Happening only once every ten years, the Sight and Sound
poll always proves to stem its fair share of excitement and procrastination to
cinephiles everywhere. Even during those
odd years, one certainly has enough internet at their hands to pass the time, memorizing
each of the previous five polls s to get them through until the next
voting. And with the poll taking place
this past July, so begins our long nine year hibernation. But just like any animal heading towards
their long winter’s nap, we have to be adequately prepared and make sure there
is substantial feeding for our hunger.
And we got it quite recently when Sight and Sound released
the all-extensive statistics outlying every movie voted for and the Top 10
lists from all 946 directors, critics, programmers, scholars who partook in
this year’s poll. Thousands of films and
thousands of links to click; I found myself overwhelmed by the magnitude of
what we now had. But after almost two
hours, I found it difficult to differentiate my feverish clicking from what’s
called procrastination. I knew nothing
was getting done so I decided to put my efforts towards something remotely more
proactive, if that can even be said.
Below is my Sight and Sound Top 10*, though I must say the
asterisk is stressed. Instead making one
of those typical “these are the 10 best films in my opinion” list, I decided to
make it more difficult and place some restrictions on my selections. I decided that the films I was going to
choose could not be in the Top 25 from either the Directors Top 100 or the
Critics Top 250 lists. That was a big
sacrifice and mean leaving many sure picks like Kane, 2001, and Seven Samurai
off-limits. But rules are rules, even if you're the one that made them up.
So below you will
find my Sight and Sound Top 10*. I tried
not to dwell too hard on my selections, but at the same time tried to make them
as diverse as possible, picking one from various countries, genres and
movements. If anyone else would like to
partake in creating a Top 10 list under these restrictions, please feel free. I would love to see what others think and
maybe it could be some sort of Blog-a-thon or something.
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Here are the extensive rules:
1. Only 10 films can be chosen
2. All selections must exceed the 25th film voted by the
Critics (ties included) http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/critics/
3. All selections must also exceed the 25th film voted by
the Directors (ties included)
