Though I fully agree that the IMDb 250 is not (and makes no claim to be) a greatest film list, I completely disagree that www.theyshootpictures.com (TSPDT) is better. Greatness is necessarily a subjective measure. There is and can be no universal set of facets (e.g. acting, script, cinematography, artistic style, symbolism), nor a universally agreed upon weighting of each facet (e.g. acting counting for more than cinematography or script or style). Under the circumstances, all any critic can claim is a respected set of biases, not objectivity about greatness.
The IMDb 250 list is better balanced than TSPDT and represents a decent statistical sample. TSPDT titles often have fewer that a few thousand endorsements each. A substantial percentage of these titles are obscure films that relatively few have seen. Also, TSPDT is heavily weighted towards top ten lists garnered from critics. Such lists favor name recognition (e.g. recommended films from the past). When reviewing the thousands of titles any respectable critic has seen over a lifetime, the titles that come to mind most easily are those others have mentioned in the past. TSPDT, and its most important contributing list the Sight & Sound decade poll, are largely petrified and very poor when it comes to newer films.
Films that achieved renown in the 1950s and 1960s, because of young Cahiers fan boys, are permanent fixtures on TSPDT. Critics like Godard established an intellectual standard that had not existed before them. However, he and others were also egotistical young fan boys. Godard not only ranked his own films as great, but also a number of American directors that he had loved as a young man. Just like the Nolan fan boys now, Godard and others lionized directors of their youth and uncritically endorsed a large percentage of their output as great because they were in love with their style, not because they were all truly better than every other film.
Those not so enamored by style rarely grant any director more than a few truly great films. TSPDT still has a laughable bias with as many as dozens of films from a small group of 50s & 60s directors. You can complain that several directors on the IMDb list have more titles than they should, but this bias is much reduced before 2000.
IMDb 250 offers:
1. Current popular resonance (a true standard of greatness for any media designed to be projected for the viewing pleasure of many)
2. A well-designed opinion poll (e.g. 160,000,000 IMDb members, high minimum number of votes, comparing ratings of every title seen, rather than just thinking up a top ten)
3. Humility about the hundreds of different facets (and the comparative weighting of these facets) that contribute to the greatness of any film. IMDb doesn’t pretend that their 250 represents the greatest films, nor should any responsible site
TSPDT offers:
1. Safe choices for those worried about being embarrassed
2. The elitism of a canon
3. A nostalgic refuge for those who think everything in the world is getting worse
I'm 60, and have been reviewing and showing films to audiences for many decades.
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