Press Play features my De Palma video w/ Kevin B. Lee interview

My video essay (the online work I'm proudest of in any form) "directed by De Palma", featuring clips from Hi Mom, Carrie and Scarface, has just been highlighted on the video essay site Press Play. It's accompanied by an interview with me, conducted by the great video essayist Kevin B. Lee (fair warning: the video contains strong violent and sexual imagery from Brian De Palma's work, and is NSFW).

Below I've reproduced both the interview and the video, which can also be found on PressPlay.

Movie Marathon (#WatchlistScreenCaps 4/22)

Between 8am, April 22 to 2am, April 23, I watched seven features, four shorts, and one featurette in a movie marathon, ranging from fantasy films to documentaries, from kids' cartoons to the dark avant-garde. Below are the screen-caps from the films I viewed, accompanied by basic info and an epigrammatic caption. Links are to my own posts on a given film.

Follow this feature on Twitter here, read about the kickoff here, and view the previous #WatchlistScreenCaps roundup here.

Visions of Filmmaking: 2 quotes from Truffaut & Godard

 Overheard in the documentary Two in the Wave (2010)

#WatchlistScreenCaps, 4/2 - 4/20

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 review of the film in question.

Boston, You're My Home

Boston skyline, August 31, 2009, taken from my cell phone

I feel compelled to write something. It isn't relevant to anything and offers no new information or perspective on today's events, so I'll try - and probably fail - to keep it short. But I didn't want to remain silent, because Boston is a city that has meant and continues to mean so much to me, so I wanted to mark the tragic bombing of the Boston Marathon somehow. I lived far longer in New York, currently reside near and work in L.A., and even when I "lived in" Boston for just over two years, my actual address was in Malden, a separate town on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. And yet no other city feels like "home" to me the way Boston does. So I'll share my memories, pointless as they may be. They're personal, and that's something. I hope any fellow New Englanders will share their own; at moments like these they are all we've got.

Pyaasa

"Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
When I searched for happiness, I was lost in streets of sadness
When I sought songs of joy, I heard songs of sorrow.
Every torment doubled the pain of my heart
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who were the fortunate ones who got the love they sought?
Companions came, stayed awhile, then left me all alone.
Who can spare the time to clasp the hand of a falling man?
Even my shadow eludes me as it fades away.
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?
If this is called living, then I'll live my life somehow.
I shall not sigh, I'll seal my lips, I'll dry my tears.
Why should I fear grief, when I have encountered it so often?
When I asked for flowers, I was given thorns.
Who are the fortunate ones who gain the love they seek?"

-Vijay (Guru Dutt), Pyaasa (1957)

I entered Pyaasa blind, knowing only that it was considered one of the classics of Indian cinema. I haven't seen any other Guru Dutt films (in fact only afterwards did I realize Dutt himself played Vijay, the poet protagonist who struggles against a hostile world) and haven't seen a great many Indian films; only recently have I been making a conscious effort to explore this rich corner of the cinematic globe. I wasn't even sure when Pyaasa was produced, only locating it in the late fifties when a young character referenced his graduation from college in 1952. The viewing experience is often enriched by such ignorance, as it certainly was here. In any case, despite many distinctly Indian touches - including, of course, the casual breaking-into-song outside of what we would consider ordinarily musical scenarios - Pyaasa's story and themes are universal, and I found its pathos in many ways more relatable than the world presented on American screens in the 21st century. Pyaasa is as moving and enchanting as ever, a powerful fusion of cinema's illusionistic and reflective tendencies. Laced with dazzling musical numbers, sumptuous sets, comedic asides, swooning romantic interludes, Pyaasa is also penetrating in its social critique, empathetically embedded in the perspective of the downtrodden, and at its heart is, well, heart: a genuine, earnest investment in what is being offered to us.

#WatchlistScreenCaps (80s short films edition), 3/26 - 3/28

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.

As it happens, all ten films this time are shorts from the 1980s. If you click on each title, you can watch it online. Oh, and though the '82 and '83 polls have passed, if you like A Girl's Own Story, you can vote for it on Wonders in the Dark.

Lost in the Movies celebrates its 5th anniversary, starting now

Tonight I kick off a four-month celebration of a half-decade of blogging, by introducing my new banner and announcing a feature which will launch in a few minutes. The idea is that I'd like to share my back pages with new readers and random stumblers; since launching Lost in the Movies in the summer of 2008 (as The Dancing Image), I've been disappointed or frustrated how many good posts get lost in the shuffle. Although it has improved over time, the blogging format tends to highlight whatever is most recent at the expense of burying the backlog.

While I hope to be introducing new content as well, in the months leading up to July 16 (this site's birthday) I will be linking each day to an oldie-but-goodie from the Lost in the Movies archive. I will be tweeting the link and also putting up a temporary post with the intro from the given piece. First I'll do so chronologically with 50 random pieces from 2008 to today, and then I'll follow with the 62 posts I consider my strongest (see the "Top Posts" tab if you want to jump the gun). On the five-year anniversary, I'll post a retrospective look at where I've been as a blogger. Self-indulgent, perhaps, but hopefully fun as well.

The bigger ambition is that this encourages others to take similar actions, and me to explore their older posts too. While it's always a good idea to be moving forward, we also don't want to abandon the past. As much as possible, I'd like to promote the idea of the blogosphere as unbound by chronology, so that one can stumble upon pieces from whenever; down with disposability, up with legacy! Or something like that.

I hope you enjoy exploring these backroads over the next 112 days. It begins tonight with a train pulling into a station...

#WatchlistScreenCaps 3/5 - 3/21

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.

Souvenirs from The Story of Film

These screen-caps originally appeared as tweets, highlighting favorite moments from each episode.

Lost in the Movies status update, March 2013

My work on this blog is obviously affected by other circumstances, and unfortunately at the moment I have a lot of distractions and other priorities. I had promised regular appearances of the Favorites series every Wednesday, but instead they will have to appear sporadically, not on any regular schedule. Likewise with the occasional reviews, some of which I have begun and not completed.

At the present moment, which could mean a few weeks or months or a year or more, the blog will primarily serve as a viewing/reading/listening log. I am tweeting pictures of book covers, album covers, or screen-caps from DVDs/streaming videos I have completed. Whenever I reach ten titles in each category, I'll put up a post here (as I've been doing for the screen-caps). While I also want to occasionally write and create fresh content, with everything going on I won't be able to do much there. So then, simply keeping an attractive visual log of my film, book, and music explorations is probably the best I can do to maintain appearances and interest in this site for the time being.

That said, I do expect other entries from time to time. I started a review of Zero Dark Thirty and never finished it, but may finish it yet. Next up in the Favorites is All the President's Men, and the template and picture are set to go, I just need to write something. I have other ideas which, during quiet and/or inspired moments, I may explore.

Meanwhile, an older video piece, the work I consider my best from 650+ posts and five years of blogging, has been invited to appear on the website PressPlay, an invitation that will be accepted in the next few weeks, accompanied by an interview with me. I will certainly link up to that when it occurs.

Most importantly, if circumstances allow (and that depends how the next few weeks go, among other things) I would like to create more video essays. I have ideas, and hopefully will have means as well. This not only something I enjoy, it's good practice for filmmaking which has always been and remains my biggest goal, and the most difficult to attain.

(side note: Though I haven't linked to it in a while, in part because after devoting so much attention I got kind of sick of it, my short film is still there for you to watch: Class of 2002, a fictional photo-memoir which, warts and all, is the only thing I can point to with any pride since my move to California a year ago. That's something.)

Over the years, I've made announcements, gone back on some of them, fulfilled others, renounced all future announcements, and then announced new ones. I've ended the blog and returned, almost lost everything in a technical glitch, made major changes and branched out in new directions. I know enough at this point just to say that some things will change and others remain the same without prescriptions, prophecies, or pronouncements. As an extension of what I said before, this site is the only solid accomplishment I can claim from the past five years. Which may be embarrassing to admit but hell, who am I trying to impress right now...

I hope you continue to enjoy my work, as I have enjoyed creating it.

#WatchlistScreenCaps 2/26 - 3/4

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.