The Lists Project

[flyonthewall2983]

Any chance of a music video-only list? I suggested this in the 80's thread as almost a joke, but I'd be up for it and I guess a few others would be too.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Any chance of a music video-only list? I suggested this in the 80's thread as almost a joke, but I'd be up for it and I guess a few others would be too.

Absolutely!

[domino harvey]

Since I pushed the deadline by a couple weeks anyways, do interested parties want me to publish the Faith List Project a little early for discussion etc ahead of the birthday celebration of one of the most prominent figures of the genre? Or would you rather wait to unwrap the present of that thread til next week?

[knives]

I'm for a little decompression time.

[domino harvey]

I don't know where to put this, but, ahem, sitewide freeleech at that site that shall not be mentioned is in effect for the next ten days, so now's a good time to fill some gaps in past, present, and future list participations

[swo17]

So I'm just going to throw this out there: Next year, after the Religious/Faith List ends, we still have a big question mark. 2015 will also mark five years since the Genre List Project started, and there have been requests for revisiting some of the early lists from new members or those who didn't participate the first go-around. What do people think of an abbreviated second round of the first couple genres alternating between new genre lists. For example:
Religion (7 months) --> Noir (4 months) --> New Genre TBA (7 months) --> Westerns (4 months) --> New Genre TBA (7 months) --> Musicals (4 months) --> New Genre (7 months), at which point we can reassess whether we want to keep revisiting previous Genres in between new genres or just plow through more new ones. Any thoughts?

Just a thought: What if later this year when we revisit the noir genre, we expand it to encompass "crime"? I actually brought that up as a potential idea for a genre project before, and I believe the general response was "What would be the point? It would share too much with the noir list."

[domino harvey]

The point is to revisit Noir, a genre already overflowing with possible inclusions. Crime would be a different Genre and I'd entertain talk of it being a future List Project but not of it usurping Noir Redux

[zedz]

This line of thought does chime with something I was idly wondering about the other day: the possibility, once the big ones dry up or just for spice, of doing much shorter-term genre projects focussing on smaller subgenres or movements, maybe with only a top ten being submitted by participants. e.g. heist films (there's another chip off Crime's old block), French New Wave.

[knives]

I remember at the start of this a shift to countries was mentioned and would be interesting also.

[Tommaso]

All right, swo, as you've just prepared the 2000's list: I guess that Greenaway's "The Tulse Luper Suitcases" also counts as one film, like "The Lord of the Rings"? And conversely, pertaining to both the 1990s and the 2000s lists: I hope that Barney's "Cremaster" films count as individual films, otherwise there'd be a big difficulty in which decade to place this cycle.

[swo17]

Lord of the Rings is a trilogy and will therefore not be counted as one film. Tulse Luper appears to be a similar case (I see many references to it as a trilogy online) and so presumably would need to be voted for in parts as well.

You can vote for the Cremaster films separately in the '90s, though I suppose you could also vote for The Cremaster Cycle (which is a 2003 release per IMDb) in the 2000s.

[Tommaso]

Oops, yes, I obviously misread your post about LOTR. But I really can't see any real difference between LOTR and Lang's "Die Nibelungen" (for instance) in this respect: the latter counted as one film, if I remember correctly, and LOTR was always conceived as a complete filmic rendering of Tolkien's novel from the beginning, too. That they called it a 'trilogy' is certainly true, but it may have been basically a marketing strategy, not at all comparable to the way one would speak about the "Godfather" films or Ray's "Apu" films as a trilogy.

I don't care much about this regarding LOTR - I won't vote for it, anyway, though I love it - but I seriously fear that the few votes that "Tulse Luper" will receive might be stupidly split between parts 1 and 2 (I guess part 3 will be discarded by most people anyway). Greenaway seriously conceived these three films as parts of ONE big project, involving internet contributions, a TV series (made from all three parts, though that never came to fruition), books, installations etc. He also made a digest one-film version from all three films called "A Life in Suitcases" in 2005, so all of this looks very much like this is really ONE film spread over three parts to me.

[domino harvey]

It is bizarre that LOTR is separate films but Flags of Our Fathers/Letters From Iwo Jima, which weren't even released by the same studio, is now one film. Like, I wasn't going to say anything because I wouldn't vote for any of them anyways, but what?

[swo17]

I thought the Eastwoods were considered companion films (like, say, I Am Curious) and that some people might like to vote for them that way. In any case, you would still be allowed to vote for them as separate films as well. If no one is interested in voting for them as a single film and my mentioning them that way is confusing, I can take that reference out.

Tulse Luper sounds more complicated than the standard example of a trilogy. I'm open to considering all things Tulse Luper-related eligible as a single film, but does anyone else care to weigh in on the matter first?

[zedz]

Lord of the Rings is a trilogy and will therefore not be counted as one film. Tulse Luper appears to be a similar case (I see many references to it as a trilogy online) and so presumably would need to be voted for in parts as well.

You can vote for the Cremaster films separately in the '90s, though I suppose you could also vote for The Cremaster Cycle (which is a 2003 release per IMDb) in the 2000s.

Personally, I think both the Cremaster and Tulse Luper series are so qualitatively inconsistent that (if I were going to vote for them at all), I'd want to pick and choose. I certainly don't see any extraordinary unity that goes above and beyond that of comparable productions and should encourage us to go against standard operating procedure. The Cremaster films were each produced individually, with different creative teams, over the course of seven years. I think we should really make a ruling about whether they're a bunch of individual 90s and 00s films, or a 2003 "cycle", rather than leaving it up in the air: the reasons for these rules is to encourage the consolidation of votes (so that everybody's vote for a particular film counts) and discourage splitting.

I'd always understood that the Eastwood films were planned, shot and released as companion films - that's certainly how they were presented at the time. Same production companies: Paramount handled the domestic US release of one of them, but both films were released internationally and backed by Warner Bros. Considering the near simultaneity of the release, I think they're actually more closely related than a lot of paired films that have previously fallen under the "two films = one" rule.

But of course all this is moot until somebody actually votes for any of these films, and I won't be!

[zedz]

Tulse Luper sounds more complicated than the standard example of a trilogy. I'm open to considering all things Tulse Luper-related eligible as a single film, but does anyone else care to weigh in on the matter first?

I just caught this and have to say: noooooooo! You realize that this would risk gathering up half of Greenaway's filmography, along with lots of extra-filmic thingamabobs, many of which never proceeded beyond concept stage? Greenaway would, I'm sure, be delighted with such special treatment, but I think it's totally unwarranted.

But I can vote for all of the Wim Wenders' films featuring Rudiger Vogler as Philip Winter as a 'cycle' for the nineties list, right? 'Released' in 1994 (conceptually, that is, until the next one comes out) with Lisbon Story?

[swo17]

I tried to address this issue in the rules section, which have included this wording for several decades now:

In certain cases, it may be appropriate for films that are technically separate to be combined, or for films that are technically combined to be separated. In such cases, you may vote for either a part or the whole, but bear in mind that all votes will be competing against each other (e.g. a vote for Ivan the Terrible Pt. 1 will not count toward the vote for Ivan the Terrible in the final tally). Generally, if multiple films are allowed to be combined for voting purposes, you should probably vote for them that way unless you are strongly opposed to doing so.

So if one person is passionate about being able to vote for Tulse Luper as a whole, while another person really wants to vote for just one part of it, they're both accommodated. Although if either one of those options is going to fare well in the project overall, there is going to have to be some lobbying done from one side or the other.

Is this not an acceptable solution?

[swo17]

Oh, and sorry, I should have said all things Tulse Luper Suitcases-related. I wasn't thinking about all the earlier films that mention him as a character.

[domino harvey]

Okay, so our first Genre List redux happens in July when the Religion List ends and the Noir List revs back up for a second limited-run round. I was thinking that in addition to asking for a Top 50 of noirs like last time, it might be fun/useful to simultaneously also ask for a Top 10 of neonoirs (being loosely defined as any noir released post-Studio era, ie after 1967) for an eventual Top 25. You could submit a Top 50 of Noirs and not submit a Top 10 of Neonoirs. However, my inclination is to not let those who don't participate in the Top 50 participate in the Top 10, but I am open to thoughts on this. You could still include any neonoirs on your Noir List (ie the Long Goodbye could top your Noir list and your Neonoir list), but the idea is more for the period-specific noirs to still make their mark in the main list while offering a venue for those who'd like to vote for neonoirs but don't consider them in the same category as studio-era noirs (as the tabulator, I can tell you very few neonoirs actually got voted on overall last time). Thoughts?

[zedz]

Okay, so our first Genre List redux happens in July when the Religion List ends and the Noir List revs back up for a second limited-run round. I was thinking that in addition to asking for a Top 50 of noirs like last time, it might be fun/useful to simultaneously also ask for a Top 10 of neonoirs (being loosely defined as any noir released post-Studio era, ie after 1967) for an eventual Top 25. You could submit a Top 50 of Noirs and not submit a Top 10 of Neonoirs. However, my inclination is to not let those who don't participate in the Top 50 participate in the Top 10, but I am open to thoughts on this. You could still include any neonoirs on your Noir List (ie the Long Goodbye could top your Noir list and your Neonoir list), but the idea is more for the period-specific noirs to still make their mark in the main list while offering a venue for those who'd like to vote for neonoirs but don't consider them in the same category as studio-era noirs (as the tabulator, I can tell you very few neonoirs actually got voted on overall last time). Thoughts?

I like the idea of doing both at once, but I think if we're going to go to the trouble of doing a small neo-noir list (and moreover of defining 'neo-noir' to a certain extent), then films noirs themselves should be defined more strictly - and I like 'end of studio era' as a constraint. Conceptually, because film noir is an unconscious genre (nobody was consciously making a 'film noir' at the time, because the genre had yet to be identified), neo-noirs are for me self-conscious films informed by a knowledge of that post-facto genre: if somebody sets out to make a 'film noir', they're actually making a neo-noir.

I agree that the neo-noir list should be a bonus optional add-on for those submitting a proper noir list, not a standalone option.

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).

[essrog]

I like this idea, too. I'd been planning on restricting myself to American films from about 1940-60 for this list anyway, in part because I have a shit-ton of those in my kevyip to watch. It will be hard enough to know what to do with films from that era that are kind of noir, kind of not (e.g., The Night of the Hunter), that I'll be happy to leave the neo-noirs for their own list.

[TMDaines]

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.

[bamwc2]

And then we can finally do sex/sexuality?

[mfunk9786]

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

[bamwc2]

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.