Another week and another close race for the top spot. Starting at the bottom: Best Picture nominee The Sand Pebbles and 1973’s Sisters tied for the bottom spot with 12 points each followed by The Country Girl with 14 and Kurosawa’s Ran with 16. In the twenty-plus range, Seven Samurai earned the next highest points at the bottom of that set with 20 points. Just barely above Samurai was The Devil and Daniel Webster with 21 points. With 24 points, Battleship Potemkin came in fourth just behind The Dark Old House with 29 points. Only two points separated first from second with 35-point Strangers on a Train barely losing out to 37-point The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which immediately goes into my Netflix queue. I will receive it next week to be watched that subsequent weekend and reviewed in The Morning After to be posted on March 21 (due to a backlog, I may not be able to get the review posted by that timea0.

Here’s the deal: every week, I will be calling for suggestions of films to be added to my Netflix queue. Each person makes one suggestion and one alternate (in case I have seen one of your suggestions). The next week, when I call for new suggestions, we begin a one-week voting period to select the film to be placed immediately into my Netflix queue to be reviewed the weekend after (because I’ll already have my Netflix queue selections for the coming weekend). Then, you’ll find out what I thought in my weekly Morning After feature on Monday morning.

I’m also going to throw in a couple of selections I haven’t seen from Oscar history. To select the years from which I’ll contribute, I will randomly select two years and then look at the Best Picture race and choose a film there I have not yet seen.

To help decide what to pick, here is a list of what I’ve seen (or at least that I have personally logged).

Full List of Films I’ve Seen (updated through 3/10/11; a small number of titles may be missing still)
Here’s what you need to post today (and through next Wednesday):

1. Below, please provide your suggestions to add to my Netflix queue.
2. Next, please rate each of the following entries in order of preference. Item 1 will be most preferred, 2 next most preferred and so forth.

• Broadcast News (1987)
• The Hustler (1961)
• Jerry Maguire (1996)
• Picnic (1955)
• Richard III (1995)
• The Roaring Twenties (1939)
• The King and I (1956)
• The Train (1964)
• With a Song in My Heart (1952)