Mike's Movie Goals For 2013 - Update

 

End of Febuary update.
With the recent Oscars, I find myself revigorated with a new thirst for watching films and blogging about them. I know that I've been pretty absent here and that my posting has been sparsed. Well, for the few out there who cared, I was starting a new job and as time and energy consuming as it was I did not found the proper moments to sit in front of a film and to write about it. Those are some of the reasons you won't see me hosting the Classic Chops on the LAMB and I won't be presenting my blog to the new edition of the Lammys. First, I don't think I deserve any of those recognitions and since I haven't been nominated it would be a waste of my time anyway. The passion of films and film writing is my reward so I don't need any other recognition other than your comments and reactions on my posts. Just having the chance to write them is enough for me. Enough of this and let's get to the update of my goals of 2013.

 For those who have been here a while you sure all know that I’ve been obsessively rambling about a particular list of films I’m targeting to complete. Since this list evolves from year to year, around January of each year the fine folks at They Shoot Pictures Don’t They? update the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time list. Every time I more or less gain some positions with the adding of more recent films that I had the luck to have seen before their intrusion.
With the recent update of the list I'm now at 551 546, on the day I wrote those lines down, I still have 454 films to catch before calling it a day. It is quite a huge assignment since my number of watches per year is clearly on a downfall since a couple of years. However, I’ve decided to spot my priorities for this quest (just like Kevyn Knox used to call his) and spot films that are grabbing my attention and that might open my viewing tastes.

First, I made a list of films I’ll likely try to tackle down while trying to get rid of my list of Pantheon Directors at the same time. The Pantheon Directors list stands as the foundation of every film enthusiast and or film critics’ theories and views on the cinema. It is quite arbitrary since American author theorist Andrew Sarris first made it in 1968. Anyhow, I still think it holds the road pretty much.

List of priorities: Only two films from this list of priorities

Stalker (Tarkovsky)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman)

A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes)

The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos)

The Crowd (Vidor)

Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Rivette)

Satantango (Tarr)

Harold and Maude (Ashby)

Red Desert (Antonioni)

The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)

Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (Carax)

Gilda (Charles Vidor)

Le trou (Becker)

Angel Face (Preminger)

Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter)

Oldboy (Pak-Wok)

Recent additions: Four films in this varia category
Argo (Affleck)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Zeitlin)
Intouchables (Toledano)
Zero Dark Thirty (Bigelow)
Lincoln (Spielberg)
Life of Pi (Lee)
Amour (Haneke)
Silver Linings Playbook (Russell)
Les Misérables (Hooper)
Barefoot Contessa (Mankiewicz)
Being John Malkovich (Jonze)
O' Brother Where Art Thou (Coen)
Hugo (Scorsese)
Drive (Refn)
A Separation
Night of the Demon (Tourneur)
Holy Motors (Carax)

Pantheon Directors: No films watched in this category
Robert Flaherty (2): Moana (1925), Man of Aran (1934).

John Ford (5): The Informer (1935), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Wagon Master (1950), The Sun Shines Bright (1953), Seven Women (1966).

D.W. Griffith (2): True Heart Susie (1919), Way Down East (1920).

Fritz Lang (11): Destiny (1921), Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Spione (1928), The Woman in the Window (1944), The Big Heat (1953), While the City Sleeps (1956), Moonfleet (1955), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), The Tiger of Eschnapur (1958), The Indian Tomb (1958).

F.W. Murnau (1): Tabu (1931).

Max Ophüls (3): Liebelei (1932), The Reckless Moment (1949), Le Plaisir (1951).

Jean Renoir (3): La Chienne (1931), La Bête humaine (1938), The Golden Coach (1952).

Josef von Sternberg (5): The Docks of New York (1928), Morocco (1930), Shanghai Express (1932), The Devil is a Woman (1935), Anatahan (1953).

After attacking those two goals I am planning on discovering films from many directors I’ve never seen a single picture. Most are names that I know and read a lot about but never grasped. Well, it could be called a blind spot list, one can say.

Blind spot directors: No films films watched in this category

Claude Autant-Lara

Jacques Becker

Jules Dassin

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Shohei Imamura

Emir Kusturica

Russ Meyer

Ermano Olmi

Sergeï Parajanov

Maurice Pialat

Vsevolod Pudovkin

Jacques Rivette

Glauber Rocha

Ousmane Sembene

Jean-Marie Straub

Béla Tarr

King Vidor

Raoul Walsh

John Waters

Edward Yang