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...

The clickbait site Book Riot just released a list with the ridiculous title "The 100 Most Influential Queer Books of All Time" — as if such a thing could ever be determined. Influential how? For whom? Measured with what criteria?  The list itself is fine if you're looking for some new reading material, particularly from recent years (like many such lists, this one pays token attention to the past but is fundamentally interested in what's recent), but it's not much good for anything else — it does not include Gertrude Stein, Samuel Delany, Judith Butler, Edmund White, Dennis Cooper, Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Michel Foucault, or Kathy Acker, the exclusion of any one of whom renders the title meaningless. Such lists aim for a kind of objectivity that predestines them to be bland. What would be far more interesting would be lists from readers and writers of the books they themselves feel most affected by. Good lists pay no homage to the false gods of objectiv...

Recently, I was curious what my top films of the 2010s were. It's not something I have an encyclopedic memory for, but, luckily, I've used Letterboxd for a few years now to keep track of some of my movie viewing. Letterboxd has a decade filter, so you can now see all the films you've logged that were released in the 2010s. Mine is a likely incomplete list, as I've use Letterboxd somewhat haphazardly, but it's better than memory.  I thought, for a diversion from the general apocalypse we're living through, that I would look at my top-rated movies and see what I think of them now. I'll list those films here, with a few comments and links to further reviews if I've written of them. This is purely a list of personal favorites — while I do think some of these are cinematic masterpieces, some are surely not, but I love them nonetheless. Lots of movies I liked aren't on this list, too, as this is a list of the ones that either blew me away on a first watc...

I'm just back from Readercon 27, the annual convention that I've been to more than any other, and for which (a while back) I served on the program committee for a few years. At this point, Readercon feels like a family reunion for me, and it's a delight. Here, I simply want to riff on ideas from one of the panels I participated in. Friday, I was on my first panel of the convention, "Nonfiction for Fiction Writers", with Jonathan Crowe, Keffy Kehrli, Tom Purdom, Rick Wilber. It was good fun. I'd taken lots of notes beforehand, because I wasn't really sure what direction the panel would go in and I wanted to be prepared and to not forget any particular favorites. Ultimately, and expectedly, I only got to mention a few of the items I was prepared to talk about. However, since I still have my notes, I can expand on it all here...

Locus  this month has been conducting a poll to find out the "best" science fiction and fantasy novels and short fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries. Though I first suggested on Twitter that I would be filling it all in with Raymond Carver stories, I gave in today at the last minute and instead filled in the poll with some choices other than Carver stories (though I was tempted to put "Why Don't You Dance?" on there, since it has a certain fantasy feel to it, at least to me). I'll post my choices after the jump here.

At other places around the internet, there is listing going on. I can't resist a good list. Though neither of these two listing events is one I was invited to join, both made me think, "What would I put on such a list?" (Lists are fiercely contagious.)

It's a new year and a Saturday morning (as I type this), I have lots of stuff I should be doing, and this here thingamabob is a blog, which means -- time for a useless, ephemeral, and yet powerfully enticing internet meme (aka, tool of procrastination)! At Salon, one of my favorite movie critics, Matt Zoller Seitz, created a slideshow of his picks for DVDs he'd want if stranded on a desert island (with, presumably, endless food and water and a great home/island video system). There are rules (1 short, 1 season of a TV show, etc.). Many people have left their own lists in the comments section of the slideshow, and critic Jim Emerson has also offered his own list , with further lists made by commenters at his site. So, to keep the internet going, here is my contribution...

It's summer and I don't feel like writing a post of substance, so here's some fluff. On Facebook*, someone I know (who is welcome to out himself here if he so chooses), posted a fun exercise: "Apparently somewhere on facebook there's a challenge to name your favorite ten movie directors off the top of your head, no research or googling," adding: "It's an interesting personality test." It is indeed. I'm going to be brave and see what I come up with this morning... Rainer Werner Fassbinder Howard Hawks Alfred Hitchcock Werner Herzog Stanley Kubrick Terrence Malick Anthony Mann Michael Mann Jean Renoir Francois Truffaut The list itself took all of one minute (alphabetizing it and finding appropriate links for each took longer), and is probably one that would be similar were I to do it on another day -- certainly, there are a bunch of directors who I thought about including (Orson Welles, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, the Coen Brothe...

The folks at NPR are asking for summer suggestions of "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books" , from which they will compile a final list. There are 1,850 comments and counting right now. Plenty of the sorts of books that have inhabited such lists for decades ( The Foundation Trilogy, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, Lord of the Rings,  etc.), but also lots of idiosyncratic choices, which is, I think, exactly what such a list should get -- indeed, I would love them to get so many eclectic comments that it's impossible for a list of fewer than 534 titles to be created from it. In that spirit, I submitted two lists: The Odyssey by Homer Hamlet by Shakespeare [though, on reflection, I think if I were to do it again I'd put Twelfth Night  here] The Double by Dostoyevsky The Castle by Kafka Orlando by Woolf The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison We Who Are About To by Joanna Russ The Return to Nevèrÿon   series by Samuel R. Delany The ...