1. Talaash (Reema Kagti, 2012)
2. Siesta (Mary Lambert, 1987) (re-watch)
3. Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Cathy Yan, 2020) (cinema)
4-5. Star Trek: Picard 3 episodes 44+43+42=129 minutes
a) Episode 1 "Remembrance" (Hanelle M. Culpepper, 2020)
b) Episode 2 "Maps and Legends" (Hanelle M. Culpepper, 2020)
c) Episode 3 "The End is the Beginning" (Hanelle M. Culpepper, 2020)
6. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu / Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019) (cinema)
7. Naissance des pieuvres / Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma, 2007)
8. Talvar / Guilty (Meghna Gulzar, 2015)
9. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - Episode 2 - "The Dying Detective" (Sarah Hellings, 1994)
10. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - Episode 4 - "The Red Circle" (Sarah Hellings, 1994)
11. Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990) (re-watch)
12. Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
13. Street Corner (Muriel Box, 1953)
14. Eyewitness (Muriel Box, 1956)
15. Mi vida loca (Allison Anders, 1993)
16. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - Episode 6 - "The Cardboard Box" (Sarah Hellings, 1994)
17. Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (Mira Nair, 1996, USA/INDIA /UK/Japan/Germany)
18. Subway in the Sky (Muriel Box, 1959)
19. Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (Pamela B. Green, 2018)
20. The Ocean Waif (Alice Guy, 1916)
21. Star Trek: Picard - Episode 6 "The Impossible Box" (Maja Vrvilo, 2020)
22. Star Trek: Picard - Episode 8 "Broken Pieces" (Maja Vrvilo, 2020)
23. Hollywood Vice Squad (Penelope Spheeris, 1986)
24. Guncrazy (Tamra Davis, 1992)
25. Tees Maar Khan (Farah Khan, 2010)
26. 36 Chowringhee Lane (Aparna Sen, 1981)
27. Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (Reema Kagti, 2007)
28. HUILLET-STRAUB 18 + 11 + 35 = 64m
a)
Machorka-Muff (1963)
b)
Toute révolution est un coup de dés (1977)
c)
Umiliati (2003)
I continue to find H-S extremely challenging - no, that's not the right word; demanding? difficult? Maybe near-impossible. The first of these shorts confirms what I'd been starting to feel over the last few films I've watched from them - I find their earlier (say, pre-1970), mostly b/w work easier to connect with or get something out of; this is a satirical story I guess you could say (though played absolutely straight) about de-Nazification of some old generals in the era of Adenauer. Like just about everything I've seen it makes no concessions to the audience - if you don't know your 40s-60s German history, well, you're only going to get a little out of it. But I liked the feel of it, the purity - almost Bressonian in a way. The second and third films both feature people declaiming long stretches of dialogue;
Toute révolution features verse from Mallarmé , with "characters" (including Huillet and Marilù Parolini, an actress/writer/photographer and Jacques Rivette's first wife) sitting on a grassy hillside; in
Umiliati it's a bunch of Italians dressed sort of like farmers, mostly, standing around or sitting on logs in a forest, declaiming words from the works of socialist writer Elio Vittorini about land usage. These are both very dense and the not-quite monotones of the speakers makes concentrating much harder, at least for me. I just don't know how to deal with these filmmakers yet, though I continue to find them interesting.
29. MISC SHORTS 8 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 10 + 11 + 26 = 68m
a)
Pauline (Céline Sciamma, 2010)
b)
UFO's (Lillian Schwartz/Ken Knowlton, 1972)
c)
Olympiad (Lillian Schwartz/Ken Knowlton, 1971)
d)
The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (Margaret Tait, 1955)
e)
La femme-squelette (Sarah Vand den Boom, 2009)
f)
D.E.B.S. (Angela Robinson, 2003)
g)
Three Examples of Myself as Queen (Anna Biller, 1994)
Mostly DTC nominees, and mostly fine but not really memorable. The Sciamma film is mostly Anaïs Demoustier as a young girl lying on a bed talking about her difficulties growing up gay; the Schwartz-Knowlton works are experimental animations that are pretty but not much else;
D.E.B.S is the short film Robinson made I suppose to convince somebody to let her make a feature - it worked, and she did, but it's not much more than hot chicks in schoolgirl outfits running around and shooting guns - not that there's anything wrong with that. The Biller film offers three scenes with the director playing respectively a French speaking Arab "sad queen", a Queen Bee with a cohort of mostly effeminate male bees who speak in verse, and Queen Poinsettia who lives in the fantasy world of old Hollywood musicals and westerns; it would be more enjoyable for me probably if I knew or cared more about camp - it's clearly indebted to Jack Smith and probably early John Waters, maybe Kenneth Anger. That leaves
The Leaden Echo, a film poem using the verse of Gerard Manly Hopkins, and
La femme-squelette, a beautiful French animated sad fantasy. These were both terrific and I'll likely rate them both reasonably highly on DTC, so thanks to whoever nominated them.
30.
Yugant / What the Sea Said (Aparna Sen, 1995)
A difficult film to parse in large part because of inadequate subtitles - and the rather weak, soft low-res video image didn't do it many favors either. A middle-aged married, childless couple who live apart are reuniting for a vacation on the sea, and their memories of younger, sometimes better days together and with the ultimately unfilled promise of children come to the fore. She is a dancer who becomes the owner of a dance studio; he's a writer who eventually works for an advertising agency, selling things like toothpaste, and one of the themes that is strong throughout is the idea of living with passion and being true to yourself... or giving in to the world and monetary reality, and we see shifts between the two characters over their lives and the film. But the really problematic element is an underlying environmental theme that doesn't seem to mesh that well with the rest of the story (though it's of paramount importance at the very end); without having good subs, and perhaps missing footage (the copy I have ran just over 2 hours but the listed run time is 135), I'm really not sure if this is something that isn't well handled by Sen or not. So a mixed bag in the end, an interesting film that I liked more and more as it went on but clearly something that needs to be seen properly, if I ever get the chance.
31.
Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (Aparna Sen, 2002)
And here with the third Sen film, I hit gold, certainly in some part because this is the first one with an excellent image quality and subs (though most of it is in English). A fairly simple concept - Mrs. Iyer is a young wife travelling with her infant son on a bus through Kashmir when conflict breaks out, and "Mr. Iyer" is the young man who steps in to help her out when she's having problems feeding the kid and keeping him quiet. This is one of the few films I've seen dealing quite explicitly with India's sectarian problems (apart from Ghatak's films about the partitioning of Pakistan/Bangladesh anyway), and it shows in some detail linguistic, religious, ethnic and class problems without feeling preachy or overtly schematic. Most of the characters on the bus are Hindu, and so when they pass through an area with clashes between Hindus and Muslims they are relieved when it is the Hindu militia that stops them... except for an old couple who cannot hide their identity. What's really nice about this is that there is no false heroism - or false cowardice - and while there is a bit of a sense of romance developing between the ultimately mismatched couple, this too does not end up the way it typically would in Holly/Bollywood. And yet it's a very compelling slice of life, of modern problems everywhere where there are multiple identity groups competing for the same resources, land, or political power --- and ultimately affecting everybody in those groups on a personal level, whether they are politically-minded or not.
32.
The Bling Ring (Sofia Coppola, 2013)
Shallow, vapid film from shallow, vapid Hollywood movie brat about shallow, vapid Hollywood wanna-be-famous girls (and a guy) ripping off shallow, vapid Hollywood superstars.
33a.
Frasier - S. 10 ep. 14 "Daphne Does Dinner" (Katy Garretson)
33b.
Frasier - S. 10 ep. 23 "Analyzed Kiss" (Katy Garretson)
On the night before my mother suffered the stroke that would kill her, we watched three episodes from the middle of season 10 of this show - all of which I'd seen at least three times, and she'd seen before as well. The three episodes as it turns out where Niles has heart problems and ends up in the hospital. Took me a few months to feel like going back to this, one of the few movies or TV shows that mom and I loved pretty equally, but in the last few weeks I've returned to it and finished off the season, which on the whole is one of the weaker ones I think. Still even below-average
Frasier is still pretty great IMO and these episodes are solid enough, though the first is maybe one variation on the theme (Frasier and Niles throw a dinner party and it's apocalyptically terrible) too many. The second gives us a humorous look at Niles becoming briefly a gun nut and going to a show with his new friends, who turn out to be... well you can guess. And it's got future felon Felicity Huffman in the middle of her splendid 8-episode run as the bitchy Julia, Frasier's foe until... well, this one's obvious to fans. Surprised she didn't get an Emmy or Globe nomination for this, it's definitely one of the most memorable guest appearances on the show.
And that's it for me. Thanks Allison!
:origin()/pre00/aa2b/th/pre/f/2012/007/1/8/videodrome_2_by_jonysilva-d4lmpcq.jpg)
I did my best. 
