Toronto Screen Shots » Lists

Blind Spots: Directors

James McNally — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:22:33 +0000

Okay, this is definitely not meant to add to my already burdensome film-viewing workload for 2012, but as I was thinking about the idea of cinematic blind spots, I wondered about the idea of larger gaps of knowledge. How many directors are there whose work I have heretofore missed entirely? This could be even more embarrassing than just listing individual films, but I thought it might be entertaining. As well, if you list yours in the comments, maybe we could help each other by suggesting which film for each director might make a good introduction for someone who hasn’t seen a single one of their films. Here are five of mine:

Catherine Breillat

I got this idea from the cover of the latest issue of 180°, the TIFF Bell Lightbox catalogue, so I know that I’ll have a chance to catch some Bresson films soon. Okay, your turn!

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Blind Spots: Directors

Blind Spots Series 2012

James McNally — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:12:42 +0000

Every time I get together with other film bloggers here in Toronto, somebody inevitably gasps in horror as someone else admits that they haven’t seen a particular movie. This has always been amusing to me, because, you know, everyone has their cinematic blind spots. Though there is no Official Canon of Films You’re Supposed to Have Seen™, sometimes we act as if there is. And there are definitely films that, as a cinephile, I know I should have seen by now, but just have never gotten around to. Hence the idea for the Blind Spot series.

I shared this idea with Ryan McNeil a few weeks back and he’s already gotten the jump on me in posting his list, but the gist of the idea is that I’m going to list a dozen films below. Films I feel somehow guilty or silly for not having seen yet. I’ve sometimes nodded along to discussions of these films, hoping nobody would ask me my opinion. By the end of 2012, I will be armed with my own opinions on them, along with a small sense of accomplishment.

My hope is to watch and post something about each film on this list during 2012. Though I have many many more than 12 on my blind spot list, for this first attempt, I’m going to try to balance Hollywood films with foreign and documentary films. Ideally, I’ll post once a month, but I’m not holding myself to that and neither should you. Here goes (and no gasping!):

Raging Bull (1980, Director: Martin Scorsese)*
Knife in the Water (1962, Director: Roman Polanski)*
Nashville (1975, Director: Robert Altman)
L’Atalante (1934, Director: Jean Vigo)*
Gone with the Wind (1939, Director: Victor Fleming)
Psycho (1960, Director: Alfred Hitchcock)
Blue Velvet (1986, Director: David Lynch)*
The Conformist (1970, Director: Bernardo Bertolucci)*
Jules and Jim (1962, Director: Francois Truffaut)
Grey Gardens (1975, Directors: Albert and David Maysles with Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer)
Cabaret (1972, Director: Bob Fosse)
Tokyo Story (1953, Director: Yasujirô Ozu)

Films marked with an asterisk (*) are ones I have actually owned on DVD for quite a while now.

You are more than welcome to join me in this enterprise. Come up with your own list, post in the comments and/or on your blog, and let’s keep each other accountable for expanding our knowledge of cinema next year!

Thanks to Flickr user atomische (Tom Geibel) for making his image available under a Creative Commons license.

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Blind Spots Series 2012

My 2010 List of Lists

James McNally — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 03:29:22 +0000

Having just come through the mathematical complications of compiling the inaugural CAST Awards, you’d think I’d be put off list-making for a while. But I actually found myself eager to revisit this year-ending tradition, mostly because I was sort of disappointed with the overall CAST list. Although it’s inevitable when asking a “committee” what the best of anything is, the fact that Inception topped the list sort of bugged me. At the time I saw it, I liked it well enough, and it did find its way into my Top 25, but it won not by being the best film of the year, but simply by being the film that most people saw.

There will always need to be a place for individual lists, for the quirky idiosyncratic choices that make us unique individuals. The group lists tend to look mostly the same. It’s only when we get to critics’ individual choices that we can figure out where our tastes overlap, or clash. And that’s when the interesting conversations can begin.

So, as in past years, I’ll present a number of unranked lists of films that I enjoyed this year. I look forward to hearing your comments!

Favourite Documentary Films of 2010

Favourites from TIFF 2010

Favourite Non-Festival Films from 2010

Favourite Films from 2009 That Are Appearing on a Lot of 2010 Lists

Favourite Undistributed Films of 2010 (no known distribution in Canada)

Autumn Gold (Herbstgold) (review)
Balada Triste (review) — Magnolia has US rights
Bjarnfreðarson (review)
Cold Weather (review) — IFC has US rights
Lovers of Hate (review) — it’s on Netflix here in Canada, not sure if that counts.
Limbo (review)
Meek’s Cutoff — Oscilloscope has US rights
NY Export: Opus Jazz (review) — my overall favourite film of the year, too!
Poetry — Kino has US rights
Rubber — Magnet has US rights
Wenecja (Venice) (review)

And the list that keeps me honest:

Biggest Omissions in My Filmgoing of 2010

Previous years’ lists:

2009
2008

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My 2010 List of Lists

My 2009 List of Lists

James McNally — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:02:17 +0000

I’ve been avoiding making any year-end “Best of 2009″ list and have been waiting for the flood of other people’s lists to pass me by, but now, goaded by TSS co-founder and now-just-occasional contributor Jay Kerr, I’ve decided to draw attention to some of the best films I saw in 2009 in my own unique way. No simple Top Ten for me. No way. I’m far too afraid of getting the order wrong, and besides, I’m not a professional film critic. I don’t see most of the major releases. In fact, if I don’t want to see a certain film, I don’t see it. And if I see it and don’t feel like reviewing it, I don’t review it. So I’m not really qualified to come up with a comprehensive list. Instead, enjoy a whole bunch of non-ranked lists from my filmgoing experiences of 2009. Films marked with an * actually appeared on my 2008 list as well.

P.S. I also get confused as to which films are actually eligible for these lists. Some films I saw in 2009 haven’t been released theatrically yet, while others that were released theatrically I actually saw in 2008 or before. And sometimes things that come out in the US have different release dates in Canada, or vice versa. It makes my head hurt.

Favourite Documentary Films of 2009

Favourites from TIFF 2009

Favourite Non-Festival Films from 2009

Favourite Films from 2008 That Are Appearing on a Lot of 2009 Lists

Favourite Undistributed Films of 2009 (no known distribution in US or Canada)

Perhaps this next list is most important, because it tells you that I’m far from qualified to judge 2009’s best films when I haven’t seen many which are being considered for awards and are on other critics’ lists.

Biggest Omissions in My Filmgoing in 2009

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My 2009 List of Lists

My Arthouse Education

James McNally — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:18:29 +0000

I’ve just realized that 2009 marks the more-or-less 20th anniversary of the beginning of my cinephilia. Back in the late ‘80s, Toronto had a handful of repertory cinemas under the Festival banner. The flagship was the Bloor Cinema, but I also saw films at the Revue, the Capitol (now an “event theatre”) and the Fox. The Kingsway, the Paradise, and later the Royal were a bit far for this east-end boy to get to at the time, but luckily they rotated the films around a fair bit. Each month, the newsprint Festival programme opened up a world of cinema riches to a young lad like myself. Though the Festival theatres no longer operate as a chain, most are still functioning movie houses, though it’s painfully evident that the best days of Toronto’s repertory cinemas are now gone. Here are some of the films I saw that made an impression on me all those years ago. In particular, I think the first four are sadly overlooked nowadays.

Paperhouse (1988, Director: Bernard Rose)
Toto le héros (1991, Director: Jaco van Dormael)
Paper Mask (1990, Director: Christopher Morahan)
Chameleon Street (1989, Director: Wendell B. Harris Jr.)
The Sacrifice (1986, Director: Andrei Tarkovsky)
Delicatessen (1991, Directors: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Director: Peter Greenaway)
Mediterraneo (1991, Director: Gabriele Salvatores)
Cinema Paradiso (1988, Director: Giuseppe Tornatore)
Metropolitan (1990, Director: Whit Stillman)
Life Is Sweet (1991, Director: Mike Leigh)
Roger and Me (1989, Director: Michael Moore)
Withnail and I (1987, Director: Bruce Robinson)
The Double Life of Veronique (1991, Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Wings of Desire (1987, Director: Wim Wenders)

Thanks to John Vetterli for making his photo available under a Creative Commons licence.

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My Arthouse Education