The Lists Project

[Mr Sausage]

I remember there being quite a fervor surrounding my idea for a religious films list. :-"

Hell, I'd be all for ditching animation and doing this one immediately. Religious films are fascinating, even (especially?) the bad ones.

[domino harvey]

I thought the idea was that the runner-up, War, was next after Animation, but it's def matrix's show now so whatevsssss

[knives]

I remember there being quite a fervor surrounding my idea for a religious films list. :-"

Hell, I'd be all for ditching animation and doing this one immediately. Religious films are fascinating, even (especially?) the bad ones.

No one likes animation. Joking of course though it does seem like a lot of people aren't interested here in a medium of such great artistic value.

[colinr0380]

I agree knives - animation is a fascinating area for the way it crosses over into so many genres. We could also have many debates over different types and styles of animations. Such as would animation melded with live action count? Such as David Lynch's The Grandmother or many of Jan Švankmajer's features? Would that also open the door to the almost totally CGI'd likes of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films though? Or Robert Zemeckis? Would we do a separate little section related to purely animated sequences in otherwise live action films?

Animation can cover everything from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the 70s Lord of the Rings. From Looney Tunes to Urotsukidoji!

I'm already debating with myself which animation to make my spotlight this time around - the beautiful anthology film Memories, the nuclear war/timely call for the older generation to stop seeing current conflicts through WWII tinted glasses When The Wind Blows, or the still incredibly timely vision of the nightmare of privatised healthcare ignoring the basic human needs of the patient, Roujin Z.

Perhaps I will try to push all of them!

Oh, and Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade for retelling the Red Riding Hood story through the prism of an underground resistance movement!

My big question is - when will we get to 'women's pictures' and weepies in general?

[knives]

You forgot Barefoot Gen which deserves a seat next to When the Wind Blows as one of the most surprising turns toward nuclear darkness in a film. The big scene I'm referring to is one of the scariest I've seen. There's also all of the lovely ways that various forms of animation are combined with the recent Paperman short being just one beautiful recent example. That's not even going into all of the ways that theory on cinema has tended towards live action so much that many preconceived notions of the cinema are going to have to be changed when looking at studio animation (Willard Bowsky should be on everyone's tongue even if he never officially was a director).

[colinr0380]

I've not yet seen Barefoot Gen but I've bought the DVD (which came with the sequel) in anticipation of the project starting up!

[knives]

It's a really great film that I am eagerly waiting to rewatch for this project (though I wonder what was wrong with my kindergarten teacher for having that be our introduction to Japanese culture).

[matrixschmatrix]

I agree knives - animation is a fascinating area for the way it crosses over into so many genres. We could also have many debates over different types and styles of animations. Such as would animation melded with live action count? Such as David Lynch's The Grandmother or many of Jan Švankmajer's features? Would that also open the door to the almost totally CGI'd likes of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films though? Or Robert Zemeckis? Would we do a separate little section related to purely animated sequences in otherwise live action films?

Animation can cover everything from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the 70s Lord of the Rings. From Looney Tunes to Urotsukidoji!

I'm already debating with myself which animation to make my spotlight this time around - the beautiful anthology film Memories, the nuclear war/timely call for the older generation to stop seeing current conflicts through WWII tinted glasses When The Wind Blows, or the still incredibly timely vision of the nightmare of privatised healthcare ignoring the basic human needs of the patient, Roujin Z.

Perhaps I will try to push all of them!

Oh, and Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade for retelling the Red Riding Hood story through the prism of an underground resistance movement!

My big question is - when will we get to 'women's pictures' and weepies in general?

I need to set up an OP in the next couple of weeks, so if you have any links to writeups or lists or anything you could PM me, I'd appreciate it.

[flyonthewall2983]

Would crime films be another genre to be split up?

[knives]

We already sort of did with Noir.

[terabin]

I remember there being quite a fervor surrounding my idea for a religious films list. :-"

Hell, I'd be all for ditching animation and doing this one immediately. Religious films are fascinating, even (especially?) the bad ones.

I'd love to do a religious films list. After animation, this gets my vote. The discussions will be fun on that one I think.

[swo17]

Nine months should be the default standard now that people treat these lists as viewing exercises and not mere compiling jaunts (which wasn't always the case)

I don't mind the sound of that, though I'm also fine just assessing where we are with each decade at various times throughout the project, and extending the deadline as necessary. For instance, six months has seemed just about right to me for some of the earlier decades, and I don't personally see myself needing extra time once we get to the '80s, as I've already been through those decades once before. Though of course, everyone's situation is different, and besides, if I end up with more time than I need for a given project, I've heard that there are other things to do in life than just watching movies.

I do think it's important to have time, on top of everything else, to be able to rewatch everything that you're considering listing for a particular decade that isn't fresh in your mind (unless rewatching is impossible). I can't fathom how people rank movies otherwise.

[matrixschmatrix]

In my mind, six months still seems reasonable for Animation- I think genre lists are inherently more variable in size than the Decades- but I'll see how things feel come April or May or something.

[domino harvey]

Yeah, I was thinking of the new rule of thumb more for the decades lists-- genres lend themselves to different timetables

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, it's April, and I want to put up a poll to figure out the next genre for the List project. I think Religious Films is going to be an option, but what else do people want to see?

[zedz]

I still like the idea of War Movies, simply because it encompasses an extremely diverse range of film styles - drama, comedy, period, modern, high arthouse, animation, experimental, science fiction. It could be the widest ranging list to date.

I agree Religious Films should be in the mix too. This is also pretty diverse, and probably quite divisive. I imagine there will be a lot of 'border' issues.

I think Documentary was also mentioned previously. The strength of this is that it's likely to prompt discussion on (and viewing of?) a lot of films that don't normally get discussed on the forum.

[matrixschmatrix]

I'd actually like to go with something that has more border issues next time around, as it seems like there's an issue with Animation being so easily defined- it means that there isn't much to talk about in terms of generic thematic concerns, or at least that we haven't talked about any much. Something like War or Action might have the opposite problem, but it would also probably be a bit easier to get discussions going.

[knives]

I'm for documentary though war sounds like a lot fun. Maybe we could do something really oddball like blaxploitation or something else that really hasn't had much scholarly work (suggesting this pretty exclusively because that's where a lot of my '70s list pre-watching has been lately).

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, so far it sounds like War, Documentary, and Religious all have seconds, so those are on.

[Yojimbo]

War is top of my list, although 'Religious' is an interesting sub-genre.

I used to consider War films as flag-wavers, but there's such a wonderfully diverse group of films in that all-encompassing description, and not just in France, Japan and (former) USSR, which I used to consider created the most artistically valid, but also 'base' Hollywood.

[Gregory]

Any genre list in which many more than about four people regularly participate would be swell. I'm just wondering what happened to most of the 26 people who voted to do animation for the current round.

[swo17]

At least in the decades projects, lots of people vote that keep quiet in the thread.

[Mr Sausage]

I think half the fun of doing religious films is going to be defining the genre.

I'd like to do war movies, too.

[Yojimbo]

I think half the fun of doing religious films is going to be defining the genre.

I'd like to do war movies, too.

Its like cult movies: religions are 'cults', too
And everybody can have their own cult movie!

[knives]

And everybody can have their own cult movie!

Or that could never exist (I've been reading too much Benjamin).