I don't know why I took a good line from one of the last movies on the list to title this blog post. Scroll to the end of the post if you don't know where the line is from.

Through IMDb, I found this list of the best 100 films of the 1970s. I've long been an admirer of films from the 1970s, if only because a lot of these films took time to develop character and plot and weren't constrained the same way films are now. There's very much a tell the story, get in, get out thing going on with most movies these days. They don't take the time to develop anything outside of a linear story, and I think they suffer for it. In fact, it's one of the essays that I wanted to write for our forthcoming book. I believe that movies from this era (I call them "1970s auteur films") are wildly overlooked in the discussion of the greatest films of all-time, excepting the Godfather and the Godfather, Part II, which get tons and tons of recognition (rightly so).

For the record, this list doesn't include Rocky, which seems like a pretty serious omission to me. But it does include several films that I'd never even heard of (pretty much the whole first page) and several others that I've heard of but never seen. It includes 4 Woody Allen films (all of which I could probably recite from memory, most notably Manhattan, which is my favorite Woody film) and it includes the Robert Altman film Nashville, which is a great film.

I'll probably take time over the next couple of month to watch them. Check the list and leave a comment about any movie that you've seen and have some thoughts on. I'd be interested to hear some feedback about these films.

By the way, the quote is from Five Easy Pieces, right before Jack Nicholson swipes all the stuff off of the table.

Labels: 1970s, knees, movies

I just found out that Lionel Jefferson died late least year.

I'm retroactively very upset about this.

Labels: Lionel Jefferson

Paul McCartney and Roger Ebert share a birthday. They were both born today, 65 years ago.

One of them wrote "Yesterday;" one of them wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

That's all I have to say about that.

Labels: Paul McCartney, Roger Ebert

Bob Herbert, TV's Mr. Wizard, dead at age 89.

Dropping a Spaldeen into a large plastic box full of mousetraps will never be the same again.

Labels: Mr. Wizard

The manuscript is in, sitting with our outstanding editor just waiting to be completely torn apart and deconstructed.

Also, Cloris Leachman and Mel Brooks may have a pay-per-view.

Labels: books, old people

Figured it was time for one of these. We're about done with the manuscript here, which is a huge relief. We're going to hand it in in the next couple of days, while we also work on the back end to refine it and add some additional material. We've also been brainstorming cover ideas and have a couple of really solid possibilities.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how the manuscript is coming together. There are a ton of essays in there right now (almost 80 different topics: movies, people, albums, books), so there's something for eveyone.

More as it develops. In the meantime, we've gotten the site back to publishing daily again, after being pretty sporadic over the last couple of months while we knocked out the manuscript. And the print effort is back on. I'm in the process of gathering all ye rosebuds while I may (or something like that).

Check it all out if you get a moment.

Labels: books, YPR

A quick announcement:

I'll be joining the Junkiness team as a blogger over there for a little while. The editors-in-chief are friends of mine, and I'm excited to be contributing to the website. I also encourage all of you (as I always have, link to the site is on the right) to go over and check it out.

Labels: Junkiness