DISQUS

My gosh, you're doing some great work over here, Blake. As ever, thanks for the shout out. I appreciate it.

Great selection of films, Blake! Thanks for your notes.

As ever, Blake, thanks for the tip of the hat.

Yet another splendid gallery. I love this feature on your site.

Whalen is a wonderful discovery, Peter. Thanks so much for the turn-on. I love his art.

I love both these films. How great to know you've had a part in their DVD release.

Wonderful coverage, Kevin. Thanks so much for filtering your reportage through your own questing sensibility.

Tomorrow's a bitch. The past, now she was faithful. Heh.

This tickles the Cassandra within to prognosticate that I've been feeling for some time now that seeing cinema on celluloid is going to shift into the elite prestige arts like opera and the symphony, where you pay good money for your seat for the privilege of seeing a movie how it's supposed to be seen. And as Dave is suggesting, truly fine opera companies and symphonic orchestras aren't readily available outside urban centers.

Then again, why anyone would choose to not be an urbanite still baffles me. (Joking of course.) Though I did receive a comment one time by a rather petulant fellow who said it wasn't fair that I could write about films I see in the city which were not available to him in the country. I reminded him that living in the city was not an accident; it was a choice. We all have choice. You have to decide what's important for you. If a love of cinema is so entrenched as to biography and lifestyle, then I think you decide accordingly.

By taking the time to share all of this, Kevin, you endeavor the kind of responsibility to film writing and film aficionados that I am 100% in support of. It's been a true pleasure to review your notes.

Again, this sounds so much like what Costa was professing during his PFA residency. I'm so glad to realize his is not a lone voice.

Oh my goodness. There are so many wonderful thoughts in this summation. What a great day of listening and interacting this must have been!

Because of my immersion into the recent Pedro Costa retrospective and Costa's own firebrand delivery of a "dangerous" cinema, many of these ideas have finally "set" in a relevant and meaningful way. For example, I have been very influenced by Costa's assertions that the best kind of cinema is precisely that which restricts or even denies access, in the sense of overly identifying with the personages on screen or--as you've synopsized it here--projecting with associations or being too comfortable for being too entertained. It's so difficult not to do this as a spectator and yet crucial to maturing as a spectator.

Brenez's question--“How do we somatize, internalize and act out the evil of the world?”--is another one I have been thinking a lot about. It has to be between people, I think. The world has to be somatized within the individual body and between individual bodies, wherein the potential breadth of good and evil likewise resides.

I love the Bergman insight on islands. I Walked With A Zombie and Casa de Lava have taken on complex connotations of longing and thwarted desire precisely for being set on islands where looking out to sea is a means of longing for the mainland, or home, or someone else.

I'm glad Adrian has spoken out against pugilistic criticism. I find that confirming and reassuring.

Durgnant sounds like my kind of guy. For as much objectivity as can be applied to a piece of film writing, can there ever be objective film criticism? Is is possible?

"space generated by sound vs. space generated by image": Again, Costa has enlightened me with regard to this structure of argument. Not only in how he capitalizes on natural light sources to shape his images but in how he extends their spatiality through soundscapes that are nearly for walking through.

I love any kind of writing, film criticism no less, when it inspires desire. Imagining the audience is, for me, a form of desire, whether that be an audience of spectators or an audience of readers.

And interesting that they should single out David Walsh's political perspective at the World Socialist Website. He denounced Costa as a fraud and yet I have found his filmmaking to be politics committed to action, nearly freed from rhetoric.

I admire that Rosenbaum recognizes that cinema is much more than going to a movie house and watching movies. It's such a simple premise really that it's nearly baffling in its potential complexities and evolutionary nuances.

Kevin: What a marvelous contribution to the online film community. Thank you so much for your care in relaying these discussions to those of who could not attend.

Superb!! You really must do this more often. Your comments here reminded me of when I caught this film on a rainy afternoon in Paris at some small alley theater.

Ugh. I detested this movie.

Thanks for the report back. I should have gone down to this. Next year.

Excuse me for going all homo on you, but yum.

Oh my goodness, Hayley had a twisted nerve?? I always thought she was ready to snap after The Parent Trap. Let's get together right away, indeed.

What a hot picture of Pam Grier!!

Hey, you've been busy over here! It's looking good. As ever, thanks for the tip of the hat, Blake.

Kevin: This entry induced much amusement at my computer this morning. Thank you for relaying it.

Sweeney Todd is fantastic theatre and its transformation into cinema is some of the best news in years.

Thanks for the tip of the hat, Blake. And for the reading tips!!

This was a truly sweet, fun movie. Did you interview them when they were in town, Peter?