Every two years, I do a sort to come up with my 50 favorite films. You can see the 2012 version here, and the 2016 version will go up tomorrow. The actual pool of films I rank usually numbers in the hundreds. That’s because I’ve found that some films will dramatically change in ranking. For that reason –and the amount of time needed to do the rankings and write them all down– I only do the ranking every two…
Earlier this week, I mentioned I spent last weekend sorting out my favorite films, circa 2016. Well, yes. And love ya, Dame Julie, but that film didn’t make the 2012 list. Part of the fun of doing this biennial sort is to compare my current favorites to years past and see what has changed. For that reason, I’m sharing both the previous sorts I did using my current sorting method of pairwise comparison. As with…
This past weekend I had some free time. What do project managers do with free time? Make lists! Specifically, I decided it was time once again for my biennial Favorite Films sort. (you can find posts about the favorite film here). Creating a list of favorite films has been something I’ve been doing since at least the late 80s, but my current method is something I’ve been doing since 2012 and have found easy –and not…
With films and film history very much on the mind from my post earlier this week, I was delighted to stumble (pratfall?) across this list from Vulture about the 100 Fights that Shaped Action Cinema. The work of multiple writers (and presumed cinemaniacs), this list goes back to the earliest moving pictures to the present day (it came out earlier this month). I not only appreciate it for its exhaustive scope, I’m very thankful that…
It’s been 10 years since I relaunched this website. On the one hand, I find it hard to believe. Perhaps not as hard as some of you find it hard to believe. Or perhaps you’re stuck on the fact that I use the term “blogiversary,” but if you’re one of my seven or nine usual readers, you’ve come to expect that kind of thing. Anyway, the 10th anniversary is traditionally the “Tin” anniversary, which really…
Looking at my film history posts, I evidently only remember to talk about the National Film Registry when I’m working on my biennial Favorite Films post. However, the Library of Congress designates 25 films every year deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Over 900 films are on the registry now, even if you go through the whole list, you’ll think of more that could be added (and which you can nominate). So it’s always nice…
Given my name and the fact that I’m a cinemaniac, it should come as no surprise that I enjoy seeing Vikings on the big screen. I mean, all seven or nine of my regular readers know I like to post about Vikings. And my brother and I have a particular love of the Rohirrim from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (whose film versions aforementioned readers may recall are always somewhere in my list of 50…
Nine years ago today, I relaunched a personal website, something Internet denizens hadn’t seen since the days of Netscape Navigator. Depending on how you mark anniversaries, this will be the pottery or willow anniversary. Not as exciting as the Bronze Anniversary last year, but I guess folks decided that metals could use a break. As with previous versions of this blogiversary post, I’ll be looking at the posts that were popular over the past year…
The final month is upon us. DVD Netflix is going away. This departure will blow a hole in the movie-watching habits of many of us… and leave us ever more at the mercy of ephemeral licensing deals and capricious streamers, both of which may conspire to leave us without certain perfectly good films that deserve to be seen. As Beth Greenfield notes on Aol.com (yes, the irony of that article’s location is not lost on…
This past Monday, I shared an article about the allure of the film Master and Commander: But Wait, There’s More Title, directed by Peter Weir. This Sunday during the main Oscar ceremony, I learned that said director, now 78, received a special lifetime achievement award last November. And it got to me thinking that, apart from one or two of his films I haven’t seen, all of his films are always in my sort. Peter…