Pantheon Inductions and Dissident Cinema Marathon Announcement

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24:11Josh Larsen:Since the pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself.

24:20Adam Kempenaar:Two films will join the film spotting pantheon today. Josh, I don't feel like we have dressed up enough for this occasion. It should be a more formal one somehow.

24:31Josh Larsen:I mean, we're getting better at least formalizing it structurally for the show. So this used to be quite haphazard leading to us forgetting what movies were even in the pantheon. So at least by doing it in this manner, I feel like we're giving it a little more honor. But at some point, yeah, maybe we get together, Adam, and do a live announcement where we dress up a little bit better.

24:56Adam Kempenaar:Okay? Yeah, that would be good. Though I hate to break it to you. Maybe now is not a good time. There are going to be changes coming to the process.

25:07Josh Larsen:but, but here's the good news. Of course there, of course there are here. I think we've, I think we've had the like six month lull of like actually doing what we said. It's high time.

25:17Adam Kempenaar:We actually think in, in all, in all honesty, it doesn't upend it and it actually totally streamlines it. You'll, you'll be on board. It, it makes it, it makes it way easier. It makes it way easier. So we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get to that later. The film spotting Pantheon currently 57 films from 2001, A Space Odyssey to The Wizard of Oz and everything, including Midnight Run in between. So the brief history lesson is initially this was all about just the film spotting top five. When the show began, there were there were three titles we knew or thought we knew would come up too often in the film spotting top fives, myself and Sam.

25:56Adam Kempenaar:So we just set them aside. They were sort of in the the forever penalty box, like Citizen Kane and The Godfather. And, And, you know, of course, we revere Citizen Kane, but it's not like realistically Citizen Kane was probably going to come up that often. So the whole thing was folly from the beginning. Now, The Godfather, that that was more realistic, you know, and then there were movies we also love, like All the President's Men and Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. And so those were put in the pantheon after that movies were just kind of added a little bit willy nilly. And so then last year we said, how do we formalize this process?

26:31Adam Kempenaar:How do we make it so we stop asking each other questions about what the Pantheon is and how movies get in? How do we make it so listeners stop asking us questions about it? And how do we also turn it into something where we can get some content out of it, generate some new content, some new reviews? And the biggest thing, you know, that Sam brought up is, and he was, he was so right about it is we just have all these great movies sitting over there that, that some people listeners have said, you know, I'd love to hear you talk about these movies. And actually by putting them in the Pantheon, we've kind of said, we're never going to talk about these movies.

27:03Adam Kempenaar:They're never going to come up in a top five. Could we actually do a project where we force ourselves to talk about these Pantheon movies? And the irony is, stupidly, you know, I was wrong. Not not surprisingly, I was wrong. I thought, well, what am honestly, what am I going to have to say about? I was going to say Raging Bull, which we haven't talked about yet. What am I going to have to say about Chinatown? What am I really going to have to say about all the president's men? All these films that are just I just know they're great. And, you know, I'm just going to say how great they are for for 30 minutes or whatever.

27:34Adam Kempenaar:And then it turns out, of course, we talk about these movies for 50 minutes to 60 minutes and they're, of course, they're so rich. And of course, it's like seeing them again with fresh eyes. And they're some of my favorite conversations we've ever had in the show's history. Right? Right.

27:46Josh Larsen:Yeah, that's it. And, you know, it's intimidating. Let's be honest. That's part of it too, is to think of some of those titles and realize all of the great writing, you know, all the great work that's been done thinking about these, what are we going to add? And, you know, we'll let listeners say, determine how much we actually added. But I think I would agree with you. The act of digging into them in a formal review has been incredibly rewarding and has, yeah, really justified this as an entire project, at least from our end.

28:19Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. So the nomination process the last two years has been, and we just wrapped it up this year with our conversation about Meek's Cutoff. We come to the table on a show. We have a nomination segment where you bring three movies. I bring three movies. Sam brings three movies. The structure is simply that each one of us has to pick a movie from a past film spotting marathon. We want to tie it to the show's history. So a film spotting marathon, one has to be a film spotting sacred cow. So it's just a classic film review. And then there's a wild card. We got to bring something new to the table. Any movie that we want to suggest and the only catch is it has to be at least five years old.

28:57Adam Kempenaar:So maybe we've reviewed it before, right? It could be like, for example, we could nominate Parasite even if we've reviewed it before, but we've never given it that full sort of sacred cow in-depth discussion. But we can't talk about a movie. One battle after another can't be nominated for the Pantheon now. That's right. In four years, in five years, it could come up potentially. So last year, we nominated those films. We put those together, those nine films on a ballot. The Film Spotting family members, part of their membership benefits, they get exclusive voting rights. They get to shape the Pantheon.

29:38Adam Kempenaar:And we had our ballot, Josh, me, you, and Sam. We had the Film Spotting family ballot, and we compare those two. And basically, the top vote getter on each one gets in. Those are the two films that get in. If there's overlap, we go to the next one on our list. And in this case, Singing in the Rain was the top vote getter on each list. And so it became Singing in the Rain and Sherlock Jr. from Buster Keaton. Those were the two that went in last year. So we then re-nominated between us three films from last year when we did the nine this year. Agnes Varda's Cleo from five to seven. William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives.

30:21Adam Kempenaar:Elo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. We then had some new nominees. We had Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. Kelly Reichert's Meeks Cutoff. Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense. Abbas Kurosami's Close Up. John Ford's How Green Was My Valley. Barbara Koppel's Harlan County. USA. How about that for a list of nine candidates for the Pantheon?

30:41Josh Larsen:Love the variety there and love thinking about those conversations we had about some of these and really enjoyed the recent ones. So yeah, we talked recently, as you said, about Meek's Cutoff. We took a look at Rashomon for the first time together, believe it or not. And then John Ford's How Green Was My Valley was the other recent conversation we had to put those films in the mix with all the others you mentioned.

31:06Adam Kempenaar:And How Green Was My Valley probably would have had to have been the Cinderella here to make it all the way into the pantheon. Of the nine, you'd agree, and it was your nominee, the longest shot. Unfairly, it seems, we would both say because we had a great conversation about it and I loved the movie, unfairly derided because it beat Citizen Kane for best picture. And it does turn out that in this ballot, it's definitely not getting into the pantheon because it did finish last in both our ballot, the critics ballot, if you will, and in family voting.

31:46Josh Larsen:Picked up the read. Not a surprise to me after. So I was initially thrilled to see on Letterboxd after we did our review it popping up here and there, how green was my valley. And some folks even referencing, they were watching it because of the Pantheon project. So love that, but not all of those reviews were glowing. So I had, I had a sense that this one didn't get a, get a shot, but as you say, I'm just so thrilled that you came to love it as, as much as I had already. So that was worth it for me, even though it didn't fare well in the voting.

32:19Adam Kempenaar:We do have what we think here at Film Spotting is good news to report. We're very happy with how this worked out because we are adding, and the Pantheon needs this, we are adding two foreign language slash international films to the Pantheon from two of our all-time favorite filmmakers who are currently not represented in the Pantheon. The top finisher in the film spotting ballot. So this is across me, you, Sam, our ballot. And it had a weighted rank of 1.0, which means that you, me, and Sam all had it at number one. I think that's fairly decisive, Josh. Officially going into the Pantheon where she belongs, Agnes Varda and Cleo from five to seven.

33:14Josh Larsen:There we go. So Sam, especially being the hugest Varda fan, is going to sleep so much better knowing she's represented in the pantheon. But I love this. This is great.

33:23Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. Okay. Now, we'll build up the suspense a little here because this is how the family voting shook out. And we can separate it quite nicely into tiers. As I already mentioned, tier five, all on its own, How Green Was My Valley. Then we had tier four, these three films bunched together. And man, were they bunched together very close. Meeks Cutoff, Harlan County, USA, and Close Up. Those three were separated by 0.27 from the first one to the third one, okay, in the weighted rank, right? So it's a ballot, you rank them one to nine, and that's how much was separating them, very close.

34:03Josh Larsen:Already my mind here is trying to make connections among these. Is there an austere slash realism sensibility that they share that that maybe voters just lumped them together. I don't know. I'll try not to psychologize our voters too much.

34:20Adam Kempenaar:I am really glad you said that because it allows me to to bring in a quick bit of feedback. And, you know, we don't have to dig into it, but I'd love just your initial thought. We got this email from Damian Cannon, who said, hi, Adam and Josh, I just wanted to drop you a line about the Pantheon Pantheon candidates. It's a really interesting project, and I like how you've come up with quite the range of choices. However, I'm wondering if Josh and Sam have a subconscious love for coal mining. Since Josh brought forward How Green Was My Valley while Sam came up with Harlan County, USA, the funny thing is that you could barely have two more polar opposite films.

34:53Adam Kempenaar:On one hand, How Green Was My Valley romanticizes the lives of those Welsh miners with their male voice choirs in beautiful verdant hills. While in Harlan, you have grinding poverty, open warfare, and the bleakness of being exploited by a local monopoly employer. And yet they both show the weary struggle of striking of scab workers and the cost of fighting for basic human rights. Tough choice then, especially as a blend of both would be outstanding, while separately they have issues. Harlan County suffers by not having someone at the center who you can root for, while How Green Was My Valley skates over the institutional brutality of coal mining.

35:27Adam Kempenaar:Still great choices, though, which I would likely never have watched without film spotting to nudge me along. So big thanks for that.

35:34Josh Larsen:There you go. Damien was way ahead of me on making some of those connections. I'm not going to argue with him. Damien came to the London meetup last December. Smart guy. So kudos. Kudos for the work done there.

35:46Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. Yeah. And I think he I think ultimately, I mean, here we could get into it and really parse it and we're not going to. I think he probably. If you can do this broadly gets at the nuance correctly there that that, yes, how green was my valley, obviously much more romanticizes the life of a coal miner than Harlan County USA does. But both speak to the the brutality of it and the exploitation of it in their own way. Right. Very different styles. Yeah. So in tier three, we have all alone in the middle. Stop making sense. The Jonathan Demme talking heads documentary. Now, here's where it gets really interesting.

36:28Adam Kempenaar:These were all very close, not only to each other, but to the number one spot. In that tier two, the best years of our lives, the battle of Algiers and Cleo from five to seven. So the listeners were not far from us, Josh, in wanting to anoint Cleo as well. They just also had Algiers and the best years of our lives in the mix. From the first one of those to the third one, there was only 0.29 separating them, okay, in the weighted rank. 0.29. So these are all just in the way to rank of three overall, three out of nine. And then there's only 0.31 separating number two from the number one choice. If you're paying close attention, you know that the title I haven't mentioned, the one that is going into the Pantheon, Akira Kurosawa, congratulations.

37:24Adam Kempenaar:What an honor for you. So you are going into the film spotting pantheon. Rosh Oman is the film going into the pantheon.

37:33Josh Larsen:You are finally officially recognized as one of cinema's all-time greats. Yes, with that induction. And seriously, probably the heavyweight title among all of those, I think it's fair to say. So I like these two as a pair, Adam. Our inductees, 2026, Cleo from 5 to 7, and Rosh Oman because Cleo is, although very well known and loved and regarded. You spoke to it with the Varda connection. I feel like this is a film spotting particular pick. We did a Varda marathon. Cleo wasn't a part of that just because you and I had seen it previously, but just really came to fall in love with her as a filmmaker.

38:12Josh Larsen:And she's come up so often over, over the years. So to have Cleo in there makes sense for film spotting. And Rashomon is just one of those, like, what are we doing here with this Pantheon if something like Rashomon isn't in it. So I think we covered two good bases here. We still made it kind of a personal sort of pick. And also we're legitimizing the project with something like Rashomon.

38:36Adam Kempenaar:And even though we did leave Cleo out of that marathon, we did talk about Cleo and loved it, raved about that film. If you would like to hear that conversation and understand why we ultimately do see it as Pantheon worthy, you can find that in the Film Spotting Archive. If you're a film spotting family member, that was a wild card nominee last year as part of this Pantheon project. And now Cleo from five to seven is in the Pantheon, the perks and privileges of being a Pantheon movie. You're no longer eligible for film spotting top fives.

39:11Josh Larsen:And you and I have to remember that when we make our top five list or, you know, just take the step of going to the website and looking at the Pantheon page, actually looking at it for some reason. and I rarely do, but yeah, we got to let these sink in now. They're ineligible moving forward.

39:26Adam Kempenaar:There you go. The Pantheon Project continues with reviews of current Pantheon titles celebrating anniversaries this year. We do intend to get to Citizen Kane. Yes. Talk about the granddaddies of them all. Citizen Kane turning 85. Now Fargo, we had on the calendar earlier to correspond with its actual release date and have had to push it back. We're hoping to get to it. That turns 30 this year. The Tree of Life, one of our younger Pantheon project reviews at 15 years. And then David Lynch has two movies in the Pantheon that have anniversaries this year. Blue Velvet at 40 and Mulholland Drive at 25.

40:09Adam Kempenaar:So those are five movies that are all penciled into the schedule this year that you can look forward to. More about the Pantheon at filmspotting.net slash Pantheon. And I'll just tell you this real quick. The quick proposal to augment the marathon or the process to the Pantheon, I should say, is to keep it nine movies and to keep it where we each come in with one wildcard new title. And we each come in with one classic film title from film spotting history. It just can be either a marathon or a sacred cow, which was getting a little tricky anyway. Right. Yeah. The only difference is that it's a three by three by three approach where the other third set of three movies is we do have three movies that hold over from the previous year's ballot.

41:06Adam Kempenaar:essentially the three top vote getters that feel like the three most urgent, the three most popular films that sort of deserve to be held over. Right. And I feel like with with a couple of the titles in particular that you heard that were very high in the voting and were certainly high on both our list and the film spotting family list. There's really no reason why one or two of those titles shouldn't for sure be held over onto the ballot next year and considered.

41:35Josh Larsen:Yeah. Roll them over. Wrinkle question, you don't have to answer if this hasn't been discussed, but do they have a number of times where they can roll over and then are no longer eligible at all?

41:47Adam Kempenaar:Yes. Well, what we've decided is, or what the thought is, is we're calling it the soft sabbatical, which is to ensure that it doesn't get too boring of hearing the same ones for 10 years potentially or whatever, is that after three years of being held over, if it doesn't get voted in, It does have to automatically come out, but it's not banned forever. If a host wants to re-nominate it, they can. After a sabbatical. Okay. After a year. I mean, again, maybe the host never will, but they can. Right. It's not banned forever. Yeah. Makes sense. So I think we've got it figured out. I think it will work.

42:25Adam Kempenaar:I think this process is working moving forward. Obviously, the four films that we've nominated, in terms of what we want to do, achieve getting great conversations. Well, we're having fun with the conversations. Again, the listeners can decide, but having really fun conversations about six movies that we haven't talked about in depth, the two of us before over the past two years, and then getting four exciting films into the Pantheon over the past two years, it's, it's checked those boxes.

42:52Josh Larsen:Yeah. It's a great, it's a great start with this mix of four so far. Absolutely.

42:58Adam Kempenaar:Reminder more about the Pantheon at filmspotting.net slash Pantheon. And coming Friday, our review of the drama and 40s Madness Elite Eight.

43:08Josh Larsen:Film Spotting is independently produced and listener supported. You can support the show by joining the Film Spotting family at filmspottingfamily.com. You can listen early and ad-free. You'll also get monthly bonus episodes, a weekly newsletter, and access to the entire show archive. Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe DeSoe and Sam Van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar. Special thanks to everyone at WBEZ Chicago. More information is available at WBEZ.org. For Film Spotting, I'm Josh Larson.

43:44Adam Kempenaar:And I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

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