The Lists Project

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: The Lists Project

#2026 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 30, 2017 3:55 pm

My main concern with a re-vote would be that it might tend to homogenize the lists, with people second-guessing their list in order to back perceived "better bets". These lists get homogenous enough when the contributor count gets up, and I suspect the process proposed wouldn't favour obscure passion picks selected by one of two people at all, but rather promote the films lots of people have already seen, which already have a natural advantage throughout the entire process. I'd hate to see the lists lose what little quirk they retain, which is entirely down to contributors not voting for what they think - or know - other people will be voting for.

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swo17
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Re: The Lists Project

#2027 Post by swo17 » Thu Mar 30, 2017 4:06 pm

What if all I published after the first round were the orphans?

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zedz
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Re: The Lists Project

#2028 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 30, 2017 8:04 pm

That might be more interesting. Maybe there could be Orphans Week, during which members do a kind of speed-dating on behalf of their favourite ugly duckling.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: The Lists Project

#2029 Post by movielocke » Thu Mar 30, 2017 9:22 pm

swo17 wrote:What if all I published after the first round were the orphans?
i don't like that idea but I do like the two round thing. I would deprioritize orphans in favor of filling gaps with films that had more than one vote. I often find the also ran list as useful and worthwhile as the main list but very rarely do I ever even examine the orphan list unless I'm looking to see if something bizarrely wound up an orphan (or wasn't mentioned at all).

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denti alligator
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Re: The Lists Project

#2030 Post by denti alligator » Thu Mar 30, 2017 9:32 pm

I'm for moving on to the pre-1920s list, which I want to try and actively participate in.

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zedz
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Re: The Lists Project

#2031 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 30, 2017 9:52 pm

The other big argument for leaving things as they are is that it better allows us to see how the same process produces different results over time (i.e. canon shift, impact of availability, change in the make-up of the forum).

I could see the value of the re-vote for the purposes of the specific all-time project, but I can only see how it might detract from the standard decade-by-decade lists.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: The Lists Project

#2032 Post by movielocke » Thu Mar 30, 2017 10:08 pm

I'm not sure but it seems like the two tier process attracted a lot of additional interest and input that the one tier process simply doesn't gather. That's significant because so far the major consistent change we've observed over time is fewer participants per iteration, iirc.

I think it also helps for fencesitters to see the posts that most participants had seen 40-60 percent of the list and thus they felt less intimidated in participating. I know I generally have assumed all participants had a more like 95%+ viewing rate of eligible films and it always made me hesitant to participate for many years.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Lists Project

#2033 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 30, 2017 10:10 pm

I fear change and reject all new notions. Leave it be, I say, and let God sort it out

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movielocke
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Re: The Lists Project

#2034 Post by movielocke » Thu Mar 30, 2017 10:10 pm

I would like to formally put the suggestion that we do a "directed by women" list before restarting the decades list up for debate

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domino harvey
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Re: The Lists Project

#2035 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 30, 2017 10:11 pm

You can formally request til you're blue in the face, the genre lists are a separate entity and it has been duly added to the list of future possibilities. But there is already a long schedule ahead of it and no guarantee it will happen any time soon

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matrixschmatrix
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm

Re: The Lists Project

#2036 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Mar 30, 2017 10:57 pm

Could we possibly slot in a woman for the next auteur list after Lang? Agnes Varda, maybe?

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domino harvey
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Re: The Lists Project

#2037 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 30, 2017 11:10 pm

The Auteur List is intended for directors with 30+ features, so no. I understand some of you are eager to highlight the works of women, and I encourage you to do so elsewhere on this forum in the meantime between now and whenever a list occurs

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swo17
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Re: The Lists Project

#2038 Post by swo17 » Thu Mar 30, 2017 11:33 pm

But this is the only way I can make a difference to the women in my life.

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zedz
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Re: The Lists Project

#2039 Post by zedz » Thu Mar 30, 2017 11:33 pm

If people really feel they need to be forced to talk about films directed by women, how about scheduling a few rounds of women-only votes for the Film Club?

(Though that does mean we end up at the mercy of Criterion's poor record with female directors, and with the very likely outcome that Jeanne Dielman is yet again the only film directed by a women that gets any forum attention! Maybe we need to go beyond Criterion in this instance.)

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: The Lists Project

#2040 Post by knives » Thu Mar 30, 2017 11:49 pm

zedz wrote:I could see the value of the re-vote for the purposes of the specific all-time project, but I can only see how it might detract from the standard decade-by-decade lists.
This 100%. As to the womans list, while I like it and it should pop up eventually making a list shouldn't be the be all end all of discussion here. I mean No Home Movie has all of five posts in its thread and only one actually talking about it despite it being a very prominent film (by the standards of this forum) from a major director that is new and widely available. The push for a list seems to largely be a matter of being chic.

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TMDaines
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Re: The Lists Project

#2041 Post by TMDaines » Fri Mar 31, 2017 2:28 am

I like that having two rounds of voting encouraged more people to submit ballots, but I hope we could just be more proactive in getting people to come forward and submit regardless going forward.

Would prefer just the single round of voting.

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matrixschmatrix
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm

Re: The Lists Project

#2042 Post by matrixschmatrix » Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:20 am

knives wrote:
zedz wrote:I could see the value of the re-vote for the purposes of the specific all-time project, but I can only see how it might detract from the standard decade-by-decade lists.
This 100%. As to the womans list, while I like it and it should pop up eventually making a list shouldn't be the be all end all of discussion here. I mean No Home Movie has all of five posts in its thread and only one actually talking about it despite it being a very prominent film (by the standards of this forum) from a major director that is new and widely available. The push for a list seems to largely be a matter of being chic.
I like the idea of lists in large part because it provides an area of focus, and I think all of the lists I participated in heavily wound up having a real and long term impact on the way I watch movies. I certainly could just decide to watch a bunch of movies made by women- and there is something about treating that as essentially a genre unto itself that feels vaguely depressing, at least- but a list tends to mean we have a corpus to work from, a timeframe, and a discussion community focusing on the same thing, all of which help enormously.

I mean, I get that we can't just bump the idea to the front of the line, and while it does actually feel like a separate kind of category than decades or genre or any of the other groupings we use, we also obviously can't start running a third parallel set of lists, particularly not one that would start feeling real weird basically immediately after the first one.

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Satori
Joined: Sun May 09, 2010 10:32 am

Re: The Lists Project

#2043 Post by Satori » Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:35 am

Has there ever been discussion of letting forum members vote for the next genre list we do, sort of like for the Criterion Film Club? You could put the current list of suggestions up in a poll and then give everyone a week or so to pick the one they'd like to do next. It might spur participation, especially in cases where a lot of members are interested in a specific thing. People could even make cases for doing specific lists, which might give users a sense of responsibility to participate heavily if their choice wins the vote.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: The Lists Project

#2044 Post by matrixschmatrix » Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:36 am

We did that a while ago, and as I recall, it lead to some of the most underpopulated lists we ever had

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domino harvey
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Re: The Lists Project

#2045 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:39 am

That's not going to happen. I take, log, and consider good suggestions, but I'm not putting them up for a vote

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swo17
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Re: The Lists Project

#2046 Post by swo17 » Fri Mar 31, 2017 11:24 am

Re: the two rounds of voting, I get the concerns and share some of them. I also feel like the potential benefits might be easier to appreciate in practice. And I don't think it hurts to give it a test run, since we will have the results stated both ways if we do. Here's what I'm thinking: We have a week-long second round at the end of the pre-1920s list. Many of you would probably make no changes to your lists during this time. But if anyone discovered anything that they wanted to add to their lists during that week they would be welcome to do so. At the end of the second round I can publish both the first-round results (i.e. the way we've usually done things) and the second-round results. If there is no appreciable difference between the two, then it's probably not worth the trouble going forward. If enough people feel like the results are compromised by having an additional round, then we throw them out. But if most people see some benefit from it, or at least no detriment, then we keep it going that way (just for the decades lists--I have no jurisdiction over the genre ones). Also, the pre-1920s are kind of an odd duck period that might not tell us enough, so I would probably want to do this test run for the 1920s as well (where again, if enough people disown the second-round results, I will officially erase them from the record).

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movielocke
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Re: The Lists Project

#2047 Post by movielocke » Fri Mar 31, 2017 1:34 pm

knives wrote: This 100%. As to the womans list, The push for a list seems to largely be a matter of being chic.
not so much chic as it is about allocating attention. For me what spurred it is that I was listening to the flixwise podcast and they had someone on who did an entire year of only watching films directed by women. I initially thought "whoa!" Then I thought, "I have probably had a few years where (inadvertently) I watched only films directed by men. If I can pay just a little bit of attention, I can easily prevent that from happening."

And once I started paying attention (rather than socio-cultural default of willful ignorance) i started to care more about making sure it was included as a standard part of my viewing repertoire, just as foreign language films, shorts, silents all became standard as well years ago when I started paying attention to what I was viewing and structuring my viewing to fill those gaps. For instance, I watched "the house is black" last night because now it is a factor I include when structuring what I view, so that little bit of attention, little bit of priority makes a difference when making the nightly decision of what to watch next.

So that's really where it all comes from. Our list is 98% male, and if we allocate some attention to gender over the years those small changes accrue and six years from now the next all time list would be a little less exclusive , a little more representational , a little less confirming of the worldwide film norms of rarely including or acknowledging or valuing women's contributions.

And the reason I was suggesting moving it up was that the decade lists would be different if they occurred after a directed by women list, so you have a stronger virtuous cycle of increased representation throughout the whole set of list iterations. But I completely understand that the schedule is set. These things take a lot of work and planning and thought and I very much appreciate all the work that goes into doing so.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: The Lists Project

#2048 Post by knives » Fri Mar 31, 2017 1:47 pm

Well if you edit my post that way of course you're going to get a rather dumb message out of it. I'm all for a womans list; I just don't think moving it up will accomplish what you think it will. Also there's enough films by women out there that if you watch films regularly you're inevitably going to get a few film by women directors each year without any worry of intent.

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swo17
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Re: The Lists Project

#2049 Post by swo17 » Fri Mar 31, 2017 2:21 pm

If you only watch mainstream films it is very likely that you will go long stretches without ever watching anything that was directed by a woman. If you start watching more obscure and/or artistic films you will see a lot more that were made by women, perhaps without you even realizing it. I think this would be the greater victory.

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denti alligator
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Re: The Lists Project

#2050 Post by denti alligator » Fri Mar 31, 2017 2:41 pm

So, is the pre-20s list next? I want to scour the old lists for films I haven't seen, and re-watch some favorites.,

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