New Blog: "Short Cuts"

Hello to all my fanatical readers,
First of all, I promise that this'll be the last blog I create - you'd think I had nothing better to do with my time! Short Cuts, which was unveiled just yesterday, is an online tribute to the art of the short film. Though typically dismissed as an inferior medium of artistic expression, I wholeheartedly believe that short-subject cinema has just as much capacity for brilliance as its more long-winded cousins.

This new blog allows a portal through which I can advertise the best that short films have to offer, through reviews that are, I hope, concise and enjoyable to read (though, if a certain title strikes my fancy, I wouldn't be averse to exploring its virtues in greater detail). The venture was inspired by the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? top 250 listing of short films - entitled Brief Encounters - which is apparently due for official release soon, though I managed to scrounge a preliminary list from sources that shall remain anonymous. In order to allow greater freedom with my blog, I won't be basing my viewing choices on the list, but will instead utilise it only as a loose guide.

In short, please head over to the new blog and peruse at your leisure.

Thanks,

Andrew

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December 2008 TSPDT Update

That time of year has arrived. After slaving away at the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? Top 1000 for almost one year, the good folks who run the website have released their annual update, which encompasses a wider range of film polls and critics’ lists. Though I had expected my current progress (sitting at 241/1000) to receive a thorough bludgeoning, I’ve actually done quite well for myself here.

The following is a list of new additions and omissions from the updated list; I’ll list only the films that I’ve seen (out of a total of 96 changes).

New additions:
#483: Toy Story (1995, John Lasseter)
#541: Swing Time (1936, George Stevens)
#565: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991, James Cameron)
#576: MASH (1970, Robert Altman)
#601: An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli)
#644: The Usual Suspects (1997, Bryan Singer)
#660: My Fair Lady (1964, George Cukor)
#733: The Matrix (1999. Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski)
#778: City of God (2002, Fernando Meirelles)
#868: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, Frank Capra)
#878: From Here to Eternity (1953, Fred Zinnemann)
#880: Radio Days (1987, Woody Allen)
#898: Starship Troopers (1997, Paul Verhoeven)
#899: Leave Her to Heaven (1945, John M. Stahl)
#917: Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly)
#952: Scarlet Street (1945, Fritz Lang)
#953: Lost in Translation (2004, Sofia Coppola)
#956: Memento (2000, Christopher Nolan)
#979: American Beauty (1999, Sam Mendes)
#981: Fort Apache (1948, John Ford)

Total additions seen = 20

Omissions:
* The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926, Lotte Reiniger)
* L’ Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat (1895, Lumière, August & Louis Lumière)
* Blood Simple (1984, Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
* Jason and the Argonauts (1963, Don Chaffey)
* Knife in the Water (1982, Roman Polanski)
* Love and Death (1975, Woody Allen)
* Rififi (1955, Jules Dassin)
* Russian Ark (2002, Aleksandr Sokurov)
* Shock Corridor (1963, Sam Fuller)
* Stray Dog (1949, Akira Kurosawa)
* The Thin Man (1934, W.S. Van Dyke)
* The Tingler (1959, William Castle)
* Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971, Mel Stuart)

Total omissions seen = 13

So, as you can see, the newest update actually boosts my count of films seen, from 242/1000 to 249/1000. Believe it or not, I’m one viewing away from being one-quarter of the way there!

Thoughts on the changes? Well, I’m devastated to see Dassin’s Rififi (1955) and Van Dyke’s The Thin Man (1934) drop off – two very different films, of course, but each brilliant in its own way. From memory, that means that the Top 1000 is now Jules Dassin-free, which is a sorry state of existence {I recently viewed Night and the City (1950), which is even better, as part of my “Shooting in the Dark” blog}. Furthermore, a list without Nick and Nora Charles isn’t really a list at all. I think I'll drown my sorrows with a martini. We may also lament the childhood favourite Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Woody Allen’s epic Love and Death (1975) and that piece of campy, demented brilliance that is William Castle’s The Tingler (1959).

As far as additions are concerned, many of the new titles appear to be rather mainstream populist films of the last decade; such as The Usual Suspects (1997), American Beauty (1999), Memento (2000) and Donnie Darko (2001). These are all decent films in their own right, but it’s sad to think that they’ve stolen the place of that obscure Czechislovakian war drama that I’ve never heard of, and probably never will now.
The additions I’m most happy with are Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), a superb piece of Halloween craziness, and Swing Time (1936) – one can never have too much Fred and Ginger! Oh, and Terminator 2 is awesome.

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New Blog: "Shooting in the Dark"

Hi, folks!
Self-promotion isn't usually my thing, but I'd just like to let everybody know that my newest blog Shooting in the Dark is open for business. It's a companion-piece to Shooting Lessons: 1000 Pictures, and concerns my efforts to watch as many films as possible from the They Shoot Pictures list of America's top 250 film noirs.

I don't expect Shooting in the Dark to be updated quite as regularly as this blog, but give me a while and I'll have compiled plenty of reviews from films that you probably wouldn't hear about from anybody else - many of those film noirs are obscure as hell! In fact, I have no idea how I'm going to track them down myself. My first review will be for Delmer Daves' Dark Passage (1947), a dynamic little thriller with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, their third collaboration.

Anyway, be sure to wander over there (click the above link, or the link in my sidebar) and offer your best wishes. Seriously, the blog smells like honeysuckle. How could I have known that awesome film noir blogs could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?

Cheers,
Andrew

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"Shooting Lessons" Half-Year Update

A warm hello to my loyal readers, of which there are – last time I counted – about two, sometimes three. Yesterday, July 21, marked the six month anniversary of the birth of my “Shooting Lessons: 1000 Pictures” blog, and I’d just like to take a few minutes to reflect upon our achievements thus far in the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? Top 1000 quest.

When I first welcomed readers to “Shooting Lessons,” I had seen exactly 178 films from the list. I am happy to report that this tally now sits at 224 films, which means that, in the intervening six months, I have enjoyed a total of 46 brand-new titles from the Top 1000. This figure obviously doesn’t include the countless pictures I’ve watched that do not appear on the They Shoot Pictures list, including many very exciting new releases. If you’re interested in any of these films, full reviews for all can be accessed through my IMDb comments.

Additionally, when I began this endeavour, I expressed my intentions that I should complete the TSPDT top 100 within six months. In this case, I was clearly dreaming. Even early on, I decided that it was fruitless to try and force myself to adhere strictly to such a short selection, and so I regularly interspersed my viewings with films from both the entire Top 1000 and whatever else happened to strike my fancy.

In the top 100 stakes, my tally has lifted from 46 to 54: The Searchers (1956), Rashômon (1950), The Apartment (1960), The 400 Blows (1959), Persona (1966), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), Gone With the Wind (1939) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). From the top 10, I have yet to see The Rules of the Game (1939), Seven Samurai (1954) and Tokyo Story (1953).
My film-watching highlights for the year? At the top of the list is certainly my May 4 cinema viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a breathtaking and awe-inspiring film in every sense of the word, and most likely the greatest ever made. Another worthy competitor is my double-bill cinema screening of Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) earlier this month. Excluding repeat viewings, my only 10/10 rating for the year was for Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975), a wonderful David Lean-like epic that I recommend to everyone.

The first six months of 2008 (and December 2007) are also notable in that I discovered the bulk of Billy Wilder’s work, and, after 16 films and counting, he has become one of my all-time most cherished directors. Some of Wilder’s unexpected surprises have included the light-hearted and charming Irma La Douce (1963), the tense WWII propaganda picture Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and the first winning teaming of Lemmon and Mathau in The Fortune Cookie (1966).

What do the next six months have in store for “Shooting Lessons: 1000 Pictures?” Certainly I hope for another fifty films to strike themselves off the list, and, after that, I’ll be at the whim of the TSPDT folk when they decide to update their listings – hopefully the revision won’t be too harrowing for me. With a wonderful Ingmar Bergman box-set currently coming my way thanks to Ebay, I can hope to see more of his films. I would also like to branch out more exhaustively into the work of Carol Reed, John Ford, John Huston, Fritz Lang and David Lean.

At this point, enthusiastic encouragements would be most appreciated. Thanks to everybody for their support, and here’s wishing for another half-year of shooting down pictures.
Andrew

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A warm welcome to "Shooting Lessons: 1000 Pictures!"

Thank you very much to everybody who is reading this introductory welcome to my film blog, an online journal in which I hope to record my exploits in completing the The Shoot Pictures, Don't They? Top 1000 films list, from the perspective of a relative newcomer to cinema.
My calculations inform me that, to date, I have only seen a paltry 178 films from the top 1000, a figure that forces me to ask why I even consider myself a film buff! Nevertheless, considering I only took an active interest in cinema nearing the end of 2006, I suppose that it's a respectable enough figure.

Though I understand that the TSPDT Top 1000 is by no means definitive, it probably gives the most accurate representation of any list that I've been able to find. At the very least, even if I'm ultimately unsuccessful in completing my goal, I will have seen a bucketload of great films in the process of failing, and I really couldn't ask for any more than that!
My primary goal in the short-term (the next six months or so) will be to complete the TSPDT Top 100, of which I've currently seen 46. The fact that I'm missing five films from the top ten alone (The Rules of the Game, The Searchers, The Seven Samurai, Tokyo Story, Sunrise) is rather embarassing to me, and so they'll be among the first to be crossed off!

Now, for the sake of interest, here are the 178 films from the list that I have already seen and (for the most part) loved:

Citizen Kane
Vertigo
2001: A Space Odyssey
8½
Godfather, The
Singin' in the Rain
Battleship Potemkin
Lawrence of Arabia
Bicycle Thieves
Godfather Part II, The
Raging Bull
Casablanca
City Lights
Touch of Evil
Third Man, The
General, The [1926]
Some Like it Hot
Psycho [1960]
Sunset Blvd.
Gold Rush, The
Chinatown
Magnificent Ambersons, The
Taxi Driver
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Rear Window
Seventh Seal, The
Night of the Hunter, The
Apocalypse Now
It's a Wonderful Life
M [1931]
Modern Times
Wild Strawberries
Blade Runner
North by Northwest
Wizard of Oz, The
Metropolis
Pickpocket
Notorious
Sherlock Jr.
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Double Indemnity
Clockwork Orange, A
Man with a Movie Camera, The
His Girl Friday
Nosferatu
Broken Blossoms
Battle of Algiers, The
Duck Soup
King Kong [1933]
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The
Star Wars
Jaws
Manhattan
Stalker
Grapes of Wrath, The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The
Umberto D.
Annie Hall
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Shining, The
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Chien andalou, Un
Philadelphia Story, The
Once Upon a Time in America
Jetée, La
Brazil
Maltese Falcon, The
Pulp Fiction
Monsieur Verdoux
Paths of Glory
Conversation, The
Last Laugh, The
Exorcist, The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The
It Happened One Night
Bridge on the River Kwai, The
Schindler's List
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Rosemary's Baby
Birds, The
Graduate, The
Raiders of the Lost Ark
To Kill a Mockingbird
Peeping Tom
Alien
Great Dictator, The
Fantasia
Awful Truth, The
Night of the Living Dead
Strangers on a Train
All Quiet on the Western Front
Navigator, The
Fargo
Manchurian Candidate, The [1962]
Five Easy Pieces
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Aliens
African Queen, The
39 Steps, The
Shadow of a Doubt
F for Fake
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Terminator, The
Reservoir Dogs
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Empire Strikes Back, The
Top Hat
Frankenstein
Rebecca
Amadeus
Midnight Cowboy
Cabaret
Night and Fog
King of Comedy, The
Hard Day's Night, A
Groundhog Day
I Know Where I'm Going!
Come and See
Silence of the Lambs, The
American Graffiti
Limelight
Faust
Full Metal Jacket
Back to the Future
Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956]
Voyage dans la lune, Le
Elephant Man, The
Rocky
Eraserhead
All the President's Men
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Alphaville
Shawshank Redemption, The
Die Hard
12 Angry Men
Dog Day Afternoon
Killing, The
Barton Fink
Scarface [1932]
Scarface [1983]
Blood of a Poet, The
Forrest Gump
Hana-Bi
Lady Vanishes, The
Thing from Another World, The
Phantom Carriage, The
Dead Poets Society
Spirited Away
Blood Simple
Verdict, The [1982]
Seven Chances
French Connection, The
Day the Earth Stood Still, The
Miller's Crossing
Straw Dogs
Edward Scissorhands
Stray Dog
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Being There
Jason and the Argonauts
Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The
Thin Man, The
Purple Rose of Cairo, The
Eyes Wide Shut
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Fight Club
In the Heat of the Night
Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat, L'
Trial, The
Adventures of Prince Achmed, The
Woman of Paris, A
Broadway Danny Rose
Big Lebowski, The
Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The
Man in the White Suit, The
Rope
Knife in the Water

That's 178 down and 822 to go. My first post and review will follow in the next few days. Wish me luck!

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