BigSoccer Movie Draft Voting Thread

oman votes:

1)billy
2)norsk
3)chaski
4)matrim
5)quango

Really tough voting. Mostly ignorance.

(I think billy's 10th pick, committments, fell out of your block quote, Gringo.)

 

My votes:

1. Chaski
2. Norsk Troll
3. hangthadj
4. Meridian FC
5. ViaChicago

Chaski won going away on my scorecard.

 

Toughest draft to vote so far. I wish I could have seen even half of everyone's lists (credit to how diverse this selection is) so I'll just base it on what movies I've seen.

5. theslipperyone
4. Ghost
3. Billyireland
2. Via Chicago
1. hangthadj

 

Who is first? Is your vote in reverse order for some reason?

 

It's a countdown. Hang is the winner.

 

Man, zero points and worse, not getting at least an FU award.

Not a productive tournament. But coach told me you need to try to play at the advanced speed if you want to get better.

 

1) Oman
2) Riverplate
3) Quango
4) Ghost
5) Sir Manc

FWIW, Demosthenes just posted her picks. If we're counting those, she's #2 and River, Q and Ghost each drop one with Sir Manc dropping entirely.

 

1. Quango - the winner. yeah, he fell into the Altman trap in round 1, but it's an Altman I at least find tolerable. Playtime was a steal, Snow White was ballsy and great. A well balanced and highly enjoyable draft.

2. Sir Manchester - I don't care for the Bunel, but everything else on the list that I saw I really enjoy. And he gets points for Anna Karina, best actress in the draft.

3. The Slippery One - Best rounds 8-10 in the draft, and has the honor of taken the most off my big board. To go from Bresson to Cronenberg is awesome and appreciated.

4. Chaski

5. Ghost

Ya know, Via and Gringo would likely get votes from me if I'd seen even half of their films, instead I just sit hear jealous at the means they have had and do have to see so many of these in 35mm. I hate you guys. You both get my FU award.

 

1. Day of Wrath - Carl Theodor Dreyer Available from the Criterion Collection
2. Lancelot du Lac - Robert Bresson Available from New Yorker DVD
3. Hiroshima, Mon Amour - Alain Resnais Availabe from the Criterion Collection
4. The Shop Around the Corner - Ernst Lubitsch Available from Warner Home Video
5. Rio Bravo - Howard Hawks Available from Warner Home Video
6. Letter From an Unknown Woman - Max Ophuls Not Currently Available on DVD
7. Gun Crazy - Joseph H. Lewis Available from Warner Home Video
8. I Walked With a Zombie - Jacques Tourneur Available from Warner Home Video
9. Les Vampires - Louis Feuillade Available from Image Entertainment
10. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums - Kenji Mizoguchi Not Currently Available on DVD

No excuses. Whiner.

 

damnit.

 

1. NorskTroll
2. hangthadj
3. Quango
4. TheSlipperyOne
5. Sir Manchester (sorry Gringo)

Norsk - Awesome draft, what can I say? Two films from my top twenty (Ford and Hawks), plus Dreyer, Erice, Eisenstein, Sturges, Satyajit Ray (although his best film is Charulata), Preminger, and one of Bergman's strongest films. Major, major props.

hang - I've already talked at length about your draft. Rounds seven and on were weak as hell, but one through six were incredibly good.

Quango - Good draft. Not a huge Altman fan but one of his better films. One of Keaton's best. A solid Hitchcock. Wong-Kar Wai, Naruse, and Tati were probably the strongest three rounds worth of selections from rounds four to six. 3:10 to Yuma and High and Low are solid, if not excellent, picks. Pride and Prejudice is my third favorite film of the new millenium. Good draft, but you'd have done better to take What's Opera, Doc? than Hitler's favorite Disney film.

TheSlipperyOne - One of Bresson's best, plus the greatest (or maybe second-greatest) realist film ever made, plus one of Melville's best, plus Fuller, plus one of the five best films of the 80s (Videodrome). Great draft. (It's also good you get out to the movie theatre every now and then ).

GringoTex - No surprises here (although your passing on Early Summer surprised me. You'd be tops if you'd taken that instead of the Rodriguez, shame on you). You pipped two of my favorites with your first two picks, snagged some Bunuel, some Renoir, Rohmer, and Rossellini. The Pabst is also a great pick, especially considering how much of a hottie Louise Brooks was.

Other thoughts:

SirManchester has what may be the best draft board but his comments about L'Argent really turned me off from his overall draft. From that point, I couldn't really trust whether you really putting your own heart into your picks, and when you made The Descent your final pick, it felt like the most heartfelt thing you'd done all draft. That's too bad, since you've got some stellar selections, but I can't trust the motivations.

Edit After he's explained his methodology, I've moved SirManchester up to fifth and knocked Gringo down a peg. That's what he gets anyway for taking f****** Rodriguez instead of Ozu.

 

That's pretty ********ed up.

 

Is it? Go back and read what he wrote about L'Argent and tell me that doesn't turn you off.

Edit: Here's what he told you about Bresson:

Yet he selected a Bresson even though he doesn't like him. Why? "Filmmaking or technical reasons?"

Second edit: Also, this shouldn't be taken as a reflection on any personal biases I may have against SirManchester, who I like immensely, and whose opinions I value highly.

 

You have seen my top 30, and my top ten for that matter. You knew A Place in The Sun and No End had to show up. And I can't let two drafts go without Argento.

As for L'enfant, that may be the most questionable pick in the draft outside of Stranger than Fiction. But I'll stick by it.

 

Don't listen to me, I'm just being overly harsh.

 

Well, I don't really have to. Your ascribing a problem with his "motivation" for picking films on something he said about a film (which I recently saw) which would not have made it into the first draft if I was the only guy drafting. This is a fun little draft but I do think people are going to have different methods or reasons for drafting, and I really don't think one's motivation should sully a good bunch of picks. I mean, you like movies for different reasons, just like you would draft different soccer players.

I like the movies Diner, Breaker Morant, Matewan and Crumb -- more than the Altman and Truffaut I picked first and second, but for varios motivational reasons, I didn't pick them.

Well, yeah. That's as good a reason as any. Some people probably like the way a film is put together rather than establishing an emotional relationship with the movie.

 

What I'm saying is it didn't seem like a personal pick. That's all. My own draft philosophy is to take films that I love to watch and that I think are great. I don't think a film is great if it leaves me cold.

His draft felt depersonalized. That's all. You can vote your way, I'll vote mine.

 

Someday I will make this board disciples of A Place in the Sun and oman a high priest in the church of Birth.

 

Via has a valid point.

When I made my choices I picked films that I like a lot, despite story, technique etc AND I aldo made some choices based on how impressed I was from a purely cinematic point of view. I only saw L'argent recently but I was so impressed by how he told the story using simplistic imagery and the most simplistic sound I felt compelled to include it because I thought it was such a significant cinematic achievement. Whether I like the story itself or the commentary the director tried to make didn't matter.

And this is pretty much how I made my picks this draft, some were personalized picks, some weren't. I didn't really have the same plan throughout the entire draft. Movies that I love were Happy Together, Obscure Object, The Last Picture Show, Broken Blossoms, The Descent, Night & Fog, and L'atalante. The rest I greatly admire and perhaps I have to see them more often to gain a greater understanding but none were blind picks by any means.

 

Good god, what Shelley Winters could have done oppsite Danny Huston.

Montogomery Clift -- the only movie I have ever seen where I didn't want to replace him with someone else was From Here to Eternity.

 

Thanks for explaining your methodology. I've moved you up to fifth in my rankings (although you should probably be as high as two...), and knocked down Gringo, who was silly enough to select that Rodriguez with his last pick when I know for a fact he rates Ozu's Early Summer in his top twenty-five.

Speaking of top twenties, here's mine.