About

Movies, and the cinema experience, have always been a private and important pleasure for me; so have books. I suspect my intellectual development has been pleasantly and consistently molded most by films and books.  To me, international, classic and independent cinema is a rich creative pot that never seems to dry, and I’ve realized that I should have been keeping track of all these damn movies, at least to have, ready at hand, conversation pieces for the occasional coterie of fellow (commonly referred to as) movie lovers of the peculiar, artistic and often supremely important. On the other hand, talking about books with most people is often like talking about your dreams-no matter how interesting they may be to the teller, they are at most marginally interesting the listener. Yes, I know, there are book clubs and social networks that foster anyone´s tastes and interests.  But living in a foreign country and being more or less an introvert, these clubs aren´t really attractive to me. I´d rather put all out there and let the anonymous reader choose what he or she would like to think about.  Both books and movies interchange in this regard.

I continually discover books and films, even as the writers, actors, commentators, directors and settings may have died or have been lost to obscurity.  To me, art isn’t always a thing presented as something new to everyone, rather it is artful when it is new to me, allowing me to see myself in the world differently, through a refreshing perspective, be it tragic or beautiful, through a dense epic, the lighthearted memoir or a practical review or travelogue.  And by examining these varied leaves of the art tree, I am forced to reckon and understand this world, with a propensity to relish in sentimentality, and indulge my lust for all things “new.”

My first time seeing Natacha’s mechanical, robot-like pondering of love in Alphaville was as engaging as any technical feat of CGI.