Not literally. That would be two and three-quarters movies every day, which would break me, not to mention how far behind I would already be.
I am rather referring to one of the very best film-as-art websites out there, They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? and in particular the annually-updated list of the 1000 greatest films ever made compiled by the editors of that site using every source they can find, in the hopes of creating the definitive canon. Or at least the definitive “start here” for all aspiring film scholars and cinephiles.
I’ve been aware of the list for quite a while now, but have only this year decided to do something crazy: for my Sunday classic movie reviews throughout 2008, I am going to work my way through those 1000 films, bit by bit. There’s a lot to work through: as of this moment, I have only seen 432 films on the list (my hope is to hit 500 in a year’s time). A lot of that is do to the difficulties of North American DVD distribution; some of it is due to the various ways I’ve wasted the “cinephiliac” portion of my life, about ten years now. I mean, really – slasher films? A whole summer of them?
Well, that’s neither here nor there. This year isn’t about genre films, it’s about film as art, and I hope the next 52 weeks will be at least a little bit useful and interesting to everyone reading this. If nothing else, I hope to get amusingly in over my head before it’s all said and done.
First up: #71, Luchino Visconti’s study of the end of the Italian aristocracy, The Leopard AKA Il gattopardo.
(My hat is off to the blogger alsolikelife of Shooting Down Pictures, who has been working on a similar project in a much more systematic way, and whose appreciations of these films I cannot hope to compete with.)