Since the last time I updated this, I sold one house and bought another. We'll be moving a few miles south to Tacoma at the end of May, a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood that's nonetheless within reasonable driving distance to Scarecrow Video. In between house showings and viewings, I managed to write about some musicals (Bye Bye Birdie and I Doot It and In the Good Old Summertime) and a bunch of Hong Kong movies: John Woo's Heroes Shed No Tears and Once a Thief and his epic Red Cliff, Tsui Hark's Love in the Time of Twilight and The Lovers, Stephen Chow's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, and Ann Hui's Zodiac Killers.
On The George Sanders Show, we discussed Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons and Jia Zhangke's Platform. The next episode, on Raya Martin and Mark Peranson's La última película and WC Fields's Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, will be up in a few days. As well, the first Vincente Minnelli episode of the They Shot Pictures podcast, covering his musicals, specifically The Pirate, The Band Wagon and Gigi, has been posted. My next They Shot Pictures will be on Lau Kar-leung, to come sometime in June, after we move. I'm very much looking forward to that one.
Over at letterboxd I have a number of lists, some of them new, some newly updated (such as my on-going Running Out of Karma tally, now up to 63 movies). I've also got short reviews of pretty much everything I don't cover at length over here at The End.
These are the movies I've watched and rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place in my year-by-year rankings.
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward Cline) - 11, 1941
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles) - 4, 1942
I Dood It (Vincente Minnelli) - 19, 1943
Yolanda and the Thief (Vincente Minnelli) - 24, 1945
The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli) - 3, 1948
In the Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard) - 32, 1949
An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli) - 2, 1951
The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli) - 1, 1953
Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli) - 6, 1954
Kismet (Vincente Minnelli) - 34, 1955
Gigi (Vincente Minnelli) - 16, 1958
Bye Bye Birdie (George Sidney) - 12, 1963
The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper) - 7, 1971
The American Dreamer (Kit Carson & Lawrence Schiller) - 10, 1971
Heroes Shed No Tears (John Woo) - 30, 1986
A Moment of Romance (Benny Chan) - 28, 1990
Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui) - 22, 1991
Once a Thief (John Woo) - 35, 1991
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai) - 1, 1994
The Lovers (Tsui Hark) - 27, 1994
Love in the Time of Twilight (Tsui Hark) - 6, 1995
Tri-Star (Tsui Hark) - 27, 1996
Xiao Wu (Jia Zhangke) - 6, 1997
Double Team (Tsui Kark) - 23, 1997
Knock Off (Tsui Hark) - 26, 1998
Platform (Jia Zhangke) - 3, 2000
Mission: Impossible II (John Woo) - 15, 2000
Time and Tide (Tsui Hark) - 16, 2000
Red Cliff (John Woo) - 9, 2008
Journey to the West (Stephen Chow) - 10, 2013