1900 - Sherlock Holmes Baffled and The Enchanted Drawing

These films are pretty rad! Two special-effects-heavy comedies. The special effects are almost perfect, and I'm glad someone was using film trickery right from the start. 

Also, in The Enchanted Drawing here is how disappointed you look with only booze

 Then if you get a cigar, you become somewhat happy. And creepy.

 But once you have a top hat you TOTALLY LOSE YOUR SHIT:

Values.

It Begins

Okay! I'm getting started before I waste any more time.

My list of films for the week starting Tuesday is posted below. The 113-year list as a whole is NOT FINISHED. But I figure it doesn't matter. Or rather, it does matter: "pick any movie I definitely should see" is a harder question to answer than more specific ones like "I need better films from the next 4-7 years I'm about to watch, given what you know I've watched so far." So, please answer any of these questions now. But I will start watching films to make the need for more specific answers both more acute and easier to come by.

So, here's the list of films. None are longer than a few minutes, and most can be watched on youtube or downloaded from The Internet Archive (freely and legally)
Tuesday Apr 2 - 1900 - Sherlock Holmes Baffled and The Enchanted Drawing
Wednesday - 1901 The Man with the Rubber Head and President McKinley Inauguration Footage
Thursday - 1902 A Trip to the Moon
Friday - 1903 The great train robbery
Saturday - 1904The Impossible Voyage
Sunday - 1905 The Misadventure of a French Gentleman without pants at the Zandzvoort Beach

The List So Far

Okay, I've filled in at least one film for each year from 1900 - 2010. The list is below. My most earnest hope is that you find it appalling that some film is missing from this list, and will contact me to right the problem as soon as possible.

Also, I've decided that I can watch AT MOST two films per year. I didn't want to decide between Nanook of the North and Nosferatu, so when some kind of voting starts, you'll get two votes.

On Steve's suggestion this list may turn into a letterboxd list in around 1922. Letterboxd looks like a pretty sweet way to keep track of what one is watching, and what one thinks of what one is watching. I'd start with letterboxd right away, but for some reason its film list doesn't include "The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach."

.	Year	Film
.	1900	Sherlock Holmes Baffled	The Enchanted Drawing
.	1901	The man with the rubber head	President McKinley Inauguration footage
.	1902	A trip to the moon
.	1903	The Great Train Robbery
.	1904	The Impossible Voyage
.	1905	The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach
.	1906	The Story of the Kelly Gang
.	1907	Laughing Gas
.	1908	fantasmagorie
.	1909	Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy
.	1910	Thomas Edison Frankenstein
.	1911	Little Nemo
.	1912	Cardinal Wolsey
.	1913	Suspense
.	1914	The Merchant of Venice
.	1915	Birth of a Nation
.	1916	20,000 leagues under the sea	Intolerance	Where are My Children?
.	1917	The Poor Little Rich Girl	A reckless romeo
.	1918	The Outlaw and his Wife
.	1919	j'accuse!
.	1920	Algol
.	1921	The Blot
.	1922	Nosferatu	Nanook of the North
.	1923	The Toll of the Sea
.	1924	Greed
.	1925	Battleship Potemkin
.	1926	Mother	A Page of Madness
.	1927	The Jazz Singer	Metropolis
.	1928	October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
.	1929	Gold Diggers of Broadway
.	1930	All Quiet on the Western Front
.	1931	Frankenstein
.	1932	Shanghai Express
.	1933	42nd street	footlight parade
.	1934	IT Happened One Night
.	1935	Top Hat	Triumph of the Will
.	1936	Modern Times
.	1937	The Life of Emile Zola
.	1938	Jezebel
.	1939	Dark Victory
.	1940	The Great Dictator
.	1941	Citizen Kane
.	1942	Battle of Midway
.	1943	The Ox-Bow Incident
.	1944	arsenic and old lace
.	1945	Mildred Pierce	Rome, Open City	Spellbound
.	1946	The Best Years of Our Lives	Song of the South
.	1947	Gentleman's Agreement	Dark Passage
.	1948	The Red Shoes	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
.	1949	All The King's Men	Sands of Iwo Jima
.	1950	all about eve
.	1951	The Thing From Another World
.	1952	the quiet man
.	1953	Shane	The Big Heat
.	1954	On the Waterfront	La Strada
.	1955	Kiss me Deadly	Rififi	East of Eden
.	1956	The Killing
.	1957	Paths of Glory	nights of cabiria
.	1958	Cat on a hot tin roof	The blob
.	1959	The 400 Blows	Hiroshima Mon Amour
.	1960	Spartacus	l'avventura
.	1961	Viridiana	Last year at Marienbad
.	1962	Lawrence of Arabia	To kill a mockingbird	The Exterminating Angel
.	1963	Jason and the argonauts	The Leopard
.	1964	I am Cuba
.	1965	The Ipcress File	Cat Ballou
.	1966	Blow Up
.	1967	Belle de jour	le samourai
.	1968	Once upon a time in the west	The Odd Couple	The Lion in Winter
.	1969	Kes	Z
.	1970	The Wild Child	Gimme Shelter
.	1971	The Last Picture Show	Dirty Harry	THX 1138
.	1972	Cabaret	Winter Soldier
.	1973	Sleeper	Day for Night
.	1974	Texas Chainsaw Massacre
.	1975	Barry Lyndon	Deep Red
.	1976	In the Realm of the Senses
.	1977	Killer of Sheep	Opening night	Suspiria
.	1978	The Deer Hunter	Martin
.	1979	All That Jazz	Manhattan	Being There	The Jerk
.	1980	Raging Bull	9 to 5
.	1981	Das Boot
.	1982	Fanny and Alexander
.	1983	Paris, Texas	The King of Comedy
.	1984	Repo Man
.	1985	My life as a dog
.	1986	Mala Noche	Little Shop of Horrors
.	1987	The Last Emperor
.	1988	They Live	Spoorloos (The Vanishing)
.	1989	Driving Miss Daisy	Roger and Me
.	1990	The Grifters	Reversal of Fortune
.	1991	Hook	Naked Lunch
.	1992	belle epoque	The PLayer
.	1993	The Piano	Farewell My Concubine
.	1994	Serial Mom	The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
.	1995	Dead Man	The City of Lost Children
.	1996	Secrets and Lies
.	1997	Taste of Cherry	Princess Mononoke		Funny Games
.	1998	The Celebration	The Thin Red Line
.	1999	All About My Mother
.	2000	George Washington
.	2001	Elling	Life and Debt
.	2002	The Pianist
.	2003	The Barbarian Invasions
.	2004	The Aviator
.	2005	Tsotsi	The Constant Gardner
.	2006	the last king of scotland	The lives of others	Ten Canoes
.	2007	Funny Games	The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
.	2008	man on wire
.	2009	coraline
.	2010	trollhunter
.	2011
.	2012
.	2013

Let's fatten the list

I'm working on adding films to the list, but I'm doing it more through RottenTomatoes ranking / personal whim than through any understanding of what films are pivotal or unmissable. So please, add films to any year you'd like. If the year has fewer than 10 films listed, that means I've probably missed something important, and you should tell me so by adding your films to the list.

This means that there will be a winnowing process that anyone who cares to should take part in. My current plan is to pick the film that the fewest people have seen. As a tie-breaker, we can choose the film that the most people actually want to see. (Or rather, want to force -me- to see.)

Another note on my selections: There are some artists whose films I definitely want to include. Bob Fosse, Busby Berkeley, Antonioni, Truffaut, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffiths, Kiarostami... and you pick your own. But until I know the makeup of the list, I can't choose which of these artists' films to include. So, Cabaret and All That Jazz are both on the list, for example, but I only expect to include at most one of them in the final list.

In other words, something like half of the films that I select are ones that I don't expect to watch at all. Let this be a sign of encouragement: You can basically ignore my selections when you're adding your own. Because that's what I do.

And finally, if you have no idea what the hell list I'm talking about, send me an email and I will show it to you.

A longer post about why I'm doing this

I started the ChronoOrder project for about three reasons:

First, I had some films I wanted to watch but kept putting off - in particular, Un Chien Andalou (b/c Dali made a film!?!?!) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (b/c Portlandia) and that 1954 movie where Charlton Heston plays Indiana Jones (b/c obviously. HT: Cracked). Watching the films in order meant that when the year came, I'd -have- to watch those movies.

Second, When Warner Brothers turned 75, the Princess Cinema in Waterloo showed a week of their best films, one decade per day, and I loved it. I loved it so hard. It added a new type of context to the films, and it made some film tropes that are commonplace now seem brand new. This is why I chose chronological order rather than, say, alphabetical order, or by-director, or the like.

And third, I had spent the last three weeks almost never leaving my house, spending all of my time watching TV or movies. This was obviously a problem. So I set a limit: I got to watch a film first thing in the morning, but then I couldn't watch anything more until I left the house to do something else.

The project worked. I saw great films, and I rejoined society. The selection of films was haphazard, mostly based on what I had around at the time, with large gaps between years and as many as 4 or 5 films in some years. But still, I enjoyed it, and I had made it from Un Chien Andalou in 1920 all the way to 1959. Then, while I was in the middle of watching The 400 Blows, my motherboard disintegrated.

So I thought, well, maybe I should do this for real. And tell other people about it so they can join in. And plan the films more carefully. And here we are.

All this means that you shouldn't feel like you have to participate. I don't want anyone to do any homework. I'll get something out of this project even if I'm the only one involved. But if you do get involved, you will surely double the radness.

-Phil

The List Begins

I've created a google doc where we can build the list of films for the ChronoOrder project. If you'd like to get in on it, contact me and I'll invite you to edit it.

Phil's life in Moving Pictures

Hello whoever still reads this. I'm going to repurpose this blog for a while, and I hope you'll join me in the new project.

The project is for me to watch a film a day in chronological order. Believe it or not, I started this as a way to _increase_ my productivity. Mental Health problems sometimes have wacky workarounds.

The project has two phases:

1) create a list of films, one per release year, from the beginning of film until the present day. There are two criteria for inclusion: First, (you and) I haven't seen the film yet. Second, since it's only one film per year, it should probably be one worth watching. The goodness of the film is ABSOLUTELY NOT a criterion. But if it's bad, it should be spectacularly so-bad-it's-the-best-film-choice-of-the-year bad.

2) Each week, I post the list of films selected for the upcoming week. After I watch them, I'll post a brief comment about them here. I'll also tweet snide remarks with the hashtag #chronoorder, probably.

If you want to take part, that's awesome. If you -can- take part, that's awesome too. Here's how you can:

Phase 1: Help me build the list of films. Suggest any film you haven't seen but wish you had, or think you should. Or films you've seen but think I should definitely see.

Phase 2: Watch any films that your whims and circumstances recommend. If you want to watch a film with me (in Edmonton), let me know a day in advance and I'll come to you. If you want to discuss the film, we can have a slow-mo discussion in the comments here.

I do discourage anyone without my particular circumstances from watching -all- of the films. That would be pathological. But so am I. In fact, feel free to watch -none- of the films, and just watch vicariously through me.

Feel free to contact me about this using any medium through which we are connected - twitter, facebook, comments here, text messages, seeing me around, etc. I will start building the list soon.

Let's do this!