Friday, November 07, 2008

Alphabetical Favorites, UPDATED!

by Ryland Walker Knight


light that fire, that spark

Started by Blog Cabins, this meme made its way to Ed Howard and then to my man Keith Uhlich and now it makes its way to me. I went ahead and dropped a list in the comments at The House but I figured it's worth recapitulating here as well. This is fun, funny, dumb, wasteful and maybe (in the teeniest sliver of possibilities) illuminative: everything a blog should be, right?
Wow, that was a tough, goofy way to waste 30 minutes. Still, a funny (how many times will I use the same director? do I try to feign cool and pick esoterically? fuck that: don't I just go from the gut?) angle on the bigger picture I'm trying to offer over at this sister blog. Too many great movies start with the same letter. I, too, had to fudge things in spots. What I found toughest was discriminating between one of the biggest things ever and one of the smallest things ever so I went ahead and listed both; it's the only two-fer I gave, although I coulda given more, of course.

Here goes --

Andrei Rublev (1966, Andrei Tarkovsky)
Beau Travail (1999, Claire Denis)
Le Cochon (1970, Jean Eustache)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)
Esther Kahn (2000, Arnaud Desplechin)
Faces (1968, John Cassavetes)
Groundhog Day (1993, Harold Ramis)
His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)
INLAND EMPIRE (2006, David Lynch)
Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg)
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976, John Cassavetes)
Love Streams (1984, John Cassavetes)
Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky)
The New World (2005, 2006, 2008, Terrence Malick)
On Dangerous Ground (1952, Nicholas Ray)
Out 1 (1971, Jacques Rivette)
Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati)
Quick Change (1990, Bill Murray)
Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Sans Soleil (1983, Chris Marker)
The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick)
Unfaithfully Yours (1948, Preston Sturges)
In Vanda's Room (2000, Pedro Costa)
Where does your hidden smile lie? (2001, Pedro Costa)
Xiao Wu (1997, Jia Zhang-Ke)
Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
Zelig (1983, Woody Allen)

Tell me yours, please, if you can or if you want to or if you like me enough to allow a preposition dangle at the end of a clause like that one before this one I'm trying to close off.

2 comments:

  1. this is tough tipsy.... i cheated a lot.. and no japanese movies. harumph, rk. harumph and hou hsiao-hsien. derrrrrrrrrrrrr

    Au Hasard Balthasar
    Birds, The
    Chungking Express
    Dr. Strangelove
    Duck Soup
    Eternal Sunshine
    Furies, The
    Gosford Park
    Hannah and Her Sisters
    I Walked With A Zombie
    Jaws
    Killing of a Chinese Bookie
    La Jetee
    Marnie
    Masculin-Feminin
    North by Northwest
    Only Angels Have Wings
    Pierrot le fou
    Qian xi mao po (Millenium Mambo)
    Royal Tenenbaums, The
    Singin in the rain
    There Will Be Blood
    Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped)
    Vertigo
    Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown
    Xi meng ren sheng (The Puppetmaster)
    Yi yi
    Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
    Band of Outsiders
    City Lights
    Duck Soup
    The Empire Strikes Back
    F for Fake
    The Godfather Part II
    Hannah and her Sisters
    Ikiru
    Julien Donkey-Boy
    King Kong
    The Lady Vanishes
    The Man Who Wasn't There
    The New World
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    Pennies from Heaven
    (no Q movies)
    Rio Bravo
    Seven Samurai
    This Is Spinal Tap
    Ugetsu
    Vertigo
    WALL*E
    X: The Unheard Music
    Young Mr. Lincoln
    Zelig

    ReplyDelete