400 Movie Anniversary
Another
milestone has been reached by yours truly. 400 movies down the list as I count
it.
It feels
like I am actually getting somewhere, 400 is a sizeable chunk of the, huh,
approaching 1200 movies on the List.
The past
one hundred movies has taken me from 1955 to 1962, which amounts to seven years
and it has taken me a year and nine months. It is five years since I started
the blog and seven and a half years since I started watching the movies. Slow but
steady.
The List
keeps throwing curveballs at me, mixing the solid hits with the obscure and
this is a trend that seems to intensify here in the sixties. Sometimes it is
fun, sometimes annoying, but I am still in a period where I have seen very few
of the movies before, so they are always new and surprising to me.
And now for
the traditional award.
Last time I
mentioned that the style was moving from noir to westerns and that has truly
been a theme of the past hundred or two hundred movies. It is therefore
tempting to give the award to:
Best Western
(not a hotel)
Nominees
are:
1. The Searchers
2. Seven Samurai
3. Yojimbo
4. The Stagecoach
5. High Noon
Considering
Westerns are not my favorite genre, this is a very strong field of movies, all
of which I enjoyed heaps. Any of them could run away with the award, but I will,
without blinking, name the winner as:
Seven
Samurai
This is
simply one of the best westerns ever made and it is not even taking place in
the American West.
Somehow I
have a feeling that the category for my next award at 500 would be Most Obscure
movie. I was tempted to do it already, but I know some seriously weird stuff
will be coming my way over the next hundred movies so I will push it a little.
Congrats on the milestone! Slowly but surely, right? Journey of a thousand miles and all of that.
ReplyDeleteThere are some genuine obscurities later in the list, things that it feels like no one has heard of, let alone seen.
Yeah, slowly but surely.
DeleteLooking ahead on the List I can see quite a few movies that I expect to land in obsurity-land.
Well done! I am in awe of your watching them in chronological order; it clearly helps put things in context, or shows how 'ahead-of-its-time' some films are.
ReplyDeleteSeven Samurai is a great choice. I, like you, am ambivalent about Westerns - some are great but in general I am not excited by them. But, as always, Kurosawa delivers!
Thank you, Julia.
DeleteI never regretted the decision of doing it chronologically. It is interesting for context, but it also means that I do not have to make a decision on what to watch next. I simply follow the List. In this way I am never afraid that I might be cherry picking and saving a lot of misery for the end. I would never be strong enough to actively pick a movie like Dog Star Man to watch otherwise.
Kurosawa always delivers, exactly!
Where in the world are you Mr. Sorenson? Inquiring minds want to know! Hope all is well.
ReplyDeleteWell, these days I live in Israel with my Israeli wife. We spent en extended weekend in Warsaw, Poland, to escape the heat, with little success. And just two minutes ago I just finished the most wonderful Ozu movie yet. Review coming up tomorrow.
DeleteGlad to hear it! I haven't watched that Ozu in several years and am looking forward to a rewatch.
ReplyDelete