THE JANUS CHALLENGE

During 2009, Matt and I plan to watch and review one movie per week from the monumental (and handsomely bound) 50-film Janus “Essential Art House” set.

We will almost certainly fail.

Wanna synchronize your Netflix queue? Here’s the (tentative) schedule:

• January 4: Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein)
• January 11: Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda)
• January 18: L’Avventura (Antonioni)
• January 25: Ballad of a Soldier (Chukhrai)
• February 1: Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau)
• February 8: Black Orpheus (Camus)
• February 15: Brief Encounter (Lean)
• February 22: The Fallen Idol (Reed)
• March 1: Fires on the Plain (Ichikawa)
• March 8: Fists in the Pocket (Bellocchio)
• March 15: Floating Weeds (Ozu)
• March 22: Forbidden Games (Clément)
• March 29: The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
• April 5: Grand Illusion (Renoir)
• April 12: Häxan (Christensen)
• April 19: Ikiru (Kurosawa)
• April 26: The Importance of Being Earnest (Asquith)
• May 3: Ivan the Terrible, Part II (Eisenstein)
• May 10: Le jour se lève (Carné)
• May 17: Jules and Jim (Truffaut)
• May 24: Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer)
• May 31: Knife in the Water (Polanski)
• June 7: The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock)
• June 14: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell/Pressburger)
• June 21: Loves of a Blonde (Forman)
• June 28: M (Lang)
• July 5: M. Hulot’s Holiday (Tati)
• July 12: Miss Julie (Sjöberg)
• July 19: Pandora’s Box (Pabst)
• July 26: Pépé Le Moko (Duvivier)
• August 2: Il Posto (Olmi)
• August 9: Pygmalion (Asquith/Howard)
• August 16: Rashomon (Kurosawa)
• August 23: Richard III (Olivier)
• August 30: The Rules of the Game (Renoir)
• September 6: Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
• September 13: The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
• September 20: The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
• September 27: La Strada (Fellini)
• October 4: Summertime (Lean)
• October 11: The Third Man (Reed)
• October 18: The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)
• October 25: Ugetsu (Mizoguchi)
• November 1: Umberto D. (De Sica)
• November 8: The Virgin Spring (Bergman)
• November 15: Viridiana (Buñuel)
• November 22: The Wages of Fear (Clouzot)
• November 29: The White Sheik (Fellini)
• December 6: Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
• December 13: Three Documentaries (Turell)
• January 31: Janus Challenge Wrap-Up