Half a year ago I started (re-)reading everything published by Epic Comics. Today, I finished.
It was an… it was an… isn’t there an expression for “big task”? I guess not. It was a big task. And stupid. Let’s not forget stupid — I never should have done it, but I did get to read some good comics along the way.
Click here to see the results.
It’s an odd imprint.
As a contrast, after watching a year’s worth of Netflix movies, I thought it would be fun to watch all the films on the Sight & Sound directors’ poll, so I did, and probably bored all you all to death while doing it.
Or was that the COVID?
It was probably the COVID. *crosses fingers*
It’s will probably surprise nobody when I say that the movies on that list are, on the whole, pretty spiffy. I had fun! I discovered a whole bunch of great movies that I hadn’t seen before, so: Mission accomplished.
But… it’s a list that has some… uhm… issues. Here’s the list of movies:
I was going to do a bunch of data-driven charts based on the movies, but the idea didn’t occur to me until I was a few months into watching, and trying to recall data points now is just too much work. I hate work.
But I did do the Bechdel test, since that’s a service I can just query.
Here’s the results: There were 32 movies with no rating (or I was too lazy to figure out under what name the movies were filed under); 23 films that passes the test and 50 films that do not pass the test. Yes, I know the weaknesses of the test — there are experimental movies on the list where nobody speaks at all, and those fail the test, of course. And failing the test doesn’t mean that it’s a bad movie, but it’s… It’s something.
I wonder how many films on the list would fail the reverse Bechdel test (i.e., flip the genders). Persona would, for instance.
It’s not a very diverse list of films, either: I don’t think a single one of these have a black actor in one of the central roles? (Please correct me if I misremember.) The vast majority of the films are from the US or from Europe, and the few that aren’t are from Japan or Hong Kong. (And one from Iran and one from Bangladesh.) There’s a single movie directed by a woman (Claire Denis) and that is also the single movie that is (possibly) about an LGBTQ+ person. (Well, if you ignore Salò, which I think you should.)
This is a list that is overwhelmingly by, and is about, heterosexual white guys.
I’m sure you’re all shocked. SHOCKED I TELLS YA! I brings ya so much exciting news.
I know, I know.
But it is kinda embarrassing, and Sight & Sound already knows:
Female filmmakers also continue to be underserved by the consensus: while a quarter of our voters were women, there were barely nine female-directed titles in our top 250. And while we attempted to extend our invitations to more particular connoisseurs of documentary, animation, experimental and short films, there’ve been few surprises to disrupt the dominance of the ‘art’ feature film – the most notable exceptions being at numbers 8 and 29…
(8 is Man With A Movie Camera and 29 is Shoah on the Critics’ List.)
I was wondering about the distribution of upper class/working class concerns in the films… but that sounds like way, way too much work for me. My guess is… that it’s kinda even? For every Citizen Kane, there’s a Bicycle Thief. But I may well be mistaken.
It’s also a list that is heavily weighted towards straightforwardly narrative films. That is, there’s very few experimental films here. I think there’s like… five?… that don’t have a narrative focus. It’s also very heavily weighted towards deep and serious movies. I love the deepness; I surely does; but just a handful of comedies seems… odd? If I were to do a list of swell flicks, there’d be more of them.
And: There’s a single musical on the list. It’s a fine movie; it’s a delight — but it’s not one I’d even put on my top ten of musicals. But it’s easy to see how it ended up here: It’s muscular and swaggering.
It’s also rather striking how many movies from the 70s are on this list, but probably just an artefact of the age distribution of the directors voting. I mean, I don’t mind watching four movies by John Cassavetes — but it’s… it’s a thing.
This person has done an analysis of the poll over the years. I think the main take-away is that the list isn’t very stable? I’m guessing some of the 70s movies will be gone in the 2022 poll to be replaced by… 80s movies? Dear god! Please don’t have The Goonies on the next edition!
PLEASE!
Tokyo Story. Yasujirô Ozu. 1953. ⚄
We’ve reached the end of this blog series, and we go out on a really good one. It’s a really moving film; even more so than that bicycle thief one. I can totally see why this ended up as #1 in 2012: The performances are swell, the cinematography is solid, it’s Japanese, and it’s the most touching movie you’ll ever see.
Central dialogue fraction:
“Isn’t life dissapointing?”
“Yes, nothing but disappointment.”
I watched and blogged about this in 2014.
This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.
2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick. 1968. ⚅
The end is nigh! For this blog series.
I think… I haven’t seen this movie since the 80s? I think I saw it in a movie theatre? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. And then on VHS later.
When thinking back on it, there’s so many scenes I vaguely remember, like the guy jogging in that circular space ship thing… and the obelisk monkey thing… and Daisy Daisy…
What I’m saying is that it has to be (at least) a visually striking film.
But it might still not be much cop. Let’s find out.
[twenty-five minutes pass]
Oooh! They just did the line that Colourbox sampled here:
It’s always so weird seeing scenes with dialogue you’ve heard a million times in various songs…
Anyway. This is really quite spiffy. The monkey thing was all kinds of deep (people injecting mary jane into their eyeballs and smoking LSD and such back in 1968 would have their minds blown), and the space station and docking thing is exquisite. It’s just the right pace, too: The grandeur of the movie is also in how deliberately it moves.
[forty-five more minutes pass]
I had totally blanked on the structure of the movie… it’s pretty brave having these clear sections with no overlapping characters to identify with. Sure, there’s some infodumps to carry us through (the briefing, the interview), but it feels oddly natural.
The work with all the rotating rooms (for filming) is amazeballs. No wonder everybody thought Kubrick faked the moon landing.
[the end]
I like it. It’s amazing how emotional Kubrick made that HAL lobotomy scene. *sniffle* And I really love how unemotional he made the astronauts — it’s like they’re professionals or something. Whenever I’ve seen a space movie from the past decade it’s like “”We’ve momentarily lost communication with Earth AAAARGH WE”RE ALL GONNA DIE!! NO COMMUNICATION!!!! WHERE”S MY SHOTGUN!!1!! We’re all cannibals now AND I”M GOING TO EAT YOU!!! NOOOOOO!!! YOU WEREN”T THERE FOR ME WHEN I GREW UP YOU”RE NOT MY FATHER oh communication has been re-established; let’s continue on to Mars”” in every single one of them.
The stoicness (stoicity? sure, that’s a word now) of the humans is an effective counterweight to the saga.
It’s so oddly structured, though, that I wonder whether the HAL conflict was added as a sweetener between all the cosmic stuff, or whether the cosmic stuff was added to give the HAL stuff more weight? Or perhaps it was always going to be this odd; Clarke isn’t a very good writer…
Anyway, it’s wonderful. Doesn’t feel like it’s seven hours long at all.
This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.
Citizen Kane. Orson Welles. 1941. ⚂
I have seen this movie a number of times before — I’m not a complete moron. (Note: “Complete”.) But it’s been several decades, and I just remember some flashes of a huge, empty house, and a sled being thrown into an incinerator? Oh, now it’s coming back to me… I must have seen this as a child: I remember the emotional impact of that scene. Oh, and the general sadness.
But nothing about what this movie is about, really. I think it’s based on William Randolph Hearst? Comics fans have a different view of Hearst than most people, I think: Hearst papers carried Krazy Kat, and any sane editor tried to get rid of it as fast as possible, because everybody hated that fag stuff (I’m quoting). But whenever Hearst noticed them dropping it, he insisted that it be put back into the newspaper. Fuck editorial independence: George Herriman was a fucking genius! Hearst was right and all the editors were wrong.
Anyway!
[roll movie]
[ten minutes pass]
Of course, Citizen Kane is traditionally voted The Best Movie Ever in any film poll, but it’s just on a (shared) #2 here. And after then first ten minutes I’m confused as why it’d be on any “best of” lists: I’ve seldom seen such a massive infodump opening anywhere. It’s boring as fuck!
[fifty more minutes pass]
OK, after the infodump is over, all the shots look fantastic! Almost every single one is like “IT”S LIKE A CUT-RATE SVEN NYKVIST SHOT! ONLY TWO DECADES EARLIER!” It’s really pretty.
But this is my third movie today, and I’m slightly tipsy. I’m really having a problem with just recognising Welles (as Kane) from one shot to the next. He looks so different from when he’s in his 20s to when he’s in his 30s (?) that I had to look it up on imdb to see whether there were several people playing him and there apparently isn’t?
Much confuse.
[twenty minutes pass]
OK, I officially don’t get it.
There isn’t anybody that dares say the think this movie is boring.
So I guess I’ll be the one: This shit is tedious. The storyline … of a semi-self-made (but not really) man turning his newspapers to trash to attract readers, and then… er… becoming a politician? And having a mistress? Who’s a singer? … and… er…
Nobody explained why we’re supposed to even care?
For every shot that’s interesting, there’s three scenes of people nobody could possibly be interested in jawing at each other.
I can see that somebody would like this: There’s always somebody. But 100%? That’s ridiculous. It’s a movie you’re supposed to find to be genius?
The lowest grade on Metacritic is 90!
[the end]
OK, I’m going to be almost as controversial as saying that Shawshank Redemption sucks, or Spielberg sucks: This isn’t a very good movie.
There. I said it.
There’s a whole bunch of turgid scenes in here, and the storyline just isn’t very interesting. We’re given no reason to care about the ridiculous opera career or why Kane cares about it. Or, indeed, pretty much anything here. It’s supposed to be a tragedy; sure, but you need a reason to care about the protagonist, and… I missed it?
On the other hand, I’m really drunk now, so I may be wrong. It’s possible! Who are you going to believe: Several hundred sober film critics that say that this is a 10/10 movie, or drunk me that says that this is a bit naff?
I know; it’s a difficult choice.
This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.
