Film Night

I got a Sky + box installed in October 2009. I went a bit mad with it at first, putting lots of programmes on “series repeat” record. I ended up with lots of episodes of “The Simpsons” (I’d not seen a new episode since about 1999), “Futurama”, “Time Team”, “Doctor Who”, “American Dad!” and “Family Guy” on there. Not surprisingly, I quickly ran out of space on the hard drive. For over a year I fought a constant battle with it, trying my best to keep watching things I’d recorded to make room to record more. For months I had it hovering on 2% free space. A few things were automatically deleted by the wretched machine to free up space. In the end I must have recorded and watched practically every episode of the shows I just listed. I had to create a nerdy spreadsheet to keep track of which episodes I’d seen and which ones I’d not. It was only at the start of 2011 that I found myself in the position where I didn’t have to keep recording episodes of the above, because I’d seen them all. So I had space and time to record and watch films. I kept a list. Here it is, with the date I viewed it:

08-Mar-11 Sunset Boulevard (1950)
12-Apr-11 This Is England (2006)
20-Apr-11 Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines (1965)
29-Apr-11 P’Tang, Yang, Kipperbang (1982)
10-Jun-11 I Was A Male War Bride (1949)
12-Jun-11 The Good German (2006)
21-Jun-11 Black Narcissus (1947)
03-Jul-11 Bringing Up Baby (1938)
05-Jul-11 His Girl Friday (1940)
21-Jul-11 Happy Go Lucky (2008)
28-Jul-11 Wild Strawberries (1957)
05-Aug-11 Monte Carlo Or Bust (1969)
06-Aug-11 Laura (1944)
20-Aug-11 Carry On Screaming (1966)
29-Aug-11 Build My Gallows High (1947) aka Out Of The Past
31-Aug-11 In A Lonely Place (1950)
02-Sep-11 First Men In The Moon (1964)
03-Sep-11 The Innocents (1961)
04-Sep-11 Farewell My Lovely (1944) aka Murder, My Sweet
14-Sep-11 Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948)
23-Sep-11 To Be Or Not To Be (1942)
03-Oct-11 Bigger Than Life (1956)
10-Oct-11 Sabrina (1954)
11-Oct-11 Persepolis (2007)
20-Oct-11 Séance On A Wet Afternoon (1964)
21-Oct-11 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1955)
22-Oct-11 Victim (1961)
24-Oct-11 Man With The Gun (1955)
04-Nov-11 The Red Desert (1964)
05-Nov-11 Ordet (1955)
11-Nov-11 Carry On Abroad (1972)
18-Nov-11 Carry On Up The Khyber (1968)
22-Nov-11 Cloak & Dagger (1946)
28-Nov-11 Panic In The Streets (1950)
29-Nov-11 Shallow Grave (1994)
06-Dec-11 Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
07-Dec-11 The Woodlanders (1997)
12-Dec-11 The Savages (2007)
13-Dec-11 Waltz With Bashir (2008)
15-Dec-11 Seven Days To Noon (1950)
22-Dec-11 Far From Heaven (2002)
30-Dec-11 Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (1956)

You’ll spot quite a few film noir in there, if you know your stuff; also several Cary Grant films too. BBC2 here had a short season of them last summer. Jolly good. They also showed a week’s worth of Fritz Lang films at the end of December. I still have a couple of them on the box to watch.

Edit
List now updated to include nerdy Wiki links. Of the above, the film noir that I enjoyed the most were “Build My Gallows High” and “Farewell, My Lovely”. “The Innocents” was seriously creepy and ace with it, as was “Seance on a Wet Afternoon”. I enjoyed “Persepolis” very much as well.