“How I Learned to Stop Listing and Just Watch the Movie”
Kidding. I really haven’t stopped listing yet. What I want to know… do any other folks out there make big lists of movies to see? (Or books, even) Do you stick to it? How far do you go to get the hard to find ones?
I myself made a list of 400+ Movies, compiled from the Internet Movie Database, and the American Film Institute’s ‘Top 100’ Lists, some of which I’d already seen, and proceeded to watch the rest… I’m coming down the home stretch of the last 70 or so… and I’ve made another movie list so that the fun never stops.
Am I crazy?
If folks show any interest in this, my first thread, I may be compelled to post the list, or excerpts from it. If folks are interested.
I will attempt to conjure the list as best I can, going in easy bite-sized segments.
In chronological order, roughly. (by decade)
There was only one 1910’s movie on the original list :
Birth of a Nation - D.W. Griffith
1920’s :
The Navigator - Buster Keaton
The General - Buster Keaton
Sherlock, Jr. - Buster Keaton
Battleship Potemkin
The Gold Rush - Chaplin
The Freshman - Harold Lloyd
Safety Last - Harold Lloyd
Phantom of the Opera - 1925 Version
Nosferatu
The Jazz Singer
All of these, I have seen. The Freshman was about to give me a panic attack trying to find it, but TCM came to the rescue. Part II of the list, the 1930’s, coming up soon.
I can’t verify that this is 100% complete or accurate as to the original form of the list, but it should be a close facsimile.
Marx Brothers : (they get their own category)
Duck Soup
Monkey Business - Still haven’t found this anyplace except on Amazon to buy.
Horse Feathers
A Day at the Races
A Night at the Opera
Dinner at Eight - Jean Harlow
Sons of the Desert - Laurel and Hardy
39 Steps - Hitchcock
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town - Gary Cooper
My Man Godfrey
The Awful Truth
Topper
M - Fritz Lang
Modern Times - Chaplin
City Lights - Chaplin
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - One of my three 30’s favorites.
It Happened One Night - Another. Though all the Marx movies rate highly with me.
The Wizard of Oz
La Grande Illusion
All Quiet on the Western Front
Bringing Up Baby
Adventures of Robin Hood - The last of the three faves.
The Thin Man - Liked it so much, started looking for others in the series
Stagecoach - John Wayne
The Lady Vanishes - Hitchcock
Gone with the Wind
King Kong
Ninotchka
Frankenstein
Dracula
Mutiny on the Bounty
Snow White
Wuthering Heights
1930’s Additions
She Done Him Wrong - Mae West
It’s a Gift - WC Fields.
1940’s - The Last section I shall post this evening, fingers getting tired.
His Girl Friday
The Lady Eve
To Be or Not To Be
Shadow of a Doubt
Double Indemnity
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Its a Wonderful Life
The Grapes of Wrath
Maltese Falcon
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Best Years of Our Lives
Philadelphia Story
The Third Man
Fantasia
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Ladri di Biciclette
The Great Dictator
Notorious
The Big Sleep
Rebecca
Sullivan’s Travels
Laura
Arsenic and Old Lace
Palm Beach Story
Miracle on 34th Street
Adam’s Rib
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Woman of the Year
Ball of Fire
Road to Morocco - Started me on a Road-movie kick - saw all of those.
Gaslight
Picture of Dorian Gray
Glad you already get Turner Movie Classics. Within a month you’ll have seen a random dozen on your list. They even do silents late at night. Today they did a Jean Harlow festival.
With extended digital cables you get a dozen more movie channels of various providence, from the Independent Film Channel to Fox Family Film Channel to BBCAmerica and Bravo and MoviePlex and a bunch more non-premium channels. Scout them out. Even the least likely channel will have an occasional winner.
Sorry, it follows from the statement above it, where I spoke of three favorites. The reason the Marx Bros. comment is there and nother with #1 or #3 favorite is because… well, I wrote the comments before adding *Adventures of Robin Hood * … so I put the coment there when *It Happened One Night * was the last of my 30’s favorites. I’m lazy.
And I don’t know if the *Blue Angel * was on my original list… as I said, I have some difficulty reconstructing it, because I delete movies form it after watching them… but I have, nevertheless, seen that movie, and in fact, own a copy. Though I must say, the best Marlene Deitrich movie I’ve seen so far is Destry Rides Again.
Many of the films on my list are unavailable on DVD (and thus unavailable from Netflix) … or I happened to watch them before joining Netflix. TCM was indispensible in the Harold Lloyd movies, and some of the Marx Bros. I’m not actively watching their schedule now, because everything remaining on my primary list is available from Netflix (Except the Marx Bros. Monkey Business, which used to be, but they ran out of usable copies… and John Woo’s The Killer, which is in a similar situation.)
I hope to see more Jean Harlow movies in the future… some are actually getting decent DVD releases these days. I did set a tape for Red-Headed Woman, though. Pre-code films fascinate me.
As an omnigeek, or a geek with many areas of focus, I just don’t have the time to take such a course. Besides, they might make me write papers and things. Or do they not do that for Film Appreciation, generally?
For several years now, I’ve have been working on a project which involves creating a master list of “recommended films.” I have been collecting lists of “great films,” “underappreciated films,” or “important films you might have missed.” These list come from books, magazines, websites, personal recommendations, threads on the SDMB, and many other places. I have combined them into two lists. The first is a list of the 200 most recommended films on these films. (I’ve posted this list to the SDMB before or at least a link to it. I’ve been thinking of expanding it to 250 films.) The second is a list of every film recommended on at least one of these lists. This is about 2500 films. This might sound like a lot, but remember that there were a total of about 15,000 mentions of films in the lists I gathered, so that means that each of these films was probably mentioned several times in the lists I gathered. (And, besides, there have probably been at least a million films made over the history of the cinema.)
So what I have is two lists. One is a list of 200 to 250 films that constitutes a basic film education for the film buff, which he or she should be able to see in about two years with a little effort. The second is a lifetime watching for a film buff. 2500 films isn’t that much. I’ve probably seen that many in my life. I wish I had seen more of the films on the list and less trivial junk.
Well, don’t just tell us about it, sport… give us a link, huh? I’m always looking for more movies to watch.
As a sidenote, your username reminded me of a *Mystery Science Theater * bit… for some reason, I was reading it as Vendell Vagner (like the Germans might say) and it reminded me of the “Virgil Vogel? Va-va-voom!” line from what I believe is the Mole People episode.