Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Welcome Back...it's raining again in PDX

Hey, it's been a while.  This lil' experiment in blogging got put on the back burner for a number of reasons.  My wife and I are having a baby in less than a month.  I've been working on a really exciting non-fiction film project.  And there's the day job, of course.  I'm sure that anyone reading this can identify with how quickly time disappears if you let it.


My love of movies certainly hasn't diminished; just the amount of time I have to go out to see them.  To that end, when I do find the time to blog, the content that is discussed here is likely to include home video and television, as well as the occasional first-run theatrical stuff that had previously been the exclusive subject of this site.  I figured I'd open it up a bit and maybe that would make it easier to post more often.

So, um...welcome back:




This whole notion of "opening up" the style of the blog will likely include shorter, topical postings, as well as a few longer ones here and there.  If I encounter an online article about the decline of 3D cinema, for instance, I might post it, jot down a few thoughts of my own and invite others to comment on the topic.  As soon as this entry goes live, I'll go ahead and enable comments for all posts on the blog (a feature I'd previously kept disabled), so feel free to comment on this or any future (or past) posts.

As for the first regular review in many months, I'll be uploading a look at Amer, which is making its dvd and blu-ray debut this week.  It should be up within the hour, so keep an eye out for it.

And, finally, it'd feel weird to not at least mention a couple of pop culture crumbs that I've run into and enjoyed lately, so--briefly--here we go:

The NW Film Center recently hosted a four-night run of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "lost" 1973 sci-fi epic, World on a Wire.  I happily rejected the opportunity to see (the seemingly ubiquitous) Drive in favor of the catching the limited run feature...and, MAN, was it worth it!  I'll probably post in more depth about World on a Wire in the future, either soon or when it hits blu-ray and dvd next year.




I also caught a mid-August showing of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 Stalker (also at the NWFC).  It's long been my favorite film by the Russian master but I'd never had the chance to see it theatrically.  All those beautiful textures blown up larger than life...you can be sure that I was in heaven.




Last night, I streamed the first episode of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's latest documentary project for public television, Prohibition.  While I completely get that many people aren't down with the very much defined style that Burns has employed in his decades long career, I was drawn in by Burns usual attention to detail and his ability to unearth lost kernels of our shared national history.  The take away from episode one?  That, as is still the case in modern American life, much of what the temperance movement of the 20s and 30s was about can be linked to entrenched ideologies about how others should conduct themselves in society.  If this doesn't sound familiar, you're probably not keeping up with the news of the day.




I've also been diggin' the hell outta the new Wilco album and this compilation of tunes by Malian singer Sorry Bamba.






A quick reminder:  we're still on Facebook and, every once in a while, an exclusive post will end up on that page, so hit us up there and be sure to "like" the page while you're at it.

And that's pretty much it for now.  Like I said, keep an eye out for that review of Amer.  It should be up within the hour.  And, since those of us living in the Pacific Northwest are currently welcoming the return of old friend "the rain," I'll leave you with this:





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