I recently discovered this decade-old list of the greatest British novels, which is more interesting than most of its type for a couple of reasons. First, the critics who voted in the poll are all outside the UK, which may or may not explain some notable omissions (Elizabeth Gaskell, Martin Amis, John le Carre, Beryl Bainbridge, for example). But even more significant, of the top 10 books, six are by female authors, and Jane Austen – who would almost certainly have been at or near the top of a poll of UK critics – doesn’t figure among them, with Pride and Prejudice in 11th place. 

Yet that top 10, and indeed much of the list, adheres very much to the Eng Lit canon. No reactionary curmudgeon is going to grumble that George Eliot or Virginia Woolf or the Brontës were only crowbarred in there to appease the feminists. Even today it would be entirely plausible to concoct a Top 10 of painting or classical music and have it populated solely by the dreaded Dead White Men. An appearance by Artemisia Gentileschi or Lili Boulanger would provoke accusations of tokenism, of DEI. But Charlotte Brontë? Well of course she’s earned a place alongside Dickens. The canon says so. And the obvious question is, why is the literary canon, in English at least, so open to gender equality, when the other arts resist it? And we could also ask whether the resources and publicity chucked at, say, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, might more profitably be offered to female painters or composers.

And then I find this pair of lists, which shows the films that have the biggest disparity when it comes to votes cast by male and female users of IMDb. Now, some of these are what you might expect. Women favour Frozen, The Notebook and (here we go again) Pride and Prejudice. Men lean to Raging Bull and Platoon. But that’s not all. All the female-favoured films are in English and in colour; the vast majority were made after 2000. The male films are at once considerably more diverse in terms of where and when they come from, and at the same time include far more (Seven Samurai, M, Paths of Glory, Lawrence of Arabia, etc) that would show up on any self-respecting film studies syllabus. Do men have better taste? Or are women simply more honest about what they like? 

PS: Belatedly, the six British authors namechecked by Donald Trump at his recent state visit. Now obviously he didn’t choose those writers (Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolkien, Orwell, Lewis, Kipling) and I’d be astonished if he’d read a book by any of them, or indeed by anyone, ever. But was the fact that they’re all male a clumsy oversight by his scriptwriters, or a conscious assertion of his tiresome machismo?

Lists of the best of things are dead and gone, kids, but what should replace them? The Independent offers us the most overrated albums, a stance that may have made sense 20-odd years ago, when Rolling Stone touted a canon ludicrously top-heavy with white male rockers from the 60s and 70s (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Springsteen, et al). Now, however, there is no such consensus, no icons against which we can be clastic. Sgt Pepper and Astral Weeks are still in place, but who ever thought Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor or A Brief Enquiry into Online Relationships by The 1975 had risen to any sort of cultural prominence from which they deserved to be knocked down? Even the authors of the list lack the courage of their pitchfork-wielding convictions; the greatness of PJ Harvey's Let England Shake is acknowledged, it just isn’t necessarily as good as some of her earlier stuff.

Rather more coherent, in methodology at least, is a poll organised by the blog They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? This time there’s a defined canon against which rage (the 2022 Sight & Sound poll) but it’s not just the resulting list of 100 films in the crosshairs; it’s any of the 4,336 films that received even a single vote, and are excluded from consideration in this selection. So, in theory at least, this should be a list of overlooked, forgotten gems, the ones that established critics and filmmakers either hadn’t seen or didn’t want to admit they liked. And there are such nuggets; but it also reveals that the great and good asked to contribute to the S&S poll had managed to miss such copper-bottomed classics as Grand Hotel, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Angels With Dirty Faces, Goodbye Mr Chips, Heaven Can Wait, Dead of Night, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Brighton Rock, Jour de Fête, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bad Day at Black Rock, Bob le Flambeur, Spartacus, A Fistful of Dollars, The Ipcress File, Wait Until Dark, Claire’s Knee, Little Big Man, Vanishing Point, Marathon Man, The Long Good Friday, Diva, Mephisto, A Zed and Two Noughts, City on Fire, Radio Days, Midnight Run, Man Bites Dog, Reservoir Dogs, Fallen Angels, City of Lost Children, Shall We Dance?, Pi, Audition, Tears of the Black Tiger, Lagaan, Downfall, Gomorra...

Which inevitably sets up another list, another canon, against which another band of discontents can vent their fury. A process that can continue over and over again, until we get to the point when someone complains that Sgt Pepper or Citizen Kane or War and Peace or the Mona Lisa doesn’t get the critical love it deserves in these polls and we start all over again.

The critic Derek Malcolm has died, which inevitably draws us back to 2001 and his shamelessly highbrow farewell gift to The Guardian, his 100 best films; any reader of his work would have a pretty good idea of the directors that would appear, although some might query the specific movies. (The Bitter Tea of General Yen for Capra? Really?)

The fun starts when his fellow reviewers are asked to review his list. Most respond with respect, while quibbling with the details; David Thomson despairs of the whole idea. And then there’s Nick Fisher from The Sun (who also died in the past few months), who gives a lovely display of performative philistinism: 

This is a buff's list, not a punter’s list. Where's Erin Brockovich and Men In Black? Where’s American Beauty or American Pie or American Movie, come to that? Long films with dense subtitles are not my cup of rosie. I think Derek and me would be hard pushed to ever pick a Saturday night out at the flicks together. Does he even eat popcorn? I think I read down to Kes before I even recognised any of these names as movies. Kinda smells of pretension to me. But hey, without buffs there would be no poncey foreign film festivals. And we know how important they are. Not. Kes, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull and Night At The Opera... yep, I go along with all of these as firm candidates for any Top 100. But, as for the other 96 titles, you're on your own Del. 

Two thoughts. First, although Malcolm might seem to be in thrall to the canon emforced by Sight and Sound, Cahiers du Cinéma, Film Comment and so forth, surely Fisher’s reference points are similarly unsurprising, playing the same game, but shorn of the “dense subtitles”. (Too many words, my dear Godard...)

The other is the frame of reference. Malcolm had almost certainly seen most of the films Fisher cited, and decided from a position of knowledge that they didn’t merit inclusion; could Fisher have said the same about the 96 he objected to on Malcolm’s list?

I don’t use Amazon all that much these days, but I do find its wish list function a useful tool with which to jot down books and other products I might wish to buy (from someone else) in the near future. Except that of course I forget about my list for months at a time, and the items on it become incrementally less desirable additions to the tsundoku pile.

For some reason, today I found myself rummaging in the depths in the deepest recesses of my list, going back as far as 2006. Many of these titles ring not the faintest bell. And I muse on what version of myself thought I might want to read the following:

• Shyness and Dignity, by Dag Solstad
• The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, by Lewis Hyde
• Living Life Without Loving the Beatles: A Survivor’s Guide, by Gary Hall
• The Giro Playboy, by Michael Smith
• Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo Virgin, by Iris Bahr
• Beware the Lobster People, by JJ Flitwick
• Thirteen, by Sebastian Beaumont
• Yiddish with Dick and Jane, by Ellis Weiner
• Gents, by Warwick Collins
• Transparent Imprint, by Michael Barnard
• What The Actual: Exasperated Incredulity Will Save America, by Muriel Chong
• The Edgier Waters, by A Stevens
• The Amnesiac, by Sam Taylor
• Three Trapped Tigers, by Guillermo Infante
• What Was Lost, by Catherine O'Flynn
• TM: Corporate Brand - Dream #69, by Nenko Joretsu
• I Am Not Sidney Poitier, by Percival Everett
• Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living, by Declan Kiberd
• Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are, by James Harkin
• The Great Dog Bottom Swap, by Peter Bently
• Gribley’s Last Conundrum, by Horatia Mannix
• Mobius Dick, by Andrew Crummy
• Callisto, by Torsten Krol
• The Last Mad Surge of Youth, by Mark Hodkinson
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu

I just discovered David Thomson’s biting-the-hand-that-feeds-him takedown of the Sight and Sound poll that tells us which films we should be seeking to unseat from their canonical position for the next decade. He sagely points out the distinction between “best” films and those one would actually choose to watch and rewatch if the mythical desert island became a repository for celluloid rather than vinyl:

...you’re all alone with perfect projection, so what are the ten pictures you want there simply in the name of pleasure? Don’t be shy of that hedonism, but think about your viewing habits day by day, year by year, especially during Covid. Under that shadow, what did you want to see again, and then again? 

I know what he means. There are some films (off the top of my head, Requiem for a Dream, Festen, Come and See) that I admire greatly but have only ever watched once, and I’d be fine if it stayed that way. They might make their way to my to my S&S list but not to my island.

Thomson also admitss that, once one gives up the Quixotic search for some kind of universal “best” (Most accomplished? Most innovative? Most influential? Most important? To whom?) film or book or record or painting or building, then all criticism ultimately become autobiography, even when it’s not explicitly acknowledged:

I hope voters will attest to their allegiances more than make a list of pictures for their résumé. But that leads to one more modest proposal. Thinking about my life with movies, and talking to others who have trod the same path, I find this common feeling: that the films we saw between the ages of four and about 16 are vital and embedded. We grow up to understand that some of those films are mediocre, fantasies that caught us at the right immature moment. But I’m not sure the screen ever meant more or gave us the secret about what a sensational and impermanent medium it is that we now try to make Ozymandian.

Leafing, as yer do, through 1952’s inaugural Sight and Sound Best Films List, the fun appears to be more in the chatter around the whole project than the list itself. 

One refrain, which I yell every time such a vote is taken, is that “the films one thought best (in the history of the cinema, etc.), were not necessarily the films one liked best.” Which I think is what distinguishes the two schools of list. People who vote for The Empire Strikes Back or The Shawshank Redemption in, say, an Empire  poll, do not acknowledge such a distinction; those who pick Vertigo or Tokyo Story in the Sight and Sound are painfully aware of it, although not all will own up to the dichotomy in their own aesthetic. And the complaints about 10 being an arbitrary number: “Why not 50? asked one contributor (sending in 15 choices). Why not 2½? suggested another.”

Which was presumably meant to be facetious, but it suggests another question: what’s the best half of a film, even if the other half disappoints?

Don’t let all these jaded old gits tell you that your youth wasn’t as brilliant as theirs – I was watching you losing your shit to ‘Killamangiro’ from the Club NME DJ booth and it absolutely was. The ‘00s UK rock scene was as exciting, energised and unpredictable as Britpop or punk, and far more varied than both.

The NME could and should have become a British Pitchfork, but the diminishing of it to a wilfully illiterate fan letter to sub-Libertines, sub-Strokes haircut bands in the 00s - a total cultural reductionism at a time when alternative music was defined specifically by diversity - ensured that would never happen. The NME should still be relevant to the musical offspring of the exciting scenes back then - Trash, Green Man, FWD>>, the birth of grime, etc etc - instead it only speaks to a tiny cluster of wankers in Doherty trilbies pissing on their own shoes and repeating Chris Moyles jokes at some “sheeeeeyine” festival somewhere. Ugh.

Post-Wikipedia, writers spend about nine-tenths of their piece setting out facts and received wisdom before saying anything original. Back then, we could make it all up. You didn’t know the “facts”. Didn’t really need them. I remember doing an interview with the Monochrome Set, in which I numbered them, one to six. What mattered was the words, the making up, that colouring in, which became the truth, the narrative of the music.

People say that we tend to read the books that impress or move us most before the age of 25. Not because we read less in later life but because we get too sophisticated to be so easily awestruck. Once you've read Great Expectations, anything you subsequently read would have to be even better than Great Expectations to impress you to the same extent as Great Expectations did – it would have to compensate for your greater expectations as a result of having read Great Expectations. That’s asking a lot of Nick Hornby.

• Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
• Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
• Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces
• Abbie Hoffmann, Steal This Book...