Lists, 7/5.

"There is a distressing inevitability about the fact that the Guardian's recent 1000 Films To See Before You Die should be overwhelmingly dominated by American films, thus giving a distorted view of the landmarks in cinema history," blogs Ronald Bergan for the Guardian. "At the same time, looking at the American Film Institute's Top 100 American films (headed once again by Citizen Kane) made me think how much richer in masterpieces would be a similar list of non-American films."

Then come the fightin' words:

Updated through 7/7.

By the highest standards of cinema, American films fall short. There are no living American directors who can compete in innovation and depth with the likes of Theo Angelopoulos, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Marie Straub, Bela Tarr, Pedro Costa, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, Manoel de Oliveira, Alexander Sokurov, Jia Zhang Ke or Tsai Ming-liang.

It has always been thus, but to a far lesser extent. The only American-born film directors that truly belong in the Film Pantheon are John Ford, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles. Emigrés Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Douglas Sirk, Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock brought what they had learnt in Europe with them to America.

Glenn Kenny addressed this last point a little over a week ago. Thoughts?

Meanwhile, the Guardian picks out some of the loudest reader reactions to its list.

The Telegraph's Rebecca Davies calls for another list.

And then there's Matt Riviera: "My Life in 5 Films."

Also: Just up at the main site, a fresh list of films we direly need to see on DVD from Craig Phillips.

Updates, 7/7: Jim Emerson passes along the results of Steadycam's most recent poll: "See, these are not just favorite films. They are the 30 most favorite films of the participating critics and filmmakers." And he follows up with his own.

SiouxWIRE starts a list of "World Cinema Films & Directors."

And, as noted in the comments: Lucid Screening's Top 7 Project.

Posted by dwhudson at July 5, 2007 1:44 PM