As a
film buff, I always feel like I’m playing catch-up – there is so many great or
at least worthwhile films in history that it is impossible to have seen everything,
so I’m always trying to see as much from the past as I can. This past year was
no exception.
Some of
the films I “discovered” for the first time this year include Barbara Loden’s
wonderful Wanda (1970), Nicolas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), Frank Borzage’s Man’s
Castle (1933), and Vincente Minelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) – all of
which I loved.
This
year, I really did try and catch up on some of the greatest short films ever
made – and made some great “discoveries” there as well - Yuriy Norshteyn’s
wonderful Tale of Tales (1979) is among the greatest animated works of all
time, I caught up with, for the first time, some of Stan Brakhage’s work, and
it mystified and fascinated to the same degree. Peter Tscherkassky’s
wonderfully weird Outer Space (1999) is a masterful cinematic destruction of a
horror film. The best though was probably two works by Bruce Conner – A Movie
(1958) and Report (1967) – the first a
look at how editing and music change the perception of what we watch, and the
later being a fascinating look at the Kennedy Assassination, from tragedy to
just something else to sell. I wish I could track down more of his work.
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