Go tell it on the mountain!

Tomorrow, the inimitable Stacie at Final Girl is hosting the wonderfully titled Hey, Internet, Stop Being Such Cynical Effing Douchebags blog-a-thon.

Her remit is simple:

Write about something in the world of film that fills you with complete and total unbridled fucking retarded JOY … Wear your heart on your sleeve and tells us all why you love something.

Wrote my entry over the weekend; on the blog it goes tomorrow. I had a blast writing it – and it got me thinking. Stacie’s clarion call to film-loving bloggers everywhere to big up and not badmouth, to sing out and not slag off, certainly chimes with the mission statement of this blog.

So: I’m introducing an ongoing series, let’s say more or less weekly, kicking off with tomorrow’s entry – 100 personal favourites.

Now, these won’t comprise the 100 greatest films ever made – (a) ‘Citizen Kane’ isn’t on the list and (b) I’d never get away with, say, ‘Bullet in the Head’ under that banner – so instead, it’ll be a motley crew of classics, curios and cult. And maybe the odd guilty pleasure.

Either that or it’ll be a mortifyingly public exercise in demonstrating just how mainstream my tastes are.

The criteria for inclusion? Pick from the following:

* Longevity: films that I’ve watched many many times and could happily watch many more times.

* Emotional response: films that have made me laugh, cry, wince or think.

* Iconography: films that are quite simply straight-down-the-line cool.

The only stricture I’ve imposed is a two-film-per-director maximum, otherwise there’d be at least half a dozen Scorseses, the same again of Peckinpahs, a handful of Hitchcock and a plethora of Powell and Pressburger. And having said that, I’m automatically going to cheat and count ‘The Godfather’ and ‘The Godfather Part II’ as one entry so that I can squeeze ‘Apocalypse Now’ into the Coppola quota.

I’ll be posting the full 100-strong list on Wednesday.