Still running off the energy generated by my "32 Days of Movies" film clip series, I immediately announced "The Big Ones," a canonical mission to review the most notable titles that I'd overlooked on my site thus far: warhorses like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Grand Illusion, Seven Samurai, The Seventh Seal, among others. Following a familiar pattern, enthusiastic commitment eventually descended into weary obligation but I finished the project anyway, producing some of my stronger essays in the process. Other ongoing endeavors exhausted themselves too and after a hectic holiday schedule I took another break.
Subjects include a list of 100 favorite films to top off this autumn of all-encompassing cinephilia, impressions of avant-garde classics, my final round-up of other bloggers' work, an interview with an independent filmmaker, and a revealing comparison between Bambi as book and Disney adaptation (among other "animated animals" in November).
My highlight for this period is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an essay on Citizen Kane emphasizing what the film's structure says about individual characters as well as the relationship of form and content.
A vivid stop-motion fable kicks off the Animated Animals Month of my Fixing a Hole series
In tribute to the Wonders in the Dark genre countdown from the year before, I reviewed a personal favorite forties mystery
Inviting movie bloggers to pick their favorite posts of 2011
Filling a small case of DVDs for a cross-country move...which ones did I choose?
Glorious proto-music video whose visual impact is echoed in many later classics
These were probably the most canonical films that I had not yet covered on my site
The Wizard of Oz was not on my "Big Ones" list because I was saving it for a more ambitious analysis (never written); in the meantime, I paid visual tribute to the tornado sequence
Linking to guest writer Stephen Gebbett-Russell's entry in my Animated Animals Month series
Revisiting Sergei Eisenstein's revolutionary masterpiece in the autumn of Occupy Wall Street to kickstart my series on The Big Ones
The moral (but not moralistic) vision of neorealism, as The Big Ones series continues
The Big Ones finds a way into Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature through the lengthy bedroom dialogue
Not just a glamorous romance but a fervent expression of antifascist commitment, as I discovered on The Big Ones rewatch
Each narrator presents a different viewpoint, style, period, and even genre, investigated in-depth for The Big Ones
Visual tribute to the flashbacks and fantasies in Wild Strawberries
Should the cast of Who Framed Roger Rabbit "Occupy Tinseltown"?
What makes the end of Chaplin's poignant comedy so affecting? The Big Ones attempts to answer...
The Big Ones studies each chapter of Krzysztof Kieslowski's ten-part anthology, loosely riffing on the ten commandments with a unique visual approach for each
Fellini's famous hit didn't resonate with me at first, but for some reason I was compelled to rewatch it a few hours later, and it clicked (I re-visit this process for The Big Ones)
Looking at the childhood favorite again for The Big Ones, I'm more taken with the beginning and end than the middle
Disney's ambitious animation characterizes yet another anthology film in The Big Ones line-up
Visual tribute to Yoshishige Yoshida's dazling riff on Antonioni and Resnais
Comparing Felix Salten's novel to Walt Disney's adaptation for my Fixing a Hole - Animated Animals Month, I notice their differing treatment of Bambi's parents, Man, and Gobo (who's cut from the film completely)
The Big Ones recognizes Buster Keaton's talent for realism within slapstick (and vice-versa) in his Civil War chase comedy
Considering the Godfathers alone and together as The Big Ones doubles up for the first time
What is the illusion, exactly? That ambiguity is part of what makes this one of The Big Ones
DECEMBER
This multifaceted entry in The Big Ones is like switching the channel from a novelistic communal portrait to an intense psychodrama to an episode of The Twilight Zone (topped off by a Christmas special)
For my Big Ones review, I reflect the way I've seesawed back and forth on one of Francois Truffaut's most beloved films
Pictures from Murder, My Sweet, one of the most dazzling noirs (and my favorite Raymond Chandler adaptation)
Linking to guest writer Maurizio Roca's entry to launch my Avant Garde Month
The full version of my conversation with a young filmmaker
Talking to a director deep in pre-production
Adding a chronological directory of films to my site
Highlighting my work from the late fall of 2011
Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage - a look at mid-twentieth century American avant-garde cinema as Fixing a Hole resumes
Celebrating the work of Amos Vogel and the international experimental films he promoted (an entry in Fixing a Hole)
My fourth and final round-up of the movie blogosophere, with bloggers once again choosing their favorites of their own work
Resuming The Big Ones series by focusing on a specific sequence in Fritz Lang's classic
There's nothing quite like the phenomenon of experiencing the Dreyer/Falconetti collaboration (an entry for The Big Ones)
What does The Big Ones series see in Ingmar Bergman's ink blot?
Getting lost in the Where's Waldo world of Jacques Tati for The Big Ones
One of the more recent Big Ones exists at several crossroads, between Hollywood and neorealism, postwar "bigness" and post-sixties edge
The Big Ones looks at a kaleidoscopic narrative where the only real variable is the woman - the accounts of rape/murder are less about different variations of truth than about a single truth covered up for different reasons
Two 1954 Alfred Hitchcock films about marital murder, shot in color, and starring Grace Kelly; one is one of the Big Ones, the other an interesting companion
An unusual Big Ones entry, composed of various responses to my forum post on why I didn't "get" Jean Renoir's most acclaimed film
Although I originally intended to include just one of these titles in The Big Ones, they make a compelling pair by playing off one another's genre, maturity, and point of view
The world of this Big Ones western entry stretches beyond the frame and even the narrative, as if it existed long before the onscreen story begins
Three experimental films that play with language in different ways: The Girl Chewing Gum, Rabbit, A Walk Through H - wrapping up Avant-Garde Month and my Fixing a Hole series
Updating my 32 Days of Movies clip series with a few additions
The Big Ones asks if Akira Kurosawa's most celebrated film is individualist or communitarian
Although for many this was Ingmar Bergman's first famous film (a no-brainer for inclusion in The Big Ones), it was also his nineteenth - a culmination of his early work as well as a breakthrough
One of my earliest reviews, written when I was fifteen, provides insight into what first drew me to one of The Big Ones
The Big Ones applies an existentialist lens to the British noir
Yasujiro Ozu's most celebrated film - landing it in The Big Ones series - is also one of his most atypical
The penultimate entry in The Big Ones is characterized by an omniscient, observational style often used playfully, but here reserved for tragedy
Highlights from a very busy back half of December as I prepare to say goodbye - for now
After months devoted to surveying cinema history, I listed a hundred favorites; now the titles all link to my subsequent Favorites series exploring each in turn
The final entry in The Big Ones morphs into a meta-essay about blogger burnout while also touching on a recent video essay about Vertigo
Highlights from three and a half years of the site, as I prepare for another long break
(I covered this period on Episode 14 of my Patreon podcast)
Next: Slow-Motion Restart (May - October 2012)
(in which I build up my site again after a long pause)
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Previous: Video Dreams (September - November 2011)
(in which I build up my site again after a long pause)
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Previous: Video Dreams (September - November 2011)
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