Jason Whyte

This would actually be a 2000 film (I checked November and December '00 release dates overseas), but if you want to use North American release dates for your accuracy, go ahead. I couldn't stop people, not even Leonard Maltin, from putting Croupier on their top of 2000 list even though it was originally released in 1998.

When I do see ITMFL, it will be on my 2001 Film List under "USA/Canada releases ineligible for 2001 List" section.

Regards,

Jason

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Eric Howell

Jason, I don't understand, are you saying you plan to include ItMfL in your 2000 movies, your 2001 movies, both, or neither?

This sort of thing happens all the time though. I can remember last year everyone wanting to include Lola Rennt in their 99 lists.

Jason Whyte

I'll be placing it in my "USA/Canada releases ineligible for Offical 2001 List" section of my 2001 Film List. I normally place such film in there if it gets a notable release here. "Snatch," for example, a UK 2000 film that got a North American release 1/19. I made note of that in the section, and it will not be eligible when I do my Top 10 of 2001.

Confusing, isn't it? But I must be accurate!


Jason

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John Thomas

I reiterate; do a search for the movie @ IMDb. Whatever
year it comes up with on the main page of said movie,
use that. Really simple. Keeps the confusion down.
Wait. I'm trying to keep confusion out of this group.
What a monumental waste of time.



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"All your base are belong to us."

Edwin Pereyra

Like most people here, I will be using the Academy's criteria to qualify for a particular year - a movie must run for at least one whole week in a theater in L.A. County. In The Mood For Love did no such thing and was hardly released at all in 2000 in North America to make it in most critics' Top Ten lists. It will be part of my 2001 films list.

~Edwin

Rich Malloy

I also saw IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE this past weekend - it's either the 2nd best movie of 2000 or the best movie of 2001 (so far).

I want to go along with whatever criteria we're using here (but, unless there's a good objective reason, I don't see why we'd care what criteria the Academy uses).

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Pascal A

Unfortunately, I cannot abide by the "Academy Rules" guideline in selecting my own top ten. According to IMDB's release information, Aleksandr Sokurov's haunting documentary, Dolce, never played in the US, even when I definitely saw it on October, 2000 in New York City.

Feel free to discount my list, but I don't believe in imposing artificial boundaries on deciding the best films to come out in 2000.

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Seth Paxton

Pascal, no need to discount anything here. The point is to have some agreed upon criteria to organize the listings. The reason the Oscar year is being used is because so many films arrange their release schedules to meet that criteria.

Otherwise we would be left with people arguing about when THEY got to see it, etc. Considering the fact that many of the 2000 films being considered only went wide in 2001, if we used the "that's when it was playing here" criteria then films would have multiple years, which sorta doesn't make sense to me for lists like this.

I think any other format would seem just as indiscriminate as the Oscar year to some people (Yi-Yi won't be in Indy till April, so that's a 2001, right? Of course not). Also, bear in mind that many people will only see some of these films on DVD long after the release date. Plus, that's the main reason why I am allowing/expecting updating of the lists.

I would fully understand if our global members preferred lists that reflect release years based on their country, but for this listing it's Oscars.

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Pascal A

I completely understand and respect the decision in trying to apply some uniform logic to determining an overall top ten list. My own reservation is in having to "bump up" films which I did not deem to be as good as the films that I had listed, simply because certain films didn't qualify by Academy standard, and I need to make up the deficit. My comment was merely to state that I would not be replacing those films in question, just to abide by format. All I meant was, I don't think that my list skews the totals, but if it does, I won't be offended if it is taken out of the tally.

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Stephen R

I don't know about this whole judging by Academy standards thing. The Academy isn't always incredibly reliable as we all know, and often times ignores smaller or foreign films entirely, which might mean they could be left off that list.

How I judge it is whether or not a film got any official release in the United States during the year. NY or LA for even just a week counts as well. IMDB is generally considered the best place to check for this sort of thing, but I find that Eric Carter's Film Releases is an excellent place to take a second look. If it's not listed here, chances are it didn't come out during that year. The list also includes films shown at film festivals, which is kind of a grey area. A film fest isn't exactly an official release, but I usually put movies I see at fests on my list for the year and keep them there until the end of the year, at which point I remove ones that haven't come out officially in NY or LA at some point during the year. In some cases, though, a movie that is shown at a fest never goes wider. Anyone have any thoughts about what should be done in this case?

Pascal, by my standards, it's certainly warranted to place Dolce on a 2000 list. [On a side note, I couldn't even find Dolce on Eric Carter's list, which is insane. This must've been one hell of a small release. Anyway, if you saw it in 2000 in NY, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't include it on your list. Chances are that's the widest release it's going to get anyway.

I might be alone on this, but I don't really want to base my list on the Academy's criteria, knowing their tendancy to casually forget films worthy of accolades.

Eric Howell

Good to see we are all in agreement.

This is the criteria most US critics use for their top 10 lists. If we use the same criteria, we can compare our lists to theirs. I’m not sure if it is an “objective” reason, but I think it will make the process more fun(for me anyways).

This same thing happened with last year’s lists, and you are correct that it won’t skew our totals significantly.

Seth, next time you tally up the points, please list more than just the top 10. If possible, put their score next to them so we can see how close they are to each other. (Edit: oops, looking back I see you did show the point totals on your last list)