Film Strategies

I've been thinking for a while about what my strategy will be this summer and beyond for plowing through the great films of the past. My strategy for finding out what new stuff I should see is to read most all reviews and festival reports from Roger Ebert and the New York Times, everything in Sight and Sound and Film Comment, and whatever else I happen upon. There are a few things I miss, but not too many notable new films are neglected in all of those places.

However, I have no good system for older movies. I do have a list of what is now around 750 movies I want to see, but that's impossible to choose from. Kevin is slogging through the AFI Top 100 list, but I don't think I want to get tied down to a list that long. I've considered going back to my History of Narrative Film (Cook) text book, which I think is pretty good, and going through it by chapter and section, watching films it mentions or that fit the category. I'm also tempted to read Andrew Sarris's American Cinema, and go through his auteur directors, which brings up the subject of whether I should do a genre at a time, or a director at a time, or what. We'll see...