Friday, June 19, 2009

Book Of The Summer

So I'm going to be reading Infinite Jest this summer, inspired by an old friend who mentioned that she'd be reading it along with a whole internet group of people (at infinitesummer.org). I first attempted to read it about eight years ago, but didn't get very far (68 pages, if the subscription card bookmark I left in there can be believed). While I recall liking much of what I was reading, it all seemed so daunting, what with the book's massive size and so many footnotes. My only other experience with David Foster Wallace comes from The New Yorker: a few essays that he wrote and a profile they ran not long after his death last year.

There are quite a few books I've read part of and given up on, not because I didn't like them, but because I felt inadequate to the task of reading them at that point in my life. I'll set them aside intending to pick them up again a few years down the line (Ulysses, Moby-Dick, Gravity's Rainbow, among others) when I'm older and wiser. Hopefully, this will be one book I'll be able to remove from that list.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Movies Of The 30s


We're just about set to announce the next Metro Classics series, which will run through August and September. The theme this time around is Liars, Thieves and Cheats, and thus far we've booked L'Avventura, Charade, The Adventures Of Robin Hood, The Wild Bunch, The Sting and Crimes And Misdemeanors. Hopefully the last three will be set by the end of the week.

In the meantime, here's a list of my Top 50 films of the 1930s. And here are the lists for the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s.

1. The Rules Of The Game
2. Duck Soup
3. Stagecoach
4. Bringing Up Baby
5. Young Mr. Lincoln
6. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
7. City Lights
8. Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas
9. The Adventures Of Robin Hood
10. Swing Time
11. M
12. Morocco
13. L'Atalante
14. Vampyr
15. Only Angels Have Wings
16. The Awful Truth
17. Shanghai Express
18. Top Hat
19. Modern Times
20. The Dawn Patrol
21. Alexander Nevsky
22. The Grand Illusion
23. The Thin Man
24. Ruggles Of Red Gap
25. The Lady Vanishes


26. A Story OF Floating Weeds
27. The 39 Steps
28. City Girl
29. King Kong
30. Earth
31. Le Million
32. Scarface
33. Wee Willie Winkie
34. The Story Of The Late Chrysanthemums
35. Sisters Of the Gion
36. Ninotchka
37. Judge Priest
38. 42nd Street
39. Tokyo Chorus
40. Gunga Din
41. The Devil Is A Woman
42. Animal Crackers
43. Trouble In Paradise
44. I Was Born But. . .
45. Love Affair
46. Show Boat
47. The Wizard Of Oz
48. Baby Face
49. Fury
50. Destry Rides Again