I don't blog about it every day, but my son John has a blog — that he adds to every day — that goes year by year from 1920 to 2020 and gives his favorite movie (or movies) from each year. For some years, he isolates a single movie, but for other years, he lists a runner-up or 2 or 3. He hit 1968 today, and this is a year with 4 movies.
The top choice is "Monterey Pop":
Truly amazing. And you can watch it at home on 4K now (with the right streaming channels, about which John will always inform you).
The second choice is something I watched recently, Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet." I watched it as part of a project — my imaginary movie project — that I began in 2019 and stalled on in 2019. I was rewatching movies that I'd seen when they came out, beginning with 1960 and only getting up to 1968. My 1968 movie was "Romeo and Juliet," and I wrote about it here. I've watched the movies for the next 5 years, but somehow I never got around to blogging about them. How, when I blog every day, do a watch a whole movie, specifically meaning to write a post about it, but then I don't?! Maybe I expect myself to say so much that I end up saying nothing at all.
Anyway... John's third choice is the Ingmar Bergman movie "Shame," which I saw when I was in college, when I had so many Ingmar Bergman movies loaded into my brain.
John's fourth choice is something I haven't seen — Frederick Wiseman's documentary "High School." I'm so impressed by the approach of using nothing but film, with no voiceover or text explanations:
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Gregory writes:
"I saw Wiseman's High School at its first public screening in 1978 at Temple University's Annenberg Hall. The director Frederick Wiseman himself was in attendance and made remarks. Yes, I said 1978. Wiseman's movie was held up from release for years through legal action by some of the people who appeared in High School. They claimed the movie portrayed them in a bad light during the Vietnam war, and for that the movie was subject to prior restraint censorship. The overhang of the war and the draft was a recurring feature of Wiseman's movie. For the record, High School was filmed at Philadelphia's Northeast High, which in 1968 was one of the most highly regarded public schools academically in the City and region. Wiseman's High School remains one of the great accomplishments in American direct documentary. Which is a genre sadly lost to history, overshadowed by the agit-prop antics of the likes of Michael Moore and other polemicists. Wiseman's High School a thoughtful addition to a list of best movies. Thanks, Gregory."
I'll add:
John's post has some striking detail about the material about Vietnam.
Kathryn51 writes:
"I feel bad that I have not kept up with John’s blog and I’m not even sure (although I am presumably a member of the “‘60s generation”) that I watched any of the four mentioned in today’s post. However, I deep dived to look at prior years and two of my all time favorites – Rear Window and Vertigo – Jimmy Stewart highpoints (and what Hollywood did to this venerable and multi-faceted star in the ‘70s is unspeakable) and will spend some serious time reviewing his blog in the next few days. Thanks for the reminder."
gpm writs:
"Monterey Pop was on TCM today, where there seemed to be a musical theme for the day (though mostly creepy movies about pianists losing their hands or something). Don't know whether MP will be available On Demand. Haven't been keeping up but, judging from the other 1968 entries, I think Jaltcoh may have passed by my sweet spot for old movies. Totally arbitrary, but I usually draw the line around 1960 for whether, yeah, I know that movie and, well, maybe I've seen it at some point."
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