Lost in the Movies: June 2013

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 6/18 - 6/24


Here are the last ten films I watched, with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

The Pebble and the String: an allegory for art


excerpted from an interview with writer Javed Akhtar in Mark Cousins' documentary "The Story of Film" (2011)

"You must have seen children playing with a string and a pebble. They're tying a string to a pebble and they start spinning it over their head. And slowly they keep leaving [makes motion of lowering grip] the string, and it makes bigger and bigger circle. Now, this pebble is the revolt from the tradition. It wants to move away. But the string is the tradition, the continuity of the tradition. It is holding it. But if you break the string, the pebble will fall. If you remove the pebble, the string cannot go that far. This tension of tradition and revolt against the tradition are in a way contradictory but as a matter of fact it is a synthesis: you will always find the synthesis of tradition and revolt against the tradition together in any good art."

Perceval and Parsifal: a visual tribute


3 images from Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Parsifal (1981), 9 images from Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978)


#WatchlistScreenCaps, 5/29 - 6/17


Here are the last ten films I watched (excluding my Top 10 Movie Marathon, held in the middle of these viewings), with a screen-captured image and quick sentence on the subject. Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

Literary Interlude: The last 20 books I read


Here is a visual/quote diary of the last 20 books I read. I tweeted each book cover when I finished, and have now added a random sample as well (chosen mostly by complete chance, wherever I flipped the book open to). Books are listed in the order I read them; some selections inspired future choices so there's kind of a thread, or a few threads, running through the titles. Hopefully some of these inspire a visit to your own local library or bookstore; let me know if you've read or plan to read any of these, and what you thought!

(P.S. The above is a photo of my bookshelf, including many titles that aren't featured below; but if you have thoughts on any of them, share those in the comments as well!)

Top 10 Movie Marathon (#WatchlistScreenCaps, 6/3)


On June 3, 2013, I watched all ten of my favorite films (thirteen, actually, if you count the four entries in the Stille Nacht series separately), according to a list I compiled a year and a half ago. The idea was that it would inspire me as I developed my own feature film idea in the coming days. We'll see how it works out. For now, enjoy the screen-caps I tweeted after each viewing, along with - as always - brief info on the title and a epigrammatic tagline.

As always, Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here. Links below are to my post on the film in question.

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