Beyond Sight & Sound: An Alternative Canon

by Cláudio Alves

Appearing on 77 ballots, Spike Jonze's HER was the most voted film.

Two years ago, Sight & Sound released the results of their polls, voted by critics and filmmakers, on the best pictures ever made. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles topped the former, causing various reactions that ranged from ecstatic to outraged. In total, the 2100 participants voted for 4366 unique titles. And yet, much great cinema was left without a single vote. In response, Ángel González devised another project for They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, focusing on all those films the Sight & Sound voters ignored. A new list was devised based on the ballots of 839 critics and cinephiles. This time around, 4336 films received at least one vote - think of it as an alternative canon.

Nathaniel and I were among the lucky voters, with a few of our picks making the A-List of 1030 titles. Sometimes, our tastes even overlapped…

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Criterion Teases 2019

Chris here. One of the cinematic treasures of the new year is always the Criterion Collection's annual animated tease of what they have coming for us cinema hounds. And dare I say that this year's puzzle is as confounding as ever - or maybe, eek, I'm drawing a blank on some of the more rarified blind spots here. One film we can count on: John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch, already teased by the filmmaker last year. Might that be this drawing's owl and earthworm? Can you spot any other film's in the drawing?

Soundtracking: "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"

by Chris Feil

Perhaps you missed that John Cameron Mitchell finally returned to the punk rock scene this past weekend with How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and honestly - what gives? Regardless of this Neil Gaiman adaptation’s quality, has everyone faded from the afterglow of Hedwig and the Angry Inch so quickly? (Mitchell's promise that the film is joining The Criterion Collection later this year should fix that.)

Mitchell has given us one of the most unique musicals of the past quarter century, so any return to musical adjacency (National Anthem or otherwise) deserves our attention. Or maybe the distinctive qualities of Hedwig make comparisons - its weathered reductive comparisons to every recent rock musical you can think of - a losing battle...

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Link Rising

Vanity Fair are big changes ahead for HBO's original programming? Will they make the right calls?
Film School Rejects 38 things we learned from writer/director Robert Eggers' commentary track on The Witch 
Oscar Dances a new twitter account is replaying that Ex Machina dance scene with Oscar Isaac getting down to every song imaginable
Variety Owen Gleiberman has a smart take on the comic rise of Zac Efron in Neighbors and Neighbors 2

Comics Alliance has a fan and staff generated list of the 100 greatest X-Men of all time. Another reminder that that movies just aren't doing right by this breadth, diversity, and queerness of this team. Only 2 of their top ten (Jean Grey & Magneto) have been reasonably well served by the movies.
Antagony & Ecstasy remembers Hedwig and the Angry Inch with a stellar review
Business Insider the new practice of teasing the trailer you're actually watching online before you watch it
Forbes underperforming sequels can still generate profits if the production is smart
Pajiba Lionsgate admits that the Divergent series is a mess but shows no signs of having learned from it
Slate on the "dark future of whitewashing" in regards to Asian-American actors 
MTV "We still don't live in that kind of world" - we weren't the only ones remembering the still resonant Thelma & Louise this week 
NY Times has a fascinating report on the death of the office dress code. Love that they illustrated with Working Girl.  

Retro Sundance: 2001's Hedwig and the Angry Inch

2001 was the comeback year for the musical. As the massively-scaled Moulin Rouge was reinventing the genre for the post MTV era, John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch was an unassuming small scale success that didn't disappoint its cult following from its Off Broadway run and the cult grew rapidly after its Sundance debut. Still a genre anomaly for Sundance, this musical was awarded the Audience Award (Dramatic) and Mitchell won Best Director for his first time behind the camera.

The dramatic Audience Award winners are typically optimistic, but rarely this uniting - Hedwig is a musical that reflects our deepest human needs. Nothing brings together a crowd of strangers like music (or film) we can all connect to and Hedwig's score is packed with emotional insight. Composer Stephen Trask fills the songs with rage, wit, and a hard-won optimism that burns through whatever baggage we as an audience bring to the table. [More...]

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