edit: Here's a link to
the year selection ballot. Deadline: Tuesday, March 20.
We need to decide which year we're going to focus on for the inaugural Retro Filmspots. (If you don't know what the Filmspots are, check out
this FAQ for the 2011 edition of the awards.)
Originally we thought we might just throw up a series of polls to narrow down the era then the decade then the year, but that started to seem a little arbitrary and impersonal and, well, boring. So here's plan B (which takes it cue from the
cases for resurrection thread that we had in the 90s bracket at one point):
We're going to take nominations from everyone for which year we should focus on. Each person will be limited to a single nomination, and nominations should take the form of an argument that you can post in this thread. The hope is that people will make good strong cases for why the rest of us should spend the next three to four months focusing on your year rather than the hundred other options.
A really good resource here, I think, will be the yearly polls that Gjay81 started and I (somewhat) finished:
It might be cool to glance through some of those polls and count of which years have the most films you yourself want to see and also the most films you want other people to see. You can also take into account the the filmmaking era, the historical impact, the variety of filmmaking on display, the potential impact on our Top 100, and so on. And, as everyone knows, every good argument includes screenshots. (Note: The years before 1919 are still viable options, even though no polls seem to exist for those years individual; the years after 1979 are off-limits, at least for this first Retro Filmspots.)
The goal here is to get this project started with a good conversation. It's possible that we'll quickly reach a consensus on which year we should have a Filmspots for; if not, we'll take all the nominated years and associated arguments and put them to a vote; and, if this whole thing's a bust, well, then we'll just go back to the polling idea.
So, have at it, Filmspotters. What year should we celebrate with our first Retro Filmspots (and why)?
pixote