As you may (or may not) have deduced from the title, which is a referrence to a Fritz Lang western, I'm going to be using this blog to write about cinema. There are two general ways of writing about cinema: in the present-tense (reviews, festival reports) and the past-tense. Given my present geographic isolation, I've decided to take the long view and write in some depth about films I've seen at least two or three times and had some time to think about. I don't intend to write about everything I see because not every film merits closer inspection; that said, one shouldn't assume simply because I'm writing about a particular film that I consider it a canonical masterpiece. When I discuss a film, I'm beginning with the assumption that the reader has already seen it so I won't bother with spoiler warnings. My aim, beyond staving off bordem while I look for a real job, is to engage the reader in a discussion about the cinema: its history, where it is today, its value.
Monday, July 16, 2007
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I'm really interested to know your opinion of Mike Kitchell's blog, Esotika Erotica Psychotica.
ReplyDeleteI should like to have a blog as interesting as his (being something of a Rivette nut I was especially intrigued by his thoughts on "Duelle"--a film I haven't seen), although my approach differs from his insofar as he seems to write about films because they're obscure whereas, before opting to write about "Trouble Every Day" (an essay I'm not terribly satisfied with though I felt a need to get the ball rolling somehow), I considered writing a piece on Hitchcock's "Notorious".
ReplyDeleteYeah I love the fact that he covers obscure/cult/exploitation films. It's like you reach a point as a film buff when you're tired of continuously watching movies that have already been praised to death by the mainstream. You start to feel like you should attempt to alter the way people perceive certain unpopular things. It's kind of Punk.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I find the idea of sitting through an unsubtitled bootleg of some Italian horror movie from forty years ago, in the hopes of uncovering some hitherto unknown masterpiece, as exciting as counting grains of sand.
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