Reading Movies Meme

Courtesy of MovieMan at The Dancing Image, this meme has been floating around all week and has been quite great to see. Those tagged were asked to pick the 10 most influential film books to their development as writers, scholars, and cinephiles of all sorts. I was thrilled to be tagged in MovieMan's initial post and since then Brandon was tagged by another friend – Jeremy Richey of the always wonderful Moon in the Gutter. Not wanting to cut ourselves short on things that have led this site to its fruitful existence, Brandon and I have each chosen ten books with, kind of surprisingly, no overlap.

I can't speak for Brandon (perhaps he will comment on this post with more explanation on his choices if anyone is curious) but this was especially difficult for me as I feel like my views are in a constant state of flux. With very little access to Films growing up, film books didn't enter the equation for me until late high school and early college when I really got going. But even since then, having just gone through grad school in film studies, I had to decide what makes these books influential. So, this really ends up being a mixed bag of things that first got me interested in studying movies and more scholarly works that have really influenced my own current writing and thoughts towards cinema as I look towards more schooling and an academic career. Its a tough call on all accounts, so I hope this is representative of some of my influences and may explain, as MovieMan hoped for, where some of my experimental/genre slant comes from. Who knows. Nonetheless, here are the books. I'll leave further explanation and discussion for what I hope is a lively comment section.


Brandon Colvin's Reading Movies Meme Selections

Notes on the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson
Film Theory and Criticism edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen
Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema 1959-1971 by Jonas Mekas
Lynch on Lynch by Chris Rodley
Everything by David Bordwell, especially Poetics of Cinema
Terrence Malick by Lloyd Michaels
Godard on Godard by Jean-Luc Godard
The film criticism of Jim Emerson, Roger Ebert, Manohla Dargis, and everyone who has ever written for the Village Voice
Tarkovsky edited by Nathan Dunne
Film Comment


James Hansen's Reading Movies Meme Selections

Cinema 2 by Gilles Deleuze
The Cinema, Or The Imaginary Man by Edgar Morin (translated by Lorraine Mortimer)
Dogme Uncut by Jack Stevenson
Film As Subversive Art by Amos Vogel
Hard Core by Linda Williams (and mostly everything else by Linda Williams too)
The Magic Hour by Jim Hoberman
Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andre Breton
Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover
Nathan Lee (duh)
Roger Ebert's 1990 Movie Companion (most notably the discussion of Lynch's Wild At Heart entitled, if I'm recalling correctly, "The Case Against David Lynch")

More recent additions to my repertoire that would be on this list if I had a little more time to absorb them:
Change Mummified by Philip Rosen
Cinema of Attractions Reloaded edited by Wanda Strauven
Collecting Visible Evidence edited by Jane Gaines and Michael Renov
Devotional Cinema by Nathaniel Dorsky
The Most Typical Avant Garde by David James

(Update!) Chuck Williamson's List
THE PARADE'S GONE BY by Kevin Brownlow
MOVIE-MADE AMERICA by Robert Sklar
WHAT IS CINEMA? by Andre Bazin
BABEL AND BABYLON: SPECTATORSHIP IN AMERICAN SILENT FILM by Miriam Bratu Hansen
VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES by Laura Mulvey
CINEMA AND SPECTATORSHIP by Judith Mayne
CINEMA, OR THE OTHER MAN by Edgar Morrin
A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA by Richard Neupert
POST-THEORY: RECONSTRUCTING FILM STUDIES by David Bordwell
EARLY CINEMA: SPACE, FRAME, NARRATIVE ed. by Thomas Eisaesser and Adam Barker
FILM COMMENT

Thanks again to MovieMan and Jeremy for calling upon us to make these lists! Hope they share something about ourselves and maybe give some of you something to check out.
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Shoulda Been A Winner Meme

I sort of tagged myself to this meme, at the request of MovieMan at The Dancing Image, which started at Filmcability. Basically, you are supposed to go through every year since the Oscars have been awarded and make your selection for what should win Best Picture. Although Filmcability and The Dancing Image decided to revoke all rules for selection, I have chosen not to do so, although, admittedly, every once in a while, I break the own rules I am about to explain. (And just to tout my record for a moment, I actually have seen every film that won Best Picture. It's a project started in high school that I tore through for a while and then slowed down. Last summer I watched Platoon and only recently watched Wings to complete the list! And, from the looks of this list, I sure don't agree with the winners very often. I also learned that I really really love David Cronenberg...in case you didn't know.)

I think of the Best Picture Oscar as an American film award. It's by no means to discredit it, but when I think "Oscar" Godard doesn't really come to mind. Neither, for that matter, does straight-up experimental film. A film like Ernie Gehr's Side/Walk/Shuttle would easily be my favorite film of 1991, but should it be the Best Picture? If it is accepted in the mainstream can is still be avant-garde? I was getting myself bogged down in a hurry, so I just decided no avant-garde. Unless I felt like I should change my mind...

Anyways, I felt like I should stick with "American" movies. I'm in the clear now, right? Unfortunately, this gets more complicated with American releases from English speaking "foreign" directors and when Hollywood produces work from foreign directors. How do I decide what is American or what isn't? I just can't keep things simple. My mind only got more twisted from here, so I finally just said forget it. If it's American-enough, I let it slide. I am sure there more more issues with release years and I may have flubbed up when this films would have been valid for Oscars in the first place, but let's overlook that for now.

Maybe in the future I'll continue this rather productive meme by selecting foreign films and experimental films from each year. That will lead my mind to a whole variety of other problems with naming them, but I'll save those matters for a later time. Now that I have bored everyone with this meandering, here is my list.

One final note...I have decided to not italicize the titles because it would take a long time to highlight each of them and select it. Oh formatting. You are such a pain sometimes. And if anyone knows how to make italics from Word/Pages transfer to Blogger, please God send me an email and let me know. :)

1927- Sunrise (FW Murnau)
1928- The Wind (Victor Sjostrom)
1929- Pandora’s Box (GW Pabst)
1930- All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
1931- City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
1932- Freaks (Tod Browning)
1933- King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest Schoedsack)
1934- It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
1935- A Night At The Opera (Sam Wood)
1936- Modern Times (Charles Chaplin)
1937- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell & Wilfred Jackson)
1938- The Citadel (King Vidor)
1939- The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
1940- His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
1941- Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
1942- Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
1943- Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery)
1944- Hail The Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges)
1945- Topaz (Dave Tatsuno)
1946- It’s A Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)
1947- Out of the Past (Jacques Torneur)
1948- Letter From An Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
1949- Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett)
1950- Rabbit of Seville (Chuck Jones)
1951- The Day The Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise)
1952- Singin’ In The Rain (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)
1953- Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller)
1954- Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
1955- The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
1956- The Searchers (John Ford)
1957- Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)
1958- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
1959- Shadows (John Cassavetes)
1960- The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
1961- Something Wild (Jack Garfein)
1962- Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
1963- Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
1964- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies (Ray Dennis Steckler) or Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
1965- Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer)
1966- Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol & Paul Morissey)
1967- Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
1968- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
1969- Salesman (Albert & David Maysles)
1970- Zabriskie Point (Michaelangelo Antonioni)
1971- Punishment Park (Peter Watkins)
1972- Cocksucker Blues (Robert Frank)
1973- Badlands (Terence Malick)
1974- A Woman Under The Influence (John Cassavetes)
1975- Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
1976- Carrie (Brian De Palma)
1977- Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
1978- Halloween (John Carpenter)
1979- Alien (Ridley Scott)
1980- Atlantic City (Louis Malle)
1981- Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
1982- The Thing (John Carpenter)
1983- Videodrome (David Cronenberg)
1984- Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)
1985- Prizzi’s Honor (John Huston)
1986- Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
1987- The Brave Little Toaster (Jerry Rees)
1988- Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg)
1989- Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
1990- GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese)
1991- My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant)
1992- The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
1993- Blue (Derek Jarman)...avant garde, I know I know...or Naked (Mike Leigh)
1994- Hoop Dreams (Steve James)
1995- Toy Story (John Lasseter)
1996- Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)
1997- Crash (David Cronenberg)
1998- The Thin Red Line (Terence Malick)
1999- Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
2000- Traffic (Steven Soderbergh)
2001- Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
2002- Spider (David Cronenberg)
2003- Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
2004- Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood) or Primer (Shane Carruth)
2005- A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
2006- Inland Empire (David Lynch) or Borat (Larry Charles)
2007- There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Wow...this took a long time to put together. Although I don't wish this kind of pain on anyone I tag the following people if they dare take up the task. And since I was working on this, you can push back my final NYFF entries to Friday and Sunday (most likely.) We'll see if I can stick to any kind of a schedule. Oh yeah, and if you wonder why I didn't select something feel free to bring it up, as I may have overlooked the films. I was using Wikipedia's pages for American films of each year so I think I got most of them, but I could always miss something. Thanks for reading!

Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience
Jeremy at Moon in the Gutter
Ibetolis at Film For The Soul
Adam at DVD Panache
Jacob W. at Mad Crazy Movie House
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