It's a shame that so little film is preserved, because come twenty years time we really have next to no idea what will remain as classics and what could have remained as such if they had been preserved, and just think about the extras and special editions we've missed out on because the film has been thrown.

For me choosing what films to preserve means choosing which to let die. It's like the BBC program where the audience had to phone in for the close to extinct animal that they wanted to save. Should we not have phoned in for the one we wanted to let die?

Anyway I digress. Now the American National Film Preservation Foundation has announced the twenty five films they are going to preserve this year. Twenty five in a year?! Imagine the work that must be required if that's all that can be saved.

You can see the full list over the page, a list which includes Groundhog Day, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Rocky, Notorious, Halloween, Fargo and even Blazing Saddles.

1) Applause (1929)
2) The Big Trail (1930)
3) Blazing Saddles (1974)
4) The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916-17)
5) Daughter of Shanghai (1937)
6) Drums of Winter (1988)
7) Early Abstractions #1-5,7,10 (1939-56)
8) Fargo (1996)
9) Flesh and the Devil (1927)
10) Groundhog Day (1993)
11) Halloween (1978)
12) In the Street (1948/52)
13) The Last Command (1928)
14) Notorious (1946)
15) Red Dust (1932)
16) Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-72)
17) Rocky (1976)
18) Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989)
19) Siege (1940)
20) St. Louis Blues (1929)
21) The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)
22) Tess of the Storm Country (1914)
23) Think of Me First as a Person (1960-75)
24) A Time Out of War (1954)
25) Traffic in Souls (1913)

The full press release is over at the official site.