Let's fire up the projector.

I hope you find this website useful.   My aim is to provide tidbits of "curation" leading the reader to useful services, alerts to interesting upcoming screenings--both digital and otherwise--and perhaps some insights into current and past films.  The bent will be more towards the off-the-beaten path .    Thanks for visiting! --Russ Queen

Paris Trance

Intrigued by Zona, I put a hold on some of Geoff Dyer's other books at the Library.  The first one available was his late 90s novel, Paris Trance, which was in many ways right in my wheel house.  It concerns an expatriate in Paris who finds some comfort in the cinemas of the City of Light.  Rings familiar.

When he grew tired of walking he went to the cinema.  (Ah, cinema, solace of the lonely young men and women of all great cities.).  He saw a film a day, sometimes two.  He became a connoisseur of the non-time that preceded the films themselves, especially in small cinemas where there were no advertisements or previews, where the audience was made up of four or five people, all of them alone.  It was easy to see why, in films, fugitives and wanted men went to the cinema; not just to hide in the dark but because these intervals between performances were out of time.  To all intents and purposes you might as well not have existed - and yet, simultaneously, you were acutely conscious of your existence.  When the lights faded -- always that same sequence of perception:  the lights are fading, no they're not, yes they are, yes -- and the curtains cranked back slightly to extend the tiny screen, there was always a moment, after the studio logos had been displayed, when the blaze of projected colour lit up the screen like Eden on the first day of creation.

Unfortunately our lonely hero eventually hooks up with an unaccountably gorgeous gal, they have fantastic sex in the manner in which many books written by males in the late 90s do, and the book loses its steam.  But Dyer is, at the end of the day, clearly a movie freak, and he captures the mystery of that in some very pungent ways.

Films Glimpsed in Films

Stalker, Distant, Ennui

Was just reading Geoffrey Deyer’ book Zona (recommended!), about his relationship with Tarkovsky’s Stalker.  At one point he digresses about a scene from Ceylon’s Distant where Stalker is glimpsed in the background on a character's t.v.  He goes on to then suggest what an interesting study could be made of films in which other films are seen in the background.  This is actually long been something I have been obsessed with, but have never had the head of steam to begin cataloguing instances of this, usually because when they occur I am deeply planted on my couch.

But now, what the hell, maybe I will begin.  Please contribute if you can.  This isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Dyer himself mentions, in addition to Distant, three others:  Frankenstein in Spirit of the Beehive, Red River in Last Picture Show, and Passion of Joan of Arc in Vivra Sa Vie.  What I like about these is in each case they are either central to the narrative of the film (in the case of Beehive) or thematically organic to the works which reference them.

And I would ask that we use this as a criterion for inclusion.  Simply throwing in references to prove street cred (Tarantino!) is not sufficient.  The clip must in some way be central to overall meaning of the film.

So I will add to Dyer’s excellent start the following:

Gun Crazy, glimpsed in the movie theater in which our lovers (is that the New Beverly…the Nuart?), Richard Gere and Valerie Karpinsky, hide out from the police in Jim McBride’s remake of Breathless.  Young lovers on the lam glimpsing a ur-text about lovers on the lam.

The Illusionist.  The Tati character attends a film, and that film is Mon Oncle!!

Mean Streets.  The boys watch The Searchers (“Twenty Dollars!”  Let‘s go to the movies!”), which is obviously a hugely influential film for Scorsese and that crowd, and is also an interesting commentary on the nature of manhood, which is central to Mean Streets.

Moonrise Kingdom

Pure Joy

Make no mistake, Moonrise Kingdom is a small film but feels enormous, not due to its big themes (the transcendent power of love), but in how it so completely crystallizes that which  Wes Anderson has been on about this last decade and a half or so.

I don't think you need to be an Andersonian to enjoy Moonlight, which is a great film by pretty much any definition.  But if Anderson is your thing, I cannot imagine a more joyous night in the cinema.  As an Andersonian from the start, I could watch it in a Loop.

But it isn't all joy, of course.  I am not the first to remark on Anderson's ability to infuse into all the whimsy an undercurrent of despair in his films, and it is there, in giant, difficult gulps in Moonlight.  In fact the cast seems to be have been assembled specifically for the ability to convey quiet desperation.  Hell, quiet desperation has given Bill Murray a second career.  Is there a stranger, sadder scene in the recent American cinema than when Murray, shirtless and paunchy and filled with so much unresolvable grief, grabs and ax and tells his sons "I have to find a tree to cut down?"

One may think Bruce Willis is the outlier in the cast, but of course his ability to carry the weight of the world has always been one of his more underrated talents.  In this, Unbreakable, 16 Blocks, 12 Monkeys, Sixth Sense et alia, he is our Saddest Action Hero.  I hope he gets his first Oscar Nomination for Moonlight.

Ah, but the joy. The joy.  It is also there in giant, difficult gulps.  The dance sequence to Francois Hardy on the beach is the most unbridled piece of joy on film I can recall since Denis Lavant tripped the light fantastic to David Bowie in Carax's Bad Blood.  Bravo, Mr. Anderson, for reminding us that without despair there can be no joy, and without joy, there is only despair.

Andrew Sarris is Dead

The Auteur Theory is no longer anything discussed with any passion since it is so much in the air even the most casual film goer breathes.  So upon the passing of Andrew Sarris it is important to remember that his Americanization of the Politiques des Auteurs, coining the controversial phrase for the first time in Volume 28 of Film Culture magazine in 1963, was an act of pure Cinehutzpah.

When he coalesced the Film Culture writings into a book, The American Cinema, in 1968, he created Holy Writ.  You think I am exaggerating?  Go Google Andrew Sarris is Dead and see.

So obsessed did I become with Sarris and his theory, so emboldened was I, that virtually every essay in school I was called upon to write in the year or so after first reading his Opus was on The Auteur Theory.  Aside from wondering why I had no life my professors also found the whole thing, both the theory and my enthusiasm for it, preposterous.  Everyone knows film is a collaborative art form.  The director, aside from the monocle and megaphone, was just another staff member.

And I have to admit the theory, in the end and under close scrutiny, doesn't exactly coalesce (what exactly is this "personality" that Sarris goes on and on about?).  But what made Sarris so powerful was the attempt to articulate what those of a certain cinematic inclination already knew:  that there was an abiding presence in the art of cinema, for good, bad or indifference, and we call that The Director.

And no one who thinks about the cinema today even thinks for a moment that this is controversial.

Malick's Type

Manz in Heaven

Caviezel in Red Line

McCracken in Tree

George C. Scott previews the latest Adam Sandler movie and finds it wanting

This is worse than The Savage is Loose

Okay, so this has been going around, and I have a done a fair share of sharing it myself.  But after the fourth or fifth somewhat luke warm response (wherein the comments were more along the lines of how funny Jack and Jill looked, rather than how hilarious the mash up was!), I realized, this is only really, truly sidesplitting to cinephiles of a certain ilk.

Why?  For one thing, one needs to know, love, or at least sort of admire Hardcore, the George C. Scott contribution to the mash up.  It is a grave-serious meditation on parental responsibility, guilt, the nature of evil, you know, the usual from fun-loving reformed Calvinist auteur Paul Schrader.  

The juxtaposition of the most intense scene (Scott's father character watches a porno film starring his missing daughter) from that most intense of films with the willfully ridiculous new Sandler high concept mall-rat bait is, well, sidesplitting.  And the fact Al Pacino, who probably redefines the word slumming with his appearance in J & J, regarded Scott as the greatest actor of of the generation before him, gives this an additional weird and wonderful meta-cinematic kick.  

Kim Novak

No Pushover

Male cinephiles tend to get all gaga over Kim Novak because she was in a ton of auteurist movies and...well...look at her.

This is Kim in Pushover, one of those t.v.-style late noirs that have been packaged so perceptively by Columbia and the like.  Directed by the solid but rarely inspired Richard Quine, one can sum up the pleasures of Pushover in pretty much two words (Kim and Novak) and a few choice images, including this one, which one wonders how in the world they ever got away with.

Perhaps not SFW

But it is the ambiguity of the look in the car mirror that is the key Novak image.  What in the world is being those eyes and that sloping nose?  Certainly most of the suspense of Pushover is wondering to what extent Novak's character is controlling the sap played by an rather sad-looking Fred McMurray, long past his leading man days, to do her bidding.   If she is really in control at all. 

Heartbreaking Photo Essay

75 Abandoned Theaters from Around the U.S.A. on Buzz Feed. 

Dream Theater, Tahlequah, Oklahoma

One can close one's eyes and picture smartly-dressed couples and families filtering their breathless selves into these former palaces to enjoy the unique experience of being taken away from their lives in Pinoche, Nevada and Bucyrus, Ohio via the magic carpet of movies. 

Remember when the advent of television had the movie industry all in a kvetch about how the idiot box would kill the movies?  Well, it didn't happen, entirely, because the movies figured out a way to continue to appeal to its audience's sense of otherness.  A big part of that was the building itself, palaces and shoe boxes of a grand or intimate nature which offered an experience more immediate and shared than a 19-inch Zenith could ever hope to achieve.

Now, I see these dead soldiers on the American horizon, and I close my eyes and picture those same couples and families, decked out in matching sweat suits and plopped in front of their home theaters arguing over whether American Idol is just not the same since Simon left, driving each other insane.

Murder By Contract

 

The best movie I have seen in the  last three months is not The  King's Speech, not Black Swan or True Grit or 127 Days, but Irving Lerner's taut, hilarious and disturbing Murder by Contract from 1958.  Long unavailable on any format until 2009 and packaged rather inappropriately by Columbia as a Film Noir, Lerner's Termite Opus makes a more pungent and succinct case than The Godfather 14 years later that killing is just another word for good business.

Irving Lerner was probably who Andrew Sarris had in mind when creating the chapter "Oddities, One Shots and Newcomers" for his seminal work of cinephilia The American Cinema.  Indeed, the kind of cinephilic excavation pioneered by Sarris and his troops was bound to stumble on Lerner hiding in the weeds of the American movie factory at some point, but not sure that would have happened without this, his masterpiece amongst some rather undistinguished titles (Studs Lonigan likely the most interesting of the bunch).

In a year when Gigi (not Minnelli's finest by any means) took home the big prize, when Stanley Kramer's stolid, artless Defiant Ones was widely believed to have been robbed of the award, Murder by Contract is, in hindsight, aside from Vertigo and Touch of Evil (neither of which was nominated, of course) the best picture of 1958.  And a preposterous idea like that is what The American Cinema, and the American Cinema, is all about.

The film concerns Claude (played by Vince Edwards with Elvis pompadour,  fresh off seducing Marie Windsor to betray Elisha Cook, Jr. in Kubrick's The Killing), who decides to eighty-six his Squaresville regular job and pursue a position with an unseen Mr. Big as a Hit Man.  True to Lerner's lean and mean storytelling, no back story is given why Claude would find this attractive, no pop-Freudian father-hating or sexual repression flashbacks.  It seems Claude is attracted to idea because it seems more or less a pretty sweet gig.   We know nothing of Claude except he looks and acts cool, and it is this attraction to the banality of this particular kind of evil that makes the audience complicit and, thanks to the whimsical script by Ben Simcoe, delighted in the events.

His handlers (Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine), who trail around with Claude seemingly to assure he doesn't flinch from his duty, seem similarly baffled and attracted to Claude.  They live vicariously through his amoral, emotionally detached walk through the world.  They mockingly refer to Claude throughout as Superman, a nod to both Nietzsche and George Reeves.

Claude is no clod.  He moves deftly from hit to hit, slowly building credibility with Mr. Big, until, of course, he meets his match with a canny Broad (the little-known but quite wonderful Caprice Toriel) doing time in witness protection, a gig which ultimately pushes Claude to the limits of his resourcefulness.

It is to Lerner's credit that as Claude is knocked off his perch it is not for moral reasons.  Killing simply gets harder, as if Claude is on some bizarre Peter's Principal path in his chosen career.   Success in this sort of business is hard-earned.  No hep cat off the turnip truck is going to be Superman without paying his dues.  Claude learns this the hard way, then Lerner fades out, careful not to make the point too emphatically.

Martin Scorsese, a more famous cinephilic excavator than even Sarris, provides a great, short introduction to the DVD.   One can imagine the young Marty, taking in and taking notes on Murder by Contract as the second bill in some Times Square flea bag the year of its release.   Scorsese admits to an homage (or is it theft?) to the sequence where Claude prepares for the call from Mr. Big by working out, a lone, solitary, totally committed figure, in a tiny apartment, to similar sequences in his Taxi Driver, and his far more disturbed protagonist, Travis Bickle.

 

Cinephile Taste Test, Part 1

Wherein you must not only understand the reference, but give the CORRECT answer to qualify.

• Brian Cox or Anthony Hopkins?
• The Clouzot or the Friedkin?
• The Friedkin or the Boorman?
• Pre Double Life of Veronique or post?
• The first Man Who Knew Too Much or the second?
• Pre The Fly or post?
• High Noon or Rio Bravo?
• The Nyby/Hawks or the Carpenter?
• Sarris or Kael?
• Shock Corridor or Shutter Island...or both?
• Pink Panther or The Party?
• La Strada or Toby Dammit?
• Jesus Franco or James Franco?
• Seven Year Itch or Lord Love a Duck?
• The Apartment or Kiss Me Stupid?
• Wild River or Streetcar Named Desire? 

Dogtooth

The creepiest image from the most uncomfortable  movie of the year.  And this was no horror movie. Probably closer to Black Comedy than anything if you are into the whole Genre thing.

Dogtooth  (Kyondatis) would have made my list of Top 10 surprises for 2010 had I seen it, but it didn't play at all in Seattle that I know of, and has yet to receive a DVD release.  I was only able to watch it through the good graces of Netflix Streaming Video.  I was surprised, all right, despite the film getting fantastic word of mouth in the underworld, by the rawness, the intensity, the ingenuity of the playing out of a scenario that could have gone terribly awry in lesser hands.  When they remake this in America, with, I dunno, Jennifer Lawrence in the role played by Angeliki Papoulia (above), with all the naughty bits excised and family values restored at the end, the thing will likely be a house of cards.

But fat chance of that remake.  Whereas Let the Right One In had the vampire hook that was able to seduce a big budget out of Hollywood, Dogtooth lacks what it takes for a mass audience.   It doesn't so much critique patriarchy (the Mother is complicit in everything), or anything, really, in the end.   But it has real bite.

And I will just come right out and say it:  every parent should see Dogtooth.  Even if they only see it mostly between the fingers of the hand held in front of the face.

Black Swan

Finally got the chance to catch Black Swan last night.  Thought it was Showgirls-bad.  In other words, highly recommended.

How this started

I had an idea about a book that would be a travelogue about cinemas around the world.  I had some interest here and there from boutique publishers, but no track record or distinguishing talent as a writer (clearly), and let's face it, the world of publishing is, shall we say, challenged these days.  Travelogues sell, but those centered around food were more commercial, for instance, than something tailored to the freak set who would rather visit a tiny cinema in an alleyway than a museum or a four star restaurant.

The idea would be that every year I would release a book about a new city, telling the story of the historical or independent cinema in these cities a cinephile might visit if she was so inclined.  Classic case of writing a book one would want to own.  As far as I know, nothing of the kind existed.  Fame and fortune, therefore, awaited me.

Not so much, of course, so I went the D.I.Y route, with this blog.  While I am not not entirely sure the entire vision isn't skakey, I would like to extend an invitation to all of those of you out there who might have something to contribute.  Not the least of the challenges in my book idea were the simple logistics of producing a book per year about the cinemas of the cities of the world on a budget best described as making Roger Corman blanch. 

But it is more or less free to publish online.  And I would love to see your contributions, whether humble or grandiose.    The idea would be a site that would be a reference for cinephiles around the world who find themselves in a strange town who are inextricably drawn to the cinema when common practice would indicate they should be moved otherwise.  

It was always the intention of this piece that it be personal, rather than strictly informational, in nature, so if you would like to talk about one cinema in some city, your home town or not, where you broke your cherry, so to speak, it is all good and, glory be to the Blogosphere, publishable. 

So shoot me a comment or an email if you have something you would like to add.

Leaving the Cinema

I love that moment just after leaving the cinema and entering the real world again.  It is likely pathetic to say, but it is probably the moment I feel most alive.  I love how the two parallel realities, the cinematic and the real, inform and enhance one another for that 10-15 minutes before the latter overcomes the former.  I was almost hesitant to write about it because it is so hard to describe, but do you know what I mean?

Top 10 Surprises of 2010

Okay, rather than yet another Top 10 list lurching narcissistically towards establishing some sort of blogger street cred, I offer instead ten moments with film and t.v. that surprised and, at times, astonished me this year. 

The criteria for inclusion is not just theatrical release in 2010 but films that were not readily available in any format prior to this year.   While a good deal of time is spent on this blog lamenting the home theater take-over and The Death Of Movie Going, the digital film restoration biz seems to be entering a boom phase, making more and more films available, and that is nothing but good for cinephiles, couch potato or otherwise.

So, here goes, another lurching narcissistic attempt at establishing blogger street cred.  With a twist!

(Some of the surprises, below, were unhappy surprises, I am afraid.)

Surprise #1.  Catfish.  I don’t care about the alleged manipulations with the sacred documentary format.  What matters is how well the tale is told.  Call it Documentary, DocuDrama or DocuLie, in the case of the Schulman’s Catfish, call it a riveting Human Dramedy which is as much about “the way we live now” as the more lavishly praised Social Network.

Surprise #2.  The Prowler, directed by Joseph Losey.  At long last caught up with this object of obsession on TCM.  A DVD release is scheduled for 02/11, and it should be one of the most sought-after items for Cinephiles five minutes later.

One might wonder why all the fuss about Losey, but twenty minutes or so into The Prowler you realize that instead of the standard Noir involving femme fatales and jaded cops you are  confronted with a profound meditation on class jealousy, framed with the astonishing compositions that are consistent with Losey’s entire oeuvre.  There was no more subversive film produced by Hollywood in 1951, and it obviously got him into a heap of trouble.

Surprise #3.  Greenberg, directed by Noah Baumbach.  I know, I know.  It is hard to get a film made, and it is harder still if your primary interest is the interrogation of unsympathetic characters.  I admire Baumbach and what he has accomplished so far.  But Greenberg blows.  It manages to waste the talents of both Ben Stiller, giving his most mannered and annoying performance to date, and the great James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, whose score sounds to me like it could have been composed by any random knob twiddler with Pro Tools.  The fact this been-there-done-that meditation on the alienated of L.A. has landed on so many Best Of lists is perhaps the greatest unhappy surprise of the year.

Surprise #4.  Possession, directed by Andrej Zulawski.   Caught up with this batshit crazy cult Whatzits by any means necessary.  All I can say is, I get it, sort of.  This is the kind of film one is obsessed and possessed by.  Alternately awful/awesome, unwatchable/riveting, unintentionally/intentionally funny.   What is clear is that director Zulawksi is some kind talent. 

What is unequivocal the greatness of Isabelle Adjani.  Her freak out scene in the Paris Metro is one of the greatest pieces of character inhabitation ever committed to celluloid, and easily as scary as anything in The Exorcist.  This is a completely fearless actress, a great star who didn’t give a fuck about being a great star if she had a great part.  Hers is the forbearer performance for Natalie Portman in Black Swan, and any other instances where movie stars throw caution to the wind and give themselves over completely to a completely insane director.

Rumors of a Blu Ray release (finally) have the easily obsessed foaming at the mouth.

Surprise #5.  The ineffable Romy Schneider.  Serge Romberg’s  Henri-Georges Clouzot's L’Enfer is fine, I suppose, especially for Clouzot completists.  But what fascinates is the  portrait of an actress, Schneider, cast in a dream role never realized.  In fact, at a certain point, the otherwise misbegotten project seems to exist for no other reason than for Clouzot to train his gaze unblinkingly on Ms. Schneider while he tries to figure out what his film is about.

Prior to seeing this I had a limited relationship with Schneider.  She was great in Tavernier’s Death Watch, an obscure favorite of mine, as a character whose last dying days on earth are captured on camera and telecast to a rapt world audience (this wildly underrated film from 1980 is both prescient of today's reality obsession and also filled with grim irony, as Schneider herself died—too young—not shortly after its release).  She was a major star in Germany and in France, and did a bunch of American films, mostly of the wacky comedy variety like What’s New, Pussycat,  in which she was generally wasted as the sexy Foreigner.  I had not idea she was, in fact, a great actress.

If anyone is wondering what acting for the movies is like (and for those who assume it is easy), watch as Schneider keeps giving it her all, take after take, bringing a nuances to the same material over and over, on and on, while a desperate director searches for….what?  And she remains sexy, unapproachable, ineffible all the while.

Surprise #6.  The Year of the Woman Director.  Superb films by Maren Ade (Everyone Else), Sofia Coppolla (Somewhere), Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids are All Right), Jessica Hausner (Lourdes), Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone), Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture), Claire Denis (White Material), Nicole Holofcener (Please Give), Catherine Breillat (Bluebeard), Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), among others. There is little doubting the relative ease and lower cost of digital/D.I.Y film making has opened up heretofore unheard of opportunities for film artists previously shunned do to their inconvenient gender.

Surprise #7.  Play Dirty, directed by Andre de Toth.  Thanks to my new Roku (Merry X-Mas to me!) and streaming Netflix, I caught up with this from de Toth, a working-man’s director from the Golden Age, who seems here, in his final feature, to be making his masterpiece.  The late sixties/early seventies were the Golden Age of cynical World War II films, and, and while clearly influenced by the Dirty Dozen formula, this may be the best, and most personal, of the lot.  And it is all here.  The heroes without any illusions or anything to lose.  The disregard for women (the sole woman in the cast, a German nurse played by Vivian Pickles, is saved from rape and murder merely because she is able to care for a gut-wounded member of the gang).  The, shall we say, unromantic ending (at least at the end of the Dirty Dozen some of the characters are left to chuckle cynically in the hospital).  This is dark as night, but the whole of the scenario is blasted with bright, sand swept light.

There is a sequence, just after the end of the first act, that would never be made today.  The ragtag special unit that is charged to blow up a German fuel depot tries to lift their jeeps up a steep hill to a plateau above by jerry rigged pulley.  De Toth lets the sequence play out in virtual real time, and we agonize with the men as one after the other vehicle makes it safely then, just as the group is ready to celebrate, the worst possible thing happens.  It is a scene that feels fully experienced, and could never be shot in this manner in this day of quick cuts and short attention spans.

Surprise #8.  Exit Through The Gift Shop. 

I don’t know how the video camera came to my hand, but I know the moment it came into my hand, I couldn’t let her down…ever.  It was more than any drugs, to anybody.  It was obsession.

Surprise #9.  The Model Shop.  This late American movie from Jacques Demy got a DVD release this year.  Gary Lockwood is the disaffected hero, and Demy utilizes him in much the same manner as Kubrick did in 2001 about the same time.   He is a blank slate upon which the viewer can project one’s own…I don’t know.  Ennui?  Ennui and inertia are certainly among of the film’s subjects, and the fact the character does not progress one iota (no hugs, no learning) is what makes it of its time, and also weirdly moving.

The film offers a great glimpse of late 60s Venice, California, in all its derelict glory.  And, for music snobs, a great score by the semi-forgotten band Sprit (I Got a Line on You), whose members also make up part of the cast.  I spent many hours obsessively trying to track down the vinyl of the score in greater vintage record stores in the greater Seattle area to, alas, no avail.  You got a copy?  

(consider for a moment Demy's first choices for both lead role and the band:  Harrison Ford and the Doors.  Something tells me this would be far from the obscure object it is if Demy had gotten his initial wishes fulfilled) 

Surprise #10.  Three Silent Classics by Joseph Von Sternberg.  Lovely release from the beloved Criterion.  Of the three (Underworld, The Last Command and Docks of New York) the latter is the supreme masterpiece, and has long been a kind of Holy Grail for cinephiles due to its unavailability on VHS or DVD.

Sternberg’s reputation is as a woman’s director due to his long collaboration with Dietrich, of course, but Docks is a rough and tumble man’s man picture which nevertheless manages to soften and humanize the brawling longshoreman protagonist (George Bancroft) at the film’s conclusion as he begrudgingly accepts the unconditional love of a hardened woman (the amazing Betty Compson) he saves from drowning.  There won’t be a dry eye in your house at the end, but Sternberg never panders, never gives in completely to sentimentality.  And there is always, from frame to frame, the remarkable, one-of-a-kind Sternberg talent for composition and lighting.   The other two films in the collection are worth watching as well, of course, but Docks is worth the price of the set.

Other surprises, 2010-style:

What an awful, pretentious, self-important howler the much-praised I Am Love was;  that multiplex dreck The Expendables and The A-Team are actually pretty good; that I think Casey Affleck and Michal Winterbottom are very talented, but it seems to me the only point of The Killer Inside Me is genre exercise and misogyny, and that ain't enough; that The Leopard restoration was a major event, but the film itself still leaves me a little cold.  And I love long, lush, historical epics where not much happens.  Not sure I am a Visconti guy; that My Son John (on Netflix Streaming but still not on DVD) is a masterpiece, despite its dubious politics and the compromises born of the tragic death of Robert Walker; that the recently and dearly departed Frank Henenlotter’s Bad Biology is way, way over the top, but filled with great ideas; that when it is all said and done (Oscar!) The Social Network is nothing more than a really solid piece of professional film making; that The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (released for the first time on DVD with a beautiful Blu Ray from Blue Underground) is an artfully made and quite scary horror movie that holds up with the best of Romero; that Dexter, on HBO, hit a new high in quality this year, perfecting its formula of mixing biting social criticism with its thrills and chills (in the case of this year, skewering the ridiculous and growing downtrodden-white-middle-class-male-self-help industry); that Mad Men had more so-so episodes this year than great ones, signaling, perhaps, the end is near? 

Blake Edwards is Dead

88 years of age, so a great run, though I am sure he would have liked to work more.  He seemed to have a severe falling out with Hollywood, and Hollywood with him, which is a shame.

Probably the most important director in my life from ages 13 (when I started to understand what a Director did) to probably 17 or so, as his films were ubiquitous and irresistible to me at that juncture.  The Great Race was my favorite film for years (saw it, like, seven times in three years owing to its constant presence on King 5's 3:00 weekday movie).   Mister Cory, the (still) terrifying Experiment in Terror, A Shot in the Dark, the widely analyzed The Party, Gunn, What Did you Do in the War Daddy, The Wild Rovers...on and on.  A genre film maker making personal films in an unforgivably impersonal Hollywood system.  That is what we call these days an Auteur. 

Edwards moved with ease from comedy to drama, and, indeed, his great Grey Beard period movies 10 and S.O.B. (the latter of which either contributed to or commented upon his disillusionment with Hollywood) have a gravitas about them that belie their wacky slapsticky trappings.  

He was, perhaps, the last of his kind.

Rasion d'etre

The art of film going cannot be killed for the simple reason it cannot be replaced.  3D LED displays will not replace it, nor will the world's most comfortable couch.  Mobile won't replace it either, cause I don't know about you but I don't really want to watch a movie on a screen the size of a triscuit.

What cannot be replaced, what is crucial is, of course, community. The sense something extraordinary is occurring and is shared amongst a group of strangers.  This will never be duplicated by advances in technology.  It cannot be duplicated in the home theater, no matter how state-of-the-art, nor should it be.

The community I pay tribute to here is the that of the Cinephile. Ironically, things have never been better for the movie obsessive.  Availability of titles, even the most obscure, thanks to the likes of Netflix, Criterion, streaming video and burn on demand are enough the keep the Cinephile shut in for the rest of their lives.  But the true Cinephile can never be satisfied with this solitary experience.  If you want to make a movie nut happy, put him in a room engaged in filmic discourse with like-minded zealots.  

It is possible that what the abundance of titles will result in is the increase of movie clubs and boutique cinemas that cater to the movie obsessive.  Certainly the astonishing number of (really excellent) Blogs devoted to the art of cinema indicate that the Cinehphile community is truly inexhaustible.

When traveling, I found myself being drawn to film going, owing to a lifelong predilection towards the cinema, in opposition to the more reputable touristic activities.  These experiences made me feel there was hope for the survival of film exhibition, something about feeling part of a larger community.  It is easy to get depressed about the dwindling theaters in one's own city, but when one gets away from your borders, hope is renewed.

It occurred to me also that while there are many travel guides that send you on the beaten path towards "must sees," there is very little guidance out there for the Wandering Cinephile. 

It is in this spirit I have created this Blog.    This is a site to help guide you on your travels if your preference while in Amsterdam, for instance,  is the  geared towards the Tuchinkski rather the Rijksmuseum, for example.

Rather than simply offering the facts you need (while careful not to ignore them!), I have tried with my own contributions and those of contributors to the site to give the site a slightly personal slant, making this more Travelogue  than Travel Guide.  I have tried to note the points of interest for film fans within the neighborhoods of the cinemas mentioned, to make it easier to plan a point of destination for the day or evening out.

My main contribution here is for Paris, the City of Light, more aptly, the City of Cinema.  The Seventh Art was born here in the inspirations of the Lumiere Brothers, and that light continues to shine as brightly, perhaps, as anywhere in the world.  I hope I have managed to capture that light in the Paris chapters, to the left.

So please use the site when planning your cinematic holiday.  Visit the links under Chapters, on the left side of the Blog.  Use the links, embedded in the chapters, to find out more about the cinemas referenced, particularly regarding their current programming. 

I hope to keep growing this over time, ideally with more and more contributions from the world's Cinephiles.  The number of cinemas may be shrinking, but the number of film nuts is not. 

And, please, please please, please contribute to the little cinemas, the old and broken down, the barely hanging on.  No matter where you may wander.