Introducing "The Big Ones": 30 classic films reviewed over 6 weeks

Though of course they need no introduction!

Originally I had a fairly long piece here, with many disclaimers and explanations. I've nixed it. The focus instead should be to briefly announce what I'm doing, and then let the forthcoming pieces speak for themselves.

I've chosen thirty films that I think may be the most notable in their absence, so far, from this site. In the next six weeks, I'll review all of them, five days a week up to Christmas. If you're curious about my criterion for selecting these titles and my thought process in initiating this series, you can email me and I'll send you the original intro. Suffice to say for now that these are not necessarily personal favorites, but films that have achieved either a widespread critical consensus or a near-universal popularity among audiences (or both) over time. Classics that I look forward to engaging with in public prose for the first time.

I first conceived this project in August 2008, only a month into blogging, when I noticed that a lot of great movies were getting lost in the shuffle as I focused on reviewing films I was seeing for the first time. It took three years and five hundred posts, but this is a step towards rectifying that. Incidentally, the only reason The Wizard of Oz is not on here is because I'm reserving it for a special essay sometime next year.

The scheduled lineup follows the jump. This post will also serve as a directory from now on, with titles linked to the pieces once they go up.





I look forward to rewatching and writing about these films (at press time, I've already gotten to the first two), and to hearing my readers' perspectives in the comment threads. See you Monday.