CNN's The Movies

It's not often that I sit back and opine about something that I've seen that isn't a direct review of a film or preview of upcoming films, but today is that day. I wanted to talk a bit about the outstanding limited series from CNN simply titled The Movies.

I'm a little late to the party in talking about this since it originally premiered back in July and the full slate of episodes has been released. The good news is you can watch the entire thing on demand through most cable providers.

The bad news, once you watch this series, you'll realize how many great films of the past you might have missed. For some reason the series started with the '80s, moved to the '90s, and 2000s before going back to the earlier eras of Hollywood. I'm not judging, but wouldn't it have made more sense to start with the classic age of film?

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TM Dance 30 v43.2 from Heather Brown on Vimeo.

Anyway, the series is stellar and includes interviews with dozens of high profile writers, directors, actors and other film personalities from Tom Hanks (who also Executive Produced the series) and Robert Redford to Martin Scorsese and the late John Singleton.

It's great to watch these episodes (each of which runs for two hours minus commercials) and listen to the people involved in making these films talk about each other, who they were influenced by, and what they saw in films of the past that they bring into their directing and performances today.

My one rant against this series is that it has considerably lengthened the list of films I have to watch. That's not a bad thing, but I only have 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, and even with all the classic films I HAVE seen in my life, there is a seemingly endless list of films that I still haven't seen.

So in addition to my stated goal of watching every Oscar nominated film ever, I'm adding the list of films that The Movies talks about to my watchlist. I'm also working my way through source materials including books and previous films that served as inspiration for the films discussed. I will be posting lists of the films discussed in the series throughout the rest of the month along with some notes about which ones I've seen so far.