Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Awards Watch: National Film Registry 2008

You may recall back in June, Movie Dearest ran a poll asking for your votes on which gay-themed movie should be inducted into the National Film Registry this year, and Philadelphia was your choice. Well, the Library of Congress announced today this year's 25 inductees, and alas, the Tom Hanks AIDS drama was not on the list.

However, the NFR's Class of 2008 is not without some queer influences. In addition to the screen version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and James Whales' The Invisible Man, there's the celluloid closet classic Johnny Guitar, starring Joan Crawford herself and directed by Nicholas Ray. And I suppose you could say Deliverance too ...

Aside from the experimental and amateur works that most people haven't heard of (let alone seen), the NFR's choices for the year (which now brings the total preserved films to an even 500) includes The Asphalt Jungle, A Face in the Crowd, Flower Drum Song, Hallelujah!, The Killers, The Pawnbroker, Sergeant York, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The Terminator. See the comments section below for a quick look at all of this year's inductees.

1 comment:

Kirby Holt said...

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Deliverance (1972)
Disneyland Dream (1956) (home movie)
A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Flower Drum Song (1961)
Foolish Wives (1922)
Free Radicals (1979) (avant-garde short)
Hallelujah! (1929)
In Cold Blood (1967)
The Invisible Man (1933)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
The Killers (1946)
The March (1964) (documentary on the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington)
No Lies (1973) (student film)
On the Bowery (1957)
One Week (1920) (Buster Keaton short)
The Pawnbroker (1965)
The Perils of Pauline (1914) (serial)
Sergeant York (1941)
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
So’s Your Old Man (1926) (W.C. Fields silent)
George Stevens World War II Footage (1943-46)
The Terminator (1984)
Water and Power (1989) (experimental documentary)
White Fawn’s Devotion (1910) (early short film)