Pink Panther, Airplane!, Exorcist Added to National Film Registry
When the aliens come, the first place they're going is the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress to check out America's catalogue of culturally and historically important films. Oh my, what they'll learn about us.
The annual addition of 25 works honors the career of the late Leslie Nielsen in the 1980 classic, Airplane!, while Blake Edwards is remembered with the addition of the 1964 Mancini score vehicle, The Pink Panther. The 1970s are heavily represented in this Film Registry crop, "choosing seminal films All the President's Men, The Exorcist, Grey Gardens, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Saturday Night Fever," notes Deadline. The program was started in 1989 and has 550 films to date.
According to the LA Times, the list was assembled from various creative film guilds and archivist recommendations as well as public nominations via the Library of Congress website,
2010 Newbies: Airplane! (1980), All the President's Men (1976), The Bargain (1914), Cry of Jazz (1959), Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), The Exorcist (1973), The Front Page (1931), Grey Gardens (1976), I Am Joaquin (1969), It's a Gift (1934), Let There Be Light (1946), Lonesome (1928), Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), Malcolm X (1992), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Newark Athlete (1891), Our Lady of the Sphere (1969), The Pink Panther (1964), Preservation of the Sign Language (1913), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Study of a River (1996), Tarantella (1940), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), A Trip Down Market Street (1906)