I realize the world hardly needs another blog about anything, but I’m going to take a run at it anyway. I plan to write mainly about movies, and also television, books, or anything else that gets my attention that I feel compelled to pass along. I love movies of all kinds, shapes and sizes, from truly great films, e.g. Children of Paradise, Tokyo Story, and Grand Illusion, to the truly bizarre, e.g. the totally inept yet strangely wonderful Plan 9 from Outer Space. I’ll try to be entertaining and informative, whether writing about old films or new. Hopefully readers (assuming there are any) will let me know how I’m doing with this goal.

Some of the directors and films I like include Stanley Kubrick (The Killing, Paths of Glory, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon); Buster Keaton (all the silents, especially The General); Robert Altman, John Frankenheimer, Alexander Payne (The Descendants); Steven Soderbergh; Orson Welles; John Huston; Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line & The Tree of Life); David Cronenberg; Michael Powell; Sam Peckinpah (Ride the High Country & The Wild Bunch); Martin Scorsese! And Warner Bros. cartoons, especially the ones directed by Chuck Jones. It goes on and on and on. But this should give you some idea.

I’ll start posting reviews soon, but in the meantime, films currently playing in NYC (and hopefully elsewhere, either now or soon) that I highly recommend include the following: Gerhard Richter Painting (fascinating documentary about a great painter); Footnote (father & son Talmud scholars with radically different approaches and their struggle – a thriller of sorts); A Separation (Best Foreign Film Oscar, a great Iranian film); Monsieur Lazhar (French-Canadian film about an Algerian substitute teacher in Montreal); The Cabin in the Woods (terrific genre-bending film that turns horror-film conventions inside out – several times, co-written and produced by Joss Whedon).

Also, Headhunters, a Norwegian film I saw at a screening earlier this year, is opening this Friday. It’s really good; I plan to see it again. Here’s a trailer: