Happy New Year!

Welcome to a new year and with it the usual slew of updates to the awards and year end critics lists. We’d like to, belatedly, ring in the new year with the adoption of 4 new lists, the replacement of one old list and an overdue revamp of another.

• Last year we made official the BBC's list of the best 21st century, published in 2016. This August, they published the results of another poll, involving 253 film critics from 52 countries, of the greatest comedies. This is a genre often overlooked by critics despite entertaining moviegoers worldwide, and one rather lacking in representation on official lists, so we're pleased to adopt The 100 Greatest Comedies of All Time (BBC Culture) so you can laugh your way to a platinum award (adopted from Panunzio).
• Another popular yet underrepresented genre on the site is romance, a staple of fiction for centuries that has so far been represented only by an AFI list and an imdb sourced list. It's about time this genre was represented by a list with a slightly broader perspective and we've come to the conclusion that TimeOut's 100 Best Romantic Movies, coming from a poll of over 100 film professionals, is a fitting adoption (adopted from togden).
• The site has awards lists for many countries, yet there are two countries with rich cinematic histories and awards dating back to the 50s that have been conspicuously missing. One is India, a country represented by a couple of current official lists but whose cinematic output is often reduced to Satyajit Ray and Bollywood. There's no denying both are pillars of the country's cinematic tradition, but we hope the adoption of the Golden Lotus Award - Best Feature Film shines a broader light on the richness of India's cinema, past, present and future (adopted from Rohit).
• The other country with an award list adopted this round is Germany. Currently represented only by a strong, but dated, Top 100, the adoption of the Lola Award - Best Film allows for a more contemporary perspective on its national cinema (adopted from Odradek).
• The last new list replaces a list with a source whose time has passed. We look for official lists to come from reputable sources, making an exception only for a few lists from active film communities connected to the development and growth of the site (FOK, FilmTotaal, reddit and icmforum.com). As such it's time to say goodbye to the current Western Top 100, sourced from an old poll on the now defunct IMDb boards. We wouldn't leave Western fans without a suitable replacement, though and we feel 100 Westerns (BFI Screen Guide) fits the bill (adopted from Kasparius).

Finally, noir fans may be aware that the TSPDT 250 Quintessential Noir Films and its companion More Noirs list have been replaced by a brand new, in construction, 1000 Noir Films on the TSPDT website. With the latest reveal pushing the new list past the 700 film mark, we felt this was a good time to refresh the lists and join TSPDT on the journey towards the reveal of the final 300, updating the list over the coming year along with them. Since they've highlighted 100 films as the most essential, we've chosen to keep the two list structure, with the 100 film list serving as an accessible entry point of the cream of the crop of the genre, and the remaining eventual 900 serving as a companion list for those who can't get enough of the genre.

As usual, we're always keeping official lists up to date, and you can see all updates here. We'd also like to mention that some time in the coming year we plan to do a poll to get some opinions from all our wonderful users on what lists they'd like to see us consider in the future, so keep your eyes open for a future blog post with details on the process.

Happy New Year from the iCheckMovies team!