Things have been quiet around here lately, as most of my blog-related free time has been spent over on our Metro Classics website. In the past few months I’ve written the following articles there:

Why Charlie Chaplin Is Better Than Buster Keaton

A Filmography Of Wong Kar-wai In Eighteen Images (Or, Yay! Pretty Pictures!)

Clint Eastwood And The Myth Of The Last Golden Age

A Short History Of The Musical Genre, Towards Defending As Essential The Arguably Extraneous Dance Sequence At The End Of Singin’ In The Rain

A Short History Of The Western Genre, And Why The Wild Bunch Was Ahead Of Its Time

Movie Year Showdown: 1938 vs. 1939

All About Bette

Check them out if you haven’t already. If you have, read them again and see if they hold up over time they way classics are supposed to. We’ve only got a couple weeks left in this fall’s Metro Classics series. After that, I should be able to get back to posting over here, including a wrap up of what I saw at the Vancouver Film Festival that I’ve been wanting to write for over a month now.

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