by Sam Juliano
The enthusiastically greeted Greatest Romantic Films of All-Time countdown is now set to commence in April of 2014, sometime around mid-month. The four months until that launching will be the time to view and re-view films in that genre, and to ponder the selections. Each voter (e mails will be send to the same group who participated in the just-completed western countdown as well as a few new members who will surely want to be involved with this one) will again be asked to submit a numerical list (1 to 60) of what they favor as the greatest (translated: favorite) romantic films in cinema history. The definition of what a romantic film is will be left up to the individual voter, but there will understandably be some overlaps from the previous comedy and especially musical countdowns. But I figure that overlap to be very modest. Ballots will not be accepted until January 15th, but then will be accumulated all the way up until April 1st. Once again Voting Tabulator Extraordinaire Angelo A. D’Arminio Jr. will be negotiating the results. Because the scope of this genre is a wide one, we will be going with a Top 70, as we did with 2011’s spectacularly successful musical countdown. I will be sending out extensive lists to the voters, but everyone is free to choose whatever films they feel qualify. The list is just to help gather your memories. I will soon be in touch with the e mail chain. To be sure there are many non-American films in this equation–France, Italy, Great Britain, Japan, Hong Kong and numerous other countries have promising entries…..
One firm rule: No writer who previously took on one of the films that will place in the Romantic countdown in one of the previous countdowns can again do the same film. For example: I did The Sound of Music for the musical countdown. Should that film make it in again, someone else must handle the essay.
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Sam one thought I’d like to pose forward…..and this may or may not be applicable to many films, but Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy…..we will need to set some groundrules on whether people can vote for all three at one time….such as someone ranking the series at one placement instead of ranking each one individually. We need a protocol or things may get messy.
Jon—-I would think that is this lone case we would group the films together and vote it and tabulate it as a single entry.
Okay yeah I was thinking along those lines. It will need to be communicated in your email so people are consistent on how they vote for it.
Very good point. They should definitely be grouped.
I’m not sure about that, I mean, I like the films, but I think that the last two are better than the first one, at least for me. I can’t rank ’em together since I rank the first one differently than the other two.
Here’s the thing Jaime…..If I vote for all three at once, it’s a vote for the trilogy. If you vote for them individually, where do those votes go to? Are those votes wasted because everyone else voted for them as one? Or do the votes get added to the tally of the three? We need to be consistent no matter what we do or the voting will be screwed up. We could also make an argument that Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy are “Romance or Love Stories” as well. So, should those be voted as one as well or not?
Here’s the thing, each movie is an individual, if you choose to put one, two or three in your list, is your choice, in the end if it makes the countdown, the best one will make it and it’d be obvious to the reader if the second one makes it, he should also watch the first one. The same goes for the first one or for whatever number of them should make it to the list. Remember, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was separated in the 2000’s countdown.
yes but how do you add up the votes?
If i vote for the trilogy at say #10. And you vote for Before Midnight at #10, how do we combine the data?
I think that’s the thing: You Can’t vote for trilogies, that’s the solution, vote for the three films in sucession if you like, or one or two or the three in different spots.
What I mean is, if one thinks that the first one is a masterpiece and the other two are trash, why would someone be obliged to put the trilogy in his list if he doesn’t like the other two, when he can just put the first one in his list near the top, or one would be forbidden to put a separate film in the list, even though you consider it one of the best romance films of all time (but you hate the other two, that’s the scenario here)?
We may also have the same issue with the Three Colors Trilogy.
for what it’s worth, I’m inclined to agree with Jaime – I’d rather consider separate films separately.
We need input from more people as this is divided. We will need to be consistent and agree on one approach, as I’m not sure how we would tabulate voting is half of us voted for all three at once and others voted them separately. This to me is a huge thing to be decided. Otherwise everything will split votes and we’ll end up with a low ranking.
I suppose we could do it whereby a vote for all three is equal voting for each of those at that slot. If someone votes for one separately, it gets added to the tally on top of the votes for the “trilogy”….meaning they get combined together then? What we can’t have is votes for a trilogy separated from votes for single films….otherwise we’re all just defeating our own rankings and splitting our votes unnecessarily.
Weeping Sam makes a good point too. Well Jon we will need to poll the group in the end, to see where the majority stands.
I also opt for treating each film separately because that’s the way I think of them. Blue for me is Blue, not Red or White.
This sounds great. I’ll be devoting my viewing over the next few months to romance films to submit my own ballot. Because of this, I probably won’t have much to write about for my Sunday slot unfortunately, and I’m assuming you wouldn’t want me writing about romance films before the countdown… I mean, I do have a lot to catch up on, and four months is just enough time to fully explore the genre.
Also, perhaps an idea for the future- a music poll? Like, the greatest albums or songs of all time? It probably wouldn’t work because the Wonders community has such diverse tastes in music, but something of like might be interesting in the future, if we have enough passionate music fans on the site. Again, just an idea going forward.
Mike…I’ll be sending on some comprehensive lists to you by email this week, that will offer many “suggestions.” Allan’s list in particular (he did not vote yet, it’s rather just a list of possibilities) is fabulous. I completely understand the situation with Sunday for now–it is more urgent to deal with the romantic countdown anyway, though your pieces have been great and you can re-claim that spot anytime.
We have talked about a music poll, and the best songs and albums. It is definitely a strong possibility methinks.
Thanks for being so understanding Sam. Also, to clear up any confusion, my email account is mnorton21@hotmail.com. I use mnoton21@hotmail.com (without the r) when I comment on here because my real account is set up with another WordPress account (I edit my school newspaper and it’s set up on WordPress).
Ooh…I gotta get to making a list. This is great news!
Count me in Sam. I’ll have a ballot ready by the end of next month.