BEHOLD! THE SKURIELS!

UPDATED! 8/21/12 12:36 p.m.

UPDATED AGAIN! 8/21/12 4:19 p.m.

AND UPDATED YET AGAIN! 8/21/12 8:43 p.m.
UPDATED WITH HONORABLE MENTIONS! 8/22/12 9:22 a.m.



"This may be the one that kills us." - Kanbei (Takashi Shimura), Seven Samurai

Paul Clark, co-founder of the beloved Muriel Awards, in which I am an honored annual participant, is up to something new this summer. He and Steven Carlson have conjoined the Muriels forces with Mike D'Angelo's Skandies awards (otherwise known as the Skander Halim Memorial Movie Survey) in an attempt to distinguish another voting body from the spotlight-snatching BFI Sight and Sound Poll. Muriels and Skandies voters sent in ballots earlier this summer for the first Annual Skuriels Awards, and now the results are being trickled out, Muriels style, over the course of the next few days at the official Skuriels blog.

"Naturally, there’s a tendency to feel a little intimidated, announcing our list like this in the shadow of the more established Sight and Sound poll," writes Clark. But he goes on to add that the idea is not so lofty as to try and steal attention from the BFI. "While they’re certainly worthy of their legendary status," Clark says in the opening salvo on the Skuriels blog, "we like to think there’s plenty of room for another poll of this sort among moviegoers. Some of these write-ups are long, other short; some of them are academic, others anecdotal, and at least one of them is... well, pretty darn creative. But they're all well worth your time."

And so it goes. Paul begins with a shout-out to all the Skandies contributors (including Yours Truly), and then moves right on to submissions on the first two of six movies that tied for the #15 spot, Seven Samurai (1954), courtesy of Matt Lynch, and The Searchers (1956), from the virtual pen of Andy Horbal.

Keep checking in throughout the week for more fine essays from the Skuriels team on the movies that made the list, as well as a look at some of the titles that garnered votes but had little chance of making the top 20. (The movie I was asked to write up has about as much chance of charting this list as Rick Santorum does of being elected president in November.)

And now, behold the Skuriels!

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UPDATE! Lots of new Skuriel entries already available! Click the following links to read up on...

#15 (tie): SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) (Matt Lynch)

#15 (tie): THE SEARCHERS (1956) (Andy Horbal)

#15 (tie): DR. STRANGELOVE, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) (George Wu)

#15 (tie): THE GODFATHER PART II (1974) (Jenny Sekwa)

#15 (tie): BLUE VELVET (1986) (Steve Carlson)

#15 (tie): PULP FICTION (1994) (Jason Alley)

#11 (tie): HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1941) (Phil Dyess-Nugent)

#11 (tie): THE GODFATHER (1972) (Paul Clark)

#11 (tie): BARRY LYNDON (1975) (Jim Emerson)

#11 (tie): APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) (Scott von Doviak)

#9 (tie): LA REGLE DE JEU (1939) (Chuck Bowen, Sky Hirschkron)

#9 (tie): MULHOLLAND DR. (2001) (Joshua Rothkopf, Scott von Doviak)

#8: REAR WINDOW (1954) (Glenn Heath Jr., Victor Morton)

#5 (tie): LA PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC (1928) (Bryant Frazer, Bryce Wilson)

#5 (tie): CASABLANCA (1941) (Don Marks)

#5 (tie): SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1950) (Scott Renshaw, Christianne Benedict)

#4: PLAYTIME (1967) (Kenji Fujishima)

#2 (tie): CITIZEN KANE (1941) (Daniel Cook Johnson, Paul Clark)

#2 (tie): VERTIGO (1958) (Ryan Wu)

(Vertigo and Citizen Kane tie for second place! Doesn't that just figure?! So the Skuriels have gone their own way. Which movie will take the crown? Find out as Jeff McMahon and Froilan Vispo reveal the number-one Skuriels vote-getter.

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UPDATE 8/22/12

The honorable mentions are beginning to roll in at The Skuriels blog. Click on over and see if any of your choices almost made the cut.

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