Mon 14 Dec 2020
The 25 Newly Added Movies to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
Posted by Steve under Awards[10] Comments
The 25 selections are:
1. “Suspense” (1913)
2. “Kid Auto Races at Venice” (1914)
3. “Bread” (1918)
4. “The Battle of the Century” (1927)
5. “With Car and Camera Around the World” (1929)
6. “Cabin in the Sky” (1943)
7. “Outrage” (1950)
8. “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955)
9. “Lilies of the Field” (1963)
10. “A Clockwork Orange” (1971)
11. “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (1971)
12. “Wattstax” (1973)
13. “Grease” (1978)
14. “The Blues Brothers” (1980)
15. “Losing Ground” (1982)
16. “Illusions” (1982)
17. “The Joy Luck Club” (1993)
18. “The Devil Never Sleeps” (1994)
19. “Buena Vista Social Club” (1999)
20. “The Ground” (1993-2001)
21. “Shrek” (2001)
22. “Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege” (2006)
23.”The Hurt Locker” (2008)
24. “The Dark Knight” (2008)
25. “Freedom Riders” (2010)
December 14th, 2020 at 3:42 pm
Some good movies here, but I wonder if any would be in my Top 800. (That’s how many are in the Registry now.)
December 14th, 2020 at 4:13 pm
I cut the first six some slack, after that it reads like snob heaven, as in, let’s see what Andrew Sarris has to say about the film and its director.
December 14th, 2020 at 6:09 pm
CABIN IN THE SKY is in my top ten. Certainly A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, GREASE, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, BLUES BROTHERS, SHREK, THE DARK KNIGHT. Quite a few I haven’t seen among the silent films.
December 14th, 2020 at 8:56 pm
I’ve only seen a subset.
But really love some of these:
“Suspense†(1913)
“The Battle of the Century†(1927)
“Cabin in the Sky†(1943)
“The Man with the Golden Arm†(1955)
“Lilies of the Field†(1963)
“Grease†(1978)
“The Joy Luck Club†(1993)
“Shrek†(2001)
“Freedom Riders†(2010)
December 14th, 2020 at 9:10 pm
I’ve never heard of “Bread†(1918). Sounds very interesting!
“Suspense†(1913) and “The Battle of the Century†(1927) both short films. You can watch both in a little over half an hour. Neither is in my Top Ten. But I suspect people will like them.
“Cabin in the Sky†might be the most artistically creative of all these films. And I’ve written a whole book about its director Vincente Minnelli. The film’s only weakness: it’s black-and-white, and Minnelli is even more brilliant in color.
Andrew Sarris and Isaac Asimov are two of my idols.
I need to write a rousing defense of both!
December 14th, 2020 at 9:55 pm
Julie Dash is a great filmmaker.
Her “Daughters of the Dust” and “The Rosa Parks Story” are classics.
But I’d never heard of “Illusions†(1982). Turns out its an early short film she did (34 minutes). Looking forward to this.
December 15th, 2020 at 8:48 am
Some good ones, but frankly, I am not terribly impressed. We saw the original GREASE off-Broadway in 1972 (Barry Bostwick as Danny Zucko, Adrienne Barbeau as Rizzo). It was so far superior to the movie – Stockard Channing as a 33 year old high school student was embarrassing – that anyone who lived through the ’50s would easily recognize the difference between at least an approximation of the way it really was and the Hollywood version.
Of course, your mileage may vary. I still remember Bill Crider’s comment when he took his (then) young kids to see it and said that now he knew “they could say ‘pussy wagon’ in a PG movie.”
December 15th, 2020 at 9:12 am
GREASE is one of the few movies on the list that I remember seeing. Good but far from great, in my opinion. I enjoyed SHREK more, but I wouldn’t put that one on the Best of anything either. But I’m sure the people who put this together had other criteria than asking me how much I enjoyed watching a movie, otherwise TWO O’CLOCK COURAGE would be on it, to pick one out of the air.
December 15th, 2020 at 11:30 am
The film historians who worked on the Registry list, very likely know and admire Anthony Mann – the director of TWO O’CLOCK COURAGE.
Here’s film critic Kenneth Turan in 2014:
“Where director Anthony Mann is concerned, there are two kinds of people: those who admire him extravagantly (Jean-Luc Godard, who called him “Supermann,†is in that group) and those who are unfamiliar with his output.”
There are at least two large scale book-length critical studies of Mann’s films: one by Jeanne Basinger, the other by Max Alvarez (2014). I’ve read both.
A good brief introduction to Mann is the article in Andrew Sarris’ book THE AMERICAN CINEMA (1968). There is also the chapter on Mann in Jim Kitses’ book HORIZONS WEST.
Experts like Sarris, Kitses, Basinger and Alvarez are eager to share their knowledge with people. You can read all of Sarris’ quick moving THE AMERICAN CINEMA in an evening or two!
December 16th, 2020 at 6:05 am
Found “Illusions” (Julie Dash, 1982, 34 minutes) on YouTube. Enjoyed it! It’s a student film she made at UCLA. Sound quality is not good (which reviewers all complain about) so the film might not be for All Viewers. But it’s original and imaginative, and has plenty of personality. It’s vivid and atmospheric.
The annual Registry is always one of my favorite times of the year. One gets to revisit old favorites. And learn about (usually good) films that were completely off my radar before. The announcement is a Holiday for Film-Lovers.
Dash’s classic “Daughters of the Dust†was previously in the Registry.
Two excellent Anthony Mann Westerns are also in the Registry:
WInchester 73
The Naked Spur.
Both are part of the major series of film Mann made with actor Jimmy Stewart.