Interesting Stuff:

It's been a long summer, and I've been pretty quiet on the old blog. But new content is on the horizon (for the few of you who care).

I wrote two short appreciations of Kiarostami for In Review Online's recent Kiarostami 'Directospective'. They've parceled Kiarostami's oeuvre into three sections, only the first two of which are currently available. My thoughts on 'Ten' and '10 on Ten' will be revealed sooner or later, at which point I'll update this post. In the meantime, I can wholeheartedly recommend the pieces already posted.

Adrian Martin has been particularly busy this summer; working with Girish Shambu, they've launched a new online magazine called LOLA - it's a worthy successor to the now apparently defunct Rouge, with at least several of the same contributors (notably Nicole Brenez) and a similarly broad approach to contemporary cinephilia. It is a welcome addition to the online film community, and hopefully fares better than Martin's previous endeavor.

Martin has also spearheaded a conference called World Cinema Now; there's a companion blog that promises to be updated regularly before and after the event, and already has some significant content, including some nice pieces on mad man provocateur Philippe Grandrieux.

In a stunning bit of good news, and to my mind perhaps the most significant cinema event of the year, Venice has just screened Nick Ray's We Can't Go Home Again. It is apparently not just a restoration, but a completion of Ray's final masterpiece, which has seen the light of day only briefly in two different early versions (one in 1973, the other sometime in the early 80's. I should note that I'm not actually sure which version I've seen, such is the limited information available on any version of the film). David Hudson has collected a bunch of links over at the Daily Notebook, including writings by Rosenbaum and links to a current Ray 'blog-o-thon.' Reports have the fine folks over at Oscilloscope acquiring the film for distribution. So hopefully we see it sooner rather than later.

Happy reading, let's talk soon...