Lost in the Movies: 2013

Soundtrack to a Warm Winter: #iPodAlbumPlaylist, December 2013



As the year ends, I begin a new method of recording my musical explorations. Since the spring, I've been rounding up #iPodAlbumPlaylists, groups of LPs I set up and then listened to over the course of weeks or months (you can keep track via this hashtag on Twitter). I'm no longer setting up these playlists ahead of time, but rather choosing what album I want to listen to at a given moment - and at the end of each month I'll round up the results. Here's what I listened to in December, limited by the absence of headphones for several weeks and a Christmas song playlist that occupied my earspace around the holidays. Next month there will probably be more titles here. As before, I've included covers, basic info, and favorite tracks with a link to the track itself, if available online.


The Christmas Day Nostalgia Marathon (#WatchlistScreenCaps)


Today, December 25, I celebrated Christmas with a viewing marathon. There was a definite theme to the lineup: not only were the first eight movies (well, six movies and a TV episode) holiday-themed, most of them I knew well from childhood (the two exceptions were based on stories or characters I was very familiar with). In many cases, this was my first re-viewing as an adult.

In keeping with the tradition of previous viewing marathons, all films viewed digitally appear full-size while TV episodes, VHS viewings, and broadcasts (i.e. things I usually wouldn't screen-cap if I wasn't being so comprehensive) appear in smaller images. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for a full line-up of everything I've watched this year.

Links lead to pieces I've written on the given film. Merry Christmas (or what's left of it), Happy Boxer's Day, and a Happy New Year.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 12/22 - 12/24


Here are the last ten films/videos I watched digitally, with a screen-captured image and caption. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for images from everything I've watched since February. On Christmas Day, I will be tweeting and eventually blogging screen-caps from a nostalgia-movie marathon (focused on films I watched as a kid in the late 80s/early 90s, some of which I haven't seen since), so stay tuned.

Also, please let me know if you can't see any pictures in the slider atop this blog (only visible on the main page, not individual posts). Or if you can. I can't see anything anymore and am wondering if it's just my computer and phone, or if I should lose the feature...

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 12/7 - 12/21


Here are the last ten films I watched (except my music video marathon, which was gathered on its own page), with a screen-captured image and caption. Linked titles lead to previous pieces on the given title from this blog. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for images from everything I've watched since February.

Music video marathon, 12/16 - 12/18


Between December 16 - 18, I viewed seventy-nine music videos based on three lists (Time, Rolling Stone, Billboard), favorite songs on my #iPodAlbumPlaylist, and a few random selections I wanted to watched. Here they all are, with a screen-captured image and personal epigram. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images.

Links are to the online music videos, so you can watch them yourself. Enjoy.

4 thoughts in response to The Battle of Chile


The following brief reflections originally appeared on Twitter following my first viewing of The Battle of Chile (1975 - 1979), a 3-part documentary covering the CIA-sponsored coup which overthrew democratically-elected left-wing President Salvador Allende and replaced him with the right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Frances Ha


Frances Ha is a fish-out-of-water story in which we actually see that process take place. Flailing, failing dancer Frances (Greta Gerwig), shuffled from home to home, falling behind her pack of friends, wandering off to Paris on a whim and mail-order credit card, is like a sea creature swimming along contentedly until the tide abruptly goes out, leaving her flopping on the shore unexpectedly. One moment the spot she inhabits was her watery home, the next it's her sandy grave. Not that the film is so dark; it's a charming comedy of manners, and one of its charms is that it neither takes itself too seriously nor treats itself too flippantly. One of Frances' most likable qualities is that even as she radiates neurotic discomfort and disappointment, she staggers on, trying to make the best of things instead of wallowing in misery. Her ethos is almost old-fashioned, like a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd hero determined to run with the big boys even as we love them precisely for being incapable of making it.

Fiction and Nonfiction - 10 Long-Form Films: #WatchlistScreenCaps, 11/17 - 12/7 (miniseries edition)


Here are the last ten films I finished, with a screen-captured image and caption. All are miniseries (half are documentary, half are dramatic) - many of which I began watching this summer. The first three were re-viewings, the rest first-timers. Linked titles lead to previous pieces from this blog. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for images from everything I've watched since February.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 11/11 - 11/17 (music video edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be music videos, including for spoken-word tracks), with a screen-captured image and caption. Linked titles lead to previous pieces on the given title from this blog. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for images from everything I've watched since February.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 10/27 - 11/10


Here are the last ten films I watched (except my filmmaker documentary marathon, which was gathered on its own page), with a screen-captured image and caption. Linked titles lead to previous pieces on the given title from this blog. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for images from everything I've watched since February.

Filmmaker documentary marathon, 11/9


On November 9 I held a viewing marathon in which I watched documentaries about filmmakers. Here they are, with a screen-captured image and personal epigram. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images.

The Final Shuffle: #iPodAlbumPlaylist, pt. VII


Here is my final prearranged 25-album playlist. After completing the last leg of a playlist created back in May, I made a brand new playlist a few weeks ago and put it on shuffle. This will be the last time I take this approach; though I plan to continue these #iPodAlbumPlaylist round-ups each month, from now on they will appear at the end of the month and simply reflect every album I listened to during that month. No prearranged playlists, no shuffles, no set amount of LPs. However, if I listen to an album that already appeared in an earlier round-up, I won't include it again.

I listened to the following albums in the weeks preceding my birthday (which was yesterday, also the first time I've not posted on November 1 since the blog began which I'm kinda bummed about). Among these are many more classic favorites than appeared on the previous lists; maybe I was in a nostalgic mood. Nonetheless, there are also (as always) records I'd never ever heard before or at least seldom really listened to. And, of course, there's an old favorite that was particularly pertinent and poignant this week (though it was incorporated ahead of time, by coincidence). RIP Lou Reed - and thanks for all the great music. (h/t for the memorable top image: Zombies en el Ghetto)

As always, you can follow my listenings on Twitter, scan my last playlist or look at all previous round-ups on this blog.


Western Countdown - Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid


This review, my first in over six months (the longest gap since Lost in the Movies began in 2008), is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark western countdown, where the 1973 Sam Peckinpah picture was voted #30. The piece has been cross-posted on Wonders, and you can visit that site for more comments and discussion.

Movies are motifs and moments as well as stories - individual, isolated campfires flickering in the desert dusk and not just landscapes strung together by a stretch of lonesome road. Perhaps Westerns more than most other narrative films rely on this identification with details rather than plot development. Indeed, often the plots exist as clotheslines over which to string the details: the kids playing in the dirt staring up in awe at the outlaws riding nonchalantly through town, the bedroom sequence in which a lonely drifter becomes loquacious with a local whore, the banter over whisky at the bar (nobody drinks beer in saloons, it seems). Audiences go to Westerns - or went to Westerns when they were more popular - less to experience surprise twists and turns in a novelistic story than to gaze with affection and curiosity at a portrait of a time and place both familiar and foreign.

"Revisionist" directors like Sam Peckinpah may have upset and upturned conventions, but they also honored and expanded upon those conventions in the first place. Watching films like The Wild Bunch today, their once-groundbreaking violence no longer shocks; one is struck instead by the ways in which they feel nostalgic or old-fashioned. They exude a sense of affectionate camaraderie which one seldom finds outside of buddy comedies (albeit sans stoicism) in 2013. Perhaps no Western more acutely captures the passage from warm if rough camaraderie into brooding, suspicious isolation than Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). Even stylistically, the film - particularly when comparing its various incarnations (three have been released over the years) - is torn between a sense of long, lingering (perhaps excessive) attention to detail and a relentless march toward an inevitable outcome.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 10/4 - 10/27


Here are the last ten films I watched (except my classic cartoon marathon, which was gathered on its own page), with a screen-captured image and caption. This week, all titles were brought to my attention by Sam Juliano of Wonders in the Dark (years ago in some cases, but I'm only just catching up). Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for images from everything I've watched since February.

The rest of 90 Years of Cinema: my "alternate Oscars", 1923 - 2012


My picks for best supporting actor and actress, score, cinematography, screenplay, editing, and other miscellaneous categories year-by-year (plus honorable mentions, runners-up, and close calls) based on my choices in the Wonders in the Dark weekly poll

Read the introduction for background & further explanation

Part of the fun in voting each week was not just choosing the big dogs, but being reminded of a brief but classic supporting performance, finding ways to reward films that hadn't made any of the top categories (or inventing new categories yourself to do so), or even running down the massive list of honorable mentions and close calls. Below are all the remaining categories I voted in, some of which I made up just for fun and only stuck with for a couple decades (those I was most enthusiastic about). There's even a category I only used once, though the winner was certainly deserving.

Originally I planned to link every title that had been featured elsewhere on my blog, but it didn't look good and the task was extraordinarily tedious. I trust if a title interests you, you can find your way to my directory or movie timeline and discover what else I think about them. Images have been used more sparingly as well, one for each decade of the supporting picks, and then only above the categories from there down. Putting together this series of posts was stupefyingly complicated and laborious, so much so that I probably wouldn't have done it had I known what was in store. But I'm glad I didn't - aren't you?

Although I dithered, I eventually included some stats at the end of this post, basically noting which directors, actors, and genres I most favored. On the other hand, I did not follow through on the idea of linking to individual ballots in the Wonders poll so that readers could check out all my votes for a given year in one place, as well as reading my occasional comments on said choices (check out this category tag to track them down, if you must). However, I will link my 1973 ballot, by far my longest in which I wax rhapsodic about one of my favorite years in cinema history. After all the lists, stats, and classifications in the world, that's really what it comes back to.

This concludes a week in which I posted my top feature films, short films, actors, actresses, and directors for 1923 - 2012

From now on, all of my winners can be found on a single "90 Years of Cinema" page as well.

90 Years of Directors: my "alternate Oscars", 1923 - 2012


My picks for best feature year-by-year, based on my choices in the Wonders in the Dark weekly poll

Read the introduction for background & further explanation

Though their role lies at the center of filmmaking, my "Directors" list may comprise the most idiosyncratic category. Unlike the Academy and other award-bestowers, I mostly gave my "Picture" and "Director" honors to different films each year; in fact, less than a quarter of my selections match up. Why? Sometimes I misfired in the name of diversity, missing perfect opportunities to reward Vidor, Lean, Fellini, Melville, Bertolucci, Rohmer, and Jia among all-time personal favorites, not to mention the legendary Renoir, Bunuel, Rossellini, Truffaut, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Chaplin, or (gulp) Ford so that I could spread the riches among multiple films in a given year. None of these deserving auteurs ever won, while others (no less deserving, mind you) racked up two or three awards each (Bergman won only once, for one of his most obscure movies; I skipped numerous chances to reward both him and Ford, thinking they'd have plenty of other opportunities and then somehow they got lost in the shuffle). Doing it again, I'd probably impose a limitation on myself: let each director win only once. After all, the ranking is arbitrary to begin with; might as well maximize diversity. Ah well...too late now.

With those mea culpas pronounced, there are also some good reasons for the frequent mismatches between picture and director. For one, while I voted for best feature (or short) based mostly on personal passion - I judged the directing category more coolly. I'd hesitate to employ that bugaboo "objectivity" but I did generally choose films with pronounced styles, directed with bold and often highly controlled formal choices - films where I could assess in concrete terms what the director had done, while admiring his or her discipline (even if that discipline was shot through with improvisation). Occasionally these films are far from being favorites, but I respect their vision nonetheless. To put it in an elusive phrase, I voted based on "mise en scene." To me that means four essential elements: composition, camera movement, movement within the frame, and editing (less in terms of dodging mistakes and trimming fat than planning and shaping a rhythm). Yes, many directors oversee all elements and details of a production but it is in these areas they earn the right to sign their name. Performances are essential too, of course (though one never quite knows where the director ends and the actor begins) but for my purposes here I was more concerned with how they were shaped into a larger pattern than the elicitation of individual moments.

The results are surprisingly different from my own sensibility, which favors spontaneity and visceral, kinetic energy to meticulous precision and execution (well, maybe I favor the latter when it comes to blogging if not filmmaking or film appreciation), but then we're often drawn to our opposites, aren't we?

As with the actors and actresses, I've included the director's lifespan so you can glean their age. I've also noted the winner of a given year, so you can see where my choices for film and director part ways. And of course I've illustrated every selection; in this case, choosing images of the director from that particular time - in most cases, on the set of that particular movie (surprisingly available in most cases). By the way, did you know that Terrence Malick's face doesn't appear once in the 1-hour documentary on The New World disc? Interesting...

So far this week I've posted my top feature films, short films, actors, and actresses for 1923 - 2012

90 Years of Actresses: my "alternate Oscars", 1923 - 2012



My picks for best actresses year-by-year, based on my choices in the Wonders in the Dark weekly poll

Read the introduction for background & further explanation

It has always been a convention of awards-givers to divvy up the acting categories by gender, although this makes little sense in terms of actual craft (one wonders had more female directors made it into the industry, would the directing category would be split in two as well?). Are actors and actresses apples and oranges or two slightly varying strands of the same fruit? Regardless, doubling the category doubles the fun of picking winners and opens up interesting questions about how viewers and filmmakers approach the two sexes. As with the actors yesterday, I tend to favor actresses with emotionally ambitious approaches and with an energetic, larger-than-life quality. These performances vary between a touching fragility and a hard-edged dynamism, much like the men, although manifested in different ways (although in early years, there's a lot more comedy, and in later years a lot more emotionally intense drama).

Alongside the names of actresses and films, I've included lifespans (to roughly determine the age), character names, and directors of the film in question. I followed Allan's categorizations in most cases, but had to protest his characterization of Ana Torrent's performance in Cria Cuervos as "supporting" - she's a lead if there was one, despite her age. Below the full lineup, I've listed another series of links - these lead to other posts on this blog covering the films these actresses appeared in.

So far this week I've posted my top feature films, short films, and actors for 1923 - 2012


90 Years of Actors: my "alternate Oscars", 1923 - 2012


My picks for best actors year-by-year, based on my choices in the Wonders in the Dark weekly poll

Read the introduction for background & further explanation

From Severin Mars, who died before this lineup even opens (my ballot's only posthumous award) to Ryan Gosling, born the same decade as me this list runs the gamut of acting eras and styles. I think of myself as someone who prefers a "naturalistic" style of performance, but scrolling through these characters I notice that many are over-the-top and larger-than-life. Clearly I enjoy an actor who's willing to chew scenery with gusto - but along with colorfulness, I appreciate intensity. There are quiet types below as well, but they tend to simmer beneath the surface. These actors skew younger than I expected and to my surprise I see that none are over sixty. I also left out some notable names (Jack Nicholson, in particular, is a grievous absence) while rewarding others numerous times but some of those absences can at least be found on the upcoming supporting list, a small consolation perhaps but a great performance is a great performance regardless of size.

Allan was the one who determined what counted as a lead vs. supporting performance, and I think in some cases he departed from the Academy's criterion. I followed suit. In addition to the actor's name, film's title, and accompanying image (I tried to find pictures isolating or at least focusing on the person in question), I also included the director(s) who worked with the performer, the name of the character portrayed, and the actor's lifespan so you can roughly glean their age at the time. Below the full lineup, I've listed another series of links - these lead to other posts on this blog covering the films these actors appeared in.

So far this week I've posted my top feature films and top short films for 1923 - 2012

90 Years of Shorts: my "alternate Oscars", 1923 - 2012


My picks for best shorts year-by-year, based on my choices in the Wonders in the Dark weekly poll

Read the introduction for background & further explanation

Though this category tends to get overlooked, it's the one I'm most excited about for several reasons. First, precisely because short films are often ignored, this lineup is full of surprises, hidden gems of cinema history. Second, I get to focus more on animation and the avant-garde, areas usually drowned out in the more crowded and narrative-heavy feature field. Finally, after 1960 shorts were organized by me in the weekly poll, so I discovered many of the following films in the process of voting. Even so, this category feels incomplete because many weeks I could only see a handful of nominees (and I also missed some votes in the early years, as you'll see). Yet I'm satisfied with most every choice below, and I hope you'll watch these films too (most are available online) - maybe one a day for the next few months? Share your thoughts below!

To qualify as a short on Allan's ballot, the film must be less than 40 minutes. Same as yesterday, titles are accompanied by a single producing country, director or occasionally producer for some cartoons, and a genre (I focus on only one dominant characteristic so that something like a Quay brothers film - at once animation, music video, and avant-garde - is just tagged as "animation"). Beneath the full lineup, I've listed another series of links - these lead to other posts on this blog covering the film in question.

Yesterday I posted my top feature films for 1923 - 2012

90 Years of Features: my "alternate Oscars", 1923 - 2012


My picks for best feature year-by-year, based on my choices in the Wonders in the Dark weekly poll

Read the introduction for background & further explanation

This category is at once the most subjective and the least erratic - I would probably stand by most (though not all!) of these choices today, which is more than I can say for some of my other selections. Going with my gut, I treated the category more as a "favorite" than a "best" - that is to say, I gave enthusiasm the edge over admiration. The results reveal an eclectic taste, I guess - everything from animation to documentary to experimental, across four continents - but also a consistent sensibility. I like visceral cinema, movies that grab ahold of you via bold and inventive choices in camera, theme, character, and construction. As Sam Fuller says in Pierrot le fou (not featured below, though the quote will appear again elsewhere): "Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word: emotion." That's true whether you're a psychologically tormented cross-dressing saint, a hardbitten yet sweetly naive streetwalker, a wittily wry and deeply pained playwright...or a brave little toaster.

Every title is accompanied by a single producing country (I chose one in the case of co-productions), the director (unless another participant has greater claim as auteur), and a genre assignation, debatable at best but included just for fun. And then there's the image, usually a screen-cap - for this category I chose pictures to represent the wide range of cinematic expression: from close-up to wide shot, distilling the luminosity of a face or the sweep of an evocative landscape.

Do you know these films? If so, share your own thoughts below. If not, check out the links below, which lead to any relevant posts (be they essays, visual tributes, or video clips) featured on this very blog. Get ready to explore, but with fair warning: there be dragons...

Introducing 90 Years of Cinema: my "alternate Oscars", 1923 - 2012


My personal picks for the best of each year from 1923 to 2012
Six illustrated lists will follow each day this week, beginning tomorrow

Update: view "90 Years of Cinema" on a single page

In January 2012, Allan Fish introduced a new weekly series on Wonders in the Dark: an "alternate Oscars" series in which voters on the site offered their picks (20/20 hindsight & all) for the best feature, short, director, actor, and actress of every year since 1921. I missed the first few weeks but began voting in 1923 and kept it up all the way through 2012, which concluded this past weekend.

Providing ballots based on his encyclopedic knowledge of film history, Allan eventually expanded the categories to include supporting actor and actress, cinematography, and score. Many of us, overcome by enthusiasm, added further categories just for our fun (since they wouldn't be tabulated). From my fifth ballot on, I voted for screenplay and editing, and in years when the competition was tight I added more playful groupings like "best line," "best ensemble," "best scene," and "best use of music."

Last of the List: #iPodAlbumPlaylist, pt. VI


I've just completed another playlist of twenty-five albums. This represented the final piece of a longer album playlist I made back in May - from now on these lists will be compiled closer to when I actually listen to them. As usual, the iPod was placed on album shuffle so the order is arbitrary. Some are familiar favorites, others new discoveries for me. You can also follow my listenings on Twitter, scan my last playlist or look at all previous round-ups on this blog.

A Saturday of Classic Cartoons: 90 images from my animation viewing marathon, 10/5


What day better than Saturday for a classic cartoon marathon? This past weekend, I got up while it was still dark out and, in an effort that would've made my 10-year-old self proud, extended a Saturday morning tradition well into the evening. I've been on a vacation from work this past week (it had been over a year since I'd taken more than four days off) and using the opportunity to catch up with many discs I've owned - in some cases for years - but never watched (as in never never - many were blind buys). Among these were four cartoon DVDs: Mickey Mouse in color & black-and-white, a Looney Tunes collection, and a cheapo anthology of 100 cartoons.

Since July I've been steadily making my way through these (see "100 Cartoons in 100 Images" from August) but I figured now was the time to finally plough through and finish 'em. So I did. There were some familiar favorites (including selections I hadn't seen since VHS tape in the late 80s - what an uncanny sensation to rewatch those!), several duds or weak efforts (I confirmed that I really tend to prefer 30s & 40s cartoons to those from the 50s & 60s), some fascinating oddities (including that cartoon with human lips Tarantino sampled in Pulp Fiction), and really revealing historical contexts.

In the latter category there was a slew of offensive racial imagery which I ended up not screen-capping even as an example (the Disney disc features Leonard Maltin nervously providing context before certain shorts - though the Warners and Fleischers cartoons I saw had more extensive stereotyping). Highlighting these is a worthy effort, but it didn't fit the tone of this lineup; perhaps in another post. On a more upbeat note, I also found these cartoons more culturally on-the-nose than many live-action features produced around the same time; somehow that vibrant, bouncy swingin' 30s & 40s energies is communicated more readily via animation.

Below are 90 screen-caps, including 3 from TV show (these appear smaller than the others and will not be included in the official #WatchlistScreenCaps directory). I've included a caption for each, usually a joke, alliterative description, or bad pun (though often, the opportunities for those were already taken by the toon's title) - although occasionally they express personal admiration especially for the dazzling accomplishments of Robert Clampett (the only linked title leads to a clip from my favorite film of his).

If you've seen any of these, or have any questions or comments, leave 'em below. Here we go...

Generations Linked by Video: The iHistory WW2 Project & Interview with Jeffrey Worthington


 The iHistory WW2 Video Competition
"The iHistory WW2 video competition is proud to connect teenagers with WWII veterans, giving students the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts of history. The students will film an interview with a WWII veteran that will be submitted to the Library of Congress. Then the students will use editing resources provided on our website to make a mini-documentary which they will submit to the competition on YouTube." - from "About the iHistory WW2 Contest"

There's a moment near the start of The Century (a documentary miniseries from 1999) that I've always found magical. The program begins unexpectedly in small-town New Jersey around '96 or '97, peeking into the corners of the familiar present to notice unexpected hints of the past. While there are many revealing places (including a car garage that was once a stable, back when "horsepower" meant just that), the most powerful and poignant reminders are the people who inhabit these places. It's their voices that carry us into the past, a miraculous dissolve from a moonlit sky to archival footage of dancing soldiers and parading movie stars and moonwalking astronauts...never has history seemed so alive.

That's the power of human memory, and the power of modern technology to capture and deliver these memories to a new generation. And that is why I was so intrigued to find out about the iHistory World War 2 project, a contest (sponsored by the nonprofit Worthington Foundation) encouraging young students to record interviews with World War 2 veterans; students will then be given the opportunity to craft polished documentary projects. This idea perfectly captures ability modern media's ability to bring history to life. Furthermore the time is now, because the youngest WW2 vets are now in their late eighties, and they aren't getting any younger.

I heard about the contest via email; I receive many such notifications and usually can't follow up even with the interesting ones. Yet I was fascinated by this project - its historical relevance, its cross-generational connections, its ability to open up filmmaking for young people who many never have considered themselves filmmakers before - and so I scheduled an interview with Jeffrey Worthington, founder and CEO of the Worthington Foundation. At the appointed time, Jeffrey was dealing with an unforeseen emergency, but he was kind enough to respond to my questions anyway, and the results are below. For more information, you can visit the iHistory WW2 contest website. The full interview follows the jump.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 10/2 - 10/4 (live-action short films edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be live-action shorts - variously comedic, musical, documentary, and avant-garde), with a screen-captured image and epigram on the subject. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 9/21 - 10/2


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject (excepting my documentary marathon, which was gathered on its own page). Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images. Links lead to any previous posts on the film in question.

Images from the Documentary Marathon, 10/1


Yesterday (October 1), I held a viewing marathon in which I watched ten documentaries. Here they are, with a screen-captured image and personal epigram. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 9/9 - 9/21


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

Uncharted Territory: #iPodAlbumPlaylist, pt. V


I've just completed another playlist of twenty-five albums. As usual, they were shuffled so the order is arbitrary. Some are familiar favorites, others new discoveries for me - a majority being the latter this time (especially strong in the first half). My favorite discovery was probably the proto-ambient Sonic Seasonings. Covers, titles, and favorite tracks are featured below. You can also follow my listenings on Twitter, scan my last playlist or look at all previous round-ups on this blog.


Images from the Two-Day Viewing Marathon, 9/15 - 9/16


On Sunday, September 15, and Monday, September 16, I held a "viewing marathon" - not a movie marathon per se as it included episodes of TV series and miniseries and video essays as well as short films and features. Since  I usually don't include episodes or video essays in #WatchlistScreenCaps line-ups, those appear in a smaller size and are not on the master list (which can be found here). My previous mixed-medium viewing diary is here.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 9/9 (short films edition II)


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images, and the previous short films edition to see more mixed-media short films.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 9/1 - 9/8 (a favorite from each decade)


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured frame and quick sentence on the subject. Last week, I decided to dig into my collection for some classics I hadn't watched in a while; halfway through the week, I realized each so far had been from a different decade so I decided to continue the trend. As a result, I've included one movie from each decade between the 1910s and the 2000s. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images. Links below are to previous posts on the film in question.

A Gallery of Movie Moments: Images from every film I've watched since February (344 #WatchlistScreenCaps)


Hundreds of images from my visual viewing diary

As anyone paying attention to this blog knows, the majority of my posts in 2013 have been #WatchlistScreenCaps round-ups. In these I track the past ten films I've seen via screen-captured frames from the film in question, accompanied by a little epitaph (occasionally a judgement, more often a description or observation), basic info on the title, and the date I watched it.

Some of you may have noticed that for several weeks I've been updating one big page containing every single one of these images - and now I'd like to formally announce its existence and invite you to explore. There you'll find cartoons and live-action, narrative and documentary, feature and short, color and black-and-white, theatrical releases and TV miniseries, even YouTube videos less than a minute long.

#WatchlistScreenCaps has been a fun way to keep a viewing diary and maintain interest (my own and my readers') in my blog at a time when I'm unable to take on more ambitious ventures like video essays or even simple movie reviews (though I hope to rectify that soon).

It can also be a good way to start conversation on a given film, so feel free to comment here on anything I've seen that you have too. Better yet, it can encourage you to check some of these out yourself (at least the worthwhile ones!); in a visual medium, a taste of what the film looks like can indeed be worth a thousand words as incentive. If you need words too (or video clips for that matter), you can click on the linked titles which lead to other pieces on these films from Lost in the Movies.

Here is the picture gallery for my #WatchlistScreenCaps. It will be updated every time I see another movie:


The round-ups will continue as well, of course, every time I've reached ten films. By the way, if any bloggers out there like this feature, I encourage you to imitate it on your own blogs as well (unless you've already been doing it on your own, that is - in which case, let me know!). I would love to follow your own visual viewing logs too.

Record of a Summer (with additional images)


This was definitely the summer of the screen-cap (and more will follow in a moment...). Since February, I've been keeping a visual diary of every movie I watched - including short films and online videos - and at times the pace has been rapid enough to drown out my other pieces. August was such a time: a succession of cartoon screen-cap round-ups swallowed up my homepage and hid the rest of my summer work.

So I'm using the end of the season to look back and offer highlights from the past few months - posts that weren't viewing, listening, or reading round-ups (I've also been posting album covers to reflect my iPod playlists and book covers to reflect a reading list).

I will continue the visual diary approach in coming months: I enjoy it, it's relatively easy to do, and seems to appeal to readers. However, I also hope to supplement these mostly silent images (adorned only with epigrams) with more essays, particularly focused on memorable movies I've seen in 2013 (I haven't reviewed a film since April). Not, that is, movies from 2013 - of which I've so far seen only one. But that's another story.

Meanwhile, here are my non-#WatchlistScreenCaps posts from Memorial Day to Labor Day, 2013:

Dozen images from two visually striking Grail films

Indian screenwriter's thoughts on tradition and innovcation

Reflections on race and political discourse after the Trayvon Martin case

Very short acknowledgement of my blog's anniversary

Very, very long reflection on my blog's history, with pictures of its former looks

Complete directory - in images - to every film featured in Mark Cousins' documentary

Six-month anniversary of my movie's premiere

My first amateur movie shoot took place on July 31, 1993, when I was nine

Carl Jung dreams of human history as a mysterious house

And finally, following the jump are some more images from the movies I saw this summer:

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/28 - 8/31


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Visit my #WatchlistScreenCaps archive for more arresting images. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/13 - 8/27 (first-time features edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Unusually, every single film is a narrative feature I'd never seen before. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

Back and back and back...


"This was the dream. I was in a house I did not know, which had two stories. It was 'my house.' I found myself in the upper story, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old pieces in rococo style. On the walls hung a number of precious old paintings. I wondered that this should be my house, and thought, 'Not bad.' But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older, and I realized that this part of the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The furnishings were medieval; the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I went from one room to another, thinking, 'Now I really must explore the whole house.' I came upon a heavy door, and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into the cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient. Examining the walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordinary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar. As soon as I saw this I knew that the walls dated from Roman times. My interest by now was intense. I looked more closely at the floor. It was of stone slabs, and in one of these I discovered a ring. When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted, and again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down into the depths. These too, I descended, and entered a low cave cut into the rock. Thick dust lay on the floor, and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture. I discovered two human skulls, obviously very old and half disintegrated. Then I awoke.

• • •

"It was plain to me that the house represented a kind of image of the psyche - that is to say, of my then state of consciousness, with hitherto unconscious additions. Consciousness was represented by the salon. It had an inhabited atmosphere, in spite of its antiquated style.

The ground floor stood for the first level of the unconscious. The deeper I went, the more alien and the darker the scene became. In the cave, I discovered remains of a primitive culture, that is, the world of the primitive man within myself - a world which can scarcely be reached or illuminated by consciousness. The primitive psyche of man borders on the life of the animal soul, just as the caves of prehistoric times were usually inhabited by animals before men laid claim to them."

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections (1963)

(Mostly) Familiar Favorites: #iPodAlbumPlaylist, pt. IV


I've just completed another playlist of twenty-five albums. As usual, they were shuffled so the order is arbitrary. Some are familiar favorites, others new discoveries for me (I go way back with most selections this time, but there were some new listens too with Neurovision being my favorite). Covers, titles, and favorite tracks are featured below. You can follow my listenings on Twitter and scan my last playlist or look at all previous round-ups on this blog.


The Sunday visual diary: Viewing marathon, 8/18


On Sunday, August 18, I held a "viewing marathon" - not a movie marathon per se as it included episodes of TV series and miniseries along with video essays, short films, segments from interviews, and features. Though I usually don't include episodes or video essays in #WatchlistScreenCaps line-ups, I've included them here in smaller sizes than the stuff I watched in its entirety. Previous viewing marathons were covered here and here. All #WatchlistScreenCaps entries can be found here. Links below lead to previous pieces on these titles.

100 Cartoons in 100 Images


As you can see by looking at the main page of this blog, I've been on a cartoon binge. In fact, without shooting for this number, I've watched exactly 100 animated shorts in the past 10 days. As usual, I have screen-capped each one for the previous ten #WatchlistScreenCaps (each themed based on what's included) for easy access. Th-th-th-that's all folks!

(animated shorts edition)

(Bosko edition)

(Looney Tunes edition)

(classic animated shorts edition)

(Ub Iwerks Comicolor edition)

(Max Fleischer Cartoon Classics edition)

(Betty Boop edition)

(black-and-white Mickey Mouse edition)

(Mickey Mouse edition)

(Technicolor Mickey Mouse edition)

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/11 - 8/12 (Technicolor Mickey Mouse edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be Technicolor Mickey Mouse cartoons), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/11 (Mickey Mouse edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be Mickey Mouse cartoons), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/10 (black-and-white Mickey Mouse edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/10 (Betty Boop edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be Betty Boop cartoons), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/10 (Max Fleischer Cartoon Classics edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be animated shorts created by the Fleischer brothers), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/9 (Ub Iwerks Comicolor edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be animated shorts produced by Ub Iwerks), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

P.S. just noticed this morning that this is my 700th post

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 8/7 - 8/9 (classic animated shorts edition)


Here are the last ten films I watched (all of which happen to be classic animated shorts), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and see all past #WatchlistScreenCaps here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

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