Sight & Sound

[rrenault]

Apologies if this has been covered, but is there a list of EVERY movie that received at least one vote? I am trying to see which many critics voted for Filipino films (so far it looks like just Filipino critics, haha.)

This version adds a second tab with all the films and their numbers of votes (with the caveat that I haven't pored over this and others may have something cleaner). By my quick-filtered count there are about 4,600 unique films and of those about 2,600 are orphans; both counts are probably a bit inflated.

Both versions of Pscyho, from Hitchcock and Van Sant, are listed as having 74 votes. I'm guessing that's a mistake.

[knives]

Not so. Just to use the examples I mentioned, a better translation would not have increased the difficulty or time needed to read them. In some cases, there are shorter, easier translations that would have been more accurate if they were open to using four-letter words (which would've matched the crudeness of the tone or language).

The danger in going down that route is that you need to be very confident that the terms that you're using have a similar impact to the terms in the original, and that can sometimes be pretty hard to gauge. In particular, you don't want to use excessively strong language that isn't reflected in the original (for instance, it's a bad idea to replace the French "con" with "cunt" - similar origin/meaning, very different impact), which I suspect is why many subtitlers prefer to err in the opposite direction.

And of course there are loads of instances where translations require footnotes that are impractical to supply. For instance, an oft-cited example of a hilarious Hong Kong theatrical subtitle is "My brother's not easy to get on with; he's tear and I have mucus" (from Tiger On Beat), but I suspect that's pretty much a literal translation of what's being said - the problem is that in order to understand it you need to be versed in the Chinese concept of the body being made up of various humours that can be in and out of balance. Similarly, I gather Parasite has loads of subtle linguistic signifiers of social status that simply don't work in direct English translation.

This can even be true of hard-of-hearing subtitles of films in a strong local dialect - my own direct experience being with creating the subs for Black Joy (lots of Guyanese and Jamaican patois), Orphans (a front runner for the title of the most Glaswegian film ever made) and Love on the Dole (1930s Salford). In all cases, I had to balance a desire for accuracy with a need for easy graspability on the part of the reader - in particular, I couldn't go down the phonetic transcription route, a luxury that Love on the Dole's original author Walter Greenwood was able to indulge in (which is why his novel was pretty useless as a reference for me!).

That’s why I loved Animego back in the day having a footnote option for the subtitles. I believe an edition of Godard’s Historie(s) did as well.

[Mr Sausage]

I genuinely didn't know the idea of the bodily humours was still current in China.

[knives]

A lot of old ideas are. The ancient idea of balancing flavors is still essential to Chinese cuisine as well.

[Lemmy Caution]

Or balancing cold and hot. Such as eating dog, considered hot, in winter, and snake in summer. This is of course practical. In winter, snakes brumate -- reptile pseudo-hibernation -- and can be hard to find, but can be found out and about in summer. While you can fatten dogs up and then slaughter them in winter, when food is scarcer.

[dekadetia]

Both versions of Pscyho, from Hitchcock and Van Sant, are listed as having 74 votes. I'm guessing that's a mistake.

It is indeed I've amended accordingly.

[Maltic]

- Surprisingly few votes (in either poll) for the "classic" Disney animated features. Fantasia got the most at 9, but Pinocchio got only 2 critics' votes (5 directors').

Studio Ghibli murdered Disney in this list. A vote for Shrek though

- Most shocking of all (to me), the almost total neglect of John Woo. Unless I am missing something, no director voted for a single one of his films, and he got only three votes total in the critic's poll (one each for The Killer, Hard Boiled, and Bullet in the Head). Is the absence of some of his best films from HD "restorations" taking its toll? Or is there some other reason he seems to be out of fashion?

Despite Hong Kong Rescue!

Woo got 2 votes for The Killer and 1 for Hard Boiled in 2012.

Sean Gilman tallied up various Sino directors here (critics and director's polls aggregate)

Tsui Hark (8 votes), Johnnie To (8), Jackie (2), Chang Cheh (1, Vengeance), Lau Kar-leung (6), King Hu (20), Corey Yuen (1, Righting Wrongs), none for Ringo Lam or Sammo...

[rrenault]

On a slightly random note, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is for me one of those films where the backlash has become just as tiresome as its initial "overrated-ness". In terms of precedent, it doesn't feel any different to me than the likes of Persona and Hiroshima, Mon Amour performing extremely well in the poll soon after their respective releases.

[The Narrator Returns]

My only problem with Portrait being there is that Sciamma made an even better movie on the next go, but including a one-year-old movie in the 100 certainly wouldn't make the people complaining about recency bias any happier.

[swo17]

Here are all the 21st Century films that placed in the top 250, sorted by the average release year on the ballots that ushered that film in (excluding the release year for the film itself). One could argue that the earlier the average, the more well-versed in film history the voters were:

The Intruder: 1970
In Vanda's Room: 1973
Mulholland Dr.: 1974
In the Mood for Love: 1974
Nostalgia for the Light: 1976
Goodbye, Dragon Inn: 1976
The Tree of Life: 1976
West of the Tracks: 1976
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty: 1976
Tropical Malady: 1976
The Gleaners and I: 1976
There Will Be Blood: 1977
Syndromes and a Century: 1978
La ciénaga: 1978
Werckmeister Harmonies: 1978
Twin Peaks: The Return: 1978
Melancholia: 1979
Under the Skin: 1979
Mad Max: Fury Road: 1980
Spirited Away: 1980
Portrait of a Lady on Fire: 1981
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: 1982
The Headless Woman: 1982
Morvern Callar: 1983
Parasite: 1983
Get Out: 1983
Moonlight: 1984

(For reference, the baseline average across all ballots is 1972)

[Lighthouse]

Is there a place where all the complete polls back to 1952 can be viewed? Not only the top films, but every film which got a vote.

[Noiretirc]

Is The Shawshank Fucking Redemption still at the top of the IMDB list? I'm not going to bother looking. Which is what lists do, right? They are merely a barometer, complete with politics and bias, always with imperfections and omissions. But for my tastes, politics and biases, S+S interests me the most. No list can please everyone or be perfect for anyone.

But lists are good!!

[Noiretirc]

On a slightly random note, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is for me one of those films where the backlash has become just as tiresome as its initial "overrated-ness". In terms of precedent, it doesn't feel any different to me than the likes of Persona and Hiroshima, Mon Amour performing extremely well in the poll soon after their respective releases.

Backlash? In this thread, or some other thread?

Confession time: This list made me run out and get POALOF, and I've watched it 5x so far. It's a stunningly beautiful film.

Lists are good!!

[ballmouse]

Give me a list that shows films and # of lifetime views filtered by the voters of the S&S ballots with the option to view views by individual. As many have said, picking top 10 films is going to introduce a lot of noise into the final results. This would be a more 'objective' list of results. The problem would be we're not yet at the dystopian future where there's a government record of what our eyeballs are watching. So thank you Noiretirc for self-reporting.

[EWMMTFAN]

Is The Shawshank Fucking Redemption still at the top of the IMDB list? I'm not going to bother looking. Which is what lists do, right? They are merely a barometer, complete with politics and bias, always with imperfections and omissions. But for my tastes, politics and biases, S+S interests me the most. No list can please everyone or be perfect for anyone.

But lists are good!!

The ultimate Rewatchables movie. Shawshank gets so much dissed by the film snobs I never understand the contempt. It gives you emotional responses, delivering a powerful message on hope and Redemption. Morgan Freeman gives one of the great performances in cinema, showing great restraint and captive charisma that holds viewers glued to the screen. Beautifully shot by Roger Deakins, our finest living cinematographer. Seen the movie 60 times in my life and it never gets tiring.

[dustybooks]

I don’t think I’ve seen any movie sixty times. That’s impressive?

[Michael Kerpan]

I haven't even seen Tokyo Story that many times.

[Noiretirc]

I enjoy Shawshank. I'm certainly no snob! The Thing (1982) should be top 25 in S+S imho. I might have seen that 60x!!

But I find Shawshank rather one-dimensional. Do rewatches really bring more depth/nuance? And how long has the damn thing been at #1 on IMBD?

[dustybooks]

It’s been #1 since I learned what the 250 was in high school, apart from a lapse when I think The Dark Knight briefly overtook it.

I like Shawshank and loved it as a teenager. Like a lot of movies with very cut-and-dried morals, it appealed much more to me then when everything seemed a lot simpler, a lot more us-v-them, nothing against people who get more out of it — I know that for a lot of people it goes a lot deeper. Meanwhile I personally have come to find Freeman’s sledgehammer-like voiceover extremely tiresome.

[MichaelB]

I saw it once when it came out, thought it was OK, never saw any particular reason to see it again.

But with regard to "getting dissed by the film snobs", I think the objection is that it's a perfectly decent film that's been wildly overrated, not that it especially deserved dissing. It's not the film's fault that it's been elevated to such a pedestal.

[colinr0380]

There are definitely worse films to take the 'populist' top slot. Any Star Wars or Marvel film for instance. That's why I am grateful for the Shawshank Redemptions and Godfathers of the world to turn up there instead.

I think my favourite part of Shawshank Redemption is that rather elegiac 'finding individual worth through shared work' moment of the gang tarring the roof together. Plus it ends with that classic mispronunciation of the author of The Count of Monte Cristo's name as Alexander Dumb-ass! That's the contrasting moment to the opera playing over the yard scene, where there is a danger of actually enjoying the experience of being institutionalised rather than being ground up by the experience (and really that's the theme of the film rather than any notions of fighting against unjust imprisonment: of finding a way to remain human and have dignity whatever the circumstances you find yourself in, and always find something worthwhile to occupy your time). That's what makes Brooks' tragedy as the actually institutionalised librarian with a role in the prison suddenly being released to a life of nothing hit all the more tragically. Maybe the Warden did Andy a favour by sending his thugs in to smash up the record player and beat him up, as otherwise he would never have had his resolve to leave hardened!

[Noiretirc]

Ah! "Populist". Is IMDB a "Conservative" list? S+S is surely quite Liberal?

I argued many pages ago that you can never get politics out of such list making, or the choosing of the listmakers.

[Lemmy Caution]

(and really that's the theme of the film rather than any notions of fighting against unjust imprisonment: of finding a way to remain human and have dignity whatever the circumstances you find yourself in, and always find something worthwhile to occupy your time).

I haven't seen Shawshank, but that sounds alot like Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

[hearthesilence]

It's not a great film, but it's far from a bad one - both Robbins and Freeman turn in good performances and at minimum I think the whole concept of seeing their lives go by over a long period of time has resonance. I want to say the film's success was a pretty good story in itself - it bombed at the box office, but some critics picked up on it (IIRC Gene Siskel in Chicago put it on his top ten list when it was more or less given up as a commercial failure and strongly urged the Academy to recognize it) and wound up with a bunch of big, surprising Oscar nominations. (There's possibly a good story on how that happened.) And then it found its audience - I'm not sure if imdb rankings really hold much weight, but I could get behind it as a sentimental cult favorite albeit not one that I'd personally call a sentimental favorite - I definitely prefer it to Goonies which seems immensely popular with people of a certain age but never really did anything for me.

[colinr0380]

Well I did put 'populist' in quotes! What I mean by that is more that its one of those films that I've known people to bring up who otherwise treat film casually as an entertaining distraction (you know, like normal people do ). I still remember my mother saying that Shawshank Redemption was one of those films that every time it came on the television (which was a lot in the mid 2000s) and whatever point it was at when she changed the channel to it, she always ended up being unable to turn it off and having to watch it to the end. There's a lot to be said for 'comfort films' that Herr Schreck called them back in the day, and that really seemed to work in that way for her, which was interesting to see happen especially for such a long film.

Perhaps there has to be that quality of being able to lose yourself in a world with compelling characters that pushed it to the top of the imdb's list (as perhaps with The Godfather films also). There's also that compelling arc of societal outcast and pariah to redeemed if only in having been able to shed the burden of their previous lives that both of the main characters go through (you could even call it a stealth spiritual film with Andy as the traduced Jesus figure seen through the eyes (and narration) of Red's criminal-turned-disciple). Its a film that starts off pretty darkly but despite dealing with some really tough material (the sexual assault; the Brooks subplot), and in comparison with the really dark later King-Darabont film The Green Mile at least offers a shred of hope that things might work out OK in the end, that the wrongdoers may get their comeuppance and the suffering may not have been entirely in vain. And we all need films like that in our lives now and then that offer that small comfort.