Maybe you can suggest something. As a matter of fact, you do suggest something. To me you suggest a baboon.

On Thursday I completed semester three of the ten year long odyssey that is David Stratton's chronological lecture series A History of World Cinema. In many ways its felt a bit dutiful so far, looking at the very innovative but occasionally dull films that invented screen grammar as we now know it. Obviously a lot of the silent comedy is still superb, but the drama....there are a few stone cold classics, but not too many (although discovering A Cottage On Dartmoor was a treat).

All of which is a preamble to my excitement that we have now reached the era of talkies and the 1930s golden age. Just glancing through the films that were made in 1931-33, the period covered by next semester, you've got Dracula, Frankenstein, The Public Enemy, M, Love Me Tonight, Scarface, Freaks, 42nd Street, Duck Soup, King Kong and so on. That's some good stuff right there.

Having said all that, I also got preposterously excited today at seeing the trailer for another silent classic, newly restored and re-released, Fritz Lang's astonishing Metropolis: