World Cup, Season 5, Match QFC: Singapore vs Russia (Oct 8th)

[joachimt]

This is match QFC of the fifth season of iCM Forum's Film World Cup.

Country	Original Title	English Title	Year	Manager	IMDB	ICM
Singapore	Be With Me		2005	hurluberlu	link	link
Russia	Detstvo Gorkogo	The Childhood of Maxim Gorky	1938	joachimt	link	link

Screenshots

Be With Me


Detstvo Gorkogo

Voting Rules:
- You must watch both films before you vote.
- To vote, post which of the two movies is your favorite. (note: you're ranking the individual films, not the countries)

Voting deadline = Oct 8th
Countdown till deadline

The country that ends at 1st place proceeds to the next round. The ranking of the match will be decided using these rules:
- Movie with most votes wins.
- In case of a tie the match will have a 3 day extension.
- In case there's still a tie then, the next voter decides by sudden death.

Here's a quick summary of how the tournament works

We start with 40 films from 40 countries. Each country has a manager who determines which movie will be watched. In the first round the countries are divided into 8 groups of 5. From each group the countries that end up at #1 and #2 proceed to the next round. In the 2nd round the 16 remaining countries will be divided into 4 groups of 4. The managers pick a new movie. From each group the countries that end up at #1 and #2 proceed to the next round. The remaining 8 countries will play one on one in the QF. This continues till the final.

iCM-list of all movies in this World Cup

List of all topics related to the World Cup including previous seasons

[Mario Gaborović]

01. Be with Me
02. Detstvo Gorkogo

[St. Gloede]

Very close match for me. Gorky might just have ended up winning because I saw it such a long time ago and I was a friendlier rater then:

01. Detstvo Gorkogo 7.5-8/10
02. Be with Me 7-7.5/10

[jvv]

1. Detstvo Gorkogo
2. Be with Me

[Fergenaprido]

A rare case where I've already seen both films.

1. 6.6 - Detstvo Gorkogo
2. 6.6 - Be with Me

I saw the Russian film in December 2021, and the Singaporean film in March 2022, but don't remember much from either and gave them both the same rating (and the same breakdown over the five components of my rating).

With a year or two's worth of hindsight, I remember The Childhood of Maxim Gorky more warmly, so that breaks the tie. I didn't write anything down for it a the time, but I do have a write-up for Be with Me in the OUT Challenge thread, and re-reading it reminded me of why I thought so poorly of it.

Real spoilers inside

Triptych by Eric Khoo with one story being a tragic teenage lesbian romance. My third Khoo, and my third letdown, and this is considered his best film by most. His obsession with filming food/making films about food and cooking continues in this one. The real-life story about the elderly blind and deaf lady was inspiring, but overall it's a big letdown, especially the third story about the creepy stalker who they try to make us empathize with for some strange reason. Spoiler, he dies at the end and I was glad.

[Armoreska]

1. Detstvo Gorkogo
2. Be With Me

too bad there are no upsets here. Argie vs Pore could have been a fun semi.

Fergenaprido, do you have updates for your LGBT sheet? BWM is not on any WLW list xcept the LB one that i havent moved yet.

[beavis]

1. Detstvo Gorkogo - 7.5
2. Be with Me - 7

Both films are not really for me, I found them flawed but still entertaining and liked them about the same (in different ways of course), but going on my ratings I think I have to say I liked the Russian one better.... to be more acurate, I rated the craft of that one higher, Be With Me was slightly more interesting actually.... but still, different but equal and the better craft wins out this time.

[Fergenaprido]

Fergenaprido, do you have updates for your LGBT sheet? BWM is not on any WLW list xcept the LB one that i havent moved yet.

Yes, I updated it a month or two ago. It happened a bit later than intended (May) as I was updating my sheet for the highest rated project so that xian could put together an LGBTQ+ sublist from those ratings.

[sol]

Reviews attached for those curious about my thoughts. I didn't really love either film this round but I gained two new Official Checks.

1. The Childhood of Maxim Gorky https://letterboxd.com/solh/film/the-ch ... xim-gorky/
2. Be With Me https://letterboxd.com/solh/film/be-with-me/

[klaus78]

1. Detstvo Gorkogo
2. Be With Me

[hurluberlu]

1. Be With Me 6+
2. Detstvo Gorkogo 6-

[cayado-coro]

Aha! I have seen both films!

1. Detstvo Gorkogo
(by a hair)
2. Be With Me

[Mario Gaborović]

Wow! Ten votes in, and still almost 9 days left. We haven't seen this in a while, I guess this happens when you have two better-known films.

The current scoreline:

Be with Me: 2
Detstvo Gorkogo: 8

[russa03]

1. Detstvo Gorkogo
2. Be with Me

[russa03]

Concerning Be With Me, why did the English subtitles i downloaded have narration that didn't appear in the film? The Spanish hardcoded subs didn't appear for a lot of the blind woman's narration about her life. It's a significant part that i would have missed if not for the downloaded subs.

[zhangalan]

1.Be with Me
2. Detstvo Gorkogo

[joachimt]

Concerning Be With Me, why did the English subtitles i downloaded have narration that didn't appear in the film? The Spanish hardcoded subs didn't appear for a lot of the blind woman's narration about her life. It's a significant part that i would have missed if not for the downloaded subs.

Spanish hardsubs?
Separately downloaded English subs?
I'm watching an MKV with integrated English softsubs, so separate file. Seems to me you haven't got the best option.

[joachimt]

Oh, haha. After 45 minutes indeed there are subs without dialogue. Weird!

[russa03]

I'm watching an MKV with integrated English softsubs, so separate file. Seems to me you haven't got the best option.

Not a problem as there is so little dialogue.

[hurluberlu]

First subtitle in English is after 10mins and then it is just scattered dialogue here and there. They are on opensubtitles.

[Smoover]

1. Detstvo Gorkogo 7.0
2. Be with Me 6.5

[joachimt]

1. Detstvo Gorkogo 8/10
2. Be with Me 6/10

The subtitles without dialogue were really annoying.

[joachimt]

I won't be online at the moment of the deadline and several days after that, but I'm sure Mario will finish the count.

Current score:
Russia: 11
Singapore: 3

[pitchorneirda]

01. Be with Me
02. Detstvo Gorkogo

Weakest quarterfinal so far for me

[zuma]

01 - Detstvo Gorkogo

02 - Be with Me

[filmbantha]

01. Be with Me

Although Be With Me is uneven, with two of the three segments being just okay, I found the story about the deaf and blind teacher to be truly inspiring and quite remarkable, to the extent that it may have been a new favourite if the film had focused purely on this aspect. 7/10

02. Detstvo Gorkogo

There was little in this film to separate it from the myriad of coming-of-age dramas I have seen previously, and I doubt I would ever feel the need to continue with the series. There was nothing bad about the film, it just lacked the magic to resonate with me on a personal level. 6/10

[Angel Glez]

1.Be With Me
2.Detstvo Gorkogo

[zzzorf]

1. Be With Me
2. Detstvo Gorkogo

[Mario Gaborović]

The match is over. Russia wins.

Be with Me: 7
Detstvo Gorkogo: 12

Congratulations to joachimt. to Also thanks to hurluberlu for his submission and the 19 people who voted this match.

Thus Singapore became the most successful country with a single appearance. Great run by hurluberlu!

[Fergenaprido]

The match is over. Russia wins.

Be with Me: 7
Detstvo Gorkogo: 12

Congratulations to joachimt. to Also thanks to hurluberlu for his submission and the 19 people who voted this match.

Thus Singapore became the most successful country with a single appearance. Great run by hurluberlu!

Wouldn't that be Estonia from Season 4? It made it all the way to the semifinals.

[Mario Gaborović]

The match is over. Russia wins.

Be with Me: 7
Detstvo Gorkogo: 12

Congratulations to joachimt. to Also thanks to hurluberlu for his submission and the 19 people who voted this match.

Thus Singapore became the most successful country with a single appearance. Great run by hurluberlu!

Wouldn't that be Estonia from Season 4? It made it all the way to the semifinals.

That's valid for the stage it qualified, but in terms of wins total, it's Singapore's 6 compared to Estonia's 5.

Of course that happened because this time we had groups of five and then groups of three, which made it possible for a country to accumulate those wins easily.

[hurluberlu]

The match is over. Russia wins.

Be with Me: 7
Detstvo Gorkogo: 12

Congratulations to joachimt. to Also thanks to hurluberlu for his submission and the 19 people who voted this match.

Thus Singapore became the most successful country with a single appearance. Great run by hurluberlu!

Wouldn't that be Estonia from Season 4? It made it all the way to the semifinals.

That's valid for the stage it qualified, but in terms of wins total, it's Singapore's 6 compared to Estonia's 5.

Of course that happened because this time we had groups of five and then groups of three, which made it possible for a country to accumulate those wins easily.

Thanks Mario !

Singapore was really a challenge given the available number of films AND directors: you quickly run in circles.
I am not a big fan of Eric Khoo and I have watched two or three more of his films to ensure Be with Me was truly his best but given how active and rewarded he has been, he was unavoidable. I thought the film would fare better with festival goers/watchers and especially after watching the Russian pick, I was wrong !

Next films I had lined are Royston Tan's 15 and Junfeng Boo's Apprentice.