When I came back after my second four-month pause in a year, I almost felt like I was starting from scratch. The blog itself had briefly vanished, and even after it returned I was working without a computer (or even a smart phone) for several months, composing pieces in a journal and transcribing them thanks to the generosity of libraries or roommates when I had the chance. Having relocated across the country, I was trying to build something new both on and offline - as the following chapter will reveal.
Subjects include adaptations of Raymond Chandler, gathering favorite paintings, the politics of the final Dark Knight movie, the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, and the casual postmodernism of eighties cartoons.
I could go back and forth on what I'd like to highlight from this period but I'll settle on Sixties Reunion: The Big Chill & Return of the Secaucus Seven, not just an in-depth exploration of the two strikingly similar films but a broader analysis of slippery concepts like "the sixties" and "baby boomers."
MAY
Returning four months later, after experiencing the random, jarring disappearance of my site for a few days
Asking readers/commentators to make their own 100 favorites list
My journey with the religious epic, from the cropped/stretched double-VHS package to a digital screening at the Egyptian in Hollywood
Mixed feelings about this Robert Altman/Leigh Brackett adaptation of Raymond Chandler with many brilliant aspects but a smug, misguided attitude toward its source
JUNE
Two "anti-films" - one shot on celluloid but viewed on YouTube, the other shot on a phone and viewed in a cinema
Thoughts on various films, including The Wild One, from my IMDb commenting days
JULY
Christopher Nolan's third Batman film was both anti-populist and too cowardly to own the implications of its anti-populism
Ninety of my favorite artworks from the Middle Ages to the turn of the millennium
AUGUST
What does a Chaplin classic lose by gaining narration?
Two films, with tellingly different sensibilities, both about seven sixties veterans now in their thirties, gathered for a reunion at one friend's home in the country
SEPTEMBER
Jumping into a discussion about the 2012 Sight & Sound greatest films poll
Updating a picture gallery and a chronological directory
Old IMDb discussions on various topics, including a controversial scene in Sweet Movie
My response to a David Denby essay about the state of cinema - the ensuing comments section was one of my longest, with an extensive back and forth between participants
Looking at two video montages with different tempos
Histoire(s) du Cinema • The Long Day Closes • Madchen in Uniform • Me and My Gal • Melancholia • North Shore • Road to Morocco • Savages • Shoah • Story of Film • Super 8 • Tangled • Tanner '88 • Ways of Seeing • The Wind in the Willows
Plans for the fall: themed weeks in October, video essays and weekly series in November, a short film in December
OCTOBER
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With time, even those films immersed totally in the moment become pieces of history and we wonder what their characters would be doing now
What has and hasn't changed for teens - and teen movies - since 1982?
Comparing book to film adaptation in a review that closes a week focused on high school movies
Does Preston Sturges try to have his cake and eat it too by making an occasionally serious comedy about a foolish filmmaker who wants to address the world's problems in his work?
Three films from three different perspectives on World War II: home front, battlefield, and somewhere in between
Wrapping up a week of forties Hollywood with the live-action equivalent of an Animaniacs cartoon
Two 2006 films about John Newton with the same title but differing sensibilities, styles, and points of view - one a British biopic, the other a Nigerian countermyth
Hollywood takes two approaches to cover exploitation of Africa
Concluding a week of films about Africa with earnest ironist Aki Kaurismaki's film about an old Frenchman concealing a refugee (plus a bonus look at his unusual adaptation of the foundational bohemian narrative)
For whatever reason, 1982 was a big year for fantasy films as these two animated fantasies attest (alongside the next review)
There's nothing quite like the texture of physical effects to bring a fantasy world to life
A week devoted to imaginative children's entertainment from the eighties ends by examining how works like Muppet Babies or Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein remix classic texts
Steven Soderbergh's film introduced me to Spalding Gray's work, and I was especially impressed by its use of pre-existing footage to tell the life story of the late playwright
I found more to mourn in the end of George Lucas' ownership of Star Wars than to celebrate in Disney's promised expansion of the universe
(I covered this period on Episode 15, a public entry of my Patreon podcast)
Next: Best Face Forward (November 2012 - January 2013)
(in which I debut my first narrated video essays and create a film)
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Previous: Long Goodbyes (November - December 2011)
(in which I debut my first narrated video essays and create a film)
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Previous: Long Goodbyes (November - December 2011)
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