Week 1 - These Go to 11

It's the Letterboxd Season Challenge's eleventh year, and it's become an informal tradition to kick things off with a theme tied, however vaguely, to the challenge's age. For this year, an exchange between Nigel Tufnel and Marty DeBergi from This Is Spinal Tap seems apt:

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven, and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel: Exactly.

--------

Marty: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel: [pause] These go to eleven.

Most filmmakers are amps that only go up to ten. Granted, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, and Kubrick may be legends, and they may have turned things up to ten more often than others, but none of them ever had the balls to reach over and turn things up to eleven. That's why, this week, we'll seek out the filmmakers who did.

Your challenge this week is to embrace the spirit of Nigel Tufnel. So, throw on a sleeveless shirt, apply some eyeliner, grab your axe, and go one louder by watching a film from Dozzyrok's Maximalist Cinema list.

Week 2 - Lesser-Known Labels: Indicator Week

 Week 2: September 8th-14th

 Lesser-Known Labels: Indicator Week

I own a bunch of Criterions, but there are a lot of other labels out there that are worth exploring. Powerhouse Films is a British company that releases Blu-Rays through the Indicator Series, featuring films from a range of eras and genres. Whether it's overlooked classic Hollywood or Jean Rollin Euro-horror, there's a wide range to choose from. I personally don't own any of these yet, but maybe I'll change that as a bonus challenge for this week.

This week's challenge is to watch a film released by Indicator.

Weekly tag: lsc11 week2

Week 3 - Erotic 80s Week

Although it could be argued that there is a small resurgence of sexual themes being explored in movies being made today there was a time “beginning in the 1970s and ending around the end of the millennium, when Hollywood movies explored the sexual lives, mores and fantasies of adults with degrees of candor, realism and imagination not seen before or since.” Karina Longworth, film historian and creator and host of the You Must Remember This podcast has explored two-decades worth of erotic movies in two separate seasons of her podcast; both seasons are fascinating and recommended. The 80s, in particular, saw many notable filmmakers delve into erotic themes where some like Paul Schrader, Brian De Palma, and Adrian Lyne thrived.

This week let’s dive into this unique part of Hollywood’s history unashamedly and watch a movie that was featured on the You Must Remember This season Erotic 80s with this list from Gentry here.

Quote from the You Must Remember This website.

Week 4 - Young Guns Week

If you follow your passion, you'll never work a day in your life.

Tony Bennett

One would have to assume the directors eligible for this week's theme truly did find their passion. After all, most octogenarians have long ago called it quits on the daily grind. But this special group kept going, seeing fit, for whatever reason, to keep crafting films well after most of their peers had folded their canvas chairs and put away their bullhorns. From narrative masters to documentarian stalwarts to avant-garde trailblazers, these folks are blessed with a lasting youthfulness that keeps them behind the camera until the moment the movie gods finally call them home.

This week's challenge is to watch a film from slinkyman's Films Made By 80+ Year Old Directors.

Week 5 - This Is a Disaster Week

While the 70s are remembered for timeless blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars, it was also the peak for disaster films. There have always been films about natural disasters, accidents, and other catastrophes, but it was the 1970 release of Airport that really ignited the genre. There's some emergency and an all-star cast of characters has to try to survive it, whether it's a bomb, a storm, a fire, or a sinking ship. These became huge hits and award winners throughout the decade. The decade is perfectly bookended by Airport and the great 1980 spoof Airplane! Can we make it out of this week alive?

This week's challenge is to watch a disaster film from the 1970s. This list is a good place to start looking.

Week 6 - The First Talkies Week

One of many fascinating parts of movie history is when sound was first introduced to movies. If you’ve seen movies such as Singin’ in the Rain or Babylon then you probably have some idea of how much of a monumental shift this was for the industry that forever changed the way movies are made and experienced. The main hurdle technologically was finding a way to reliably synchronize the sound with the image, which led to two technologies: sound-on-disc was sound recorded on a phonograph disc that was mechanically interlocked with modified projectors, whereas sound-on-film recorded sound on the sides of a film strip. Some early films like Sunrise: A Song of two Humans used the new technologies to add a score and sound effects like crowd sounds, but The Jazz Singer in 1927 was the first to add scenes of talking and singing recorded live on stage and became Warner Bros. biggest hit to date. Other studios were slow to adapt, with some studio heads believing sound would be a passing gimmicky fad, but Warner Bros. huge successes with subsequent films led all the other major studios to produce films with prerecorded dialogue before the end of the decade.

This week’s task is to watch one of the first talkies ever created, specifically one that features synchronized sound, recorded dialogue, and made before 1930. Here is a helpful list from Zach.

Week 7 - Multiple Roles Week

There is something fun about seeing an actor play multiple roles in a single film. If nothing else, it provides an opportunity for our favorite actors to get more screen time. Sometimes it is utilized for comedic effect such as Mike Myers in the Austin Powers trilogy, the Monty Python troupe in all their films, or Eddie Murphy in several movies including seven characters in The Nutty Professor. Peter Sellers’ three roles of different nationalities even garnered him an Oscar nomination in Dr. Strangelove. Other times multiple roles are used for thematic effect such as the use of doppelgängers in Us or the several actors who played six different characters in the six different timelines depicted in Cloud Atlas. Of course there are so many actors who depict multiple family members like Michael J. Fox playing his own ancestors and descendants in the Back to the Future trilogy or Venessa Hudgens portraying three cousins in The Princess Switch trilogy, but far and away many films use the same actor to play identical twins such as Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers or the one other Oscar-nominated actor for multiple roles: Nicolas Cage in Adaptation.

So whether you find a movie with obvious multiple roles like Michael B. Jordan in Sinners or a hidden one like Tilda Swinton in Suspiria, this week watch a movie featuring an actor playing multiple roles. Here is a list from Antoine Cournoyer to help.

Week 8 - BLEEDING SKULL! (poster: Student Bodies)

From bleedingskull.com:

Bleeding Skull! A 1980s Trash-Horror Odyssey is a celebration of the most obscure, bizarre, and brain-busting movies ever made — the definitive resource on 1980s trash-horror cinema. [It] features... 300 movies that have escaped the radar of people with taste and the tolerance of critics. This book gets deep into gutter-level, no-budget horror, from shot-on-VHS revelations to forgotten theatrical casualties. Bleeding Skull! is an edifying, laugh-out-loud guide through the dusty inventory of the greatest video store that never existed.

It's almost Halloween! In the spirit of the spooky season, let's virtually rummage through that mythical video store's grimy selection and pluck out an 80s trash-horror movie to watch from Bleeding Skull's BLEEDING SKULL! A 1980s TRASH-HORROR ODYSSEY list.


Week 9 - A24 Horror Week

You've got to ask yourself one question: Wouldst thou like to live deliciously? A24, despite being a distributor, has come to be seen as a genre unto itself, particularly with their horror films. The term "elevated horror" pre-dates the company, but they've helped to popularize it with films like Under the Skin, The Witch, Hereditary, and Talk to Me. There's plenty of debate about whether the term or the films are pretentious, as horror films have always been capable of style and depth. Regardless of how you feel about them, there's typically at least an interesting hook, so this Halloween, brace yourself, grab the hand 🫱, and see where it takes you.

This week's challenge is to watch a horror film released by A24.


Week 10 - Fringe Cinema Week

Movements demarcate cinema's history. A few of these are well-known, even to those who wouldn't consider themselves cinephiles; the terms French New Wave and New Hollywood are likely familiar to many. Most movements, however, are invisible to the casual moviegoer. To help expand our knowledge (and firmly brand us as cineasts), the past ten LSCs have dedicated a week or three to 30+ movements, from French Impressionism to Japanese New Wave to Greek Weird Wave. For this, our eleventh year, in addition to a couple more film waves covered in later weeks, we're headed well off the beaten path to explore Fringe Cinema. Focusing on films made by those way outside the system, Fringe Cinema casts a wide net over sub-movements that include No Budget, SOV (shot on video), Experimental, and Underground Cinema. Labelling Fringe Cinema as a movement or wave may flout the traditional definition with its variety of styles and subjects and its century-long sweep. But that's kinda what Fringe Cinema is all about: a scrappy underdog indifferent to the conventions of standard movie-making and, therefore, an entity stoutly—and steadfastly—unto its own.

For this week's challenge, take a look through ElNapalmo's extensive Fringe & Outsider Cinema list. Whatever you choose to watch, we hope it'll be an eye-opening experience and expose you to the relatively hidden world of cinema made outside the usual channels.



Week 11 - You Don't Know Jack Week

Excerpted from The American Society of Cinematographers:

Once asked to name the best color movie ever made, Natalie Kalmus, the daughter and protege of Technicolor inventor/founder Dr. Herbert Kalmus and Technicolor consultant on a number of classic films, offered her choice without a moment's hesitation: 1948's The Red Shoes. But not everyone agrees with Natalie Kalmus. Many aficionados believe Black Narcissus is the best Technicolor film ever made. The critics lauded the camerawork with comments such as "Dazzling colors, rich pastels... never garish."

Both films, in case you weren't aware, were shot by Jack Cardiff. Cardiff was self-taught and took his inspiration not from others in his field, but from history's master painters:

Any cameraman would get ideas from Van Gogh and moods of light. Light is the principal agent. That should be the same in photography, that the use of light is like a painter — that you use it in a simple form.

Vermeer was the sort of painter that I had in mind on Black Narcissus because the light had to be clear and as simple as possible.

With a mind-boggling 90 years in the movie industry, Cardiff was one of the most lauded and esteemed cinematographers of all time and the first person ever to be awarded a technical honorary Oscar for their work. For these reasons and many more, let's get to know Jack Cardiff, one of the industry's finest artisans and a man who left a lasting mark on the way movies look.


Week 12 - Direct Cinema Week

Direct cinema is a documentary film movement originating between 1958 and 1962. New technologies around this time, like lightweight and portable cameras and synchronous sound equipment, allowed filmmakers to depict the real world as directly as possible. The goal was to document "cinema truth", which can be traced back to Dziga Vertov. The presence of the camera should not alter the reality of what's being recorded, but is that possible?

This week's challenge is to watch a Direct Cinema documentary. This list has plenty of examples.






Week 13 - Family Business

As with any other business the movie industry has been fertile grounds for family members to work together. Siblings, in particular, have been directing movies together since the beginning of movie history with the French Lumière brothers making shorts and putting on the first commercial public screening of a film in 1895, while the Aromanian Manaki brothers brought the first camera to the Balkans and documented several important historic and cultural events in the early 1900s. Today, newcomer directing duos like the Australian twin Philippou brothers and Zellner brothers are making a splash, while famous stalwarts like the Coen brotherss, the Belgian Dardenne brothers with movies about working-class life, the Duplass brothers working in indie and mumblecore, the comedic Farrelly brothers, the twin Hughes Brothers exploring Black American life, the twin Hong Kong Pang brothers mostly making horror and action movies in Thailand, the Russo brothers working with Marvel, the indie darling Safdie brothers, the German-Australian Spierig brothers making horror and sci-fi, and trans sisters the Wachowskis mostly making big sci-fi movies are all making movies today even if some of them are trending toward solo projects. Other important sibling duos include the documentarian Maysles brothers working in the direct cinema style and the Naudet brothers who captured extensive footage of the 9/11 attacks, animators the Wan brothers who directed the first feature animated film in Asia and the identical twin Brothers Quay working in experimental stop-motion, the identical twin British Boulting brothers who made satires in the 50s and 60s, the Ramsay Brothers who made Bollywood horror movies mostly in the 70s and 80s, and the Italian Taviani brothers who won the Palme d’Or in 1977. It is probable that the disproportionate amount of sister directing duos compared to brothers is the result of the overall sexism prevalent in most industries, but sisters of note include the French Coulin sisters who had movies play at Cannes and the twin Canadian Soska Sisters, a.k.a. the Twisted Twins, known for their violent horrors.

This week’s task is to watch a film directed by a pair of siblings. Although many of these duos are listed above there are others you can seek out, just make sure you find a movie directed by two siblings as many have directed solo.






Week 14 - We Love Docs Week

Documentaries are an important, but often overlooked part of cinema. The International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982 by Linda Buzzell, has sought to champion documentaries with grants, advocacy, education, and exposure with the help of their Documentary magazine and their IDA Documentary Awards. In the past they presented a Best Feature award to up to five documentaries each year before limiting it to two in 1997, but since 2008 it now limits it to a single documentary. What better way is there to show our love of documentaries than to watch one that is deemed one of the best by such big documentary enthusiasts as the ones at the IDA!

This week let’s watch one of the documentaries that won Best Feature at the IDA Awards as compiled in this list from Y2K.



Week 15 - Underseen Excellence Week

In order to be on the Official Letterboxd Top 250, a film needs to have at least 15,000 ratings. This week, like Mama Odie told us to, we're going to dig a little deeper. User Sam Williams has kept a list of the top 100 films under 15,000 ratings. These are films that don't yet meet the official threshold, so this week let's try to help some of them graduate. I've seen a third of the list as of writing this, and there are several I love and all are worth watching, so find one that interests you and hopefully discover a new favorite.

This week's challenge is to watch a film from one of the top 100 films with under 15,000 ratings.


Week 16 - Beach Week

Let’s go to the beach in winter! When surf culture was hugely popular for young people in the United States during the 60s, American Independent Pictures decided to target this audience with their film Beach Party, which became a gigantic hit and prompted the studio and many others to focus on producing movies that fit the same formula, showing how important the teen market could be for financial success. These movies were all about having a good time with plenty of young people in bathing suits, good music, dancing, lots of innuendo and suggestive dialogue and no parents! In fact, the few adult characters who appeared were either antagonists and/or completely silly. Those adults, after all, were responsible for the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and civil rights riots, but there’s no mention of these events in these films; they’re all about escapism. Beach Party films featured original songs and music from established musicians and up-and-comers like a young Stevie Wonder and Nancy Sinatra and comedic guest stars like Don Rickles or old stars past their prime like Buster Keaton, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Vincent Price. Sex was used in the advertising, but very little of it was depicted in the actual movies. Of course, just like any other fad, beach party movies were all but gone in less than a decade as teens’ tastes shifted to the next thing: stock car racing!

This week escape winter and soak up the sun with a Beach Party movie from the 60s! Here’s a good list from lmgiannone.


Week 17 - Great Literature Week

Adapting any book is its own challenge compared to writing an original screenplay, especially when working with revered source material. In the past, my New Year's Resolutions have involved reading more, so as we return from the break, we can at least tackle one of those classics in a more digestible movie form. Great literature doesn't always lead to great cinema, but hopefully we find some great examples this week. And for extra credit, either before or after watching this week's film, read its source novel.

This week's challenge is to watch a film adapted from a classic novel. Here is a list of novels that can fairly be called classics, and most of them have at least one film version.





Week 18 - Demi, Demme, Demy Week

We're back at it again! At LSC, we love having fun with names. For the past seven seasons, we've cleverly chosen individuals with sound-alike names from in front of- and behind the camera to form an eclectic group from which we torturously make you choose just one. This year, our cruelty limits you to one of only three choices: Demi Moore, Jonathan Demme, and Jacques Demy. Who will you select? A former world's highest-paid female actor making a late-career comeback? Or perhaps one of two dearly departed directors, an unlikely duo who happened to direct a pair of wildly different films that, nonetheless, share one uncommon, elemental trait: wall-to-wall music. It's a tough choice; good luck!

(As always, if choosing only one feels barbaric, feel free to make room for a film from all three—we won't judge!)




Week 19 - Social Conscience Week

Roger Ebert famously said that “movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” When we watch a movie we can understand a little bit more of what it might be like to be someone else, to witness the challenges and struggles that impact how they live. Every March, when the United Nations’ Human Rights Council holds their main session in Geneva, a concurrent film festival called the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights is held to honor films that help spark debate and spread awareness about human rights and social, political, and economic atrocities. Naturally, they award a top prize to a documentary, but since 2003 they have also included fiction films at the film festival and have since awarded a top prize to a fiction film too.

This week let’s grow our empathy and become more socially conscious by watching a film awarded the grand prize by the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights for either documentary from this list here or fiction from this list here.


Week 20 - The Sundance Kids Week

Robert Redford and his Sundance Institute established the Sundance Film Festival in 1978. It began in Salt Lake City, and in 1981 moved to Park City. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States. This year's festival will be the last held in Utah, as it's moving to Boulder Colorado in 2027 for reasons both practical and political. To honor the end of this era, this week we'll be looking at some of the festival's top prize winners throughout the years.

This week's challenge is to watch a film that won either the Grand Jury Prize or the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.



Week 21 - Regeneration (poster: Regeneration)

Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971 was an exhibit at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures from August 2022 to July 2023. The exhibit's permanent online home offers the following overview:

Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971 explores the rich history of Black participation in American cinema from its beginnings to just beyond the civil rights movement. Inspired by and named after an independent all-Black-cast movie from 1923, Regeneration seeks to revive lost or forgotten films, filmmakers, and performers for a contemporary audience.

Moviemaking has always been instrumental in shaping culture more broadly, and Black artists and entrepreneurs have been involved from the start despite racism and prejudices that limited their opportunities. Black actors, at times, turned stereotypical roles that did not represent their full humanity into three-dimensional characters, while Black directors who were left out of the mainstream system created their own independent production companies.

In celebration of Black History Month, this week's challenge is to watch a film from bobbiana's handily compiled list of all the titles featured in the exhibit.


Week 22 - Lessons in Chemistry Week

The chemistry between lead actors can often carry a film on its own. However, as they said in the Letterboxd Showdown "The Big Heat", reaction rates may differ. Combining the right elements takes skill, both by the actors and the casting director, who starting this year will be eligible to win an Oscar in the brand new Best Casting category. If you're looking for actual science, this week is also an opportunity for education as you can also choose to watch a movie about science, whether it's real or fictional. This list is a good starting point, but feel free to experiment on your own. Maybe you'll make a breakthrough and find a movie about chemistry where the actors have great chemistry! Just don't forget your lab safety equipment.

This week's challenge is to watch a film with acting chemistry or a film about science.


Week 23 - Bill Hader’s Essential Comedies Week

Time to laugh! Writing comedy is largely seen as extremely difficult. When Mike Sachs wrote a book featuring interviews with a bunch of comedy writers, Bill Hader simply provided him with a list of 200 movies he thought comedy writers could learn from watching. Hader, famous for being a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, as well as a writer for South Park, Documentary Now!, and Barry is also a huge cinephile and his Criterion Closet appearance is a favorite. His list features a plethora of great movies new and old, some of which aren’t traditionally seen as comedies like Eyes Wide Shut and Drag Me to Hell. Most, however, are indeed comedy classics that feature exceptional writing and provide all the laughs.

This week enjoy some comedic genius by watching a movie from Bill Hader’s Essential Comedies list, which can be found in this helpful list from Aaron.


Week 24 - It's a Woman's World Week

There are too many men in movies. From The Thing to Reservoir Dogs, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to There Will Be Blood, some of the most well-known and beloved films have casts that either entirely exclude women or relegate them to minor, insultingly perfunctory roles. Granted, some, like Saving Private Ryan and Twelve Angry Men, are simply replicating the eras and circumstances in which they take place. But still, enough with the dudes. It's time to take a stand; it's time to say, "No more!"; it's time to reverse the status quo and give women the limelight they deserve—all of it!

This week's challenge is to drastically—if only briefly—tip the scales by watching a film with an all-female cast from Ian Casocot's The Women [or Films with an All- or Predominantly Female Cast] list.




Week 25 - Won Once: Best International Feature Week

Although the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts had frequently granted special awards for international films in the first few decades of the Academy Awards, which pretty much amount to a best international feature award, it wasn’t until its 29th iteration in 1956 that an official annual competitive award was included, first called the Best Foreign Language Film before being renamed the Best International Feature Film in 2020. Over 135 different countries have submitted films, but only 64 countries have ever received nominations and a mere 30 countries have ever won. Some countries with big, historic film industries have won many times like Italy’s 14 wins or France’s 12 wins, while a few individual filmmakers have been favored like Ingmar Bergman’s three wins or Vittoria de Sica and Federico Fellini’s four wins each. Since the Oscar love has been spreading to more countries in more recent history there are a handful of countries that have won the top prize a single time, about half of them just in the past twelve years.

This week’s task is to watch one of the movies from a country that has only won Best International Feature once, which can be found in this list.



Week 26 - Hungary for Cinema Week

Past LSCs have featured the New Waves of countries around the world, and this year we'll be focusing on Hungary. As we learned from The Brutalist, Hungarian is a difficult language to learn, so let's hear some real Hungarian with no help from AI-vocal adjustments. The Hungarian New Wave began in the 1960s following the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Directors like István Szabó and Miklós Jancsó became prominent with their innovative styles and themes reflecting societal and political undercurrents. Here is a good list, but this movement doesn't seem as well-defined as others from what I've found, so feel free to expand your search to any Hungarian films prior to the turn of the century. Even if it doesn't strictly fit the prompt, if you want to use this opportunity to tackle the 7+ hour Satantango I certainly won't object.

This week's challenge is to watch a Hungarian New Wave film.



Week 27 - Lucha Libre Week

Fútbol may be Mexico's most treasured sport, but Lucha Libre ranks a close second. The sport's roots stretch back to the 19th century, but it wasn't until the early 1930s that freestyle wrestling took hold nationally. A decade later, Santo ("Saint") made his debut. Never without his mascara de plata ("silver mask"), he thrilled the population with his secrecy and skill, thrusting the luchadores into the popular consciousness and, over his nearly 50-year career, becoming exalted as a folk hero. Then, during the 1950s, Mexico's film industry took off. And what better to capitalize on the popular, B-grade genre output of their industry neighbor to the north, Hollywood, than luchador pictures? Luchador films enjoyed a healthy run through the '50s, '60s, and—when interest and box office finally waned—into the mid-'70s when everything from Nazis to aliens was targeted for the heros' particularly high-flying, acrobatic meting of justice.

This week's challenge is to climb into the ring with the Lucha Libre. Paul D's Mucho Lucha Libre: Mexican Wrestling Movies has plenty of titles for you to wrap your arms around and wrestle into submission.


Week 28 - Uncharted Lands Week

Although there's no official partnership, we like to include categories in March that help people participating (including all three of your esteemed LSC hosts) in the wonderful March Around the World challenge. The goal of that challenge is to expand your cinematic horizons and explore films from across the globe. One of the incentives is the opportunity to turn countries from gray to green on your Letterboxd map, so this week let's add another new country to our lists.

This week's challenge is to watch a film from a country from which you haven't seen any films.






Week 29 - Classic Performers: Mary Pickford Week

Following her father's death in 1899, seven-year-old Gladys Smith took up the burden of providing for her mother and siblings. Her chosen line of work? Acting. Local stage plays quickly blossomed into a touring theatre group, followed by a supporting role on Broadway with a new, catchier name: Mary Pickford. Soon after, D. W. Griffith signed her as a Biograph Player. By her mid-20s, Pickford, as skilled in business as acting, was negotiating million-dollar yearly deals for herself, making her the highest-paid actor in the biz—even higher than Charlie Chaplin. Not content to rest on her laurels, she helped found United Artists and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Now in her mid-30s, Mary longed to break from being typecast as a coy youngster; unfortunately, audiences were unsympathetic. Upon her mother's death in 1928, she cut her trademark curls to outrage and death threats, and five years later, after an unsuccessful transition to talkies, she vacated life on-screen.

Nowadays, you don't hear much about Mary Pickford. So for this week's challenge, let's return the spotlight to the "Queen of Movies" by watching a film starring the world's first movie star and the most powerful woman in Hollywood, the singular Mary Pickford.



Week 30 - Everything Is Connected Week

​​Spatial analysis in the social science field examines the "'horizontal experience' of human life, the spatial dimension of individual behavior and social relations, as opposed to the 'vertical experience' of history, tradition, and biography." Hyperlink films, a term first used by Alissa Quart in her review of the 2005 film Happy Endings, follow this same concept by featuring the stories of multiple connected characters, whether it's guests at a single hotel in the Oscar-winner Grand Hotel, or people around the globe in Iñárritu's Babel. These films can feature complex or multilinear narrative structures, and the connections between characters may be clear or hidden, literal or thematic. Like 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon shows us, we're all more closely connected than you think.

This week's challenge is to watch a hyperlink film. This list is a good place to start.



Week 31 - The Roger Corman Film School Week

The Roger Corman Film School Week (poster: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960))

Roger Corman is one of the most important figures in American independent filmmaking. He started by working as a messenger for 20th Century Fox and worked his way up to become a story reader, but when he received no credit for his work on The Gunslinger (1950) he quit and eventually sold a script for enough money to make his own low-budget feature called Monster From the Ocean Floor (1954), which did quite well. Corman sold his second feature, The Fast and the Furious (1955) to a new independent production company, which became American International Pictures, despite offers from big studios. Corman ended up directing and/or producing over 500 films and also distributed movies. When other big studios decided to stop distributing foreign arthouse movies Corman’s own company New World Pictures, founded in 1970, distributed films by François Truffaut, Peter Weir, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and others. Many famous filmmakers and actors got some of their first work on a Corman film and have said that they learned a lot from or were influenced by Corman with James Cameron even saying, “I trained at the Roger Corman Film School.” Others, who went to this so-called school include Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Polly Platt, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, John Sayles, Monte Hellman, Curtis Hanson, Robert Towne, James Horner, Timur Bekmambetov, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Charles Bronson, Todd Field, Michael McDonald, Dennis Hopper, Tommy Lee Jones, Talia Shire, Sandra Bullock, Robert De Niro, and David Carradine to name a handful.

This week let’s honor Corman’s legacy by watching the first movie one of his collaborators, who would later become famous, worked with him on from this list here.


Week 32 - Nature Week

Even though almost every movie-watching experience involves being indoors in a very controlled and comfortable setting often in the dark, air-conditioned with yummy snacks, movies can still transport us outdoors to dry deserts and wet jungles or to snowy mountaintops and pristine beaches. Nature can be a source of beauty, danger, inspiration or power. We can try to tame or conquer it, but often it humbles or even devastates us. And even though a movie will always fail to fully capture nature’s impact as experienced in real life, some movies highlight just how awesome nature can be in both wonderful and terrible ways.

This week turn on your screen and get swept away in a movie that features nature as a major theme with this list from MorganLightle or this list from rscusick and after maybe go for a walk in the woods.








Week 33 - Contemporary Performers: Willem Dafoe Week

It's 1980. A young Willem Dafoe lands his first film role in Michael Cimino's epic flop Heaven's Gate. Dafoe got the part by asserting he was fluent in Dutch. Spoiler alert: He was not. That's why, fired and uncredited, his unmistakably angular face only pops up in the background of a few scenes. But everyone's gotta start somewhere, and that's where one of modern cinema's most compelling and prolific actors got his. And, boy, what a run he's had. Who else can claim to have worked with directors more wide-ranging and notable than this son of Wisconsin? Scorsese, Stone, Lynch, Cronenberg, Friedkin, Herzog, Schrader, Burton, Bigelow, Raimi, Del Toro, Lee, Von Trier, Anderson, Lanthimos, Baker, Eggers, and the list just goes on.

This week, let's take a look at one of contemporary cinema's most interesting and valuable on-screen presences, Willem Dafoe.