First of all a big thank you to the 183 members who filled in the best and worst film survey handed out at our last film of 2009.  We had thought of sending a survey out with the last newsletter but decided that this would not elicit such a good response.

 

So what did the survey show?  Well, technically it showed that the film voted best was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with 34 votes and the film voted worst was The Host with 52 votes.  But there are several other stories behind these bald facts.

First of all several members voted for more than one best or worst film, (these votes were counted), and also four people could not nominate a best film and four people could not nominate a worst film.  So it’s not a straightforward, one person, one vote result.

Then it seems that we all know very clearly what we don’t like - The Host and No Country for Old Men with 36 votes were far and away the most disliked films and I guess we can understand why.  The Host was actually a disappointment for us, as it had received many critically favourable reviews and was well received at film festivals around the world.  We thought it would spice up the mix a bit.  But still it has to be said that four members nominated it as their best film!  Other disliked films were The Secret of the Grain (22), The Misfits (20) Lust, Caution (18), You the Living (18) and There Will Be Blood (16), none of which surprises really.  The rest of the films had very few ‘worst’ votes, with two The Black Balloon and The Visitor not getting any ‘worst’ votes at all - is this an indifference indicator, one wonders, or an indication that they were universally liked?

On the plus side, the votes were much more evenly spread.  Every film has at least one vote - including the kids’ film and the ‘worst’ film, The Host.  Films with over 20 votes each were Edge of Heaven (30), And When Did You Last See Your Father? (28), Juno (28), The Visitor (27), Happy Go Lucky (27), Up the Yangtze (25), The Band’s Visit (24) and The Black Balloon (21), so as you can see it was a much more even spread. 

The films that most divided you were Lust, Caution (16 for and 18 against) and No Country for Old Men (18 for and 36 against).  All of which just goes to show, I suppose that you can’t please all the people all the time!

Some members also took the time to make a few comments.  We thank them.  These will be presented at the first committee meeting of the year, and a news item will be posted after that date.