iW. Critics Poll 08.

"Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flight of the Red Balloon topped indieWIRE's annual survey of more than 100 North American film critics," announces editor Eugene Hernandez. "It was named best film of the year and Hou was singled out as best director in a survey of 105 critics." Looks like now would be a good time to go back and revisit Reverse Shot's recent special issue on Hou.

What's interesting about this year's edition of iW's poll - a reincarnation of sorts of the one originally conducted by Dennis Lim for the Village Voice in 1999 - is that the frontrunners have nailed their positions pretty firmly. The point spread seems wider than it is in Film Comment's poll of critics (and hence, probably mentions as well). Here, Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale is a clear second, with spot #3 far behind. Thing is, WALL•E and Wendy and Lucy are in a tight tangle for that one.

Topping the list of Two Hundred and Fifty undistributed films is Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman. Anthony Kaufman sorts through the long tail.

As part of the package, a slew of comments from the voters fall under headings such as "Rants on the state of film and film distribution, circa 2008," "Hollywood and politics" and "Feelings and moments to remember."

And finally, a little something to do over the holidays: Browse the individual ballots and sort through the complete results.

Posted by dwhudson at December 23, 2008 12:30 PM