525 Great Films: click on the screen-caps to visit the Wonders in the Dark decades countdown

My "Top Posts" highlights continue in anticipation of my 5th anniversary this July. Each day I will be posting an intro with a link to one of the pieces I consider my best. Today I'm featuring a massive reverse-chronological line-up of screencaps, which also serves as a directory to Allan Fish's comprehensive decades countdowns (described in greater detail below). Click on any image and it will take you to the review of the film in question.

As always, please don't link to or attempt to comment on this intro page, which is a temporary bump and will be deleted when a new "Top Post" is featured tomorrow. You can link to, comment on, or recommend the original post, also linked below.

Yesterday's Top Post, if you missed it, was "Blog 10", my third annual round-up of the best of the blogosphere.

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This post is a tribute to Allan Fish, who has just concluded his ambitious, erudite, and stimulating countdown of every era in film history (a top 100 for the first 35 years of cinema, a top 25 for the 1930s, a top 50 for the ensuing decades of the 20th century, and another top 100 for the decade just past). The project was launched on the popular website Wonders in the Dark in the autumn of 2008. A poll was attached to the end of each countdown, so that the readers could voice their own opinions. Not that they needed the excuse - if anything defined the excitement around Allan's exercises, it was the fantastic discussion which sprouted from many of his choices, sometimes voyaging far abroad from the starting point, spanning hundreds of comments and dozens of topics. Many of these were among the best conversations I've had on the internet - or anywhere else for that matter.

There were numerous contributors to the buzzing atmosphere, not least of whom was Sam Juliano, the irrepressible administrator of Wonders in the Dark, who drummed up enthusiasm and participation in Allan's countdown with the exuberant discipline of a Falstaffian ringleader. And then, of course, there's Allan himself. A thirtysomething Brit who has seen just about every major film known to man, he also harbors a no-bullshit attitude and a brooding sensibility. Though bruising at times, he was the perfect yin to Sam's yang - and their odd couple routine defined the site's bright but unpretentious tone from the get-go. More important, his virtually peerless immersion in film history provided a wealth of choices for the countdown and he drew on them with gusto. Many times his #1 (not to mention lower-ranked picks) took us by surprise and sent us scurrying to the margins of filmdom to polish off his proclaimed masterpieces.

In several paragraphs, Allan would summon up the world of the movie effortlessly, giving a bit of history and story, but focusing on the film's mood, its connections to other movies (and books and TV shows and plays...), and whatever it is that drew him in the first place. These short, succinct, yet highly evocative pieces were intended to evoke curiosity and excitement, and in this they were assisted by an often bold and original image - a screen capture in almost all cases, snapping a picture in the midst of merry movement, making us want to see more. The remainder of this tribute focuses on these pictures. Rather than lay these images out in the order of his ranking, I'll fuse them into a seamless portrait of movie history, a voyage into the silver screen's past, starting with the most recent and ending with the earliest glimpses of the medium's potential.

Click on the picture and you will be taken to the review in question. (And if you click on the picture topping this post - an arresting, sultry frame from the French miniseries "Mesrine" - you will arrive at a list of all Allan's countdowns in numerical order.) Enjoy…

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#WatchlistScreenCaps, 5/10 - 5/14

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 5/7 - 5/8 (viral video edition)

Here are the last ten viral videos I watched (in honor of expanding this viewing diary to include YouTube clips; see here for terms of inclusion), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 5/1 - 5/7

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

As you may have noticed, I'm now including YouTube videos which opens up a can of worms. To qualify, the clip has to be self-contained (no "SNL" sketches unless they are created as stand-alone shorts like some of the Andy Samberg ones, and I'm leaning toward excluding excerpts from public speeches).

And no commercial - unless the commercial could stand alone as a very short film (like, say, some of Ridley Scott's early promos). That last point may seem like splitting hairs, especially because I'll include what are essentially home movies, but hey, you gotta draw the line somewhere...

Music to My Ears: #iPodAlbumPlaylist

Since March, I've been making my way through a massive, 600+ song "album playlist" on my iPod. It includes both perennial favorites and LPs I acquired from friends without listening to them before. After each album finished, I tweeted a picture of the cover and a link to my favorite track. Now that the playlist is done, I am featuring the entire lineup here.

The playlist was shuffled by album, so the order is entirely random.

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 4/23 - 4/30

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

Press Play features my De Palma video w/ Kevin B. Lee interview

My video essay "directed by De Palma", featuring clips from Hi Mom, Carrie and Scarface has just been highlighted on the video essay site Press Play, accompanied by an interview with me conducted by the great video essayist Kevin B. Lee (fair warning: the video contains strong violent and sexual imagery from the De Palma's work, and is NSFW):

"directed by De Palma" & interview with Kevin B. Lee

Since creating this video four years ago, it has remained the online work - video or otherwise - I am proudest of, so if you haven't already, definitely check it out. And if you have, follow the link anyway for the brand new interview, in which I discuss my own nascent ideas about video essays with Lee.

Movie Marathon (#WatchlistScreenCaps 4/22)

Between 8am, April 22 to 2am, April 23, I watched seven features, four shorts, and one featurette in a movie marathon, ranging from fantasy films to documentaries, from kids' cartoons to the dark avant-garde. Below are the screen-caps from the films I viewed, accompanied by basic info and an epigrammatic caption. Links are to my own posts on a given film.

Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here.

Visions of Filmmaking: 2 quotes from Truffaut & Godard

 Overheard in the documentary Two in the Wave (2010)

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 4/2 - 4/20

Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my review of the film in question.

Boston, You're My Home

Boston skyline, August 31, 2009, taken from my cell phone

I feel compelled to write something. It isn't relevant to anything and offers no new information or perspective on today's events, so I'll try - and probably fail - to keep it short. But I didn't want to remain silent, because Boston is a city that has meant and continues to mean so much to me, so I wanted to mark the tragic bombing of the Boston Marathon somehow. I lived far longer in New York, currently reside near and work in L.A., and even when I "lived in" Boston for just over two years, my actual address was in Malden, a separate town on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. And yet no other city feels like "home" to me the way Boston does. So I'll share my memories, pointless as they may be. They're personal, and that's something. I hope any fellow New Englanders will share their own; at moments like these they are all we've got.

Pyaasa

Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
When I searched for happiness, I was lost in streets of sadness
When I sought songs of joy, I heard songs of sorrow.
Every torment doubled the pain of my heart
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who were the fortunate ones who got the love they sought?
Companions came, stayed awhile, then left me all alone.
Who can spare the time to clasp the hand of a falling man?
Even my shadow eludes me as it fades away.
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
If this is called living, then I'll live my life somehow.
I shall not sigh, I'll seal my lips, I'll dry my tears.
Why should I fear grief, when I have encountered it so often?
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?

I entered Pyaasa blind, knowing only that it was considered one of the classics of Indian cinema. I haven't seen any other Guru Dutt films (in fact only afterwards did I realize Dutt himself played Vijay, the poet protagonist who struggles against a hostile world) and haven't seen a great many Indian films; only recently have I been making a conscious effort to explore this rich corner of the cinematic globe. I wasn't even sure when Pyaasa was produced, only locating it in the late fifties when a young character referenced his graduation from college in 1952. The viewing experience is often enriched by such ignorance, as it certainly was here. In any case, despite many distinctly Indian touches - including, of course, the casual breaking-into-song outside of what we would consider ordinarily musical scenarios - Pyaasa's story and themes are universal, and I found its pathos in many ways more relatable than the world presented on American screens in the 21st century. Pyaasa is as moving and enchanting as ever, a powerful fusion of cinema's illusionistic and reflective tendencies. Laced with dazzling musical numbers, sumptuous sets, comedic asides, swooning romantic interludes, Pyaasa is also penetrating in its social critique, empathetically embedded in the perspective of the downtrodden, and at its heart is, well, heart: a genuine, earnest investment in what is being offered to us.