The Library of Congress has announced its 25 picks for this year’s addition to its list of “Culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant films on the National Film Registry. This year’s titles span the length of film history from the earliest experiment in combining image with synchronized sound to one of the earliest computer generated animated shorts, from epic war films like Patton (1970) to classic cartoons like animator Chuck Jones’ One Froggy Evening.

The list was announced by Librarian of Congress James Billington on Wednesday, December 17, 2003, who states that the Registry is designed to reflect the full diversity of American film history and to help increase the public’s awareness of and the need to preserve that history.

“Our film heritage is America’s living past,” Billington states. “It celebrates the creativity and inventiveness of diverse communities and our nation as a whole. By preserving American films, we safeguard a significant element of our cultural history.”

The Library of Congress works to ensure that every film named to the list is preserved either through the Library’s own motion picture preservation program or through collaboration with other archives, film studios and independent film makers.

“In spite of the heroic efforts of archives, the motion picture industry and others, America’s film heritage, by any measure, is an endangered species,” Billington adds. “Fifty percent of the films produced before 1950 and 80-90% made before 1920 have disappeared forever. Sadly, our enthusiasm for watching films has proved far greater than our commitment to preserving them.”

The earliest film on this year’s list is the Dickson Experimental Sound Film. Shot at the Edison laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson this 17-second is the first attempt to match synchronized sound with a moving image. It shows Dickson himself playing violin into a large cylindrical megaphone that was acting as a microphone, while two unidentified men danced. The sound was captured on a wax cylinder, which was meant to be played in conjunction with the film. The film was restored only recently by film editor Walter Murch and funded through a donation from George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound company.

Other silent films on the list include 1924’s The Chechahcos, the first feature film shot on location in Alaska and silent screen legend Rudolph Valentino’s last film The Son of the Sheik (1926).

Tarzan and His Mate (1934), the second in the long running Johnny Weissmuller-starring series, was named as a racy nude swimming scene featuring a body double for star Maureen O’Sullivan was a contributing factor to the introduction of the Hayes Code and early film censorship. After objections from conservative groups, MGM studios, the producers of the film, removed the scene. The missing footage was restored in the early 1990s.

“It’s a very sexy scene,” states Steve Leggett, staff coordinator for the National Film Presentation Board. “But it was one of those things where people started saying that Hollywood was getting out of control. After this, Tarzan and Jane are sleeping in separate beds- like that would ever happen in a tree house in the jungle.”

This year’s list also includes many famous pairings, including Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in Naughty Marietta (1935), Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet (1944) and Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). George C. Scott’s tour de force performance in the 1970 bio-pic Patton helped to secure that film’s place on the list this year.

The most recent film named to the list is the computer generated animated short Tin Toy (1988) directed by John Lasseter, who would later direct the classic Toy Story (1995). The film won an Academy Award for “Best Animated Short Film” for its studio Pixar.

The complete list of films on the National Film Registry can be found here. The films on the list range from silent classics Intolerance (1919) and It (1927) to popular block busters like Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) to historically important film footage as the Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage (1937) and Abraham Zapruder’s infamous home movie footage of the John F Kennedy assassination.

The complete chronological list of films named to the list this year is as follows-

• Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894-95)
• Princess Nicotine; or the Smoke Fairy (1909)
• Matrimony’s Speed Limit (1913)
• The Chechahcos (1924)
• The Son of the Sheik (1926)
• Fox Movietone News: Jenkins Orphanage Band (1928)
• Show People (1928)
• The Wedding March (1928)
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
• Tarzan and His Mate (1934)
• Naughty Marietta (1935)
• Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
• National Velvet (1944)
• White Heat (1949)
• One Froggy Evening (1956)
• The Hunters (Kalahari Desert tribe anthropological film) (1957)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
• Medium Cool (1969)
• Film Portrait (1970)
• Patton (1970)
• Nostalgia (1971)
• Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman (1974)
• Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Atlantic City (1980)
• Tin Toy (1988)

By Charles McKeown
Second Draft September 4, 1996

In 1981 Monty Python member Terry Gilliam released Time Bandits, his first major step away from his work with the British comedy troupe and a film that distinguished himself as a fantasist whose work demanded attention. A dark comic fantasy, Time Bandits featured six dwarves who felt that their work for the Supreme Being in helping to shape Creation has gone unappreciated. Stealing a map that will allow them to travel through time, the group, along with 11-year old school boy Kevin, find themselves on the run through history, chased by the Supreme Being and manipulated by the machinations of Evil. The film was a surprise hit and left many wondering whether they would see further adventures of the Time Bandits. Well, over a decade and a half later, they almost did.

Time Bandits II has its origin in early 1996. Gilliam was between film projects and was looking for something to do. A phone discussion with his occasional writing collaborator Charles McKeown (Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)) sparked the idea, which the two expanded into a full screenplay. As Gilliam explained on August 12, 1996 on Monty Python’s PythOnline bulletin boards to a poster who asked if there would ever be a sequel to the original film-

Nicole, Funny you should have this odd craving for some sort of extension to Time Bandits, I had the same craving a couple of months ago and immediately called my old buddy, Charles McKeown, to see if he too was feeling this, clearly universal, craving. Not at all surprisingly, he was suffering the same knowing at his guts. So we had a little natter and came up with a thought or two that might help put the world at ease again. The outcome of all this is that we have been busily scribbling a Time Bandits II script. The strain has been such that Charles has taken off to Italy for a holiday. But there is now a script and all we need is for someone to cough up a few million. You don’t happen to have a few to spare, do you? As it is now in the hands of the fine people that run Hollywood studios I have no idea when your craving will be assuaged. But hope and Crosby spring eternal. Yours in limbo, Terry G.

Between Gilliam’s posting and September, McKeown made another past through the script. This second draft, dated September 4, 1996, opens with two dwarves, Mox and her friend Tangle, working in the bureaucracy that runs all of Creation, shredding files on animals as they become extinct. They are extremely busy. The two overhear a conversation between the Supreme Being and his Supreme Opposite Number who are planning to turn off creation at the end of the millennium. (The Supreme Opposite Number is a hand puppet that the Supreme Being talks to. The puppet talks in its own voice, though. It’s a bit reminiscent of alternative cartoonist Evan Dorkin’s “Devil Puppet” strips.) Mox decides she and Tangle need to hunt out her father Strutter, one of the original Time Bandits, to see if he has any suggestions on how to stop this from happening. They find the remains of the Time Bandits out of work and scrounging for a living. Strutter (Malcolm Dixon) is joined by Fidgit (Kenny Baker) and Og (Mike Edmonds) and Og’s son Tubby. Another former time bandit, Wally (Jack Purvis) is despised by the group as he has moved into Creation’s Upper Management and is in charge of the Accounting Department.

(Note: The characters of Randall and Vermin from the first film are mentioned in passing, but no indication is given as to their fate. In reality, David Rappaport, who played Randall, committed suicide in 1990. Tiny Ross, who played Vermin, had also passed on. Jack Purvis’s part was written especially for him, knowing that he was paralyzed from a car accident and in a wheel chair.)

The group decides they need to see exactly how creation was saved from being shut off at the end of the first millennium in order to save it this time around. They go to the Supreme Being’s Treasury, steal a key from Wally and get the map that the Bandits used in the first film. Whilst rummaging about in the treasury, they accidentally knock over the Ark of the Covenant (Which McKeown notes should look like the one in Raiders Of The Lost Ark), summoning the guards. Finding some time portals (lying in a stack like panes of glass), the group make their escape into history.

The group’s first stop is the bedroom of Polly, an 11 year old American girl, who spends more time in Internet chat rooms than with her working mother or stay at home, laid off father. With the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse hot on their trail, the bandits and Polly set off through history on a trip similar to the first film. They encounter a cleanliness obsessed pirate captain, inadvertently participate in Joan of Arc’s capture and discover that Julius Caesar’s assassination was faked so he could get away from his shrewish wife Calpurnia.

The script is fun and might have made an enjoyable movie except for the fact that it echoes the first film too closely. The bandits’ first stop after stealing the map is again a child’s bedroom. The Pirate Captain and the Joan of Arc bit both feel similar to the Robin Hood and Napoleon segments of the original, not to mention that Joan of Arc had already appeared in another time travel comedy, Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1988). Polly’s interaction with Calpurnia echoes the relationship Kevin and Agamemnon shared in the first film. The script does introduce a neat idea where the Bandits travel back in time for just a day and encounter their earlier selves. However, when the two groups get separated, one expects to see the second group again, but they never reappear.

Finally the Bandits discover that they are the ones who saved Creation at the end of the first millennium and so they have to try again. Just before the switch to turn off Creation is thrown, the real Supreme Being returns, having been delayed while measuring infinity. The other Supreme Being (the one with the hand puppet) was just his servant who had gone crazy trying to keep things going for his boss. Polly is returned to her bedroom, where her parents wake her just in time for the millennium New Year’s Eve countdown. Downstairs, she meets her mother’s new boss, a man who looks suspiciously like the real Supreme Being. . .

One theme McKeown seems to explore in the script is the parent-child relationship. Mox seems to be embarrassed by her father, but over the course of their adventures they come to understand each other better. Polly seems to have the same problem with her parents and comes to a similar happy ending with them as well. (No exploding parental units this time!) Unfortunately, this is still a weak element in this draft and hopefully would have been strengthened had the project continued forward.

While the first half of the script sets the story solidly in motion, the second half contains a few logic problems, specifically when the time bandits run into themselves one day in the past. The first group successfully stops their past selves from making a mistake before the two groups interact for a few scenes. Don’t even think about cause and effect in this sequence as it’s thrown out the window. Also, the script implies that the Supreme Being has been away for more than a millennium, leaving his assistant in charge. Are we to assume, then, that the Supreme Being who appears at the end of the first film is actually the crazed assistant as he is revealed in this script? If so, why does he appear to be sane at that end of the first film when we are shown he was insane back at the turn of the first millennium?

But Time Bandits II‘s biggest failing is that it doesn’t feel like it fits in with the first film at some level. Gilliam has stated that Time Bandits is part of a thematic trilogy about Dreamers, specifically the Dreamer as a youth. (Brazil is about the Dreamer at the middle of life and Baron Munchausen is the Dreamer at old age.) But beyond the parent-child conflict subtext of the script, there’s no deeper theme to the sequel and perhaps it’s for that reason that it just doesn’t seem like a worthy successor to the first film.

For a while there looked to be some interest in the script, though no definite word was forthcoming. Rumors circulated that Kenny Baker’s son and Jack Purvis’ daughter were both in consideration for roles (Tubby and Mox?), an extension of the script’s theme of parent/child relations perhaps. Dreams: The Terry Gilliam Fanzine website quotes the director in July 1997 as having discussed the project with Canada’s Paragon Entertainment. “A company that bought out Handmade Films (The producers of the original Time Bandits) were talking to us about doing this,” the site quoted Gilliam. “Charles McKeown and I have an idea of what to do, but we haven’t heard anything for months. It’s one I wouldn’t direct. I’d work with Charles on the script and godfather it basically.”

One stumbling block with dealing with Paragon may have been that the Pythons as a group were struggling to get back the rights to their film Life Of Brian. (They eventually succeed in 1998.) However, with Purvis’ passing in November of 1997, the project seemed to have quietly faded as well. By the time Bob McCabe’s 1999 book Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam (Universe Publishing) hit stands, Gilliam seemed reluctant about reviving the project. “I think we’ve got enough funny stuff in there, but there’s this slight feeling of repetition in how you deal with time. I know that we made a really, really good film and any follow up is never as good.” (pg 185)

A February 2001 article at Ain’t It Cool News.com speculated that Time Bandits II was perhaps back in development. In an August 16th article on the sudden proliferation of time travel movies being produced in the wake of the just released remake of Planet Of The Apes, USA Today confirmed that the project was being developed by Universal Studios. While no word was given on what the plot may be, it’s safe to assume that if anything from the original script remained, at least the millennial angle had been dropped by this point.

On November 5, 2001, Gadfly Online published an interview with Gilliam where he revealed that a deal had been struck with Hallmark Entertainment. “So we [Gilliam and McKeown] wrote Time Bandits, these two, two-hour specials,” he stated. He then dropped a hint about the new project’s direction, which seemingly has abandoned the original sequel’s storyline. “Kevin is now in his middle-thirties and he’s got a couple kids. And life has never been as exciting as it was then. And that’s where it starts.”

The project was confirmed in the British genre magazine SFX’s April 2002. Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd re-confirmed the story on April 9, however describing the project as a four-hour miniseries for the ABC network with preproduction scheduled to begin in early July and cameras rolling in August, 2002. Hallmark and its chairman Robert Halmi, Sr. were no strangers to bringing fantasy epics for television, having produced miniseries as Jason and the Argonauts, Merlin and Dinotopia for television. (With its $80 million dollar budget, Dinotopia was the biggest production from Hallmark to date. While the initial miniseries did well, the subsequent Dinotopia regular series that was set to premier in the fall of 2002 was beset with low ratings and was soon cancelled after only six of the 13 produced episodes aired.)

Unfortunately, as nothing more has been heard on the project, it appears to be dead once again. (Calls to Hallmark Entertainment to confirm the project’s status have not been returned.) For now, ironically, only time will tell when we will get to return to Gilliam’s delightfully skewed version of history with its diminutive tour guides.

Sequels are tricky things. They must deliver the same thrills that thrilled movie audiences the first time around while still serving up new twists and surprises that won’t alienate fans. Unfortunately, most sequels don’t live up to the task. Fortunately, X2: X-Men United, the sequel to director Bryan Singer’s 2000 adaptation of the popular comic book, not only equals its ambitious predecessor, but surpasses it in excitement, story and depth.

X2 picks up a short time after the events of the first film. Public fear of mutants, people born with powers and abilities, is on the rise, especially after a teleporting devilish-looking mutant named Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) tries to assassinate the President. The wheelchair bound telepath Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) feels that mutants and regular humans can live in peace, and to such an end has established a school that trains young mutants to use their powers for the betterment of mankind. The teachers at this school are the superhero team the X-Men. Unfortunately, Xavier has an opposite number, Magneto (Ian McKellen), who believes that war between mutants and humans is inevitable.

Upping the ante this time around is Stryker (Brian Cox), a military scientist who has his own reasons for wanting mutants dead. Following a chilling night time raid on Xavier’s school by Stryker’s men and Xavier’s capture, the X-Men find themselves on the run and ultimately teaming up with Magneto to stop this threat to them both. Running with the old question “Is my enemy’s enemy my friend?”, the film offers some twists right up to an ending that will have fans anxiously awaiting the next installment.

At the time of its release, the first X-Men film was perhaps the most intelligently written comic book adaptation to come along. It successfully explored the comic’s core conceit of bigotry and the desire to belong. While it may be somewhat simplistic to compare Xavier and Magneto to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, some similarities do come through. The heroes and villains of the film didn’t ask for their powers anymore than anyone has a choice about the circumstances they are born into. And Singer knew enough to develop the characters enough so that we cared about the decisions they make regarding their abilities.

X2’s story is adapted (somewhat loosely) from the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills by longtime X-Men scribe Chris Claremont. Director Singer, along with screenwriters David Hayter, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris have crafted a screenplay that grows out of the themes explored in the first and complicates them. The idea of anti-mutant bigotry extends deeper than just race relations. As Bobby’s mother says to him after he admits to family that he is a mutant, “Have you tried not being a mutant?”

Fortunately, X2 is written so that if you haven’t seen the first film in a while, you won’t necessarily be lost. For the die-hard fan there are plenty little hidden treats to find over multiple viewings. (Hint: Read some of the other files names on a computer screen.)

There are interesting examinations of the ideas families and fatherhood here. Both Xavier and Magneto see themselves as father figures. Xavier has been building a family of outcasts at his school. Magneto keenly realizes and supplies the father figure that the troubled mutant Pyro is looking for while young mutant Bobby is torn between his biological family and the one he has come to know at the school.

Although there is a fair amount of screen time devoted to Wolverine’s continuing search for his origins, the film is much more of an ensemble piece than last time. The acting is first rate, especially from Stewart and McKellen. Stewart shades his Professor Xavier with just a hint of grey to suggest that he may not be quite as benevolent as he wishes us to think. McKellen plays his Magneto with the cold tone of a bored monarch that makes us forget his warm and good-natured portrayal of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films. Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore and Aaron Stanford as the trio of younger mutants who find themselves thrust into a conflict that will shape their own personal futures. James Marsden’s Cyclops does get short changed a bit, and that is to the slight detriment of the finale. However, for a cast as big as this film’s, every one gets at least a few moments to shine.

It’s looking to be a good year for fans of comic book films. Upcoming months will see Academy Award nominated director Ang Lee’s take on the four-color retelling of Jekyll and Hyde The Hulk, Bryan Singer’s next installment of the civil-rights parable The X-Men and Sean Connery leading a group of Victorian literature adventurers in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And kicking off the parade of superheroes is Ben Affleck as the blind superhero Daredevil.

Blinded as youth by some biohazardous waste, lawyer Matt Murdock fights for justice in a courtroom by day and as the red leather clad Daredevil by night. Acquiring extra-heightened senses in his accident, Murdock now “sees” with a kind of “radar sense”. He is convinced that there is one person controlling all the crime activity in New York, but can’t seem to find out who it is. Into this already complicated life comes Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner), the daughter of one of Kingpin’s associates. When Elektra’s father tries to retire from his life of crime, Kingpin (Michael Clark Duncan) sends for the assassin Bullseye. Daredevil tries to stop Bullseye, but fails, leaving Elektra with the impression that Daredevil was responsible for her father’s death.

The cast does remarkably well with the material they are given. Affleck plays Murdock as man whose affable demeanor hides a burning anger over the murder of his father. Colin Farrell does much with the underwritten role of the assassin Bullseye, giving just the right amount of psychotic desperation as his confidence in his own abilities gets shaken during his final showdown with Daredevil.

If there’s any fault to find in this movie, it lies in the script. The first half of the movie seems oddly paced, with some scenes feeling like shorthand for ideas that should have played over a few scenes. There are themes of love, revenge and redemption running through this story that are almost operatic in power, but the film clocks in barely over 100 minutes. With this past summer’s Spider-Man running a solid two hours, the filmmakers could have opened up the film a little more and allowed these themes to breath more.

What’s maddening about the film is that while it takes its premise seriously and explores some aspects of Matt Murdock’s world intelligently, other things are left untouched. We’re shown Murdock sleeping in a sensory-deprivation tank, presumably because his heightened senses wouldn’t allow him to get a decent night’s sleep with all the distractions. But how are we supposed to believe that Murdock is able to afford being a superhero when he and partner “Foggy” Nelson (Jon Favreau) can’t seem to get their clients to pay their bills. While it probably doesn’t take a Bruce Wayne-sized bankroll to keep things running, secret rooms, spare costumes and funky clubs don’t come cheap.

Comics fans will have fun as several writers and artists who have worked on the comic get name-dropped through the movie. Writer/director Kevin Smith, who wrote a critically well-received story arc for the comic, appears as a morgue attendant. Of course, as the co-creator of many of Marvel Comics’ signature characters, Stan Lee has his customary cameo.

If Daredevil had been released just a few years earlier, it would have been considered a great comic book movie. Recent releases like Spider-Man and Road To Perdition have really raised the bar for adaptations of comics to film. But even now Daredevil is still a pretty good film and given some of the absolute cinematic disasters that comic book fans have had to sit through (I’m looking at you Steel and Batman And Robin) that’s not a bad thing.

When director Terry Gilliam invited documentarians Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe to chronicle in the making of the science-fiction thriller Twelve Monkeys, he said that “if anything should go wrong, at least I’ll have witnesses.” It’s fortunate then, that based on the strength of their final product, The Hamster Factor And Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, Gilliam invited the pair back to chronicle the filming of his latest project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote as no one would believe the incredible string of bad luck he and his crew were about to experience.

The resultant documentary, Lost In LaMancha, details the battle that most film productions got through to make a movie. Unfortunately, for Gilliam and his crew, it was a battle that they couldn’t win. Limited by a budget that barely met the production’s requirements, Gilliam struggles to realize a film project that he had been developing for a decade. But a series of disasters including a flash flood and the failing health of Gilliam’s Quixote, French actor Jean Rochefort, force the production to shut down after just six days.

Gilliam has an unjustified reputation in Hollywood as a visionary infant terrible. His fight with Universal Studios chief Sid Shienberg over the release of his film Brazil is legendary. (And has been chronicled in Jack Matthews’ book The Battle of Brazil.) His 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen went spectacularly over budget, though most of the blame could really be laid at the feet of the producer rather than Gilliam. In fact, the specter of Munchausen’s production hangs over Gilliam throughout the film, even though since then he had helmed the hits The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys. It seems that sometimes, you aren’t even as good as your most recent hit.

In a way, Lost In La Mancha is a love story. Gilliam’s love for his craft is evident in his eyes as he works through pre-production watching the costumes and set pieces come into being. And you can also see the frustration and heartache as things fall apart just weeks later. This film is heartbreaking for Gilliam fans as well. The glimpses of costumes, set designs and especially those few moments of completed film hint at a film that could have been truly spectacular.

The parallels between Quixote and Gilliam are readily apparent and thankfully the filmmakers don’t belabor the point. It’s been said that while filming a movie Gilliam begins to take on aspects of his protagonist, and its easy to see that in the face of mounting disaster Gilliam is almost dementedly determined to continue forward, ignoring the reality of the situation around him.

Of course, the film does raise the question of whether or not there really is a curse that hangs over any attempt to adapt the novel. Orson Welles struggled for 20 years to unsuccessfully complete his version of the project. Maybe Cervantes really did curse future generations when he wrote at the end of the book’s second volume “For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; he to act and I to record; in a word, we were destined for each other” and wasn’t just taking a swipe at another author who had quickly published a sequel before Cervantes had time to finish his own.

In this day and age, “Making Of” documentaries are almost a de rigeur part of a film’s marketing, showing happy actors and confident directors having barrels of fun on set while in the incidental business of making a movie. Rarely is the real struggle and toil that is the actually film production experience shown. Up until now, the most revealing look at film production has been Hearts of Darkness, which chronicles Frances Ford Coppolla’s own journey through despair while shooting Apocalypse Now. Unfortunately, Lost In La Mancha doesn’t have any kind of triumph-over-tragedy, “Great-film-produced-over-unbelievable-odds” finish. Instead, it will serve as a document for a project that seems destined to join Welles’s version of Quixote and Marilyn Monroe’s Something’s Got To Give in the cinema of great films that never were.