2012 Skuriels Best Film of Ever Round-Up

Sure, that once-every-10-years Sight & Sound poll is pretty sweet, but the voters in the Skandies & Muriels online film awards (including some critics who also voted in the S&S poll) recently joined forces to reveal the REAL top films OF ALL TIME (time time time).

Because these all-time awards needed their own distinct name, branding experts were called upon, straws were drawn and blood was spilled before the two groups decided to chuck their fate into the Name-A-Nator 3000 and call these prestigious aluminum-plated statuettes….The Skuriels. Research dollars well spent.

Well, here are the 2012 results, revealed at the Skuriels blog, with the 2012 Sight & Sound result listed in brackets.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) – 35 votes [#6 in 2012 S&S poll]
2 (tie). Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) – 23 votes [#1]
2 (tie). Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) – 23 votes [#2]
4. Play Time (Tati, 1967) – 23 votes [#43]
5 (tie). Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, 1952) – 14 votes [#20]
5 (tie). Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942) – 14 votes [#84]
5 (tie). The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928) – 14 votes [#9]
8. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) – 13 votes [#53]
9 (tie). Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001) – 12 votes [#28]
9 (tie). The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1958) – 12 votes [#4]
11 (tie). Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) – 11 votes [#14]
11 (tie). Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975) – 11 votes [#59]
11 (tie). The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) – 11 votes [#21]
11 (tie). His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940) – 11 votes [#171]
15 (tie). Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986) – 10 votes [#69]
15 (tie). Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964) – 10 votes [#117]
15 (tie). The Godfather, Part II (Coppola, 1974) – 10 votes [#31]
15 (tie). Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) – 10 votes [#127]
15 (tie). The Searchers (Ford, 1956) – 10 votes [#7]
15 (tie). The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954) – 11 votes [#17]

Overall, a list we can be proud of. Some observations:

• Skuriels voters are a bunch of young whippersnappers. Or, at least, they recognized several newer films. The median year of release of a Top 20 winner was 1963, over 12 years younger than the median on the Top 20 S&S films.
• Fanboys & Fangirls?  Directors with multiple films, including Coppola (3), Hitchcock (2), Kubrick (3) and Lynch (2). Consider that no director in the S&S Top 20 is represented twice. My non-expert view is that with 20 slots to fill (instead of the 10 that S&S voters get) allowed voters to include more diverse choices from a sole director, without deciding which one demanded inclusion.
• Sample size matters. We 74 Skuriels voters are tiny in number when compared to Sight & Sound’s whopping 846, so each individual vote counts more. Six 15th place Skuriel winners received only 10 votes (13%), while SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN required 46 votes (5%) to claim 20th in the S&S poll.
• PLAY TIME at #4. An offbeat comic observation on the rise of cities.
• The Skuriels mascot should totally be an effed-up squirrel.