the curator corner

Dean in our window

2009-03-09T10:18:00.000-04:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Now in theatres: Birdsong (Albert Serra, 2008)

2009-02-25T17:29:00.004-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

The New York Premiere run of Albert Serra's Birdsong starts tonight at Anthology Film Archives with Serra in person to introduce and discuss his quiet little gem of a film. It's a hard sell, of course, as its a slow observational film about a Biblical myth/legend, but like Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, it's a deadpan "comedy" in a way, too, if you let it. I wrote about the picture for The Auteurs' Notebook. Here's my first graf:

Aleatory and teleonomic, Birdsong bears a somewhat familiar resemblance to the Straub-Huillet school of adaptation and philosophy; however, Albert Serra plays a game of improvisation that branches this genealogy into a new space of chance. The document begat by duration here turns presence into an opportunity for digression, for leaps, for a poetic sense of contiguity and not continuity. The whole sums chunks arrayed, not morsels lined. One can sense the film was made on the fly, assembled into its form through smarts and luck. And it's silent, mostly. Save one piece of music, the soundtrack is an assemblage of sand and wind and broken branches, of waves, of inconsequent dialogue mumbled, of the world's little noises blown big.

Also covering its release today are...
— J. Hoberman in The Village Voice
— Jeff Reichert of Reverse Shot for indieWIRE
— A.O. Scott in The New York Times
— Michael Tully at /HAMMER TO NAIL
— Also worth reading: Daniel Kasman wrote about the film back in May 08 at its Cannes debut
— Thanks to David Hudson for the help.

2009-02-25T09:58:00.005-05:00

— Francis Ford Coppola has a new film called Tetro (film site), for which FFC has just launched a website. There are a few pictures from the film, as seen above, and a video made by Francis himself (what some may call a vlog) introducing the project. The film stars Vincent Gallo and is the first original screenplay Coppola has shot since 1974's The Conversation, which is a personal favorite of mine.

2009-02-21T16:19:00.001-05:00

— Hugh Jackman's prep work for hosting the Oscars. Lots of man there. I hope I'm never that buff.

Oscar time! Milk buttons! Wrestling! Actors!

2009-02-19T19:30:00.000-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

I have only seen two of the nominees for Best Picture this year: David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Gus Van Sant's Milk. I cannot say I was blown away by either film. I did like parts of both, though. Indeed: both glide by on the charm and movie-star beauty of their respective leads, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. As the Oscars are wont to do, both men are nominated for Best Actor. Mickey Rourke is also nominated for his performance in The Wrestler. Some have that said Rourke was born to play the role, that his career would have meant nothing had he not been a part of this film, that it's the ne plus ultra of art reflecting life reflecting art works of art. I think it's pretty good. In fact, I'd say that, hyperbole aside, this role does indeed help define Mickey Rourke, and vice-versa. I'll go so far as to say I'm rooting for this man. I might go further to say that outside of Rourke and Werner Herzog (his film, Encounters at the End of the World is nominated for Best Documentary Feature), there's little to draw me to the Oscars this year. I mean, I love looking at Brad Pitt like anybody else but, for serious, he won't be onscreen all night.

Big surprise: Plenty of bloggers are paying way more attention to this year's telecast than I am, and for that I'd like to point you to some of the best:

Ali Arikan plans on liveblogging the event
Count on Defamer to have plenty to blog about in all their snarky glory
Craig Phillips and Aaron Hillis will liveblog on Sunday for GreenCine
Karina Longworth shall Twitter through Sunday for Spout, covering both the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday and the Oscars proper on Sunday
Nathaniel R of The Film Experience and a select crew are hosting the 4th Annual Oscar Symposium
You can bet Jeffrey Wells will have something to say

2009-02-18T23:40:00.006-05:00

— Claire Denis' new film, 35 rhums, opened today in France. It plays four times in New York in mid-March (learn more here) during the Rendez-vous with French cinema series. Please go see it; it's amazing. (More enthusiasm on VINYL.)

2009-02-16T19:30:00.004-05:00

— some Hitch, via my friend Glenn

2009-02-16T19:20:00.004-05:00

— more James Gray, via my friend Claire

Now in theatres: Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)

2009-02-14T14:00:00.009-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

[Many blogs feature review roundups, or use a Friday post to highlight a current release, so this feature is always already redundant. However, we trust, as we push forward, we'll make our way to set ourselves apart from the likes of David Hudson and Aaron Hillis and any other number of committed blogger-critics out in this internetland. Thus, our first installment, an appropriately late entry hitting the web not Thursday or Friday but on Valentine's Day (another genius marketing ploy), as the film is, ostensibly, about "love" or some such nonsense. Also, I haven't seen the film yet.]

Although available on demand since January 16th, James Gray's Two Lovers opened theatrically on Friday in New York City and Los Angeles. Lucky for this little film, Jaoquin Phoenix has a little act going where he says he's quit acting in favor of a career in hip-hop music. Thursday night, he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. It was an instant classic appearance, and had nothing to do with this film, and its noteriety will only help the little PR machine that could behind this modest feature—a film that, from an outsider's eye, looks lovely but (terrifically) out of synch with the current landscape of American Film. For one, it's clearly a straight-forward melodrama. This is apparent in the trailer (see below), despite a few marketing ploys to amp up the Manhattan scenes, and, as Hoberman derides the picture, is consistent with Gray's previous films. Those prior efforts, however, were not romance yarns; rather, all three (just three! in 13 years!) are crime-related tailspins. I did not care for 2007's We Own The Night that much, but it is nothing if not consistent and it definitely had its supporters, like, say, my blogging buddy Zach Campbell (who drops notebook knowledge at Elusive Lucidity) and Dan Callahan at Slant Magazine. And, yes, Callhan has written a fine essay in favor of this new film, again at Slant. His was the first review I read, and it spurred me on to read a number of others, which I hope you do look at as well. I've listed them below in the order I read them in, not in some hierarchy of importance. All of that, coupled with the elegant looking trailer, makes me definitely hope I can see this film sooner rather than later and, if I find the time, revisit his earlier efforts. If there's any benefit to Gray's short-list filmography it's that one may easily digest it in a week. In any case, we hope you enjoy these links, and maybe this film. If you have any thoughts, please do share them.

— Both Glenn Kenny and Karina Longworth saw the film at Cannes and reworked what they wrote then for our reading now. Both are well worth a look.

— Daniel Kasman caught the picture at Cannes as well and has reposted his review at The Auteurs' Notebook alongside a new notice from David Phelps.

— I've already linked to Hoberman's review above but here's another since I like him so much.

— A. O. Scott in the New York Times is his ever-astute and literary self and for Michael Tully at (the handsomely redesigned) /HAMMER TO NAIL, the film proves consistent with what we (okay, I) have come to know of his taste (which is generally excellent, btw).

— Some from some Reverse Shot boys: Andrew Chan, Michael Joshua Rowin, and Elbert Ventura.

— Finally, an "old hat" guy whose new blog career continues to aid the internet's rep as a valuable and interesting forum for criticism (that takes a fun spin on a print "mindset" at that), Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.

American Filmmaker Links: John Cassavetes

2009-02-12T00:05:00.001-05:00

— from the documentary I'm Almost Not Crazy

— Ray Carney on Cassavetes

— An interview with Playboy Magazine, as archived by this website, across 13 pages has this highlight right up front:

Look, this isn't a cop-out—at least I don't think it is—but I tune out directors I hate until I forget their names. I remember all the directors I've ever liked working with as an actor—guys like Don Siegel and Robert Aldrich. The thing I feel directors have to realize today is that they must become like The Beatles: They must write their own material. It's really incredible that directors would allow someone else to write their scripts for them. I can understand that happening when a guy starts out, I suppose, but to make a career out of directing other people's work is all wrong.

— Aquarello, at Strictly Film School, writes on Faces, A Woman Under The Influence, and Love Streams

— Joe Leydon offers this "Lost Interview" from 1985, a time near the end of his life, which touches on his waning, among other things, as when he says, "Not having as much energy is very frustrating. I used to have enormous energy and could accomplish a great deal. Now it takes me a longer period of time to accomplish what I could accomplish in a very, very short time. Outside of that—the rest of it—well, that’s life."

— some aphoristic quotes

— At Senses of Cinema, a few pieces of note by: Matthew Clayfield on Opening Night, Philippe Lubac on Cassavetes and Maurice Pialat, Christos Tsiolkas on three books concerning our hero, Gilberto Perez on two books

— Zach Campbell and Matthew Clayfield offer two "Cassavetes Letters"

— The Criterion Collection Box

10 Personal Touchstones in American Cinema

2009-02-11T23:00:00.001-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Here I shall list ten films, always that arbitrary arbiter, that have directed my thought (or marked certain passages) in the most significant ways during my young life in the cinema. I list them here in chronological order of their impression on my forever impressionable brain.

Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese, 1973
          The first film to show me how much music matters, and the first film I can remember feeling aroused by during its violence. Luckily, it still feels "strong" and, as I age, it appreciates for different and exciting reasons. As with all that follow, it continues to teach me things.

Manhattan, Woody Allen, 1979
          Woody taught me to look beyond the center of the frame for the first time, and that Gershwin still matters, even in fantasy-land. Honestly? I could easily have put The Godfather: Part II here for similar reasons tied to Gordon Willis.

2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick, 1968
          It feels a little dishonest to place this film this early in my personal timeline but, as I said with the Scorsese above, this film continues to yield new sights with every screening. Seeing it for the first time in 70mm at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco was perhaps the greatest cinema experience I can remember as it fulfilled every desire this always-learning young cinephile could think of; a year later it did new things. Since then I have yet to look at it at home. It's a cathedral unto itself. (Also, does it belong in American Film? You tell me. It's so seminal that I felt I had to squeeze it in.)

The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock, 1963
          My chosen banner image should have alerted you to the possibility of this choice, of course, and, again, this film did not tell me all it could and would when first I saw Tippi's cheekbones cringe in terror. Now it's easily my favorite Hitch for more than just my undying affection for the wounded soul underneath that blithe, aloof facade Ms Hedren erects. For instance: the lack of score! the crisp editing! the untidy psychology! the unreliability of the signifier! (Here I'm assuming that a Hollywood film by an English director will count for an American Film.)

Rushmore, Wes Anderson, 1998
          Encountered late in high school, and after first seeing The Graduate, this update (of sorts) on that Nichols-Hoffman classic meant a lot to my sensitive desire to be loved as I am, just like any number of myopic teenagers. However, it still makes me laugh, and, as I learned a few other things from films below this one on this list, it has plenty to offer—just like its star character.

Mulholland Dr, David Lynch, 2001
          Saw this one five times in theatres. Didn't know what to do with it other than tell everybody I thought it the most brilliant thing ever. It took me a good six years to really grasp what I sensed. And then INLAND EMPIRE came out...

The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
          Seen anew after reading Walter Murch and Michael Ondaatje's book, The Conversations, this was as big in teaching me how to "look" at a film's sound as was the Lynch I mention just above.

The New World, Terrence Malick, 2005
          As I wrote in this recent piece for The House Next Door, this is perhaps the most important film for my development as a person invested in cinema (as a viewer, as a writer, as a thinker).

The Awful Truth, Leo McCarey, 1937
          Encountered in conjunction with my first exposure to Stanley Cavell's extraordinary (and extraordinarily influential) The Pursuits of Happiness, it was unavoidable I would fall in love with all this lovely thing has to offer. It may not be as "good" as a few others Cavell writes about in that book, but, as it is the final film discussed, its significance is weighted that much more by all that precedes it one's life with the book (and films), or had preceded it mine.

On Dangerous Ground, Nicholas Ray, 1952
          A helluva lesson in phenomenology. I need to see it again so I can write more. Also: a helluva lesson that Nick Ray does, in fact, live up to Godard's proclamation (about Bitter Victory): this is cinema.

I'm certain your trajectories will teach me things in turn! So, please, share yours in the comments! Or, if you like, at your own blogs!

Breadlines & Champagne! UPDATED. TWICE.

2009-02-11T16:30:00.001-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

To counter our chill with a laugh (and a hug?), Film Forum has programmed the Breadlines and Champagne series, a month-long celebration of Great Depression cinema. The fun begins this weekend with an opening night screening of Wesley Ruggles' 1933 film, I'm No Angel, which stars Mae West and Cary Grant and costs a mere 35 cents (or a quarter for members). The weekend continues with two Franks: Borzage's Hooverville classic, Man's Castle, and Capra's punchy American Madness. I was lucky enough to catch a screening of the new print of the Borzage and wrote up some quick thoughts for The Auteurs' Notebook, which you will be able to read ~~shortly in that webspace~~ by clicking here. The short of it goes something like this: Borzage smears the frame with light to point beyond it, back at the world, and beyond that, too, to the skies we see and seek, where we are free to dream and project our wishes. (Shhh: at bottom, the film is interested in the freedom the cinema can offer, the uplift possible, and our capacities as agents even in the dark!)

But don't stop there. Scroll down that page and you'll see all kinds of fun double bills, all at a 2-for-1 discount, including one helluva Valentine's Day, programmed by Bruce Goldstein to pair My Man Godfrey (service would save the day, wouldn't it) with Easy Living (perhaps most famous now for its early Sturges screenplay). If that kind of night out (complimented by a meal and drinks, if not flowers, I trust) does not warm the soul, I cannot imagine what will. Of course, two days earlier there's a new print of Young Mister Lincoln screening with The Tall Target, if your soul needs that kind of uplift. Night Nurse plays Feb 17, Hawks' Scarface on the 21st and King Kong helps close the month before five more double bills to start March. I'm going to try to enjoy as many as my meager wallet and my stuffed social calendar will allow. (And if that's not enough for you, there's something called The Human Condition coming back by popular demand April 8th. That one might tell you some things.) [x-posted at VINYL IS HEAVY]

UPDATE: My piece on Man's Castle is available over here, and I've left a comment below the "essay" that furthers my thought a bit, or questions what I've written, in an inviting way (I hope).

UPDATE THE SECOND: My first piece published at SpoutBlog can be found through this link. It's called "Valentine's and Breadlines: Love in the Depression" and it concerns a few of the romantic comedies I've seen in the past week at the Film Forum. Please, read it. Please, tell me things. Please, enjoy your Saturday.

Must-read becomes must-see: When It Was Blue

2009-02-11T16:25:00.000-05:00

— Michael Sicinski in the latest issue of Cinema-Scope, at his best:

Yet it would be entirely too facile to suggest that When It Was Blue is Reeves’ freedom tract, an overcoming of an agoraphobic attitude toward the greater world. For one thing, although Reeves always tends to incorporate some autobiographical elements in her work, she does so in a highly complex, mediated way, and to simply read “Reeves” off the surface of the work is to do both films and maker a grave disservice. Nevertheless, the restlessness and anxiety that permeates When It Was Blue, in particular its engagement with the problem of self and other, the female eye and body making itself genuinely vulnerable in global space, is a feminist and a political issue, and one that expands the mythopoeic achievements of Brakhage in a distinctly grounded, even urgent new direction. (And Brakhage’s work, when reread through Reeves’ “use” of it, has a feminist undercurrent: a disarmed, quivering supplication before the visual universe that abdicates male prerogative, and that ought to give some of his feminist critics reason to reconsider their quick dismissals of his alleged modernist machismo.)

— Jennifer Reeves' website

— the TIFF page for the film

— Sicinski's original notes from TIFF

A quick hit on Philippe Garrel, Van Morrison, and irony

2009-02-11T16:20:00.000-05:00

— from 2001's Sauvage Innocence, which looks rather sexy, no?

— here I link to an essay by Quintín, who does not care for the film; he closes his argument against irony thus:

This kind of moral dilemma (“I can make this film against drugs if I help sell drugs”) is at the core of the most primitive Hollywood filmmaking. But something is wrong if a sophisticated director like Garrel indulges himself by messing with this cheap material. In a way, the depiction of intimacy with a twist of irony is a nouvelle vague device that goes back to À bout de souffle (1960). But after all these years, this particular mix of detachment and autobiographical narcissism that gave rise to dandyism has turned sour. In the beginning, there was a world outside and making films was a reaction to it. Now, there is no world left. It's just a matter of solipsism, a game of certain individuals playing with their minds and memories, and a group of admirers celebrating. That's why Sauvage innocence is an empty film.

— having not seen this particular Garrel film, I cannot argue with our man Quintín here; however, I can say that, yes, irony is slippery indeed, and it's rare that it resolves well, but one thing I totally dig about Les amants réguliers is how sincere it all feels... and how smart it is about drug use. I imagine this is consistent in the previous film.

— this dischord makes me yearn to see Sauvage Innocence all the more.

— my favorite piece of writing on Garrel is this piece by Serge Daney, reprinted in English by Rouge.

Artist Spotlight: Pedro Costa

2009-02-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

The A+C bio I wrote
Pedro Costa has made digital works since the turn of the 21st Century due to a number of influences and philosophical premises. Through his 1997 film, Ossos (Bones), Costa shot on film and perfected a style of shadow and elision equal parts Bresson, Rivette, Ford and Tourneur. After working in the Lisbon slums of Fountainhas while filming Ossos, Costa realized the inefficiency and intrusion of a 35mm camera crew, no matter their limited size/footprint. He realized that to work with any grace, any honesty, any integrity, he would have to abandon the troupe of filmmaking. Thus he forsake film’s emulsion for digital’s arrayed pinholes of light and began to shoot his next film, No Quarto de Vanda (In Vanda’s Room), by himself with a “consumer-grade” camera. This was not simply a democratic, or even simply a Marxist, impulse. It’s more complicated, more radical. His new art—in and of the margins—gives face to the mosaic of poverty too rarely seen on cinema screens. It builds the world in blocks of time and space into a concrete object of witness. It’s document without the guile of documentary. It gives us heroes without capes (although they wear masks, as does everybody, the argument goes): the ordinary, made material, exceeds representation.
Costa’s cinema refuses. As he says, it’s a closed door that leaves you guessing. The impulse to separation is a denial of not just audience identification but the very way of seeing that keeps poverty hidden. It’s a paradox. Pedro Costa looks at the rift and creats a cinema of faith—in the world, in our bondage to it as much as our flight from it. This faith, of course, supercedes politics, however political his image-making may be, into the space of ethics. —How we look is how we make the world.
Some links you might enjoy, or find useful.
— The VINYL IS HEAVY link dump, which will point to essays I've written, as well as some other essays written by other people.
— An impetus for my VIH link dump was Girish's One Stop post, which also prompted Michael Guillen's Next Stop post.
— A Closed Door That Leaves Us Guessing, a lecture Costa delivered that Rouge then published in its 10th issue.
— Andy Rector on Costa over time.
— A clip from his Straub-Huillet video, Où gît votre sourire enfoui?
— His recent The Rabbit Hunters is available for (crummy) viewing on youtube in three parts: one, two and three.
— And! Please, if you want to, help us add more at Pedro's page! Or, as ever, you can send us a link via "curator at artandculture dot com" — or drop it in the comments!

In the works: Doillon at FIAF.

2009-02-10T00:01:00.002-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Last Tuesday marked the beginning of the current Jacques Doillon retrospective at French Institute-Alliance Française with a screening of 1985's La Vie de famille, which Dan Salitt says is lovely. I missed it, and I'm bummed. However, I can say that tonight's film, Le petit criminel, is well worth seeing if you happen to live in New York City. I hope to have some words formed about it, and next week's Ponette, for your reading pleasure at The Auteurs' Notebook soon. I'll keep you updated. What's most striking, so far, looking at Doillon's cinema in the order of its programmed appearance at the FIAF, is the focus on children—and their complete "naturalness" in front of the camera. The close-up effaces, or makes transparent, any masks they (wish or hope to) wear. Set mostly in a two-door almost-truck, Le petit criminel is meager, and subtle, a restricted (head) space prone to jammed signals, to cluttered thoughts. The endgame may appear "open" to some but, as the cop says earlier in the picture, there should be no doubt as to where the story winds up; how the angles converge and how the camera pushes into that space (as well as away) define its characteristic (to say, stubborn) resilience. I can only guess how this plays out fuller in La vie de famille, as this trailer below hints at a film teeming with a lot of things I love, like Juliette Binoche, words, language, direct-address, diegetic video use, family problems despite good intentions, life's inherent corruption (and corruptibility), Sami Frey all man-like some 20-plus years after Godard had him dancing all boy-like, and so on; my attraction should become readily apparent as you click play.

Since I'm following the screening schedule, kinda, this puts my viewing of Doillon's films of the 1970s back a bit in my personal queue. This is fine by me, of course, as I've subscribed to a certain curriculum, if you will, but it makes it a little harder to gauge at this point how much similarity his work bears to those of his post-vague filmmaking brethren (the press release mentions Eustache and Garrel to get nerds like me excited) over against a larger tradition of gallic cinema. So far, it seems like he's got more to say to Truffaut and Pialat than those other dudes. More soon. —Oh, and a quick thanks to all the ideas and thoughts thrown my way in that last (now enormous) thread at Girish's joint. [x-posted at VINYL IS HEAVY.]

evening digital tangents/threads

2009-02-09T20:18:00.005-05:00

— I just re-read Jean-Baptiste Thoret's essay "Gravity of the Flux: Michael Mann’s Miami Vice" because I just re-read Sally Shafto's recent piece "Brave New World: Some Reflections on the Digital Revolution in General and Digital Cinema in Particular" because just last week I re-watched Miami Vice and I hope to, just as soon as possible, revisit some Jia Zhang-Ke for a long-gestating piece. (Also, for a variety of additional reasons, INLAND EMPIRE.)

— This is, of course, a different model of digital cinema than something like what our own Marc Lafia works at, as you can see on his cinema-engine and on youtube channel and this piece built for The Whitney, but it's kinda cool to think how even in such "non-narrative" works as these the narrative architecture is still at work, still organizing, even if it's work done by spectator and not the spectacle. What I mean to say is that there is a conversation between the traditions that we should perform although we rarely do; weaving is harder than it looks, even in pixel form.

2009-02-09T20:12:00.003-05:00

— to get some color on here, and repeat-plug our Che Letters at VINYL IS HEAVY; I'm told we can expect Part Three soon...

An anniversary we appreciate: Sátántangó, as noted by Rosenbaum

2009-02-09T00:46:00.005-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

Béla Tarr's Sátántangó turns 15 this year, apparently, and Jonathan Rosenbaum, one of the film's oldest and most vocal champions, wrote a little ditty at the request of Tarr to help commemorate the moment. His second graf is typically astute:

The film finally became available here last year on DVD from Facets Video, helping to demonstrate how much cinema as a “language” is more easily translatable than literature. For many years, Béla and I have had a running debate about the relation of the film (and, by implication, the novel) to my favorite novel in any language, William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932), which also focuses largely on the simultaneous events of a single day in a depressed, flat rural area as seen through the consciousness of several alienated characters—alienated from themselves as well as from one another—including a fallen patriarch who observes all the others called Reverend Hightower (a name and figure that already anticipates some of the structure and vision of The Man from London), and who might have served as his community’s conscience if they all hadn’t deteriorated into an apocalyptic, post-ethical stupor. Béla doesn’t see any connection because he doesn’t care for the Hungarian translations of Faulkner, and it’s true that one could also trace many of Faulkner’s methods to those of Joseph Conrad. But I also can readily acknowledge that the sarcastic wit of the story is quintessentially that of Eastern Europe.

I was not fortunate enough to see The Man from London when it played in San Francisco and Berkeley as part of last year's San Francisco International FIlm Festival but I have, somehow, seen this other (enormous) thing, and I'm still mostly proud of what I wrote about it, which you can read by clicking this link, for, if any thing, the simple fact that it's a fine marking post for that stage in my development, my taste, my smarts, my life.

Film Blog of Note #1: The House Next Door

2009-02-07T18:53:00.006-05:00

by Ryland Walker Knight

[Here begins a short series on the blogs we've chosen to add to the "Blogs of Note" section of the Art+Culture Film Magazine landing page, a pageflakes-like assemblage of RSS feeds, which we are continuing to tweak in this beta phase. We should note, in addition, that we are open to suggestions!]

While I understand that there is a certain conflict of interest in promoting another outlet I write for (on occasion), I feel this is a necessary nod as Matt Zoller Seitz and Keith Uhlich are largely responsible for my first exposure to the broader blogosphere. VINYL IS HEAVY attracted a few stragglers when it began, but it wasn't until I began writing (and sporadically at that) for The House that anybody really paid attention to what weird words I wrote. So this first spotlight is a thank you. Also, Matt's baby, which has matured in three years into Keith's angsty teen (dog years? mixed metaphors?), is kind of a big deal now'a'daze so this link is possibly redundant. Then again, all in this series probably will be since this little thing I've started is going to be read by very few people as we build up our base.

In any event, The House Next Door has blossomed into one of the premiere online film blogs, acting as host to a wide stable of young writers (and some not-so-young writers) eager to share their particular perspectives and passions. What began as a platform to sing praises about Terrence Malick's The New World, now affords space to television and music and, even, last fall, some political intrigue on top of the continued interest in cinema. And it continues to morph and build into something new, like any home, as it welcomes more and more readers and writers. Visit the lively comments sections for often funny and definitely irreverent opines and rants, arguments and shouts, all kinds of ideas. If only we could get Keith to write more often and get Matt back into writing at all, we would be in even better shape as fans and curious readers and friends alike. Finally, a bit of self-promo to top it off: To mark the anniversary of the site this new year, Keith and I composed a pean, of sorts, to the site and to that Malick film, and how both have shaped our trajectories, which you can read by clicking this link right here.

Audrey, bound by light.

2009-02-07T12:54:00.001-05:00

Straub-Huillet

2009-02-05T15:59:00.007-05:00

They smart, old. She's gone now.

Nick Ray

2009-02-04T21:17:00.000-05:00

Living hard in 1971.

Hopeful filmmakers

2009-02-03T21:21:00.004-05:00

Rivette

2009-02-02T21:32:00.002-05:00

Still making masterpieces at 80 years young.

2009-02-01T21:36:00.000-05:00

From Arnaud Desplechin's Comment je me suis disputé (ma vie sexuelle...), which I wrote about last fall right here and you can watch on The Auteurs right here.