Observations on film art is normally too sophisticated for me, for the same reason as Jonathan Rosenbaum’s is, because I have barely seen any of those films they are looking at. And for those that I have seen, I never got the impression they were that interesting (“Shutter Island” is a prime example). But they released these incredibly nice looking 10 best movies of past years, all of it being from the silent era.
I dug them up here, followed by the films mentioned in the posts I have actually seen (films in parenthesis are those which are not actually in the top 10s):
1917 – Straight Shooting
1918 – (Die Bergkatze)
1919 – Blind Husbands, (J’accuse – yup DB dislikes it like I do, albeit for somewhat different reasons than me)
1920 – Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
1921
I totally think that they are partial to certain filmmakers (DeMille, Lubitsch, Dreyer) but I suppose there is a good reason for that. Anyways, I want to see much much more.
reading J-Ro always makes me want to watch more of everything – but now almost anything is available online, so like, you have no excuse of not watching something they go on and on about xD right now i have so little time though, that i resort to watching a few episodes of really really short tv-shows and basically no features at all! (i still haven’t managed to see a single one of the films i have saved on my hard-disc ever since i got here, haha).
about film blogs in general – i get so weary of reading long-texts on films these days. i even only look at J-Ro’s like once a week or something!
instead, i prefer sites like
http://landscapesuicide.blogspot.com/
or
http://theartofmemory.blogspot.com/
which are no less interesting in taste and manage to capture films very nicely in a few or even just single screenshots.
like omfg, how great is it that someone has the eye and appreciation to take this screencap and share it:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2omOVfvBU3E/Tv0MbowjqNI/AAAAAAAAFGM/pZccjixu9Qw/s800/vlcsnap-00330.png.jpg
which says more about pedro costas movie than any 4-page rant on some film blog?
i’ve become very lazy these days LOL.
and like omfg:
http://theartofmemory.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-was-never-worse-fitted-since.html
single best film-post i’ve come across lately! these people have too much time, but their postings make so much sense and are SO NICE to browse through!
I agree! I am doing my best to watch more films, but it really only works when I am not going to school every day (which is awesome), or when I am really frustrated about school (which is horrible).
In my own interest, of course I want you to see more of the films we gave you, hahahaha!
Pedro Costa is one of the few directors that I have read more about than seen. In fact, I probably spent more time reading about him than watching one of his movies would have taken. (Though Pedro Costa makes some crazily long movies. :D) Time to catch up indeed!