I started to watch Vivre sa vie and decided life was too short and watched The Big Country (speaking of Jean fucking Simmons) instead. What a glorious movie. Definitely going to be pretty high up on my eventual western rankings.

The Big Country is just splendid. All that amazing scenery and the unforgettable music, plus Gregory Peck being a self-possessed, principled dreamboat. *sigh* And one of the few genuinely great vehicles for Simmons -- I feel like Hollywood didn't know what to do with her outside period epics.

Probably will catch a few of the expiring Frances Marions later today.

I really liked Secrets if you haven't seen that yet -- it's got some period-specific gender issues that made me cringe, but the central performances by Mary Pickford and Leslie Howard are very fine.

Oh yeah, that's one of our favorites and most rewatched

I haven't even heard of Porco Rosso until this month and was gobsmacked by how much I loved it. I mean, it's about a flying pig pilot for cryin' out loud. It's such an interesting mix of old Hollywood swashbuckling type charm, some anime-specific wacky shenanigans, plus this melancholic streak a mile wide, which somehow all work together. That flashback to the line of dead pilots in their planes ascending to the sky -- gosh, that hit me hard. Kinda reminded me of the arrival-at-heaven's gate scene from A Matter of Life and Death, which I might have mentioned once or twice is like my favourite movie of all time.

Both of my kids really glommed onto this one on first exposure in their pre-teens.

I mean, that movie has *everything*. Magical amulets! Floating lost cities! Sad giant robots programmed for destruction but secretly want to just look after local flora and fauna! SKY PIRATES! What's not to love?

I was dubious about Porco Ross before I watched it, but yeah, won me over.

I am not rushing right out to subscribe to HBO Max so I can watch Ghibli and I would like a gold star for that. Although I seem to recall seeing a free three months offer somewhere that I may check out...

SKY PIRATES! What's not to love?

Insider tidbit: Miyazaki was once slated to do an anime of Pippi Longstockings and if you look at his character sketches you can see that Captain Dola, the granny leader of the Sky Pirates is basically his idea of what would have happened to Pippi when she got older.

Mark Hammill voiced the baddie in both Castle in the Sky and Naussica.

While I'm at it, Minnie Driver voiced both Jane in Disney's Tarzan, and Lady Eboshi. Gillian Anderson was the mother wolf.

Also, Porco Rosso sent me on a research journey about the WWI Mediterranean and the pilots--not something taught in history classes in the US. I want to live in Gina's garden.

I want to like Ponyo a whole lot more than I do--the fish-to-little-girl transformation somehow gives me the wig, though. I think it's her running on not-yet-feet that does it.

A very short (~40) Criterion expiring list this month.

German Expressionism: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem, Destiny, Nosferatu, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, The Hands of Orlac, Varieté, Metropolis
Marriage Stories: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Squid and the Whale, A Separation
Western Noir: Day of the Outlaw
Directed by Mike Leigh: All or Nothing, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year
Directed by Kathleen Collins: Losing Ground, The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy
Masterclass: Kelly Reichardt: River of Grass, Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Cutoff
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky: Nostalghia, The Sacrifice
Starring Catherine Deneuve: Vice and Virtue, The Girl on the Train, On My Way
Other films: Born Free, Husbands, Death in Venice, The Last House on the Left, The Skin, My Beautiful Laundrette, Into the West
Three Documentaries from the Sensory Ethnography Lab: Caniba, Leviathan, Sweetgrass
Other documentaries: Stop Making Sense, Of Time and the City, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

My personal August "Get Them Before They're Gone" list: Besides the German Expressionism collection (many of which are rewatches) and continuing through Western Noir (which I actually expected to be expiring as a whole this month), I'm prioritizing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Kramer vs. Kramer, Stop Making Sense, My Beautiful Laundrette, Vera Drake, A Separation, On My Way. The first two are rewatches, the others are basically what seemed most interesting of those expiring. No real must-see films for me, except A Separation, which I haven't seen but feel I should consider for my Century+ Essential Films.

Now maybe I can get through some of the films I've been meaning to watch on Hulu and Netflix.

I'm prioritizing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Kramer vs. Kramer, Stop Making Sense, My Beautiful Laundrette, Vera Drake, A Separation, On My Way. The first two are rewatches, the others are basically what seemed most interesting of those expiring.

I love My Beautiful Launderette. A movie which just about everybody in my generational cohort watched but seems culturally somewhat forgotten. That's even more true about the second collaboration by Stephen Frears, and Hanif Kureishi, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (which is also a fantastic movie I'd like to revisit.)

I love My Beautiful Launderette. A movie which just about everybody in my generational cohort watched but seems culturally somewhat forgotten.

Yeah, it's weird I haven't seen it, or Stop Making Sense for that matter, but that's how it works out sometimes. I probably should consider both for my 1980s Century+ list, though it would be hard to dethrone anything currently on there.

I'm doing a Criterion trial because of you good people. Turn two, the rest are food...

Question: can you search by actor name? I tried but it wasn't giving me love. That said it was also late and I was high. Like, do they have a permanent library or just the themed groups of films monthly?

Question: can you search by actor name? I tried but it wasn't giving me love. That said it was also late and I was high. Like, do they have a permanent library or just the themed groups of films monthly?

They do have a permanent library. And the themed groups stick around for as long as some of the films in that collection are there. It's just that often the themes revolve around something that needs to be contracted out (I assume) and so they all expire at the same time when the contract runs out.

On the web (where I tend to organize most of my streaming queues since apps/Roku tend to be shit for that), there is an "All Films" section where you can filter by country, decade, director, and genre. While this can be useful if you are looking in a general way for, say, westerns or films of the 1910s (where there aren't that many), I mostly just use the Search feature. Their permanent collection runs very art house so I think if you are looking for a particular Hollywood actor, they might not have anything right now, but it doesn't mean they won't ever.

They cycle things in and out rather often. I've already seen multiple films "expire" and then be back again for some other reason.

The way I've pretty much been using Criterion is I have a permanent queue of films I want to get around to eventually and then I add new collections/films/double features that look interesting at the front when I happen to notice them, and then every month I put the expiring ones at the front of that. So on the Roku we see the expiring ones first and if nothing seems appealing at that moment we go to the collections. The only ones we seem to get to in my more permanent queue are the female filmmakers since I prioritize those on Fridays.

Rose and I just watched the third HP movie, and I was so surprised that nobody explains to Harry (or the audience) who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are! That seems really important both plot-wise and thematically.