All right, so lemme rap about myself first off. My name is Mike Ouderkirk, I'm an American Studies major at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. I'm a junior, but at 24 I'm a few years older than most of the kids in my classes. I was a journalism major at UMCP for the first 2 1/2 years outta high school but then I fell into a deep funk and dropped outta school, moved back with my parents and worked a bunch of dead-end jobs for a bit.

I was never much of a film buff growing up. Before leaving UMCP I took a class called "Film Culture in the 1960s", a 300-level American Studies class, for an upper-level elective, thinking we'd just watch "The Graduate" and "Easy Rider" and write essays about how "this film really reflects the counterculture and its views on Viet...blahblahblahblahblah." My professor exposed me to a wide range of films from the period, such as "Scorpio Rising" (!), "Flaming Creatures" (!!), "The Connection" (!!!), and "Guns in the Trees" (!!!!!). He even played the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs" once as we walked into class, which I was already very familiar with, but dude was 65 YEARS OLD!! Everyone my age knows VU but it's rare to find someone who was down with them in the '60s.

Anyway, as much as I'ld love to say I passed this class with flying colors, nah, it was one of my straight-W semesters, W for Withdrawal, when I was too depressed to wake up before 1 p.m., let alone attend a class more than once a month. I found myself living back at home in Frederick, working dead-end jobs at gas stations and Target. I found refuge in my downtime giving myself a crash course in cinema. By day I was making $7.25 an hour making sure the deodorant section looked like clockwork; by night I was absorbing the films of Dreyer, Ozu, Godard, etc.

Anyway, so, eventually I got a job managing a video store, had that for year, made approx. $3 in that span but had major fun watching Looney Tunes 8 hours a day. Now I'm at Starbucks, making more money, but unfortunately no Looney Tunes. I'm looking out for a career in film preservation. UCLA is offering my dream major for grad school, so that's what I'm aiming for after I finish my undergrad studies.

OH HEY, this is about my blog. There is a list maintained at http://www.theyshootpictures.com/ of the 1000 best films of all time. I made a list of the top 100 films from that list that I haven't seen. Each time I view a film that is among my top 100 unseen, I will post about it. Here's how the list looked as of Nov. 1, 2006:


1. Singin' in the Rain (10)
2. Children of Paradise (24)
3. The Gold Rush (37)
4. Pather Panchali (42)
5. Intolerance (44)
6. The Wild Bunch (59)
7. La Strada (60)
8. Fanny and Alexander (62)
9. Greed (63)
10. North By Northwest (64)
11. The Earrings of Madame de... (65)
12. Sherlock Jr. (66)
13. Rio Bravo (67)
14. Voyage in Italy (70)
15. Pierrot Le Fou (75)
16. Sansho the Bailiff (77)
17. My Darling Clementine (80)
18. Gone with the Wind (88)
19. Last Year at Marienbad (90)
20. The Leopard (91)
21. The Decalogue (92)
22. On the Waterfront (93)
23. Stagecoach (94)
24. His Girl Friday (96)
25. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (98)
26. Letter from an Unknown Woman (99)
27. Chimes at Midnight (102)
28. Gertrud (106)
29. Hiroshima Mon Amour (110)
30. Stalker (113)
31. Umberto D (114)
32. Earth (115)
33. Napoleon (119)
34. Broken Blossoms (120)
35. Shoah (121)
36. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (123)
37. Black Narcissus (125)
38. The Grapes of Wrath (126)
39. Ivan the Terrible (128)
40. Red River (130)
41. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (131)
42. Brief Encounter (132)
43. Paisan (133)
44. Two or Three Things I Know About Her (135)
45. The Red Shoes (136)
46. Kind Hearts and Coronets (137)
47. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (139)
48. Rome, Open City (141)
49. The Sweet Smell of Success (142)
50. The Exterminating Angel (145)
51. Once Upon a Time in America (147)
52. To Be or Not to Be (148)
53. Out of the Past (150)
54. La Notte (152)
55. Close-Up (153)
56. Ashes and Diamonds (154)
57. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (158)
58. The Maltese Falcon (159)
59. Monsieur Verdoux (160)
60. The World of Apu (162)
61. The Philadelphia Story (164)
62. The Traveling Players (169)
63. Meet Me in St. Louis (170)
64. Jalsaghar (171)
65. Performance (172)
66. Alexander Nevsky (174)
67. The Crowd (179)
68. A Matter of Life and Death (180)
69. The Exorcist (181)
70. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (182)
71. The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (183)
72. Rocco and His Brothers (185)
73. Crimes and Misdemeanors (188)
74. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (190)
75. Schindler's List (191)
76. The Conversation (192)
77. Throne of Blood (193)
78. Paths of Glory (195)
79. The Wages of Fear (200)
80. The Shop Around the Corner (201)
81. Germany, Year Zero (206)
82. Mouchette (207)
83. Berlin Alexanderplatz (209)
84. A Day in the Country (211)
85. Vampyr (212)
86. Written on the Wind (213)
87. Death in Venice (214)
88. Wings of Desire (215)
89. The Navigator (218)
90. Zero for Conduct (219)
91. The Band Wagon (220)
92. Les Vampires (224)
93. Ninotchka (229)
94. The Tree of Wooden Clogs (231)
95. Strangers on a Train (232)
96. The Life of Oharu (234)
97. Unforgiven (236)
98. The Time to Live and the Time to Die (237)
99. Strike (238)
100. The Awful Truth (239)

Lots of movies that I'm personally kind of shocked I haven't seen (North By Northwest? The Exorcist? The Good the Bad and the Ugly?). I'm only counting as "have watched" films I have actually sat down and watched all the way through. Back when I worked at the video store we'd have movies on in the background all day and that includes some of these films.

Anyway, enjoy the site!