The Seven Best List-Referencing Entertainment-Related Lists of 2011

1. 2011 in review: The full poll (Sight & Sound)

The international film magazine’s venerable clearinghouse of critics’ lists astutely avoids Hollywood-centrism. You don’t just read it, you soak in it.

Sample: “A Peruvian single mother, a cute baby and the taciturn loner driving them the 1,500km from Asunción to Buenos Aires. Giorgelli’s delicate and beautifully performed road movie is a lesson in stolen glances, silence and understatement.” (Maria Delgado, on “Las acacias”)

2. The Black List

This is film executive Franklin Leonard’s annual compilation of producers’ favorite scripts that have yet to get produced. Saving lots of time and trouble, it goes straight to the list-maker’s hauteur-clogged heart: Now we may get righteously indignant or insufferably self-congratulatory about movies precisely because they don’t actually exist.

Sample: “Based on the true story of Colin Powell questioning the Bush administration leading up to his United Nations presentation where he made the case for going to war with Iraq.”

3. Ten Movies You Didn’t See in 2011, but Should Have (Slate)

New York Asian Film Festival co-founder Grady Hendrix has an adventurous spirit, and a flair for finding alternatives.

Sample: “These days, movies are obsessed with violence and scared of sex, despite the fact that most of us are far more likely to have sex than get shot.”

4. The Top 10 Everything (subsection: “Best Movies,” Time)

The longstanding (if dubious) authority on the whole “of the year” concept, Time magazine grasps at Web-era relevance and certainly gets the essence of the online-commentary vibe: It’s somehow both comprehensive and lazy. This list, from Richard Corliss, has the audacity to force you to click through one item at a time, all the way to — wait for it — “Fast Five.” But thousands of Facebook likes can’t be wrong. Right?

Sample: “The dialogue, characterizations and acting are irrelevant to the success of this first great film of the post-human era.”

5. Coffee With Jesus 207 (RadioFreeBabylon)

A succinctly executed comment on the phenomenon in question, and Christmas-appropriate too! (This is not a religious endorsement.)

Sample: “Yeah — that’s not really how this works, Jesus.”

6. The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections Of Year-End Lists (Monkey See, NPR)

Linda Holmes strikes just the right tone here, venting exasperation without taking the privilege of a readership for granted. Also: 20 seems like the right number.

Sample: “3. The Person Who Is Exactly Right. ‘It really seems like this list of things you thought were good is just your opinion.’”

7. The 7 Best List-Referencing Entertainment-Related Lists of 2011 (The Faster Times)

What began as a cutesy oh-so-meta gimmick also ended as one.

Sample: “What began as a cutesy oh-so-meta gimmick also ended as one.”