastes/exposure/&c

I believe I initially suggested this approach a while ago, and I think it's still probably a fine idea for the noir list where there's a year cutoff as part of the genre definition, but what about genres whose ranks keep expanding each year? Like if we eventually redo horror in a couple of years, are lists that people made in 2012 still going to count even though they were compiled without considering several years worth of subsequently eligible films?

A good question. My thinking is yes, though I see your point with regards to newer films potentially getting short shrift. Ideally everyone keeps updating their lists each iteration, but realistically some of the lists are going to be from members who stopped posting here, and I guess I just consider these contributions "legacy" lists, which get included as par for the course

I'm a little uneasy with this suggestion. I can see how it will keep the number of entries high, but all that inertia will make it much harder to see any significant changes in critical favour among the films, which for me is by far the most interesting thing about redoing previous lists. If a great noir is 'rediscovered' between lists projects and manages to make the top ten of every new list submitted, it won't stand a chance of registering to the same extent if those current lists are counterbalanced by twenty old lists on which it couldn't figure.

When the new decades lists are posted, most of the interest for me comes from seeing which films leapt up the list, or fell down it, or fell off completely. We're not going to have any clear picture of that for the genre lists if we retain a whole lot of old lists in the count.

If we're minimizing the chance of any major changes in the new noir list, and coming up with a 2015 list that isn't actually going to be "the Criterion Forum's favourite noirs as of 2015" what exactly is the point of the exercise?

And if we are going to do an aggregate list of every individual list ever submitted, can we also have a aggregate list of only the new submissions, so we actually have something meaningful to compare with the last list?

Considering almost every list submitted last time is from a currently active user (and really, that's the case for every list other than Horror that I've run), I don't think you need to worry too much about the effects of the old lists. To me the point is not just to reevaluate our previous rankings but to bring in new participants and voices to the discussion, which this already has and hopefully will continue to. If a few old voices remain represented in stasis, I see no harm

Okay, I actually just checked: Only three of the previously submitted lists are from members who haven't posted in the last year. This is hardly worth taking a Napoleonic stand on-- for either of us, honestly! (And it would frankly be easier for me if I didn't have to worry with past lists) Does anyone feel strongly whether past lists should or should not stand? I will consider any and all arguments expressed in a timely fashion before making a final decision

Maybe all you should do is wait until close to the deadline, then PM those that contributed last time that haven't yet submitted a new list, ask them if they'd like their old list to stand, and then only count their old list if they confirm that this is what they'd like you to do.

Checking with people (if they're still around) whether they want their previous list to stand seems sensible to me. Personally, I'd favour omitting old lists completely unless it's going to mess with compiling the latest round (i.e. so few people participate with new lists that we're not reaching some arbitrary threshold of consensus).

A reasonable solution. I've updated the first post in the Noir List to reflect this small change

I had my doubts as to whether a Faith/Religion List Project could sustain conversation and interest (which I expressed years ago when it was first suggested), and at five whole pages of discussion with only a couple weeks to go, I feel sadly vindicated. I think, between the scheduled reduxes of Noir coming up next and the Western redux next summer, we should take a breather from genres and do one of two things: have no competing tabulated list (so, the ongoing decade list only) until the Westerns Redux next year, or do a country project instead.

If we do a country project, I'd want the first country covered to be one that people have already shown a proclivity to discuss on the board and one with a large, readily-available subbed output on home video, so I'm thinking either France or Japan. These aren't necessarily my "favorites," but both are national cinemas with a lot of existent fans and easy access for new viewers, and neither have been the subject of earlier board lists (as America, Britain, Russia and Eastern Europe have). We need a project that people will participate in, and switching over to a country list in lieu of a genre one might be a nice shot in the arm. It does not mean genre lists are abandoned (and again, the reduxes of Noir, Westerns, and Musicals will stand on the schedule as-is), but maybe let's try something else?

No immediate decision is needed here, just opening a dialogue

I've been anticipating a countries list for a while, but I think in general the site is seeing a list fatigue and might due to rest for a while. Perhaps not doing the countries list until after the western redux.

domino harvey wrote:I had my doubts as to whether a Faith/Religion List Project could sustain conversation and interest (which I expressed years ago when it was first suggested), and at five whole pages of discussion with only a couple weeks to go, I feel sadly vindicated. I think, between the scheduled reduxes of Noir coming up next and the Western redux next summer, we should take a breather from genres and do one of two things: have no competing tabulated list (so, the ongoing decade list only) until the Westerns Redux next year, or do a country project instead.

If we do a country project, I'd want the first country covered to be one that people have already shown a proclivity to discuss on the board and one with a large, readily-available subbed output on home video, so I'm thinking either France or Japan. These aren't necessarily my "favorites," but both are national cinemas with a lot of existent fans and easy access for new viewers, and neither have been the subject of earlier board lists (as America, Britain, Russia and Eastern Europe have). We need a project that people will participate in, and switching over to a country list in lieu of a genre one might be a nice shot in the arm. It does not mean genre lists are abandoned (and again, the reduxes of Noir, Westerns, and Musicals will stand on the schedule as-is), but maybe let's try something else?

No immediate decision is needed here, just opening a dialogue

I'm certainly having trouble finding time to do the necessary work to keep up with multiple list projects (and just ordinary DVD watching), and it was exacerbated for the Faith list by a certain conceptual difficulty I had with the project as a whole (which I was initially really excited about). I think I might have had a breakthrough with how to deal with it now, which I hope to post about in the thread in the next couple of days.

Another option re. the fatigue might be to do shorter, sharper, more focussed list projects - maybe only running for a few weeks - either limited to specific sub-sub-genres (e.g. heist films) or focussed periods (e.g. Czech New Wave).

Some potential mini-genre lists I've been toying with, if we decide to go with that idea. Some of these would lend themselves to longer submissions/coverage time (10 submitted films? 15? 25?) than others:

Biopic
Conspiracies
Medical (doctors, nurses, pioneers, &c)
Pre-Code Hollywood
Screwball Comedies
Sexuality
Sports
Youth (films primarily focused on children under 18)

Those all sound like great ideas, and I have a few ideas for Medical films already. Maybe we could throw in Road movies too (I promise I'll get around to Border Radio for this if we do!)

That's a really good one too. Though I feel like my submitted list could just as easily be called "Wim Wenders movies"

I like the idea of mini-list projects, but I think for them to work properly they'd need to have very limited number of films that potentially qualify. Because otherwise we might end up with a scenario where there's very little overlap between lists, like doing a youth list and having one person's 10 favorite Ozu films, another person focusing on the experience of children in wartime, another on teen slasher films, and another on recent adaptations of American YA novels.