With only three more days until I finally get to go on vacation (we’re going to the Vancouver International Film Festival again this year), I thought I’d quickly clear out the most recent additions to the various Big Lists. If you want to see some actually writing about movies, check out the Metro Classics website. There’s lots of good stuff over there, lately most of it not written by me (though I did have a History of the Western Genre a few weeks ago.)

Anyway, between work and various things falling apart around my house and rewatching the last seasons of The Office and 30 Rock, I haven’t actually watched a movie in three weeks. But this is what I saw over the weeks before that, and where each film ranks for its year:

A Time To Love And A Time To Die: 9, 1958
Inglourious Basterds: 2009
Dakota Skye: 35, 2008
Virginia City: 22, 1940
Jeanne Dielman: 2, 1975
The Private Life Of Henry VIII: 11, 1933
Stalker: 7, 1979
They Drive By Night: 20, 1940
Silk Stockings: 14, 1957
A Chinese Odyssey 2: 51, 1994
Murder By Death: 13, 1976
Royal Tramp 2: 38, 1992
If You Could Only Cook: 13, 1935
Visions Of Light: 32, 1992

Perhaps because we watched way too much geeky TV as kids, Mike and I have been inspired by the great James Burke to have our next Metro Classics series be based on Connections, with each film connected to the next film in the series in some nefarious way. The shows will once again run every Wednesday night, from October 07 through December 02. Here’s the lineup, along with how the movies are connected:

Oct 07: Singin’ In The Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) (elaborate choreography)
Oct 14: Enter The Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973) (action stars wreaking havoc on islands)
Oct 21: Commando (Mark L. Lester, 1985) (actors who became politicians)
Oct 28: The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976) (westerns)
Nov 04: Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959) (musicians who act)
Nov 11: Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994) (urban romances)
Nov 18: City Lights with The Immigrant (Charlie Chaplin, 1931/1917) (silent comedy double features)
Nov 25: Sherlock Jr with The General (Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, 1924/1926) (civil war films)
Dec 02: Gone With The Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)

That’s eleven films in nine weeks, six of them in high-definition. It will also be our eleventh musical, our seventh and eighth Westerns, our fifth, sixth seventh, and eighth silent films, our sixth Howard Hawks film, our fourth and fifth double features, our fifth Best Picture winner, our third Asian film, our second Gene Kelly film, and our first film that is so long we can only show it once.

Handsome fliers will be available within the week.