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[Doctor Omega]

The BBC’s 100 Greatest Foreign Language Films





Every year in the later Summer or Fall, a major British magazine or outlet publishes one of those greatest of all time lists that stir some big debate about movies.

In 2016 The BBC did their 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century poll with 177 film critics from around the world weighing in on the list which had David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” at Number One. They followed that up with last year’s 100 Greatest Comedies list which enlisted 253 film critics from around the world who ultimately deemed Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot” as the best comedy ever made.

This year they polled 209 critics (45% of which were women) representing 43 countries for their newest list – the 100 Greatest Foreign-Language Films of all time. None of these films are made in English and they run the gamut from the 1920s to this decade, with Akira Kurosawa’s topping the vote as the greatest non-English language film ever made.

Several directors popped up numerous times in the list with Wong Kar-wai, Abbas Kiarostami and Jean-Luc Godard making it three times; Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky and Federico Fellini had four films in there each; and both Ingmar Bergman and Luis Bunuel had the most mentions with five each. Here’s a look at the list in full:

1. “Seven Samurai” (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
2. “Bicycle Thieves” (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
3. “Tokyo Story” (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
4. “Rashomon” (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
5. “The Rules of the Game” (Jean Renoir, 1939)
6. “Persona” (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
7. “8 1/2” (Federico Fellini, 1963)
8. “The 400 Blows” (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
9. “In the Mood for Love” (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
10. “La Dolce Vita” (Federico Fellini, 1960)
11. “Breathless” (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
12. “Farewell My Concubine” (Chen Kaige, 1993)
13. “M” (Fritz Lang, 1931)
14. “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce…” (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
15. “Pather Panchali” (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
16. “Metropolis” (Fritz Lang, 1927)
17. “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (Werner Herzog, 1972)
18. “A City of Sadness” (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989)
19. “The Battle of Algiers” (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
20. “The Mirror” (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)
21. “A Separation” (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
22. “Pan’s Labyrinth” (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
23. “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
24. “Battleship Potemkin” (Sergei M Eisenstein, 1925)
25. “Yi Yi” (Edward Yang, 2000)
26. “Cinema Paradiso” (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)
27. “The Spirit of the Beehive” (Victor Erice, 1973)
28. “Fanny and Alexander” (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
29. “Oldboy” (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
30. “The Seventh Seal” (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
31. “The Lives of Others” (Florian H. von Donnersmarck, 2006)
32. “All About My Mother” (Pedro Almodovar, 1999)
33. “Playtime” (Jacques Tati, 1967)
34. “Wings of Desire” (Wim Wenders, 1987)
35. “The Leopard” (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
36. “La Grande Illusion” (Jean Renoir, 1937)
37. “Spirited Away” (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
38. “A Brighter Summer Day” (Edward Yang, 1991)
39. ” Close-Up” (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
40. “Andrei Rublev” (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
41. “To Live” (Zhang Yimou, 1994)
42. “City of God” (Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund, 2002)
43. “Beau Travail” (Claire Denis, 1999)
44. “Cleo from 5 to 7” (Agnès Varda, 1962)
45. “L’Avventura” (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
46. “Children of Paradise” (Marcel Carné, 1945)
47. “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)
48. “Viridiana” (Luis Bunuel, 1961)
49. “Stalker” (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
50. “L’Atalante” (Jean Vigo, 1934)
51. “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (Jacques Demy, 1964)
52. “Au Hasard Balthazar” (Robert Bresson, 1966)
53. “Late Spring” (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
54. “Eat Drink Man Woman” (Ang Lee, 1994)
55. “Jules and Jim” (Francois Truffaut, 1962)
56. “Chungking Express” (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)
57. “Solaris” (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
58. “The Earrings of Madame de…” (Max Ophüls, 1953)
59. “Come and See” (Elem Klimov, 1985)
60. “Contempt” (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
61. “Sansho the Bailiff” (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
62. “Touki Bouki” (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973)
63. “Spring in a Small Town” (Fei Mu, 1948)
64. “Three Colours: Blue” (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
65. “Ordet” (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
66. “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973)
67. “The Exterminating Angel” (Luis Bunuel, 1962)
68. “Ugetsu” (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
69. “Amour” (Michael Haneke, 2012)
70. “L’Eclisse” (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
71. “Happy Together” (Wong Kar-wai, 1997)
72. “Ikiru” (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
73. “Man with a Movie Camera” (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
74. “Pierrot Le Fou” (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
75. “Belle de Jour” (Luis Bunuel, 1967)
76. “Y Tu Mamá También” (Alfonso Cuaron, 2001)
77. “The Conformist” (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
78. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (Ang Lee, 2000)
79. “Ran” (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
80. “The Young and the Damned” (Luis Bunuel, 1950)
81. “Celine and Julie go Boating” (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
82. “Amélie” (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
83. “La Strada” (Federico Fellini, 1954)
84. “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (Luis Bunuel, 1972)
85. “Umberto D” (Vittorio de Sica, 1952)
86. “La Jetée” (Chris Marker, 1962)
87. “The Nights of Cabiria” (Federico Fellini, 1957)
88. “The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum” (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939)
89. “Wild Strawberries” (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
90. “Hiroshima Mon Amour” (Alain Resnais, 1959)
91. “Rififi” (Jules Dassin, 1955)
92. “Scenes from a Marriage” (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)
93. “Raise the Red Lantern” (Zhang Yimou, 1991)
94. “Where Is the Friend’s Home?” (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
95. “Floating Clouds” (Mikio Naruse, 1955)
96. “Shoah” (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
97. “Taste of Cherry” (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
98. “In the Heat of the Sun” (Jiang Wen, 1994)
99. “Ashes and Diamonds” (Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
100. “Landscape in the Mist” (Theo Angelopoulos, 1988)

 

[Doctor Omega]

 

[chainsaw_metal1]

1982. A friend and I are sitting in the front row of our local theatre to see Wrath of Khan. The whole movie we were just blown away. Then, it happens. Two six-year-old boys brought to tears at the death of Spock. Our half-Vulcan compatriot who we both adored. My favorite character in all of Star Trek. His sacrifice, Kirk's reaction, the funeral, and Scotty playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes. It was the first time I cried in the theatre.

 

[Doctor Omega]

The Biggest Flops & Hits Of 2018’s Box-Office





Moviegoing was big business this year. Cinemas, suffering through a terrible 2017, found themselves bouncing back with a number of major hits across a range of genres including the return of major success for sadly vanishing mid-sized budget level productions.

At the same time, there were a couple of major flops – most of which were fairly predictable, and one or two that were not. Variety has done a piece reflecting on a dozen of this year’s biggest success stories and disappointing failures, comparing budgets with box-office tallies. The results were as follows:

HITS:
“Black Panther” (Cost: $210 million, Gross: $1.3 billion)
“Incredibles 2” (Cost: $200 million, Gross: $1.24 billion)
“The Nun” (Cost: $22 million, Gross: $365 million)
“A Quiet Place” (Cost: $17 million, Gross: $340 million)
“Halloween” (Cost: $10 million, Gross: $252 million)
“Crazy Rich Asians” (Cost: $30 million, Gross: $238 million)

MISSES:
“Robin Hood” (Cost: $100 million, Gross: $65 million)
“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” (Cost: $100 million, Gross: $138 million)
“A Wrinkle in Time” (Cost: $100 million, Gross: $132 million)
“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” (Cost: $43 million, Gross: $31 million)
“The Happytime Murders” (Cost: $40 million, Gross: $27 million)
“The Sisters’ Brothers” (Cost: $38 million, Gross: $9 million)

Once again, the overall box-office domestically has passed the $11 billion mark while internationally the global box-office tally for the year is expected to hover around the $40 billion range.

 

[Doctor Omega]

ASC Announces Top 100 Best Shot Films Ever





To celebrate the group’s 100th anniversary, members of the American Society of Cinematographers have put together a list of the 100 best-shot films of all time honoring the best cinematography put to the screen.

Selected by professional cinematographers themselves, the group revealed a ranked top ten followed by another ninety ordered by year of release. Probably by requirement, no film later than 1999’s “The Matrix” and 2000’s “In the Mood for Love” appear on the list so you won’t see deserved inclusions like “The Assassination of Jesse James,” “Skyfall,” “Moonlight,” “City of God,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Children of Men,” “The Master,” or “Pan’s Labyrinth”. The Top 10 are:

1. “Lawrence of Arabia”
2. “Blade Runner”
3. “Apocalypse Now”
4. “Citizen Kane”
5. “The Godfather”
6. “Raging Bull”
7. “The Conformist”
8. “Days of Heaven”
9. “2001: A Space Odyssey”
10. “The French Connection”

Vittorio Storraro made that top 10 list twice, the only cinematographer to do so, while Francis Ford Coppola is the only filmmaker with two films on the list. The full list of 100 films is up at TheASC and includes astonishing looking films ranging from “Metropolis” to “The Red Shoes,” “The Third Man,” “The Night of the Hunter,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,” “The Exorcist,” “Barry Lyndon,” “All the President’s Men,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Alien,” “The Shining,” “Amadeus,” “The Right Stuff,” “Brazil,” “The Mission,” “The Last Emperor,” “JFK,” “Unforgiven,” “Schindler’s List,” “Se7en,” and “L. A. Confidential”.

The list was released as “A Star is Born,” “Cold War,” “The Favorite,” “First Man” and “Roma” were all announced as nominees for this year’s ASC award for best film.

 

[The Seeker]

Of the foreign movies, I’ve seen a few of them. “M” is my favorite movie of all time. I bought “The Battle of Algiers” but I have yet to see it. “Man with a Camera” is on YouTube - I intend to check it out! A lot of those movies are on Criterion but they’re expensive! I wait for a biannual sale to buy any of those. I wish Criterion hadn’t broken off from Hulu - maybe now that Filmstruck went under, they’ll go back?

 

[The Seeker]

Somebody chewing with his mouth open, or smacking his lips, drives me CRAZY. I was watching “Inside Out” with my mother in one of those theaters where you sit at a table and order food, and I could hear the kid at the next table over chewing her popcorn with her mouth open. I switched seats with my mother, who didn’t mind it quite as much, but if I’d had the nerve I would have walked over to that kid and told her to eat with her damn mouth closed. That’s the thing I truly dread when I go see a movie in a theater.

 

[Doctor Omega]

When the movies blew your mind....... or changed your viewpoint on something......?

And has there ever been such a thing as a "dangerous" movie, that is irresponsible in the message it conveys?





.

 

[Doctor Omega]

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is one of the first times I can remember a movie broadening my horizons.

Emerging from the cinema, the starry night sky was never quite the same. And the wonders of the universe just might decide to pay my home planet a visit!

 

[Doctor Omega]

TWELVE ANGRY MEN:

Helped make me realise, at a tender age, that the world is not always black and white and that things may not always be as they appear. Also to consider all angles in something.

 

[Doctor Omega]

..... without those cinema visits?

 

[Doctor Omega]

Quite well.

The telly's big enough that - if I quint - it could be an Imax cinema screen in the distance.

And it has always been a ritual to get a coffee at the kiosk which comes with a complimentary biscuit, so stocking up on the same cinema biscuits has helped, while having one of those speciality all in one coffee's from a sachet at least makes the drink a bit special.

Having the room in total darkness helps too.

 

[Doctor Omega]

1982. A friend and I are sitting in the front row of our local theatre to see Wrath of Khan. The whole movie we were just blown away. Then, it happens. Two six-year-old boys brought to tears at the death of Spock. Our half-Vulcan compatriot who we both adored. My favorite character in all of Star Trek. His sacrifice, Kirk's reaction, the funeral, and Scotty playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes. It was the first time I cried in the theatre.

I had missed out on TMP and TWOK at the cinema, so SEARCH FOR SPOCK was my first Star Trek movie trip. Was blown away at seeing the (admittedly battered and bruised Enterprise on the big screen. ILM really were good at their effects.

Remember being worried for a while when I heard that Shatner was haggling for more money (reported as 1 million and 10 percent of the profits) for STAR TREK IV to the point where I thought the stuck on Vulcan cliffhanger of this film might not be answered.

 

[Doctor Omega]

Analysts: 90-Day Theatrical Window Is Dead - Dark Horizons

The COVID-19 pandemic has likely forever shattered the 90-day theatrical exclusivity window according to a leading Wall Street analyst. Robert Fishman of MoffetNathanson, in a report Monday, says studios look set to gain the upper hand in skirmishes with exhibition over windowing as trends...

www.darkhorizons.com

 

[Doctor Omega]

40% Of Chinese Cinemas Could Close - Dark Horizons

The China Film Association has published a new survey in the South China Morning Post which suggests that 40% of Chinese cinemas could permanently shut down as a result of the prolonged closure. At the end of 2019 around 69,800 cinema screens were in operation across 12,400 complexes. A 40%...

www.darkhorizons.com