While Googling Ken Russell today (I had my reasons), I learned that the director of such cinematic oddities as Lisztomania and The Lair of the White Worm is keeping busy writing a weekly column for The Times of London. It turns out that Mr. Russell has much in common with your pals at the Screengrab; for one thing, he likes to make lists. And as you might expect, these lists often contain some eccentric and unexpected choices. For example, in his column on his top ten favorite movie characters, he includes the “glamorous, vulnerable and ‘totally cutting-edge’ duo Romy and Michele, played by Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, those inseparable flatmates bound for their high-school reunion with exaggerated resumés and loveable optimism. No, I haven’t miscounted. It’s a tribute to their ability to complement each other’s performance that their double act in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997) makes them unforgettably one.”

In his latest column, Russell reports: “I have just returned from that hospice of fun, the hospital, with a new knee - and this time I went in well-prepared with DVDs.” What strange and wondrous visions did the Altered States director choose for his convalescence? Well, Groundhog Day for starters, the title of which Russell explains to his British audience as “a peculiarly American festival, in which legend has it that if a groundhog (a cross between a giant squirrel and a skunk) catches sight of its own shadow on February 2, then six weeks of winter will follow - and they always do and it always does.” This selection makes sense when Russell explains it: “And isn't every day a Groundhog Day in hospital?”

Russell’s other choices range from Cocteau’s Orphee to Evan Almighty, but the most perverse just might be Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom, about “a Danish hospital built on tainted ground, where the ghosts mingle with bewildered patients and eccentric doctors, one of whom is so enthusiastic about his work that he performs a liver transplant on himself.” This is a little like picking United 93 as your in-flight movie…and we wouldn’t put that past Russell, either.