CASTing a Final Net over the Year - 2011 in Review (Part 4)

Good friend James McNally (and first blogger I actually met face to face) from Toronto Screen Shots had the idea last year to put together the CAST Awards - a list of the top rated films of the year from the Toronto Film blogging community. Though it's about as representative of the group as much as any other consolidation of opinion is, the list was still an interesting counter to the Toronto Film Critics Association and a great way to further bring the blogging crowd together. The small set of bloggers who used to meet at film festivals and occasionally go for a pint has grown leaps and bounds over the past few years and 2011 has seen a large array of new (and seriously fantastic) people join the group. James is a key reason why our monthly film blogger pub nights are large, raucous and more fun than a block full of aliens attacking.

This year, the set of voters for the Cinema Appreciation Society of Toronto (CAST) Awards increased to 40 (many more were asked, but only 40 submitted by the deadline). The results are listed below but are also found at James' site with loads more stats and links to many of the participants. In addition, this year we also did a full roundtable podcast about the results (a CASTcast if you will - hey blame James, it was his joke). The panel included myself, James, Kurt Halfyard (from Rowthree and Twitch), Joe Belanger (Black Sheep Reviews), Ryan McNeil (The Matinee and who graciously hosted the event for us) and the duo of Matt Brown and Matt Price from the Mamo podcast (who acted as moderators and organized the group). I did my best to keep up with what I think is a terribly interesting and astute set of folks and had a great time chatting, laughing and sharing a bottle of Port.


The full roundtable podcast can be found and listened to here or downloaded directly from here.


The top 25 from the final CAST ballots are as follows (hope you don't mind me stealing the table from your site James...):

FILM TITLE	POINTS	MENTIONS	SEEN
1. Drive	548	31	36
2.The Artist	479	26	29
3. The Tree of Life	460	24	27
4. Attack the Block	386	25	36
5. Take Shelter	376	20	21
6. Midnight in Paris	330	24	31
7. Melancholia	306	19	26
8. Shame	284	19	28
9. Beginners	281	19	24
10. Martha Marcy May Marlene	279	20	24
11. Hanna	235	18	28
12. Café de Flore	207	9	13
13.The Raid	205	12	15
14. Blue Valentine	192	11	30
15. Bridesmaids	185	18	31
16.The Muppets	179	14	25
17. The Illusionist	174	11	22
18. The Descendants	172	11	16
19. Super 8	167	16	31
20. Contagion	167	14	22
21. The Interrupters	167	10	12
22. Tabloid	165	12	20
23. Hugo	162	10	23
24. The Trip	159	14	24
25. Meek’s Cutoff	159	10	18

A few notes:

• My favourite of the year Cafe De Flore finished 12th which was pretty remarkable for a festival film that had a small end of year release in town. It had the highest average point total from the voting, so you can see that there's a high degree of love from those who saw it.
• My favourite film of 2010 The Illusionist made this year's list too (due to a wider release in 2011). That's how great that film was...
• The most widely seen films were top scorer Drive and insane-amount-of-free-screenings-per-capita Attack The Block. I expect the latter had the wider disparity in individual rankings. The former didn't make my Top 25 though I liked it well enough.
• I've seen 19 of the Top 25, but only 6 of the Top 10.