It's List Eve once again

Here we are again, down to my final post before revealing my movie rankings for 2023. 

On this List Eve, I watched The Blue Caftan -- a dangerous choice considering that it finished in some critics' top tens, and in some critics' top tens of 2022, the year it was available at film festivals. I try not to overcomplicate my endgame with movies that could be game changers.

But I was originally supposed to watch The Blue Caftan last Wednesday night, except that as my start time crept later due to viewings with the family over a late dinner, I decided I was better off not starting a two-hour film set in Morocco in Arabic when I'd already had a beer, so I pivoted to the documentary Mister Organ.

Of course, as it turned out, I also had a beer with dinner on Monday night, but there was no longer any chance to delay.

Without saying too much, I'll say that I'm glad I fought through the effects of the beer early on in this movie to give it my full attention down the stretch.

Technically, The Blue Caftan was watched on List Eve Eve, since I saw it on Monday and my list doesn't post until about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, my time. That's when it's 5:30 a.m. Tuesday in LA and the Oscar nominations are getting announced. But I'll have my rankings finalized before midnight, so to call it a List Eve viewing still feels accurate.

In terms of the actual final viewing, there could be some drama there. 

I've had Palm Trees and Power Lines lined up as that viewing for some time now, or at least the greater part of the last week, as I ticked other movies off my list and mapped out the remaining viewing slots and what went best in what slot. 

Then just now on Kanopy, I saw that Daliland, a movie that has been on my watchlist all year but I've never tried very hard to see, is now streaming for free. 

There are two reasons to consider an 11th hour change:

1) Daliland is 15 minutes shorter, which is a benefit to me considering that I'll need to do some work on my rankings post after I finish watching it;

2) Daliland saves me the albeit minimal $3.99 rental fee for PTAPL.

Whichever I choose, my hope is that the movie lands in some middling spot in my rankings. I take whatever precautions necessary to avoid what happened in 2014, when my wife and I watched Love is Strange just a few hours before my rankings were due, and I had to scramble to write up a blurb on it and kick another movie's already written blurb out of my top ten. (My records show that this was the Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy The Interview, so maybe it's just as well that this movie had to settle for #11, since I'm not sure how well it's aged.)

In any case, all will be revealed in about 16 hours.