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Oscars 2008: The 100 Best Films - Documentary And World Cinema

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  • Oscars 2008: The 100 Best Films - Documentary And World Cinema

    OSCARS 2008: THE 100 BEST FILMS - DOCUMENTARY AND WORLD CINEMA

    Daily Telegraph
    12:01am GMT 21/02/2008
    UK

    You'll laugh, you'll cry. Or you may angrily demand to know why
    we've snubbed Meg Ryan. In honour of next week's Oscars we present
    our own highly subjective, yet infinitely debatable nominations for
    the greatest films of all time

    100 best films: Drama and thriller / action

    100 best films: Comedy and horror

    100 best films: Kids and musicals

    100 best films: Romance and animation Oscars coverage in full
    Documentary

    1. American Splendor (2003)

    Fact and fiction are deftly muddled in this character study of
    doomy cartoonist Harvey Pekar, directed by Robert Pulcini. Half a
    dramatisation of his graphic novel Our Cancer Year, with Paul Giamatti
    (pre Sideways) as Pekar and Hope Davis as his wife, Joyce, the film
    also devotes screentime to interviews with the real-life Mrs and
    Mrs Pekar.

    American Splendor (2003) 2. The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

    Four hours on the Vichy government's involvement in Nazi
    atrocities. Marcel Ophuls's mix of newsreel and interview makes for
    a film of rare intelligence and integrity.

    3. American Movie (1999)

    Movies about making movies tend to be overrated. Not this one, perhaps
    because it doesn't follow the production of a classic. Instead, it
    tracks the ups and downs on Coven, a grubby horror shot by redneck
    auteur Mark Borchardt, funded by his wonderfully crusty father.

    4. Touching the Void (2003)

    Superlative reconstruction of Joe Simpson's and Simon Yates's perilous
    trek up, and particularly down, an unforgiving Andean peak.

    5. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

    Queasy investigation into the case of a middle-class Jewish family
    whose father and son were charged with child abuse in the mid-1980s.

    6. Spellbound (2002)

    Jeffrey Blitz's Spelling Bee crowdpleaser is gripping and revealing.

    7. Ã~Jtre et Avoir (2002)

    More disarming tots in Nicolas Philibert's sophisticated look at a
    year in the life of an infant school in rural France.

    8. Hearts and Minds (1974)

    Peter Davis's Vietnam documentary cuts together talking heads and
    eyewitness footage to difficult, brilliant effect.

    9. My Kid Could Paint That (2007)

    Another documentary in which the director, Amir Bar-Lev, finds himself
    unhappily involved. This one starts as the story of a four-year-old
    painting prodigy in New York, but gets interesting after allegations
    that Marla may have received more than encouragement from her amateur
    artist father.

    10. Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)

    Exactly what a concert film should be: the concert, and nothing
    else. This one, directed by Jonathan Demme, records a performance in
    Nashville of Young's 2005 album Prairie Wind, taped days before his
    op to remove a brain tumour.

    World

    1. The Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925)

    The film that introduced an astonished world to Sergei Eisenstein's
    theory of montage (dynamic editing for political effect). The story
    of the abortive Russian revolution of 1905 still has immense impact,
    thanks to the unforgettable 'Odessa Steps' sequence.

    2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (France, 1928)

    Made in France by the Danish director Carl Dreyer, this was one of
    the greatest silent films. It depicts the trial and execution through
    close-ups resembling medieval portraits. And the spiritual quality
    of Maria Falconetti's Joan seems beyond acting.

    3. La Règle du Jeu (France, 1939)

    All French society gathers for a country-house party that proves to
    be on the eve of the war. Time has lent Jean Renoir's film an extra
    dimension, but it always seemed the quintessence of art.

    4. Tokyo Story (Japan, 1953)

    Yasujiro Ozu's study of family relations and the irreconcilable
    differences between generations is one of the most moving of all
    pictures. It offers universal truths, a spare, almost ascetic camera
    style and matchless acting from Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara.

    5. Seven Samurai (Japan, 1954)

    Akira Kurosawa's medieval epic achieves an almost Shakespearean range,
    embracing personal pride, professional skill and social distinctions.

    There's Falstaffian humour, spectacular battles in the rain and the
    sense of a master film-maker at the peak of his powers.

    6. Pather Panchali (India, 1955)

    Another film about generations - the very old and the very young. Set
    in Bengal, it was Satyajit Ray's first film, establishing him as a
    director in the great humanist tradition, with a superb pictorial
    sense.

    7. Smiles of a Summer Night (Sweden, 1955)

    This apparently frivolous comedy is Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece
    because, like Mozart's operas or Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, it
    says something profound about love. It's taken 50 years for the penny
    to drop.

    8. Un Condamné a Mort s'est échappé (France, 1956)

    In Robert Bresson's austere account of the wartime escape of André
    Devigny, the soundtrack is Mozart's C Minor Mass, the alternative
    title is 'The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth'. It might as easily have
    been called 'God Helps Those Who Help Themselves'.

    9. Andrei Rublev (USSR, 1966)

    Not a conventional biography of the 15th-century icon painter, but
    eight imaginary episodes from his life, evoking his spirituality
    and symbolic importance at the time of the Tartar invasions. Andrei
    Tarkovsky's troubled epic looks to God as saviour rather than Lenin.

    10. The Color of Pomegranates (USSR, 1969)

    Sergei Parajanov was imprisoned in Russia for this intensely visual
    film about the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova. It delivers a
    torrent of breathtaking images.

    --Boundary_(ID_8r2+0XSV+T0Z0269cfV9bA)--
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