The Mumpsimus

The once-in-a-decade Sight and Sound poll of critics and filmmakers to determine the "greatest films of all time" is on the horizon — the 2012 one was published in the September issue of Sight and Sound , and people I know who have been invited to contribute their lists have done so in recent days. Since I am somewhat obsessed with the Sight and Sound poll, particularly how it has changed through the decades (the first poll occurred in 1952 ), I was surprised to find that I did not note here at The Mumpsimus the 2012 poll when it was released. I prepared for it by pointing to some lists I liked and making my own using Ignatiy Vishnavetsky's technique of making a big list of favorites and then randomly choosing 10. Looking at that post now, I see it also includes a link to what was Roger Ebert's final Sight & Sound list . 2012 does not feel like a long time ago to me. If you were to tell me that 2012 was three years ago, I would believe it. And yet, when I s...

Banner image for Geoffrey Goodwin's Facebook page   Geoffrey H. Goodwin was a writer, a bookseller, a friend. He contributed here at The Mumpsimus in the early days, starting with a conversation about Hayao Miyazaki's film Howl's Moving Castle , which we saw together in Cambridge, Massachusetts when it was released in 2005. Geoffrey then contributed two interviews: one with Thomas Ligotti , another with Jedediah Berry . We had planned for Geoffrey to do more interviews and guest posts, but other commitments pulled him away. His final contribution here was to our Delany Roundtable in 2014. 2014 turned out to be a disaster year for Geoffrey. A car accident caused by a drunk driver brought significant physical and mental injury to him. His later years were extraordinarily difficult. His later years. Yes, Geoffrey is gone now, his death reported as cardiac failure , the failure of the literal heart of a person with, in the metaphorical sense, an extraordinary heart. It is ap...