I watched The Thick-Walled Room this evening. After watching The Human Condition earlier this year for the first time, I have been looking forward to tackling Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System during this challenge. I will definitely be watching this set in its entirety during this month's challenge, but am still undecided if I will also go for a regular Criterion boxset too. I have enough of them around the house.

Thanks

I finished watching The Sword of Doom. Brutal, violent and the main guy is totally off his rockers. You need to see the ending of this movie as is a nonstop sword fight with ghosts and real people.

I miss seeing these films when IFC used to have Samurai Saturday and would show a few of these films in the early morning.

I'm going to do my best to watch more of the Samurai movies on Criterion while the challenge is on.

Wow! I just watched Nashville... Robert Altman is a genius! Nobody else makes movies like that!

I miss them too (Saw almost all the Zatoichi movies they aired) In fact, I miss ALL of the IFC of old.

I plan to watch quite a few samurai movies too.

You're old too

Another sign of being old is seeing ads for class action lawsuits for drugs you remember the commercials for, when they first came out.

Watched Mamma Roma earlier. I hate to say it, but one of the biggest highlights of the movie was the fly who snuck into the opening credits

Was it your first-time viewing? If so, it's nice to see someone react this way 39 years after it first came out--and everyone reacted that way back then also. Sad to say, I haven't seen it since it came out.

Ya, first time. I've seen Short Cuts, MASH, and a few others, so I knew what to expect and was NOT disappointed! Now I want to pull Short Cuts out again.

Introduced a couple of friends to Nashville last month when I got my BD copy. I've had the soundtrack on my iPod rotation ever since, and I picked up a copy of Jan Stuart's The Nashville Chronicles. It's definitely a film that holds up to multiple viewings. I think that was the five or sixth time I've seen it, and this time my friends and I discussed Timothy Brown's character - a character I'd never really thought about - at length. Every time there's something new and interesting.

Makes me want to watch my copies of Short Cuts and Tanner '88 later this month.

I just watched Juliet of the Spirits and Night Train to Munich for the first time. I liked JotS, but I kind of thought that the first hour kind of drug. But after that it got better and I liked the back half. Night Train to Munich I liked, but the more I thought about it the more I think that I liked it better than The Lady Vanishes, which it is usually compared to.

If you really want to see something impressive with Andy Griffith, go watch the movie A Face in the Crowd. He plays a villainous role and he is very good in it.

I've seen it but it's missing something for me. Still good though.

I started doing some documentaries yesterday. Antonio Gaudí, even though it's just showing architecture, the music is good and made it easy to sit through. In fact, the few scenes where people talked ruined the pace for me. It's the perfect film to watch when you just want to sit back, relax, not move, and have your head pointed at a tv.

I also finally got around to seeing Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait, which I also recommend. Dude has charisma, I'll give him that. The obvious double feature to that is The Last King of Scotland.

It's hard for me to say which to watch first. Do you want to start off with his biased documentary or finish with it? If you don't know anything about him, I'd lean towards the documentary first. After watching the movie, you may feel like revisiting the doc.

Besides Hoop Dreams, which I really don't have any interest in, being I don't care much about basketball, and Sans Soleil, which I already watched, does anyone know of some good documentaries on Hulu for this challenge? I like documentaries.

HOOP DREAMS is not really about basketball. It's about two young men in the ghetto who are looking for a way out and basketball holds out hope to both of them of supplying the way out. But eventually we learn that they need more than basketball to pull them out. And that's what HOOP DREAMS is about.

I've gotta echo Ash's sentiments on this one--I'm not a big basketball fan, either, but HOOP DREAMS is one of my favorite two or three documentaries.

Don't watch the Beasleys docs, or whatever they're called. You'd be better off saving your time reading about it on wikipedia.

Really hope you're not referring to the Beales of Grey Gardens, cause those documentaries are absolutely fantastic. Grey Gardens definitely ranks at the top of my favorite documentaries, and I would even recommend watching the Drew Barrymore movie based on the Beales and giving the Broadway musical soundtrack a listen.

Indeed I am. I haven't watched the second one, and I may get to it this challenge, but I felt like I wasted a lot of time on the first when I could have just read about it in a few minutes.

You may want to skip the second which is mostly made up of footage not used in the first film. You're not the first person I've encountered who didn't like the film. I watched it with a friend shortly after the musical soundtrack was released, and afterward she turned to me and said, "That movie? Really?"

Over the weekend, I didn't get much Criterion watching done; instead I got caught up in cleaning my apartment, visiting friends, and then watched way too much True Blood (not holding my breath for a Criterion release). However, I did watch Rome Open City which was amazing. It brought tears to my eyes several times.

The Tale of Zatoichi continues - Ichi is such a badass in this film. It's a continuation in which he returns one year later to the same place that the first film took place. On his way, he ends up pissing off a gangster and a Lord and both comes after him. Also, the conflict ends up being more personal than Zatoichi thought... Shintaro Katsu is such a delight as Zatoichi. Such a unassuming personality but when he's provoked, he's no one to mess around with.

I'm hoping that this boxset will go below $100 during Black Friday. The quality of the Hulu stream is okay but I'm betting that the Blu-ray is a much better PQ along with the sound.

Seems like I have to say something like this almost every challenge about some movie or another, but I finally watched Casablanca for the first time. :O

My favourite movie of all time.