I’m a Spielberg fan to death, but hardly an Indiana Jones fan at all. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark at 10 years old, Temple of Doom at 13 (when I shoulda been seeing Wild Style) and The Last Crusade at 18, with my parents and/or pops every single time. Raidersgot me excited about my fifth grade social studies class for about two days. I’ll get around to seeing Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sometime next week, but part of me hopes it bombs, considering the weak plot and how Spielberg and George Lucas were apparantly asleep at the wheel.

So forget Indy; if you’re in Paris now into the summertime, the following films are interesting over at the Cinémathèque Française over the next three months:

The Graduate – June 1
Last Tango in Paris – June 19
The Dreamers – June 22
Alphaville – July 7
The Wizard of Oz – July 16
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – July 23
Superman – July 30

Before I get into my quarterly roundup of choice films playing down at the Cinémathèque Française, a little announcement: Furthermucker has made a ranking list of one of the Internet’s most popular blogs for film! Well, I never said this blog isn’t about film. I deal in Paris, pop culture, hiphop and the arts here; cinema is definitely one of those arts, and thinking back, my highest stats ever (like over 5,000 hits in one day) came from my post about Woody Allen’s last joint, Cassandra’s Dream. And so Wikio – a pretty cool site that can serve up all the news on the Internet from media sites and blogs to your specifications – has a Top 100 ranking for different subjects like music, celebrity and politics, and Furthermucker just made #31 in their new ranking for film. (See my spanking new badge at left.)

As far as the Cinémathèque, the next three months are pretty vapid. But judge for yourself:

A Band Apart – March 7
Coffy – March 21
Shaft in Africa – March 27
Blood Diamond – April 18
Star 80 – April 18
And Justice for All – April 24

Slim pickings somewhat at the Cinémathèque Française over the next few months. I copped the schedule a few weeks late this weekend; on the 6th I missed The Last Movie – long out of print, totally wigged out (from what I’ve heard) and directed by Dennis Hopper, who did one of my all-time favorites, Easy Rider. But Woody Allen’s Zelig is a choice flick. And Renaldo and Clara, direted by Bob Dylan, was recently referenced in Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There, which I fuckin loved. (Never seen it though, Renaldo and Clara.) Peggy Sue Got Married makes the list for Francis Ford Coppola alone. And I’d love to get a comment battle going comparing Mick Jagger in Performace to David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, but this ain’t furthermuckin film school. Anyway, here’s my quarterly list of the upcoming Cinémathèque Française films that I find the most interesting – and R. Kelly:

Peggy Sue Got Married – December 26
Ghostbusters – December 27
Pet Sematary – December 29
Zelig – January 9
Trapped in the Closet, ch. 1-22 – January 25
Taps – February 10
The Addiction – February 16
Performance – February 22
Renaldo and Clara – February 22
Sankofa – March 1

My main aspiring-filmmaker hangout here in Paris is the Cinémathèque Française, kind of a movie theater/museum/film-related library in the 12th arrondissement. I’ve only seen Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Dog Day Afternoon there, but I pick up their three-month schedule four times a year just to see what’s on deck. Here’s their most interesting films through the first week of December. (The ones really not to miss are probably Poltergeist and American Graffiti.)

Solaris – October 5
American Graffiti – October 14
The Last Detail – October 14
Tommy – October 22
Psycho – November 2
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy – November 16
Poltergeist – November 28
Christine – December 2