First off, I want to commend Bill Georgaris on another monumental round of collecting, compiling and computating in delivering the latest update to the 1000 Greatest Films on They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?. The January 2010 edition incorporates 216 more films than the previous update of December 2008, resulting in the replacement of 68 films in the list of 1000. The good news for me is that the update only sets me back four spots in my quest to see all 1000 films. My countdown will resume with Alexander Kluge's Yesterday Girl at #993 instead of #997.

I'm expecting the Shooting Down Pictures project to finally conclude in the weeks to come, though I'll be taking time to savor the remaining films as best as I can, at least as much as Matthew Dessem appears to in his entries on the Criterion Collection catalog. (Many thanks to him for giving me a mention in his profile by Roger Ebert.)

There is one film in the "left to see" column that has proven incredibly difficult to obtain, and that film is Douce / Love Story by Claude Autant-Lara. I can't find a video copy of this film anywhere, and as of now it's looking like I will have to spend a few hundred Euros to rent the film from France and then rent out a theater to screen it. If anyone out there knows of a way to access this film without considerable financial cost, please don't hesitate to contact me at alsolikelife at gmail dot com.

I feel that I should follow up on last year's version of this "state of the project" post (which itself was a rehash of issues I raised the year before), in which I offered a mild complaint that the list has consistently shown a lack of regard for world cinema (unless your idea of world cinema is Europe or Hollywood movies set in Middle Earth), as well as experimental films and films by women. Maybe I'm betraying my own biases towards films I consider underrepresented, but on the other hand there seem to be no shortage of supporters of the mainstream. The latest version of the list grimly bears this out.

To read the rest of the article at Shooting Down Pictures, click here.