[Pickups: April (Revival and current)]

* The Adventures of Prince Achmed was such a treat! The oldest full length animated feature in existence, it is a stunningly beautiful silent film, created using hand-cut silhouettes. I saw it at SIFF Cinema with a live and original score by Miles & Karina, and it was just magical. The story, adapted from Arabian Nights, is still captivating. It’s fascinating to me to see how the mechanics of storytelling (and in particular comic timing) don’t really change.

* Mr Smith Goes to Washington was the final Metro Classic of this cycle. The lowest circle of hell: politics. It’s Capra at his flag-waving best, and of course we can’t help but love Jimmy Stewart, but me being me my favorite was probably Jean Arthur as the seen-it-all assistant, followed by Thomas Mitchell as journalist Diz Moore. Oh, democracy!

* Either you’re buying into Scream 4 or you’re not. I saw the first three Scream films that week & then went to the fourth at midnight, so clearly I was into it. Better than the second and third, and a worthy successor to the first, it featured all the jumpy-out bits, one-liners, and kick-ass ladies that I could hope for.

* The thing about Henry’s Crime is that it came out about sixty years too late. It is at heart a heist film, with Keanu Reeves basically playing himself as your typical noir hero, an everyman caught up in the underbelly of, in this case, Buffalo. Vera Famiga’s the love interest, Fisher Stevens is the scumbag, and James Caan is the salty old conman. Far more entertaining than it had any right to be.