Some More

So, I'm not the best at updating, but I've been pretty good at movie watching.

Since my last update I've seen 23 more films from the list. I didn't stay in strict chronological order, cause sometimes after watching a netflicked movie I'd want to watch something else and did want it to be from the 1001 list so I'd watch a movie I'd recorded with my DVR from TCM.

And I'm also now not sure of the best way to post about the list. Would it be best to just go in chronological order of the whole list even if I've seen the movie months ago or years ago, or should I should just mention the movies I've seen recently? I can't really decide which would work best. I'm leaning towards doing what I did with the last post which was make the bulk of the post about recent viewings and then touch on the previously seen films, or films I've skipped over for various reasons. Well I'll keep posting like that and see how I like it.

The first new movie I saw since my last post was La Souriante Madame Beudet. A French film from 1922. After I discovered that it wasn't available on video or DVD, I did a google search to find out more about it and saw that I could view the whole film on google video. Which was quite surprising. The quality was decent enough, the only problem was that there were no English subtitles, the title cards were in French. But I think I got the gist of the film from the acting and images. Seemed like an early film about feminism and women's rights, which I'm all for.

Next were a bunch of movies from Netflix. First up was 1922's Nosferatu. I had an interesting experience with this film. I put the movie in the DVD player and I first noticed something was amiss when the background music started to sound like a cat meowing. It then changed to the main theme music from Home Alone. I thought there must be something wrong here, usually silent movies come with their own soundtrack, but it's usually music that was arranged and composed from that time period that was played in the movie houses with the movie. Not contemporary music, certainly not meowing and the song from Home Alone. I decided to double check the menu to see if there were any clues to what was going on, checked the physical disc and discovered that I had in my possession the 'Gothic & Industrial Re-mix of Nosferatu. I wasn't really too into that, so I reported the mistake to Netflix and then the next day got the original version of the film. It was more enjoyable with the original music, very creepy film, just take a look at that guy.

Next was Haxan, from 1923. I honestly didn't enjoy this film too much, it felt like a documentary at first, with odd images and quotations about witchcraft and less than savory activities. Then once the action got started, it just seemed like weird imagery for the sake of weird imagery.
Next up from Netflix was Foolish Wives, directed by and starring Erich Von Stroheim from 1923. This was another film that didn't really do anything for me. It felt very long and epic, but the story didn't warrant so much hub-bub. It was just about a man who was a con artist and got money from various women, but interesting to see Erich Von Stroheim's earlier work.



Next, was my first exposure to Douglas Fairbanks, in 1924's The Thief of Bagdad. At first I couldn't get over how similar Aladdin was to this movie. I guess it's because it's a common story, or part of Arabian folklore, but sometimes I resent the fact that I don't get to see these stories for the first time. I can't help but compare older movies to movies that came after them, rather than the other way around. Once I kind of got over the similarities I started to appreciate the movie on it's on and found it to be a fun adventure.


The movies that I have previously seen or skipped cause it was unavailable:

1. Nanook of the North, I rented from Netflix a couple of months ago. It was a pretty entertaining documentary, although some of the scenes and elements seemed staged or manipulated, I read more about it and discovered that this is a common belief. Either way an interesting documentary on an interesting group of people, and I really liked seeing how an igloo is built!
2. Our Hospitality from 1923 is a wonderful! Buster Keaton movie. I absolutely adore Buster Keaton and this movie was the first one of his I watched. I saw it a few months ago and was completely surprised by how funny silent comedies could be. The physical comedy is just great.
3. According to IMDB, The Wheel is not availble on video or DVD. But I'll continue looking for it.
   

Well, this is starting to turn into a very long post so I'll stop now, more movies next time.