I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

My ballot for the big Skandies/Muriels Greatest Films In History project. When in doubt over which films qualified as truly “great” on a comparative basis, I went for the ones that make me happiest or have left me the most shaken, especially when those qualities endure on repeat viewings. Bottom line: if my desert-island cinematheque only had room to store 20 feature films, I’d be pretty damned stoked if they were these 20.

• Sherlock Jr.
• The Passion of Joan of Arc
• King Kong
• Citizen Kane
• The Maltese Falcon
• Sullivan's Travels
• Out of the Past
• Singin' in the Rain
• Vertigo
• Persona

…plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Because I’m a web-stats nerd, I find it amusing and sometimes instructive to see which Google search terms actually bring traffic to my site. Per Google Analytics, here are the top 10 queries that landed web browsers at Deep-Focus.com for calendar 2011, sorted by the landing pages Googlers most often clicked through to. I will say this: the stuff you think people will search for, they don’t necessarily search for. I have no idea why anybody would end up here, for example, after searching for “waiting.” (Around 40 people did.) But nipples are an enduring favorite. (It was not a mistake to build an explanation of aspect ratios and theatrical exhibition around Keira Knightley’s nipples. Never bet against nipples, I say.)

1) “nipples [with innumerable modifiers]”

2) “keira knightley [nude, nipple, porn, ass, wet, etc.]”

3) “breaking the waves”

4) “twins of evil”

5) “laura gemser”

6) “leaving las vegas”

7) videodrome

8) “easy a [emma stone, corset, outfits, hot, etc.]”

9) “fifth element”

10) “private parts”

Rape-revenge is the basest of movie formulas. What amounts to a social contract exists with the audience: during the first half of the film, you will experience the sadistic, brutal, misogynistic sexual abuse of an innocent, probably naïve young woman at the hands of cavalier thugs. And during the second half of the film, you will see this broken woman–this survivor–pull herself together long enough to exact a terrible revenge on those who wronged her.

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Hey, the folks at First Look Studios sent me an extra copy of Sukiyaki Western Django on Blu-ray Disc, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t pass it along to someone who’s reading this. (U.S. and Canada only, sorry!) Take a look at the following images from Takashi Miike films. First one who sends me an email (at bryant@deep-focus.com) identifying each of the films, in order, gets the disc — again, sent to an address in the U.S. or Canada only.

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