Sunday, June 03, 2012

End Notes


A couple months ago I started the never-ending process of revising my posts ranking the films from each year.  The Movies of the Year posts are some of the oldest and least impressive parts of this blog, and they're very much in need of updating.  While I've kept the actual yearly lists up to date on The Big List, I'd eventually like to have something written about each of the films I've ranked, organized in such a way that they'd be easily accessible.  To that end, I've been making new posts for each year, with the movies I've seen reviewed and ranked.  The Big List will serve both as a summary and an index of these posts, which will be continually updated each time I see a new movie or reevaluate an old one (in the meantime, I've been adding links within the Big List to previously-written reviews, some of which are OK.  I made it through 1932).  So far, I've covered 1901-1904, and I'll be posting an in-progress version of the 1957 list sometime soon.  I've been watching a lot of 1957 movies lately, so many of the reviews there will be new to The End.


In other news, I'm happy to share that the Self-Styled Siren has announced that the National Film Preservation Foundation will be streaming the proto-Hitchcock film The White Shadow later this year.  The For the Love of Film blogathon raised $6,600 towards that goal, and now Fandor has provided the rest of the money necessary to digitize and score the film.  My contributions to blogathon can be found at the Index of Essays link in the top right corner, along with all the other longer pieces I've written over the years.


Some plugs for the work of some friends:

My old Metro Classics co-conspirator Mike has his own blog now, Utter Piffle.  He's in the midst of a year long marathon of writing about every Disney animated film.  Send him your sympathies as he enters the 1970s.

Cinema on the Road is a podcast in which Seema and Jhon discuss various films from around the world.  It's always a relaxed and interesting listen, even though most of the films they talk about I haven't seen yet.  Recent episodes on Australia and Turkey (covering Sweetie and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, among other films, respectively) I thought were particularly good.

They Shot Pictures is another of Seema's podcasts, this one focusing each episode on a single director.  She's done two episodes so far, on Ernst Lubitsch and Satyajit Ray, both of which are recommended.  There's a rumor that Josef von Sternberg lies in the future.


Finally, no post here at The End is complete without a ranked list.  I've had a lot of fun working on The Laurel & Hardy Project over the last few months and I plan to get back to it shortly.  Eleven films in, about one eighth of the way along, here's a list of the films I've seen so far, along with their rankings by year.


1. Jewish Prudence - 8, 1927
2. Love 'Em and Weep - 10, 1927
3. Fluttering Hearts - 11, 1927
4. With Love and Hisses - 12, 1927
5. Duck Soup - 13, 1927
6. 45 Minutes from Hollywood - 8, 1926
7. Why Girls Love Sailors - 15, 1927
8. Sugar Daddies - 16, 1927
9. Thundering Fleas - 9, 1926
10. Slipping Wives - 17, 1927
11. Along Came Auntie - 10, 1926

4 comments:

  1. Earlier this week I was toying with the idea of you and I joining forces for a monthly film podcast. "Utter Cinema" or "The End of Piffle", or some such nonsense. But then I wondered how entertaining my obnoxious braying and your monotonous mumble would be.

    I guess it could be an interesting dynamic if we pulled it off. But oh so much work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wait, I know: "Thursdays at the Ush Stand"!

    ReplyDelete
  3. How hard could it be? Kids do it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, kids also kickflip skateboards down stairwells and build science fair volcanoes.

    ReplyDelete