If you've found this then you've stumbled upon the first post and place holder (until I fix the place up) for a new film blog.
Yea, I know we don't need another film blog but then again someone has to point out all of the great, or at least good, films that are getting lost and pushed by the way side. Lets face it there are simply too many movies out there and unless its a major release most films are doomed to be lost and forgotten, in other words unseen. Here in the US, the situation is even worse for any film from another part of the world since the number of people watching foreign films is small, and the number of people who are watching anything out of the mainstream is even smaller (dare I say it's probably almost nonexistent?).
What I'm going to try and do here is review films that are worth searching out. Some will be readily available, from say Amazon or another on line retailer, some will have to be tracked down via other means, say Yes Asia or a trip to your local Chinatown or a nostalgia show. Many are going to be films that are so off the beaten track, that even IMDB doesn't record as existing. Two examples are Tree in the Desert and Ghost Town. Tree in the Desert is a really good Chinese film about people planting trees in the desert in the hopes of reclaiming the land. I found it on VCD but can find no other reference to it anywhere. The other is a film called Ghost Town which played the New York Film Festival last year and concerns the inhabitants of an abandoned village in China. The last time I looked neither film appeared to be on IMDB.
Trust me, these are going to be films you can find if you look, or in some cases they are going to be films that just haven't hit yet because they haven't gotten a proper release (say they are playing at a film festival or haven't gotten a US release yet). I will point out how you can see the films.
I know you're probably asking yourself "who are you and what makes you think that you can do this?"
Fair enough question.
I'm a huge movie lover who has probably seen more films than most people would ever rationally think to see in their life time. Not that it means anything but I've posted over 3100 reviews at IMDB (and I will be the first to admit not all of those reviews are good). In another time and another life I was writing reviews of animated DVD's for a now long gone animation website. My writing style tends to shift from very precise and on target to rambling and a tad unfocused.
My tastes are such that I will pretty much try anything (much to the annoyance of friends and family who have to suffer through some strange choices). I tend toward Asian films, documentaries, American and British B films and animation simply because the subject matter and styles tend to be very different than the typical Hollywood product. While there is nothing wrong with the Hollywood product, it tends to be very homogenized and politically correct to the point of blandness.
I'm hoping that if you read this blog with any regularity you're going to find that I've both turned you on to more than one film that you will become a favorite and at the same time made you see something that will make you think I've gone insane. Hopefully no matter how you feel I hope I will never bore you. Feel free to tell me what you think of any of the films I review.
For now I think that's enough. I still have to knock the look of this page together. I'll be posting some pieces over the next couple of days to get things really up to speed. Next weekend I'll start in with reviews of films that are at the New York International Children's Film Festival... which give me a great idea for the first film I'll talk about the animated Nocturna.
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