About this blog

I’m happy that you found your way here to my film and TV blog, which was primarily inspired by my love of film and TV shows of film quality. I suppose a secondary reason for the blog might be the realization, after watching the documentary Side By Side (2012), that photochemical “film” is being rapidly outpaced by digital technology. While you won’t see any sappy, nostalgic laments about the good ol’ days of “cutting” and “splicing,” you may find me waxing a little poetic on film photography in motion pictures or TV.

But I’m much more interested in film narrative, so any mention of techniques serves only to reinforce how story and image work together for a thematic purpose. A good example might be Noah Baumbach’s interesting choice of sepia-toned frames in Kicking and Screaming (1995) or David O. Russell’s decision to intersperse bleached out, slow-motion shots in Three Kings (1999). In both cases, the cinematographic style underscores a tonal change in the story.

So by now you’ve probably got the idea of how my blog is “retrospective”—which, I think, is a good alternative to “nostalgic”: it’s never a bad thing to look back, especially if new insights can be gained. Accordingly, this blog intends to cover everything from silent films to movies and TV shows only a few months old. But, with rare exception, what it DOESN’T do is review “new”/current films. So, for example, I might do a few posts on 1930s films (like Scarface or Mad Love) or a retrospective glance at Breaking Bad. In some rare cases, I might even do a recap of a show that I’ve recently fallen in love with (Better Call Saul or Fargo), but it’s more likely that I’ll be looking back (a few months or a few years).

Why, you might ask, am I not covering “upcoming releases”? Simply put, there are plenty of places for that. But a better reason is that I view movies and TV shows (or at least the ones I discuss) as examples of art, as things worth talking about, evaluating or reevaluating long after their release date or season finale. Good examples of this are the TV series Twin Peaks and Breaking Bad, and the films of Richard Linklater and Andrey Zvyagintsev.