The 2004 Xixax DEKAPENTICON

[Fernando]

already didn't 4 years ago you know...

http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=8560.0


i agree that cmbb would take that spot now.

edit: added 2006 deka's pic for the lazy.

[Pas]

I had forgotten about that Deka...

A lot better than the 2004 one, but not optimal yet. We skipped 2008 so we must do it in 2010 as a every-other-year thing.

I think leaving the list would be Apocalypse Now, Eternal Sunshine(might stick down there 13-15), Citizen Kane, Goodfellas, Vertigo??? (not sure since might just be a Hitchcock representative), 8 and a half... Taxi Driver would fall a bit... also Annie Hall (again not sure since mostly a Woody rep.)...

[Gold Trumpet]

Yea, we're due for another Deka. I hate that There Will Be Blood would likely win because no film that recent should win anything on this level, but this board is still a 70% fan board for PTA so you can't escape that. The main thing I would hope for is variety with the other picks. 2006 was better than 2004, but the choices are still stiff and repetitive.

If we do it again, I'm going to campaign three films to death. I think in 2006, I was on a bandwagon to get 8 1/2 props and that had some success, but I think you can be behind a few films all the way and get people to actively consider voting for them. I wish other people would do the same for films that aren't shoe ins because we need some better films represented.

[Pas]

what are these 3 films you would campaign to death, out of curiosity?

[Gold Trumpet]

Not sure, since I want to choose personal favorites, but I also want to choose films that stand a fighting chance with the crowd. Maybe 8 1/2, Persona and Citizen Kane? I know 8 1/2 and Kane placed on the 2006 list, but I imagine 8 1/2 would experience a drop off and Kane definitely needs to be higher.

[polkablues]

I actually see it going the other way. I'd be amazed if Citizen Kane ranks this high again.

[Gold Trumpet]

I actually see it going the other way. I'd be amazed if Citizen Kane ranks this high again.

I also fear that so double the reason to campaign for it.

[Pubrick]

I hate that There Will Be Blood would likely win because no film that recent should win anything on this level,

eternal sunshine was two years old when it ranked in the last deka. pdl was the latest pta and it didn't make the top 15.

according to your theory pdl should hav ranked much higher. but i the fact it didn't doesn't prove entirely that we are not pta-fanboys, that's obvious, but only that ppl still can only get behind well-established choices. no one has talked about 8.5 since it made that list. no one has probably even watched it. PDL and eternal ballshine would at least have been representative of our kinks.

CMBB would obviously place very high on the new one, and rightly so. i disagree that new films shouldn't win anything on an "all time" level. but that's only cos most ppl don't hav the balls to really get behind something new unless everyone else is saying it. isn't that the reason why when all those major directors were asked to say their favourite kubrick film, only like 2 or 3 said anything after Clockwork Orange? it's not cos his early films are the best,. it's cos the old ones are SAFE.

they are safe for 2 reasons which feed each other:
1. you don't hav to really try to convince anyone why they are classics, since they have years and years of hype behind them. you just hav to point to the hype.
2. if you want your favourite director to make the list the smart thing to do is to get behind their most conventional classic, the standard brilliant film they did -- not so much their most GENIUS film or their most inspired. you hav to play the odds even if you want to support Eyes Wide Shut.

even so, i really like the 06 list. the abundance of recent films at least are mostly original and representative choices of great taste. i ask myself if i would like a person if these were their whole collection. i would. i would think the 04 list is a boring idiot.

[Gold Trumpet]

eternal sunshine was two years old when it ranked in the last deka. pdl was the latest pta and it didn't make the top 15.

according to your theory pdl should hav ranked much higher. but i the fact it didn't doesn't prove entirely that we are not pta-fanboys, that's obvious, but only that ppl still can only get behind well-established choices. no one has talked about 8.5 since it made that list. no one has probably even watched it. PDL and eternal ballshine would at least have been representative of our kinks.

Yes, I would say PDL should rank higher, but that's only if I believed either film even deserved to make the list. I don't. I think Eternal was too new and PDL not even that great, but that's just me. My silence does not mean I was agreeing with everything.

I still think there is an overriding sense of PTA fandom to the list. Only two of his films make the list, but that's mainly because he only had made four films up until that point. A new list will mean that 3 out of 5 of his films will likely make the final list. Future lists will probably mean higher percentage of PTA films, but I've been to David Fincher forums that had all time lists and there was an overriding bias in the forum, but even people there agreed that Panic Room didn't measure up to Seven, Fight Club or even The Game. There doesn't have to be a total acceptance of everything a filmmaker does to say it's biased toward them.

CMBB would obviously place very high on the new one, and rightly so. i disagree that new films shouldn't win anything on an "all time" level. but that's only cos most ppl don't hav the balls to really get behind something new unless everyone else is saying it. isn't that the reason why when all those major directors were asked to say their favourite kubrick film, only like 2 or 3 said anything after Clockwork Orange? it's not cos his early films are the best,. it's cos the old ones are SAFE.

I wouldn't pick any film as new as There Will Be Blood because every film has to age a little bit before they start making all time lists. It's easy to be overwhelmed by a film when it's released, but a lot of times they don't hold up to the original feelings. I think there is a bias to their new factor because it is newer and registers as more innovative, but that new appeal dies off and becomes something else after a while so there isn't an equality to viewing them in conjunction with older films.

Does that mean I feel films literally have to have dust on them to be voted? Not at all. I would vote films from 90s and early parts of 2000's because some age has defined them enough, but I couldn't pick something so new for anything all time. That's just me and should not influence anyone to do anything.  

even so, i really like the 06 list. the abundance of recent films at least are mostly original and representative choices of great taste. i ask myself if i would like a person if these were their whole collection. i would. i would think the 04 list is a boring idiot.

3 films by Kubrick, 2 by Anderson and 2 by Scorsese. Three filmmakers make up almost half the list. I agree the list is better than the 04 one, but I don't think it's very good in general.

[polkablues]

In general, I think that reflects the sort of middle-ground film fanboyism that Xixax as an entity tends to embrace.  The Ain't It Cool crowd fetishizes Spielberg and Lucas, the Sight & Sound readers fetishize Eisenstein and Renoir, and Xixax fetishizes Kubrick and PTA.  Are the Dekapenticons ever a truly objective ranking of the greatest films of all time?  Of course not.  They're a reflection what we as a group value in film, which typically falls squarely in the middle between pop and art-house.

[Gold Trumpet]

In general, I think that reflects the sort of middle-ground film fanboyism that Xixax as an entity tends to embrace.  The Ain't It Cool crowd fetishizes Spielberg and Lucas, the Sight & Sound readers fetishize Eisenstein and Renoir, and Xixax fetishizes Kubrick and PTA.  Are the Dekapenticons ever a truly objective ranking of the greatest films of all time?  Of course not.  They're a reflection what we as a group value in film, which typically falls squarely in the middle between pop and art-house.

Absolutely. Agreed. I don't expect miracles, but it could have been a little better. That's all I'm asking for.

[picolas]

i disagree that new films shouldn't win anything on an "all time" level.

i think there's a lot to be said for perspective though, and not just being caught up in the fresh or zietgeisty feeling of a new film. how a film survives in your mind after a few years/upon revisiting at a different time in your life is an important factor in determining all-time goodness.

[Pubrick]

yeah i agree in principle, but it doesn't really make more sense to wait 2 years than to wait 5 or 10 or 20.

seeing William Gaddis mentioned in the What Are We Reading thread made me think about his books in relation to determining best films of all time. that dude wrote his masterpiece in 1955 only to wait 20 years before it got any recognition.. (pun there for the initiated). meanwhile his second novel got instant acclaim in 1975, which is what led to the first one being reassessed. now they're both considered probably among the best novels of the 20th century. the difference between the worlds of literary and cinematic appreciation is part of the point: why is it ok for literary circles to correctly herald a book an instant classic of all time and not do the same for a movie? at least in the case of Gaddis they corrected their mistake eventually and comfortably stood behind the new arrival.

so it shouldn't be out of the question to have watched 2001 in 1968 and thought jesus this is the absolute best thing that has ever been made. why wait ten years? that's just hedging your bets, like i said, being SAFE. kubrick is a fine example of course cos every one of his films has been misunderstood or underappreciated from the moment he started churning out masterpiece after masterpiece. and still ppl doubt the greatness of EWS.. madness! or just dullness.

i agree that the process of reassessment is never over. that much is obvious, you can say YES it's important to make these lists every 5 years cos our tastes will change. but everyone is saying that there is a MINIMUM cool-off period. i don't think so. if you wait a long time to make a statement, either everyone will hav come around to agree with you or they will not. it's not exciting to wait, eventually it becomes dead boring to call something a classic if it has been known to be so for a long time.

consider the case of Citizen Kane, it wasn't recognized as the masterpiece it was until decades later. if the french freaks hadn't started talking about it, who knows when it would hav been properly assessed. those cheese-eating surrender-monkeys WISHED they'd been around (beyond being toddlers) when that movie came out so they could hav given Awesome Welles his proper due.. so this is what happened: he got his due, not that it mattered by then other than giving him the ability to crash at a few critics houses when he was wacked out on Paul Masson champagne, and now everyone and his illiterate Dan Brown loving cousin knows that it's the best movie ever made, and then in 2004 and 2006 it made the xixax dekapenticon.

now in 2010 there's a few ppl hoping it doesn't make the list at all. why? cos it's not our discovery.

[©brad]

i agree that the process of reassessment is never over. that much is obvious, you can say YES it's important to make these lists every 5 years cos our tastes will change. but everyone is saying that there is a MINIMUM cool-off period. i don't think so. if you wait a long time to make a statement, either everyone will hav come around to agree with you or they will not. it's not exciting to wait, eventually it becomes dead boring to call something a classic if it has been known to be so for a long time.

It's a good point, but it's more than just tastes changing. We get smarter and more intellectually mature and quite simply, better at watching film as a whole. I have no real qualms with labeling a new film an instant classic (ahem, oxymoron) but there's something to be said about revisiting an old work you saw back when you were 19 and stupid.

I just watched Magnolia a couple weeks ago after not seeing it for over 5 years at least, and I hope I don't get crucified for saying this (actually, I don't really care) but I was amazed as to how empty I found it. Some parts were actually quite insufferable, so much that I'm not sure it would make even my top 15 right now. Back in '99, after my third theater viewing, I was championing it as the best movie ever to anyone with a pulse, but that was when I was 17 and much more enthralled with whip pans and super long takes than substance. 

[Pas]

why is it ok for literary circles to correctly herald a book an instant classic of all time and not do the same for a movie?

I think literary enthusiasts just spend more time and more work on the oeuvres they enjoy. Not because they are smarter but only because it's longer to read a book than watch a film.

I know some here watch the same movie over and over in a short span of time and analyse it a lot, but most just watch it once in theater, maybe again when it comes out on DVD and that's it. Even buyers will only watch the film once or twice for the most part, really. And it is a widely known fact that the films you watch most often are not those you call ''the best films''

Not enough work is done by film enthusiast to truly understand every inch of greatness in a great film. You can watch 5 different films a week if you want. You can watch Casablanca one day and TWBB the next day and forget about Casablanca. It's hard to do the same thing in literature.

People tend to make up their own mind more with books than cinema, because people have time to make up their mind with books and not with cinema. (again, not speaking about everyone, just most people, including here) Also, even the most die-hard reader will never ever have read half as many books as a simple film enthusiast will have seen movies. So when times come to make lists of ''best ever movies'' people will refer to other lists and other opinions. These other lists will have referred to other lists so on and so forth. That is why most films list are boring as fuck whereas book lists are always (or almost) enlightening or filled with discoveries.

The Deka MUST be free of any outside influence.

[Citizen Kane]there's a few ppl hoping it doesn't make the list at all. why? cos it's not our discovery.

Or also it's not of our time? Do you think Shakespeare is the best writer ever? He's great, like Citizen Kane, but mostly historicaly important, like Citizen Kane. That's how I see it, anyway.