sharing audio/video clips on YouTube • first visual tributes • blogger-selected best of the blogosphere '09 • posters from my childhood moviegoing, 1988 - 1998 • poster galleries for film directors • Lost in the Movies (new blog for weekly reviews of current cinema) • this year's Academy Award nominees • Holy Grail meme image collection • Now Playing/New on DVD coverage (new releases from 2009/2010) • Best of the 21st Century? • picture gallery meme • overview of six Star Wars films • beginning Remembering the Movies (what came out 10-100 years ago this weekend) • The Wind in the Willows series • The Sunday Matinee (Italian/British/Czechoslovakian/French New Waves) • three Disney classics
Chapter 8: The Image Emerges (January - February 2010)
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JANUARY
Kicking off the new year (and decade) with a shot of Bulle Ogier
I can only imagine this nineties action film as a well-worn VHS tape
John Lennon quote from the early days of Beatlemania (also, my earliest YouTube clip - albeit audio only)
Picking apart the troubling implications of Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda, with the help of a Susan Sontag essay
As a new decade dawned, my very first visual tribute - to a film I'd reviewed a few weeks earlier, divided between country and city
For this round-up of the movie blogosphere, many bloggers submitted their own best work for sampling/visual display...a taste of where we were in '09
Sharing an unsettling Ub Iwerks toon
Tributes to a French auteur who passed away and a Hollywood star who turned 100
Updating my best of the blogosphere round-up
A clip of an MLK speech for his birthday
Thoughts on Scott Brown's special election to the Senate
Andrei Tarkovsky's last film, with a legendary long take of a burning house
A rant about getting rid of cable (because what are blogs for)
Excerpts from the essay "My Lost City"
FEBRUARY
Random collection of screen-caps, continuing the new visual emphasis in my work
Weaving together text and image in tribute to Pierrot le fou
Departing the Examiner site (includes links to original comments)
Considering films that became icons years after their release
Status update keeping track of updates and invitations over several sites
Soviet comedy with a more subtle approach than many of its contemporaries, but still very inventive and clever
Sharing a seriously unsettling Canadian cartoon
Watching a Howard Zinn documentary shortly after his death, very early in my first tentative steps toward the left
I never liked the word "indie"
Linking to an argument about criticism
A gallery of posters from a decade of moviegoing, from the four-year-old convincing his dad to take him to Twins in '88 to the fifteen-year-old catching Affliction in early '99
Arthur Rimbaud, screen-caps from The Rules of the Game and other relevant films, and a bunch of sadly defunct YouTube clips
The first of several poster galleries: Scorsese, from 1968 to 2010
Roberto Rossellini sends Ingrid Bergman to a volcanic island
Welcome to Lost in the Movies
Introducing a third blog, Lost in the Movies (*different* Lost in the Movies - it's confusing) to cover new releases in cinemas and on DVD
Avatar
James Cameron's 3D super-blockbuster was first up among my Oscar contender/new release reviews
The Restoration: Glimpses of the Past - and Future?
Gathering images from hundreds of hard-to-see films sought out by various movie bloggers
We Are the Silver Screen Preservation Society...
Cross-promoting the Film Restoration round-up
Chapter 9: Four's Company (February - May 2010)
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Introducing a third blog, Lost in the Movies (*different* Lost in the Movies - it's confusing) to cover new releases in cinemas and on DVD
James Cameron's 3D super-blockbuster was first up among my Oscar contender/new release reviews
Gathering images from hundreds of hard-to-see films sought out by various movie bloggers
Cross-promoting the Film Restoration round-up
George Clooney's Oscar contender, too slick or just slick enough to suit its subject?
Kicking off a more stable Best of the 21st Century? series, which will continue weekly or biweekly throughout the year, based on an updated list covering the full decade
Clint Eastwood's easygoing film about post-apartheid South African rugby
Hilariously awkward Jaws deleted scene
Highlighting work from the past month
MARCH
Carey Mulligan's breakthrough in a coming-of-age story
Rounding up the Wonders in the Dark coverage of the 2009 Oscar contenders
Best of the 21st Century? continues with my first Jia Zhangke film, mixing magic and documentation to convey modern Chinese development
A poster gallery for Spielberg, 1971-2008
My first "new on DVD" review from 2010, a double-header from Lee Daniels and Michael Moore
Not a particularly well-received film (I liked it more than most at the time), this awoke lingering memories of the Iraq invasion from a stateside perspective
I really liked Spike Jonze's riff on Maurice Sendak's classic picture book
Three trios reveal themselves in Olivier Assayas' film: international, intergenerational, and sibling (one of my favorite Best of the 21st Century? pieces)
The last of my poster galleries: for Lynch, 1977-2006
Really did not care for this one, but I think I was able to articulate my objections effectively
Swedish adaptation (apparently edited down from a miniseries) of the bestselling mystery novel
Stepping into a new season that would hold more changes than I expected
Gus Van Sant's school shooting study, whose relevance unfortunately did not go away with time
Greta Gerwig and the influence of mumblecore mellow the bilious Noah Baumbach
Robert Downey, Jr. adding another franchise to his belt
APRIL
Dragons and western warcraft mythos - my last new release review in the spring push before slowing down and ending two sites
Rounding up my old episode guide, this directory was my last Twin Peaks-centered post for close to four years
Through the tail end of this period, as most of my activity paused, I continued my Best of the 21st Century? series, here covering my second Apichatpong Weerasethakul fable
The Dardennes brothers depict of a fumbling youth as a kind of arthouse videogame avatar in this Best of the 21st Century? entry
MAY
Agnes Varda's inventive essay film provided a wonderful surprise when I covered it for Best of the 21st Century?
Advertisements for kids' products taped off Saturday morning cartoons when I was four or five
I had more reservations than expected while watching this drama about East German surveillance for Best of the 21st Century?
Chapter 10: Heading Home (June - September 2010)
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JUNE
Re-launching my main site after closing down various satellite blogs - although I still wasn't sure if I'd carry on, this turned into a fruitful summer
Creating a picture gallery for the site that has continued expanding over the years
Mystified by the Coen brothers' mysticism, as the Best of the 21st Century? series begins alternating with other posts
Field of Dreams is not just a film about baseball, it's a film about the sixties - particularly how a segment of baby boomers envisioned their own past and legacy in the late eighties
Jia Zhangke uses the microcosm of a Chinese theme park to explore intersections of illusion and reality - another Jia gem discovered through Best of the 21st Century?
I loved compiling this reflection on city dreams, incorporating Carl Jung, Jia Zhangke, and Michel Gondry
JULY
Best of the 21st Century? leads me to Wes Anderson's first foray into stop-motion
Some of my favorite opening frames in cinema history (+ initiating a "picture gallery" meme in which bloggers offered themed screencap collections - all responses linked alongside my own entry)
Celebrating Allan Fish's decade countdowns with an image from every single film
After watching all six of the existing Star Wars films in story order, I acknowledged their appeal and complications
The entire arc of Darth Vader told through screenshots, from the orphan kid to the dying man
AUGUST
The third Jia film in the Best of the 21st Century? series, a survey of Chinese transformation in the eighties, ended up being my favorite
Two fifties noir Sterling Hayden heist films featuring horses - a double review
Sensitive direction and performance by Terence Davies and Gillian Anderson make for poignant adaptation (Best of the 21st Century? series)
Time for a few Jean-Luc Godard quotes, shared on Wonders in the Dark
Watching this film for Best of the 21st Century?, I felt more engrossed as it went along - which may be the point
SEPTEMBER
Comparing the '58 and '86 versions of The Fly
A couple years after its conclusion, the entries for my Hooray for (Hating) Hollywood series were gathered into one place
Chapter 11: Golden Age (September 2010 - January 2011)
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Kicking off a series in which I discuss movies that came out in ten-year intervals on a given weekend
Announcing a new schedule for autumn 2010, one of the most productive periods on my site
Leaping into one of my most ambitious projects up to that time, an in-depth exploration of Kenneth Grahame's story illustrated by images from the film adaptations
My "unseen acclaimed films" series becomes weekly with Ousmane Sembene's colorful, political masterpiece set in a Burkinese village
Visual tribute to Michael Corleone's arc from infancy to the consolidation of his power as "godfather"
What came out this week in history, featuring Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and William Wyler, plus Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and the Great Bambino
Sam Fuller's film about a dog trained - and then untrained - to be racist
The mixture of comfort and adventure in this location captures the divided spirit of Wind in the Willows (culminating with the Piper at the Gates of Dawn)
Work as redemption - or escape
Pictures from The Company of Wolves, a striking mashup of fairy tale and monster movie
What came out this week in movie history, featuring Sly, Uma, and Judy
The question of historical fidelity in an Irish biopic (reprinting a 2004 essay)
Freeze frames from the drunken Dumbo's hallucinations
OCTOBER
What came out this week in movie history, featuring films by David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Raoul Walsh, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Watching a John Lennon doc on what would have been his seventieth birthday
What exists beyond the boundaries of Kenneth Grahame's world may be as important to its definition as what exists within
Tall tales told by the glow of an arc light rather than a campfire
My first tribute (in this case visual) to one of the most frequently featured films on my site, Fists in the Pocket
What came out this week in movie history, featuring a Broadway-themed film and a film adapted from Broadway as well as a couple John Fords
Expanding my fall 2010 schedule to six days for a series that will end up covering four European New Waves
Discussing the Facebook film on Facebook (not as easy to assemble as it sounds, but a lot of fun)
The Edwardian age and the cult of the automobile, as my Willows series reaches Mr. Toad's adventures
Robert Altman's slyly subversive take on the British country home genre
Snapshots of a gorgeous trip into outer space, reconfigured two decades after the Apollo missions for the documentary For All Mankind
What came out this week in movie history, featuring Cecil B. De Mille, Charlie Chaplin, and Francois Truffaut, among others
Underrated slice of sixties cinema, to introduce an Italian New Wave triptych
Some of my favorite directors illustrated by a credit screencap from one of their films
How does The Wind in the Willows deal with class (and how does this relate to the time it was written?), with reference to Jan Needle's revisionist The Wild Wood, which takes the weasel underclass' point of view
Sometimes disorientation can be clarifying
Animated antecedent to Fantasia and The Nightmare Before Christmas, screencaps from a single sequence in The Mascot
What came out this week in movie history, featuring Buster Keaton, Luis Bunuel, and a rare Ingmar Bergman
Random reflections from my IMDb message board days, gathered a few years later
How Kenneth Grahame navigates the complicated anthropomorphism of his tale
An Inuit oral tradition given cinematic form
Faerie Tale Theatre episode "The Nightingale" directed by Ivan Passer and starring Mick Jagger, represented by a few dozen frames
What came out this week in movie history, featuring some Halloween themes
Communism, Catholicism, and especially Cinephilia: belief systems in tension (drawing the Italian part of my Sunday Matinee series to a close)
NOVEMBER
In honor of the Wonders in the Dark countdown, I pick my own favorite
The final entry, exploring Kenneth Grahame's life and its intersections with The Wind in the Willows' theme of home
A Jean-Luc Godard film that didn't really click for me although I found the latter half frequently beautiful
Few have taken to color filmmaking after a long black and white career as readily, beautifully, and ferociously as Federico Fellini (as this visual tribute to Juliet of the Spirits attests!)
What came out this week in movie history, featuring an early start to the holiday season
Kicking off the British "kitchen sink" part of my Sunday Matinee series
Written after seeing the Alfred Hitchcock classic on the big screen for the first time
Gathering all the Wind in the Willows entries in one spot - this series is one of my favorite things I've ever done
Comparing various adaptations of Let the Right One In: how do they deal with different aspects of the story, including point of view, society, and gender?
Visual tribute to the spaceship sequence of alien abduction thriller Fire in the Sky
What came out this week in movie history, featuring a John Ford, a Yasujiro Ozu, and two animated Disney features
Visual tribute to a sunrise, the quiet opening of an acclaimed Mexican film
Albert Finney in an "angry young man" film that feels both sturdier and more volatile than some of the others
Help! is far from the best Beatles film, but it's possibly the most gorgeous - this collection of screenshots revels in that realization
What came out this week in movie history, with a new, more stylish visual format
My favorite from my Sunday Matinee series - an overview of early sixties British cinema with emphasis on two '63 films, both representing a rupture but each indicating a different direction
Pictures from Daisies' epic banquet/food fight just in time for Thanksgiving
What came out this week in movie history, featuring W.C. Fields, Douglas Fairbanks, and Fred Astaire among the icons on display
My favorite Milos Forman film kicks off the Czechoslovakian New Wave section of the Sunday Matinee series
Two Disney classics, considered side by side as representatives of different eras in the studio's history
DECEMBER
What came out this week in movie history, featuring an argument about Gimme Shelter between Pauline Kael and the Maysles brothers
What came out this week in movie history, featuring extremes of both violence and pacifism
A Disney film uniquely places itself in the recognizable world of the recent past
What came out this week in movie history, featuring grouchy old men redeemed from Scrooge to Forrester
Claude Chabrol sneaks up on you while other French New Wavers make more flamboyant debuts
Using the Wonders in the Dark animation countdown as an excuse to highlight a Quay brothers classic
Teasing three upcoming screencap line-ups
The ending of Steven Spielberg's Duel as a series of screenshots
Betty Boop does her own twist on Snow White, and I pay visual tribute
On the eve of Christmas Eve, I offered one more visual tribute to a favorite cartoon special
What came out this week in movie history, featuring a couple international crime sagas and animated musicals
The French New Wave portion of my Sunday Matinee series continues with Agnes Varda's real-time classic
Recalling a whirlwind 2010, with many links embedded
What came out this week in movie history, including some fascinating but relatively little-known titles from one of the most consistently quiet times of the yearly release schedule
(I covered this year on Episodes 8, 9, 10, and 11 of my Patreon podcast)
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