2011Watch was never going to be 365Watch. That was never my intention . . . but I should have at least made it to the end of January.
It was that bastard Coogan film that broke my spirit.
I should stick to documentaries. I know where I am with documentaries.
As New Year's Resolutions go, lasting out until nearly the end of May is pretty impressive but, after one hundred and forty eight films, I have to hold my hands up to the fact that, due to a combination of extreme tiredness and more extreme tiredness, May 28th is marked down as the first day in 2010 that I didn't watch a new film as part of my '365Watch'.
I'm especially disappointed because I'd already decided to temporarily suspend 365Watch for the duration of the World Cup. Only fourteen days shy of an honorable suspension of the resolution.
Gutted . . . .sick as a parrot . . . more morose than a Red House Painters album track. The cliches come fast and furious. And all the more galling to last so long when I've had to suffer through garbage such as this, this and especially this.
Rather than knocking 365Watch on the head after lasting so long, I think I'll carry on with my original plan: try and watch as many films as possible during the course of the year - maybe doubling up one day with two films to make up for the aberration that was May 28th - and welcome the temporary suspension of the film a day for the duration of the World Cup.
What else am I going to do . . . write actual blog posts?
Good post over at the World Socialist Party of the United States website on the significance of May Day.
And it would be remiss of me if I didn't mention the May Day post over at the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog.
Now on a day like today, what radically minded film can I watch as part of 365Watch? Norma Rae, maybe? (No, too close to Soapdish.) Reds? (Yep, believe or not, I've never watched it in its entirety.) Children of the Revolution? Together? John Thaw in Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition? (I would if I could. The holy grail of lost films that one.) Modern Times? (Bugger Chaplin.)
I'm sure I'll find something appropriate . . . .
From the closing credits of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story', Tony Babino belts out what is now my favourite version of The Internationale:
"Speed it up", indeed.
Addendum
Interesting article by Len Wallace about the history of The Internationale that first appeared in the pages of The Industrial Worker back in 2006:
The Most Dangerous Song in the World - A Rewrite
Back to the Baconian Mixing Politics and 365Watch
From Natalie Wood to the 1918/19 German Revolution in 4 moves:
Late last month I squirmed through the execrable 'Sex and the Single Girl'. My only defence -and it's a flimsy one - is that it starred the divine Natalie Wood. Adapted from the 1962 book of the same name, the film's screenplay was co-written by Joseph Heller who - and I'm guessing wildly here - got the writing gig as he was still at that point considered the literary hot stuff off the back of his 1961 novel, Catch-22. Literary sensation, Catch-22, received its very own film adaption treatment in 1970. I've only ever seen bits and pieces of the film here and there but it's got a stellar cast and I love the book, so it'll probably find its way onto 365Watch at some point. Despite all the right credentials, the film was neither a success with the public nor with the critics. (M*A*S*H stole its thunder that year.) All the more surprising because director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry were coming off the back of the success of The Graduate. Mike Nichols was born Michael Igorevitch Peschkowsky in Berlin in 1931. His maternal grandfather was Gustav Landauer, communist anarchist theoretician and a leading participant in the Bavarian Soviet Republic of the Spring of 1919.
As mentioned previously, "Sorry, it doesn't get any better."
I've not been mixing it much lately, so, as the blog is currently in film watching mode, I've decided to kick-start a series entitled, 'Mixing Politics and 365Watch'.
I can't guarantee that it will have the longevity of 'Mixing Footie and Politics' or the studied obscurantism of 'Mixing Pop and Politics', but I do promise irrelevance and responses of 'What the fuck is he on?'*
Inspired by the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon trivia game, the idea is that I will take a film that I watched as part of 365Watch and somehow link it to fringe left-wing politics. The more tangential the connection the better. The more obscure the politics? All the more in keeping with the blog.
Of course, such a series should start with the usual suspects. From Dustin Hoffman to the SPGB in 3 moves.
Last night I watched the 1969 movie, John and Mary, starring a buttoned-up Dustin Hoffman and an eyebrow-less Mia Farrow. Adapted by John Mortimer, the script is based on Mervyn Jones's 1966 novel of the same name. Mervyn Jones? Only the same Mervyn Jones who reviewed Barltrop's The Monument: the Story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the pages of New Statesman in 1975. (The review wasn't as hostile as you would have thought. It wasn't that glowing, either.)
Sorry, it doesn't get any better.
*'What the fuck is he on?' Lack of bastard sleep.
. . . or rather, what my world's been waiting for.
This little gem of a website could keep my 365Watch New Year's Resolution on track for longer than any of us anticipated. The heads up on future films to be streamed will hopefully mean that I will no longer be faffing about for half an hour every day wondering what film to watch.
