Toronto International Film Festival 2011: An Introduction

TORONTO—Two whole years after I first resolved to one day attend the Toronto International Film Festival, I am finally here in this bustling town, gearing myself to see 29 films in the next 10 days, and basically inundate myself with cinematic discoveries.

I'm not here under the most ideal of circumstances. I would have preferred to have attended the festival as a member of the press, if only so I could pretend, for 10 days, that I had somehow moved up in the world and was actually working on the same level as some of the "big dog" film critics I admire so much. Maybe I should have just said "fuck it" and tried to apply for press credentials even without a more "official" affiliation than this here blog (I had always assumed this blog wasn't good enough to be taken seriously). (Why am I always so reluctant to take those kinds of risks?) In any case, this year one of my roommates offered up a spot in a suite he had reserved, free of charge, in Toronto; combine that with an offer to split a 50-ticket package with a friend of his, and I finally decided that I couldn't pass up this opportunity to finally attend one of the biggest film festivals of the world, money be damned.

So here I am. Either I keep on regretting what this experience could have been, or I can just forge ahead and make the best of it now that I'm here. I'll do the latter. And I'll certainly try my best to update you all on the films I see here in Toronto as the festival goes on.

Besides, once I come back from Toronto, I then have the New York Film Festival to look forward to—and at least, for that hometown festival, I'll be once again covering it for Slant Magazine's The House Next Door. After a summer in which I pretty much allowed my professional life to dwindle to near-nothingness, I could certainly use the infusion of work.

Stay tuned for more dispatches from the Toronto International Film Festival, dear readers!

Housekeeping, Or "Where the Hell is My Last Blog Post???"

NEW YORK—Normally, I would apologize after an absence of more than a week from this blog...but it only looks like I haven't posted since Mother's Day last week. In fact, those who faithfully read My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second may know that I actually did post something on Thursday morning: my third entry in the "epic, multi-part Ebertfest recap" series I've been running. But then, Blogger had that massive outage on May 13 that laid the service low for, like, a full day. And then when service was finally restored on Friday, I discover, to my supreme irritation, that that last post—which took me a few days to write—was gone! But I didn't panic yet; someone at Blogger indicated on its Buzz blog that tech people were in the process of restoring blog posts and comments missing after restoring the service to its Wednesday, May 11 version.

Since then, my draft for the fourth post in the Ebertfest series has been restored. But that third post that was published on Thursday? Well, it was restored...but it was restored to the incomplete draft version that it was at the beginning of Wednesday! (My official defense of Tiny Furniture, all gone!)

That's enough for me to decide that, if I don't hear from anybody at Google about this issue by the end of today—and I haven't heard jack shit from anyone in the past few days, because Google apparently doesn't believe in good help service—I think I'm going to simply abandon the "epic, multi-part" format and just sum the rest of the experience up in one final post. Frankly, I'm ready to move on from Ebertfest and start focusing on other things both here on this blog and elsewhere in life. (I already feel my career stagnating; I don't need to feel like this blog is stagnating as well.)

I'm open to anyone willing to persuade me to do otherwise, but if nothing changes at the end of the day today, I think that's pretty much my final decision.

For those who care.

An April Shower of Activity! Plus, "The Mysterious Light"

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Today is April 1, the first day of what is looking to be an unusually busy month for me.

Among the many things on my plate this month:

• Another month, another film festival—two actually (as I will explain below)! New York's own Tribeca Film Festival runs throughout the second half of this month, and for the first time ever, I will be helping to cover it for The House Next Door.
• In the last week of April, I will be heading off to Champaign, Ill., to attend Roger Ebert's annual film festival, Ebertfest. I'm attending this one mostly for my own personal enjoyment. The lineup, frankly, doesn't excite me all that much (I've already seen, like, half the films scheduled, though I do like all of them to varying degrees), so I'll mostly be there to try to meet up with people I only know from online interactions (people like elite blogger Jim Emerson and some of Ebert's very fine Far-Flung Correspondents). Hopefully I'll be more successful at the networking thing there than I was at South by Southwest.
• In between all this festival-going and -dispatching...well, this month New York seems to have exploded in intriguing repertory-cinema programming. The ones I'm most interested in hitting up as frequently as possible are Museum of Modern Art's Charles Burnett retrospective (finally, I can see his not-available-on-Region 1-DVD 1990 film To Sleep With Anger!), Brooklyn Academy of Music's series of Brian De Palma thrillers (The Fury on a big screen!) and Film Forum's "5 Japanese Divas" series, featuring films with five of the most famous actresses in Japanese-cinema history—including Mikio Naruse's muse, the late Hideko Takamine (who was so luminous in Yearning, the only Naruse film I've seen so far).
• I hope to be able to fit in at least a little bit of non-cinema culture as well. I already have a ticket to see the indie-rock band TV on the Radio in concert at Radio City Music Hall in a couple of weeks (I'm not necessarily even the biggest fan of Tunde Adebimpe & co., but one of my roommates convinced me to tag along with him, and the venue is a mere three blocks away from my workplace!). Other possibilities: Alban Berg's Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera, and maybe even the hot new Broadway ticket, Trey Parker & Matt Stone's The Book of Mormon.
  

So, once again, if you notice blogging is light here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second (though it's not like I've been super-productive in the blogging department recently, I admit), all of those above are reasons for that paucity. Juggling all this and my day job? Maybe one day I'll actually get paid for all this writing and festival-going I'm aiming to do this month...

In the meantime, speaking of my day job: Thanks to my new iPhone, I guess this is the kind of meaningless crap I capture with it when I'm bored:



Meaningless? Well, maybe you can find some kind of wholly unintended meaning in this mysterious light hovering on one area of the ceiling at my place of employment. In fact, if any of you want to contribute any, um, interpretations of his mysterious hovering light, feel free to offer some up in the comments section of this blog!

Texas-Bound

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—By the time you all read this, I will most likely be on my way to Newark Liberty International Airport, heading to Austin, Texas, for this year's South by Southwest festival!

I'm covering the film-festival portion of South by Southwest for The House Next Door. I guess I'm supposed to be covering the interactive portion as well—I have a press badge that gives me access to both—but considering how many films I want to see, and how many I want to try to squeeze in a day...well, we'll see how much of the interactive part I actually get around to covering.

Last year, of course, I covered the New York Film Festival for The House. Sure, that's considered by many as an elite film festival. But South by Southwest promises to offer up a far different experience. I saw the majority of the films in last year's New York Film Festival at press screenings, all of them scheduled by the Film Society of Lincoln Center so that we'd take in two or three films in an average day. At South by Southwest, however, there are no press screenings; we in the press are, for the most part, getting into the same screenings as the rest of the public. Sure, we all have press badges, which might make it easier for us to get into a desired screening. But then, it's up to us to decide what we're going to see each day...and since there are so many screenings scheduled on a given day, choice—as I suggested in my last blog post—can be quite difficult! Even now, after I've worked up a tentative daily screening schedule, I have a feeling I will be departing from it...a lot. (Hey, I'd like to also have some fun there too, and not just feel like I'm working all the time.)

We'll see how all of this goes; this feels like a brand new experience to me, and I'm looking forward to the surprises and possible frustrations it might bring. In the meantime: If anyone has any suggestions about cool bars to hang out in, fun places to eat, and so on in Austin, by all means, let me know!

And, of course, watch this space for links to festival dispatches as they go up on The House Next Door, or as I find the time to post them up on this blog.

Wish me luck!

Diseased

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—I know I haven't been nearly as prolific with posts on this blog as I had been before, oh, December...but this week, at least, I have an excuse!

That excuse, in this case? Illness.

In the midst of seeing—fittingly, perhaps—Fritz Lang's The Big Heat at Film Forum on Saturday, I started feeling a chill throughout my body that had nothing to do with the film itself (although, make no mistake, for those who haven't seen that classic film noir, the film has plenty of bone-chilling moments). That chill persisted even as a friend and I made our way to Jersey City that evening to check out the still sexually provocative Baby Face (1931) at the dazzlingly restored Landmark Loews Jersey Theatre. You should have seen me sitting in that theater, wearing my beret and a scarf to keep me warm while watching Barbara Stanwyck sleep her way to the top of the business ladder.

Despite still feeling some aches in my leg muscles the next morning, I foolishly decided to work anyway...and was then promptly sent home by my boss, who told me not to come back until I felt better. The next three days have seen me basically either lying in bed, sitting slack-jawed in front of my computer, making occasional trips to the nearest bodega to buy some soup and just basically wasting away, torn by a desire to be productive and the knowledge that I should probably rest as much as possible. During those days, my body temperature varied from 99.4°F on Sunday, to around 100°F on Monday, up to 101.7°F on Tuesday, then back down to 99.5°F on Wednesday.

Yesterday, I woke up and checked my temperature, and hurray: 98.6°F! Could it be? After all this time, and a certain amount of frustration, could my fever have finally dissipated? I felt good enough this morning that I figured I probably could come into work, and my boss told me that, based on what I described about my conditions, it was probably safe for me to come in. But I am by no means back to 100% health; a cough still persists, as does nasal congestion and a sore throat. I still sound pretty sick, most people in the office told me yesterday. And I still felt some of those chills. It's making me wonder whether I should have come into the office in the first place.

In any case, it's looking as if the better option for me this coming weekend—a three-day weekend for me, because I decided to take off for Superbowl Sunday—is to just lie low and recuperate. And since that means I probably won't be going out much, I figure I might as well just go back to my parents' home in East Brunswick, N.J., to regain my strength.

So I haven't been able to work up much energy to do a whole lot this week, including posting stuff on this blog. Hopefully I'll be back to some kind of healthier form next week...because, really, there is a lot of exciting stuff for me in the horizon that I'd like to share with you all.

Until then, though...well, happy Chinese new year! It's the year of the rabbit!

From Inland Empire (2006). I know I know: not Chinese. But hey, it's a rabbit! In a gorgeously framed and lit shot! It's all I could think of at the moment; indulge me, please!

New York, New York...Film Festival, That Is!

NEW YORK—On Monday, I picked this up at Lincoln Center:

There it is, folks: my first film-festival press pass ever (and hopefully not the last one I'll ever get!)

Don't I look all professional in that photo? (Actually, don't answer that...)

Starting tomorrow, and within the next four weeks, I will be covering this year's New York Film Festival (running from Sept. 24 to Oct. 10) for Slant Magazine's blog offshoot The House Next Door. That is where you'll see my dispatches—and maybe I'll find some time to pool some of those initial impressions on this here blog, especially for films I see that I am not covering.

I've never covered a film festival before, but I've been told that this is a far more relaxed kind of festival than, say, the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival (which I hope to one day attend, after plans to do so this year fell through). Hopefully, then, I'll be able to handle the pressure of pooling my impressions in a reasonably timely manner. (I'm not the only one covering the festival for The House, so I'll have some help in that regard.)

Besides: Isn't that the kind of pressure that actual journalists have to deal with day-in and day-out? (Hey: If I can pull this off, anyone want to hire me to cover film festivals full time? Anyone?)

So if substantive blog updates here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second are sparse in the next few weeks...well, that's why. But, of course, I will link you all to my House Next Door posts as soon as they go up.

Wish me luck! I'm looking forward to whatever discoveries, pleasurable or not, await me in the next few weeks of film-festivallin'.

P.S. I know, I know: I haven't written much about my big move to Brooklyn this past weekend. Short version: I encountered the usual stresses, but overall it went pretty well; now I'm just trying to get myself all settled in, not to mention comfortable with the idea of living on my own. Longer version of that to come...eventually.

This Is What I Will Be Doing All Weekend...

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

This is it: my last day as a regular East Brunswick, N.J. resident.

By next week, I will be situated in an apartment in Crown Heights and thinking about the upcoming New York Film Festival, which I will help cover for The House Next Door for the next few weeks.

Until then, however: I will be doing box-loads of packing. So I will likely not be taking in many, if any, movies this weekend, theatrically or at home.

Wish me luck, everyone! Considering how much I've packed as of the publication of this post—not at all, really—I will most likely need all the luck I can get.

To end this week, then...naturally, some Billy Joel is in order:

A Quick One, While I'm Away—and Awake

PERRYSBURG, OHIO—I was trying to fall asleep in the RV tonight, and finding myself failing miserably at it for the first time during this vacation, until I remembered that I hadn't blogged in a few days and figured some of you readers may or may not be interested in what has been going on since my last post. So I am using my sudden attack of insomnia to do this little bit of blog housekeeping.

So what has been going on since my last post? Well...not much and quite a bit, it turns out. In the past three days, my family and I have been making the long trek back home...and boy, has it really felt like a loooooong trek home, not helped much by the fact that the past two campgrounds at which we have taken shelter at to rest for the night have lacked sufficient internet access, preventing me from being able to, among other things, update this blog. (This is where my non-smartphone's recently activated mobile web has come in handy, so at least I can keep up with emails and very occasionally check Facebook and Twitter.) Not that I have been terminally bored during these long days of cross-country driving; my iPod's shuffle function, James Joyce's Ulysses—which, for all its difficulty, I'm actually kinda loving—and Twin Peaks have all been keeping me reasonably distracted.

But our third and final day in Yellowstone was spent exploring Grand Teton National Park, which, it turns out, is even more awe-inspiringly beautiful a place than Yellowstone. (Jim Emerson, you were right!) As I tweeted at the end of that day, as I gawked at the view of the Teton Range and hiked on one of its mountains, I found myself desiring to do two things: listen to Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony) and watch Renny Harlin's Cliffhanger (1993) on an endless loop. Yes, you read that right: I just lumped Richard Strauss and Renny Harlin in one sentence. Hey, that's how my highbrow/lowbrow mind works.

I won't say much more about my trip now; I'm saving that for a summary post after I return from vacation, which will most likely be later today. Oh, and there is also one other development in my life that faithful Twitter followers will probably already know about, but which I haven't gotten into here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second. It's a pretty earth-shattering development for me...but again, I will save it upon my return.

For now...just wish me luck in getting some honest-to-God sleep tonight! (So this is what insomnia feels like, huh?)

On the Road, With a Trailer—and My Mother—in Tow

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—By the time you all read this, I will most likely be on the road, traveling with my family to the first national park ever established in the world. That's right, we're going to Yellowstone National Park!

Actually, my enthusiasm for going to this U.S. landmark is a bit more tempered than the exclamation mark in the previous sentence might indicate. Why? Not because of the venue, certainly; I, for one, have never been there, and am eagerly looking forward to the chance to see Old Faithful, among other sights, up close and personal. (Yes, my friends, there will be photographs.) No, my lack of unadulterated excitement for this trip stems from pretty much one fact and one fact only: I'll be spending 12 straight days in the presence of my mother. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know what that means: the potential for lots of barely suppressed tension. As usual with family getaways, this trip is completely her idea, and for the next 12 days, the rest of us are basically at the mercy of her whims. Let's just say, that prospect fills me with less sit-back-and-relax-forget-about-Mars Attacks! satisfaction than it used to inspire.

Nevertheless...as Ludwig van Beethoven famously added to his setting of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy" in the finale of his Ninth Symphony, "Oh friends, not these tones! / Rather, let us raise our voices in more pleasing / And more joyful sounds!" And so I will try my best to take my mother's advice, for once, and put myself in a more positive frame of mind as my family and I embark on the long drive out to the other side of the country. Besides, if I'm being honest with myself, I probably could use the break from work anyway. (On the other hand, my cinephilia will be taking major hits as a result of this trip: I'm missing Dial M for Murder and House of Wax in 3-D at Film Forum in the coming week, and completely missing Film Society at Lincoln Center's Eric Rohmer retrospective while I'm gone. Believe it or not, Mom, I actually do make personal sacrifices for family time!)

So if you notice that posting is light for the rest of month at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, then that is why. Supposedly the campground at which my family and I are staying when we get to Yellowstone will have wifi, so I won't be completely offline. And I may not be completely deprived of filmed entertainment either: Maybe this is a good time to finally tear through Twin Peaks beyond the first five episodes, the last of which I watched maybe a couple months ago. And oh yeah, a friend of mine did give me her copy of the first season of Lost, didn't she...?

My name is Kenji Fujishima, and I am an entertainment addict.

"California! California! Here We Come!"

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—By the time you all read this, most likely I will be (picture me wincing while I say this) up in the air, on my way to California for a week around the SoCal area—Los Angeles, principally, but perhaps other areas like San Diego.

I would like to try to update this blog during my venture, in order to give you all a reasonably live peek into what I'm doing/observing over there on a regular basis. We'll see if that pans out.

In the meantime, as a parting gift to you all...how about a clip from Metropolis?



On Saturday, I went to Film Forum in New York to see the new, near-complete restoration of Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi epic, and at the very least, it proved to be a thrilling and necessary palate cleanser after sitting through Iron Man 2 the night before. To be fair, Lang's vision of a futuristic society strictly divided into workers and planners is perhaps not much more nuanced than a comic book, in some ways—but man, what obsessive invention and visionary freedom Lang brings to this world compared to Jon Favreau's dull, uninspired image-making! And while some may find Lang's "hand and brain must have the heart as mediator" message to be somewhat cheesy in retrospect, the nutty conviction and sincerity he brings to the material easily outclasses the breezy, if admittedly often funny, snark of Iron Man 2. Metropolis was always a mad, passionate, glorious spectacle; now, thanks to 16mm. footage discovered at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, there is more of it to savor (at least, amidst the heavy wear and tear of the new footage). 

See it, if this new version is playing in a theater near you, and remind yourself of what real cinematic daring, unencumbered by Hollywood box-office dictates, looks like.

In the meantime, I'm off to have my own potentially daring adventure on the other side of the States. I'll try to stay out of trouble, I promise!

A Film By...Kenji Fujishima?

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Over the years, a few friends of mine have insisted that I should try my hand at making a film of my own, that getting the experience of doing so might enhance my criticism in some way. I always listened to these people with a twinge of guilt. Deep down, I knew that there was certainly something to be said for what they were suggesting...but the truth is, I don't think I've ever really come up with any idea that I felt confident about trying to shoot and edit into some kind of movie. Furthermore, I don't think I've ever really felt a strong desire to put in the time, effort and money to make my own film; I guess, for a long time, I've felt content to merely watch, think and write about movies rather than getting my own hands dirty.

Until this past weekend, on Saturday, that is.

On Saturday, I went to see the last two screenings in the Museum of Modern Art's Jia Zhang-ke retrospective, which paired his 20-minute short Cry Me a River (2008) with Fei Mu's classic 1948 Chinese feature, Spring in a Small Town, the latter of which Jia has cited as an inspiration for his short. I was dazzled by both: Spring in a Small Town is a beautiful film full of wonderfully complex emotions, and the Jia short acts as an affecting modern elaboration on its themes of romantic yearning and regret amidst social and environmental change.

Walking out of MoMA into the bright sunshine, I found the rueful melancholy of Cry Me a River sticking to me pretty closely. The fact that I was by my lonesome in taking in this pair of films only increased that feeling, one I felt even more acutely than usual on a gorgeous 70°F day. I wanted to share my soaring feelings of ecstasy with someone, and found no one at my side with which to share them. I often tell myself I've become used to solitude over the years...but that day, I thought, Oh, who am I kidding? Company is a nice thing to have, especially on a day like today.

And then an unexpected thing happened, one that, in all my years of cinephilia, I've never experienced to the degree I experienced it Saturday afternoon: I started to feel a strong desire to pick up a camera and turn some of these emotions into a film. Inspired mostly by Jia Zhang-ke's long takes and careful framing, I started to map out camera moves in my head that I wanted to execute, and shards of a possible storyline started to come together. I thought maybe this desire might be merely a passing one...but then I saw more fascinating long takes, in a far different context, at Film Forum with a newly restored 35mm print of Joseph Losey's great film noir The Prowler (1951). As I walked out of that theater, that compulsion reared its head again as I walked up to the W. 4th St. train station to head home.

Only the next day, however, though, did I feel my mental engine really revving up to this idea. You know what?, I remember thinking. Maybe I should actually follow through on this. It's about time to perhaps get some experience in doing some filmmaking of your own. You're feeling a strong desire to express yourself in some way other than my own writing, and you know you've been thinking about doing this in the back of your mind. But you've never felt the full strength of inspiration hit you. Now you have. Act on it! Or you may well regret letting that flame of inspiration pass by.

Later that day, I started working on a treatment. And during my lunch break at work, I walked up a block from my office and just stood by a ledge, mentally parsing through visual and aural details, mapping out images and shots, considering details of mise-en-scène, and so on.

I think that mental vehicle is off and running.

***

I don't plan on doing anything overly ambitious for what I'm thinking will end up being merely a few minutes long. In fact, I don't even think it will have much of a story. Instead, feelings are what I'm interested in capturing. I do have some mild formal experimentation in mind, though nothing Stan Brakhage-like or anything (but of course; I don't have any film to manually distort).

Mostly, though, I'm thinking about doing this for the experience of making a film. And dammit, I could use such experience! When I was contemplating aspects of my film over the weekend, I couldn't help but reflect on just how little I actually know about the filmmaking process, for all that I crow about how much I love the cinema. And in thinking about what I might have to do in order to be able to get this thing successfully shot—buying equipment and editing software, rounding up friends, hiring some actors/technical hands, maybe even appealing to a producer for funds—some of that old reluctance started to kick in.

But no: I intend to not let skittishness get in the way of this effort. Besides, these days, I could use the feeling of accomplishment that completing such a project might inspire.

***

So I'm posting this for a few reasons:

1) Posting this on a public forum such as my blog is perhaps a good way to keep up my motivation in hopefully seeing this project through. You readers will be the ones keeping me honest!

2) If you find me blogging a bit less than usual here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, then this is the reason. Thus, consider this a fair warning.

3) This is a direct appeal to all of you reading this who may or may not have filmmaking expertise: Any help in this adventure I plan to embark on would very much appreciated!

***

P.S. Though this would be my first attempt at fiction filmmaking, this isn't exactly my first film. Almost two years ago, when the family dog Dusty died, I made a short video to his memory. It's not much: With the help of iMovie, I stitched together a bunch of cellphone pics and scored it to the transcendent concluding bars of Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. But I'm still proud of the way it came out (even if the one asshole who gave it a 3/5 rating on YouTube disagrees).

If you haven't seen it, here it is:

A Placeholder, With Two Videos

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Someday—someday soon, I hope—I will get around to mounting a defense of Martin Scorsese's latest film, Shutter Island, which I genuinely think is a near-great film, quite possibly his best in over a decade. Certainly, it feels to me like his most deeply personal work in quite a while, with thematic and emotional depths—including links to his past films—that connect with its feverishly expressionistic visuals to move beyond its pulpy psychological-puzzle aspects into something more haunting and thought-provoking. In other words, it's more than just a brain teaser with a big twist; alas, that seems to be the only level at which a lot of the film's strongest detractors seem willing to engage. The dismissiveness of some of those dissenting opinions kinda frustrates me, to be honest...but, hey, if you don't feel it, you don't feel it. All I can do is just shrug my shoulders and try to set forth my reasons for liking it—which I aim to do...someday soon.

In the meantime, I'll direct you all (if you have not yet read these pieces) to Glenn Kenny's review of the film at his blog Some Came Running, Ryan Kelly's at Medfly Quarantine, and Richard Brody's series of posts on the film at his New Yorker blog The Front Row for critiques that strike me as the most perceptive on the matter of Shutter Island. And if any of you would like to try to engage me on the film, please feel free to do so in the comments page of this post, or on Twitter (@kenjfuj). I'll try my best to match up to the reviews above in depth and insight.

***

For now...how about a couple more YouTube videos? I got two for you today.

1. A while back, I finally got around to acquainting myself with late '70s/early '80s American new-wave band Devo's first album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! For the most part, I was pretty bowled over by it, but there's one song on it in particular that I connected with: "Mongoloid," a metaphorical song about how even someone with a major disability can go through life seemingly unnoticed in American society. As someone who every so often feels like an intellectual lightweight masquerading as normally functioning adult (yeah, I'm sometimes deeply insecure; what of it?), the tune resonates, in its own geeky-freaky-totally awesome way.

Here's Mark Mothersbaugh & co. performing it on French television in 1978 (though at a tempo much quicker than the one on the album):

2. It must have been because today was such a nice spring-like day, but "翩翩飛起" (roughly, "Handsomely Flying," as implied by Babelfish), a lovely Taiwanese pop tune from 1985, popped into my head and stayed there. The singer of this tune is 王芷蕾 (Jeanette Wang), who quite possibly had the most sheerly beautiful voice in Taiwanese pop during the 1970s and '80s. If you want to know what an angel might sound like, just listen to her. Seriously.

Or watch this video:



Again: I know only I and a select few others really care about this Asian pop music...but I repeat: it's my blog. I do what I want in this joint, beeyotch! Take from it what you will.

A Placeholder

NEW YORK—Don't worry, readers! I have ideas for upcoming blog posts bumping in my head, but I may not be able to get to them this week; I've got a few other (non-film-related) things on my plate right now that I hope to get out of the way before I commit pen to paper, or rather, fingers to keyboard. (One of those things, if you would like to know, is to catch up on the third and fourth hours of the latest season of 24, if only to see if they improve upon the fairly lackluster first two hours.) Rest assured, though, I have not hit one of my lazy creative-block hiatuses. I will be back.

Lookin' Sharp (I Hope)

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Hope all of you enjoying the sleek (?) new look I've given to My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second. If nothing else, I hope that this will indicate how serious I am this time—after a lot of broken promises over the past year—about keeping up with posting on this blog. These days, I find that my excitement about posting here is what keeps me going every day, among other things.

Oh, and no overhaul of a blog of mine would be complete without a still from Wong Kar-Wai's glorious Fallen Angels, seen above (just in case some of you didn't know where the photo in the blog's head banner came from).