2011 Criterion Forum Awards

[domino harvey]

Lord help us, with the December announcements, we now know all of the eligible titles for this year's awards. Plan early and often, folks. Don't send me any votes til December at the earliest. I will edit into this post a January deadline once I decide on one. Cart, horse, &c.

EDIT: Deadline to edit / submit your post is Midnight EST on January 14th. You can edit your posts up through the 13th without needing to inform me. Once I've collected all already-posted lists, I'll make a note of it in the thread, at which point you will need to PM me for any changes.

2011 CRITERION WRAP-UP

CRITERION (First run)
552 Broadcast News
553 Fish Tank
554 Still Walking
555 Sweet Smell of Success
556 Senso
557 the Times of Harvey Milk
558 Topsy-Turvy
559 the Mikado
560 White Material
561 Kes
562 Blow Out
563 Something Wild
564 Pale Flower
565 the Great Dictator
566 Insignificance
567 the Makioka Sisters
568 Kiss Me Deadly
569 People on Sunday
570 Zazie dans le metro
571 Black Moon
572 Leon Morin, Priest
573 the Music Room
574 Life During Wartime
575 the Killing
576 Secret Sunshine
577 Cul-de-sac
578 the Complete Jean Vigo
579 the Phantom Carriage
580 Le beau Serge
581 Les cousins
582 Carlos
583 the Four Feathers
584 Kuroneko
585 Identification of a Woman
586 Island of Lost Souls
587-90 Three Colors Trilogy
591 12 Angry Men
592 Design For Living

CRITERION (Reissue)
Branded to Kill
Diabolique
the Naked Kiss
Orpheus
the Rules of the Game
Shock Corridor
Solaris
Tokyo Drifter

CRITERION (Blu-ray upgrade)
Amarcord
Army of Shadows
Au revoir les enfants
the Battle of Algiers
Beauty and the Beast
Le Cercle Rouge
Dazed and Confused
the Double Life of Veronique
Fanny and Alexander
Fat Girl
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Harakiri
High and Low
If...
the Lady Vanishes
My Life as a Dog
Naked
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Rushmore
Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Smiles of a Summer Night
Sweetie
3 Women
Yi Yi

ECLIPSE
25 Basil Dearden's London Underground
26 Silent Naruse
27 Raffaello Matarazzo's Runaway Melodramas
28 the Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara
29 Aki Kuarismaki's Leningrad Cowboys
30 Sabu!


VOTING CATEGORIES
Best Release (1-5, in order of preference)
Best Eclipse Set

Best Reissue
Best Blu-ray Upgrade

Best R1 Rescue (for title already available in R1 and re-released by Criterion)
Best (Re)Discovery
Most Disappointing Release (for Criterion's treatment, not the film itself)

Best Commentary
Best Supplement

Best Cover
Best Packaging

Member of the Year
Richard Cranium Award

[Jeff]

Many thanks to Domino for doing all the heavy lifting again this year. The last titles of the year will be released on December 13, so in the interest of at least pretending that every disc gets a fair shake, we should probably say that people can start posting their lists on December 14. Dom, if you would rather people submit via PM, of course that works too.

[domino harvey]

You can post 'em here or via PM-- I actually forgot that this is the one list-y thread where people generally post their ballots publicly, but doing so is a-ok

[Tribe]

Are we going to consider lists prefaced by "I-haven't seen-any Criterions-all-year-long-but-the following-are-my favorite-foods?"

[knives]

Fortunately I think Dom has that act of idiocy covered by spelling out the categories.

[felipe]

Best R1 Rescue (for title already available in R1 and re-released by Criterion)

Was Kes ever released in DVD to R1?

[matrixschmatrix]

For that matter, was any of Jean Vigo's work outside of L'Atalante?

[knives]

As far as DVD is concerned no on Kes nor Zero, but apparently the two shorts have had some fashion of US release over the past ten years.

[domino harvey]

Re: Kes: Thought the disc MGM put out in R2 had also been out in R1, my mistake

[movielocke]

Best Cover may be the hardest category for me this year, I have ten I'd consider voting for, which might be a new record. It'll probably come down to Sweet Smell of Success, The Killing or Rules of the Game. I'll have to wait to see how Rules looks in person.

[swo17]

I'd also like to see a category (especially this year, when we were flooded with them) for Best Blu-ray Upgrade, i.e. the one where the transfer was most worth the double dip.

Also, a lot of people like to add another category for their favorite non-Criterion releases of the year here, and I think that should be encouraged, even if those votes don't end up getting tallied.

A few other notes:
- These should be added to the list of Blu-ray upgrades: Fanny and Alexander, My Life as a Dog, Robinson Crusoe on Mars
- Though they didn't change as radically from their prior editions as most of the other cases, Rules of the Game and Solaris might still technically be considered reissues.
- The Four Feathers previously had an MGM release in R1.

[mfunk9786]

Everything swo said.

[domino harvey]

Fine, though I remain personally unconvinced of the necessity for the Blu-ray Upgrade category since all it will really be is "Favorite Catalog Title That I Now Get to Vote For Again"

That said, I'm going to hardline this policy this year: if the category calls for one selection (as all but one do), then list only one. No more ties, three-ways, or other carpool lane selections. It's fine to rattle off five or six thing you loved for that category, but it needs to be clear which one is getting your vote, or else none are.

[swo17]

Actually, my vote for Blu-ray upgrade at this point would probably be for Naked, a film I'm not entirely on board with and which I wouldn't have voted for in whatever year it came out, but which looks absolutely sensational on Blu.

[mfunk9786]

Despite all the energy expended trying to drive home the point regarding people not voting for tons of stuff or creating their own categories, they're still going to do it. My solution? Assign a moderator to the thread who can:

a) Trim down posts with extra selections/categories
b) Delete irrelevant posts
and/or
c) Move irrelevant posts to another thread (irrelevant meaning those sandwich lists and people who feel the need to vote for BFIs instead or whatever)

[swo17]

You were the one that did the sandwich post last year, and I doubt it kept domino up all night figuring out how to incorporate it. It was part of an ill-advised series of jokes that I started because someone chose not to follow the rules, but it was harmless fun. I think domino's "it needs to be clear what you're voting for or I won't count it" approach should be sufficient, no need to burden mods with extra duties.

[mfunk9786]

Oh, I know. I just encompassed all of those types of posts into one monicker rather than describing what I was getting at - I know that I made that post, and it was in [hopefully] good humored protest of posts like that in a thread with clearly assigned categories. Just had making things easier for Domino, who has a daunting task ahead, in mind.

[zedz]

Pretty much agree with the above, though I'm on domino's side with the BluRay Upgrade category, since (swo excepted) it's inevitably going to boil down to "my favourite film out of this random list" unless Criterion manages to pull off some massive botch job with an HD transfer. I don't think many people will have done detailed side-by-side comparisons between every old DVD and every new Blu, even if they own both. If we are going ahead with this category, I might as well vote for Yi-Yi now, even though I haven't even watched the Blu yet, or any of the eligible upgraded titles.

In the past we've also had a separate thread for best international releases of the year in one of the other subfora (though I can't find and of them at the moment - did we skip last year?). I'm happy to start one up at the time, though I think that works better as a enthusing / recommending thread rather than a voting one, since I'm hoping there are lots of great releases that many of us haven't heard of.

(Frankly, I think Criterion has had a pretty drab 2011 compared to some of the other releases that have got me excited this year, and compared to the risks they were taking last year. I can't even think of a mainstream Criterion release that would warrant a top ten placing for me. Maybe The Music Room, though even that's been overshadowed by the Tagore set.)

[mfunk9786]

Then perhaps the category can be renamed to something like "Most Impressive Re-release Blu-ray Transfer"

[zedz]

Or we could have a category simply for "Best Transfer"?

[swo17]

Pretty much agree with the above, though I'm on domino's side with the BluRay Upgrade category, since (swo excepted) it's inevitably going to boil down to "my favourite film out of this random list" unless Criterion manages to pull off some massive botch job with an HD transfer.

There are probably also many people who vote for Best Release without having specifically seen the Criterion release or watched all the supplements, but just because they like the film that much. If you don't feel qualified to vote in a certain category, just leave it out of your ballot I guess. I don't listen to many commentaries for example, so I never vote for that one. But I do watch a lot of the Blu upgrades and feel qualified to rank them. And I'm often surprised by which ones do or don't look phenomenal.

Speaking of the "picking favorites from a random list" issue though, should it be specified that the top 5 releases should relate to the full Criterion treatment and not just the film? Perhaps there could be one category for Best Criterion Treatment and another for Best Film to Enter the Collection?

[zedz]

I actually like the category domino (I believe) suggested last year and I think only I voted for: Best Rescue - in the sense of a film already available, but only in a poor presentation. Considering that this year's Criterion schedule was pretty much all 'rescues', and generally of films in no particular need of rescuing, that may be a category whose time has come.

[domino harvey]

I actually like the category domino (I believe) suggested last year and I think only I voted for: Best Rescue - in the sense of a film already available, but only in a poor presentation. Considering that this year's Criterion schedule was pretty much all 'rescues', and generally of films in no particular need of rescuing, that may be a category whose time has come.

I obv agree, since it's one of the ones listed above (see the green titles).

I rather like the idea of having Best Blu-ray Transfer rather than Upgrade, what say others? (Though I can't imagine how it could possibly go in good faith to any title other than Fish Tank, but nevertheless...)

I don't really care what all everyone feels the need to add onto their ballots, just keep in mind that I'm only counting what's in the first post when tabulating and make sure I can tell who or what you're giving your one vote to in each category (excepting Best Criterion, obv).

Speaking of Best Criterion release, I feel one should consider the film and the treatment and decide for themselves where their picks fall. So, veto on Swo's separation idea.

[swo17]

Speaking of Best Criterion release, I feel one should consider the film and the treatment and decide for themselves where their picks fall. So, veto on Swo's separation idea.

Fine by me, it was only a thought.

And I'm fine having the category be called Best Blu-ray Transfer. So presumably this means everything released in the mainline this year is eligible, but this is also the only category where Blu-ray upgrades can be voted for. Just so everyone's clear on that.

[mfunk9786]

Doing a straight-up vote for best Blu transfer is going to result in just as many guesses or non-votes as voting for just upgrades would. I know what swo is going for with the upgrade idea, I just wish there were a better way to phrase it.