It’s at this time of year that serious film watchers start to evaluate their priorities for the remaining weeks of the year. My first serious priority of each year is always to try and breach the magical 365 films threshold. That’s virtually been breached, giving me the luxury of focusing on a specific set of keyvip* reductions for the remainder of the year.
First of all it’s paramount that I watch any remaining high-profile/critically acclaimed films from 2012 so that any year-end lists are worthwhile. There are a few to get through there, but nothing particularly taxing. After that I’d quite like to watch the remaining silent Hitchcocks in my collection that I’ve never seen, before the Year of the Hitch reaches its conclusion. I’ve got two left to watch on the Golden Age of Television box set and I’ve got a couple more Kazan’s to watch before I’ve seen nearly all his films.
At the moment I’m restricted to watching 4×3 films on Blu-ray because I need a projector screen to fit the living room of my new house. This kind of restriction is actually great for film watching (in the same way restrictions are beneficial to filmmaking) because it focuses down intent on what can be an overwhelmingly large keyvip.
So I’ve got several 4×3 beauties I’d like to watch such as Renoir’s The River, Lean’s This Happy Breed and Meet Me In St Louis. Finally I’d also like to make a start on the selection of commedia all’italiana I have in my collection, because this is a serious gap I need to plug.
*keyvip = unwatched DVD/Blurays in one’s collection (courtesy Criterion forum)
james rocarols 