Well, fall is approaching as I'm eagerly excited for what is coming. Yet, I'm also excited that a few projects I'm working on are starting to gel with some new ideas emerging. As I'm still working on my fourth Auteurs essay on Gus Van Sant, that I'm going to have done at around September along with an additional piece about his short films and music videos, I'm still figuring out which film I want to put as the third part of my favorite films series. At the same time, I've got a couple of new ideas I want to do. One is about favorite albums that I hope to do in November while the other is a more freestyle, rant-based project on films that I loathe entitled Your Film Fucking Sucks!.
One of the projects I've been working on that is nearly 2/3 done is a very ambitious project called 1991-20. A project about the 20th anniversary of the year 1991 in terms of popular music. For me, it was probably one of the last great years in the history of popular music where everything was changing. Originally, I was going to create a seven-part essay to explore pop, dance, rock, hip-hop, and alternative/indie. Well, that turned out to be way more complicated as the alternative/indie piece became a whole lot bigger than that. That in itself is now a separate seven-part essay about its impact on popular music from the release of Nirvana's Nevermind, the first Lollapalooza festival, and the landmark albums that came out that year like Massive Attack's Blue Lines, U2's Achtung Baby, Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless among many others.
That essay on the world of alternative/indie is pretty much finished as is the other essay about the year in music which is now in three parts instead of seven. The genres I didn't focus on for the essays are jazz and country. The former due to the fact that I'm not really familiar with jazz at all. The latter is due to indifference because I much prefer old-school country like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Patsy Cline and I'm not really into Garth Brooks no matter how big he was.
With those 2 essays done, the next part of 1991-20 will be the biggest challenge as I have to make a list of the 40/50 best albums of that year and in order to do it right. I need to listen to these albums. I doubt I will review a lot of them but I am willing to give it a shot to listen to some of these albums that I have never heard of. There is a good idea on what is in my top 10. Yet, for the nine albums that is in the top ten. I plan to write about these records in mini-essays to explain why they're great such. For the number one album, that will be the first subject of my favorite albums essays. Anyone who is familiar with my work back at Epinions.com might have an idea what could be that number one record but I'm going to try and keep people guessing.
The music side of me is something I want to balance more as I'm still doing film reviews and film-related projects as I'm currently half-done with my Van Sant project. This week, I'm going to focus on anthology films while I also want to focus on documentaries for next week. I like to keep things in schedule. With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, I'm planning to review 11'9"01 September 11 for that anniversary just so we don't forget that horrible day.
In the world of the blogosphere, there's a lot happening that I'm reading. James @ Cinema Sights and Edgar @ Between the Seats are both doing Bond marathons as James does Octopussy (which I thought was OK) and Edgar doing The Man with the Golden Gun (which I like and it has my favorite villain).
JBT @ Big Thoughts From a Small Mind has a great list of what he believes are the five best heist films ever
Max @ Anomalous Material has a wonderful review of a film I'm eager to see called A Separation
Max @ Anomalous Material has a wonderful review of a film I'm eager to see called A Separation
The Mad Hatter has a new site in The Matinee as he has a wonderful review of Crazy Stupid Love.
Dan @ Dan the Man's Movie Review has a very fun review of one of my favorite early 90s action movies in the bromance classic Point Break.
Bonjour Tristesse has a review of Bela Tarr'a Damnation that is getting more intrigued by Tarr's work whom I've heard of but never had seen anything he's done. Any recommendations?
There's two reviews out there of Guillermo del Toro's Cronos which I've yet to see as I've purchased the Criterion DVD a few weeks ago. One is from Andy @ Andy Buckle's Film Emporium & John at John Likes Movies.
Finally, Jason @ Cinemecca has a review of The Gold Rush that I think should check out as I just went through a mini-marathon of films by Charles Chaplin.
Well, that is all for today. This week, expect some reviews of a few anthology films plus some of my old Gus Van Sant reviews for Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, and an expanded DVD review for Finding Forrester while the rest will have some additional edits. Meanwhile, enjoy this short of one of the anthology films that I'm currently watching.
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