Retro...what?

Okay, hit the rewind button for a second. One year ago: Was I watching movies? Check. Did I babble endlessly to students about the merits of Bottle Rocket? Check. Was everyone pondering the future of movie theaters as people flocked in droves to dvd's and interweb piracy? Check. So, you might be asking yourself what is this retrospective about? Well, dear reader we are about one year in to the start of this blogging project, and what has changed is that thetwocents exists, and for that I am really happy.

So, to kick off this one year trip down memory lane I'm directing my thoughts to co-blogger extraordinaire Leslie. Here goes.

L--

If there's one very general thing I could say about this past year in movies and blogging it would be how much I have raised my awareness of "what a movie is doing", and I think that operates on many levels. There's what the movie is actually doing (physical actions, plot lines, written words being expressed), there is what the movie is doing to us (how do we interpret and interact with what unfolds on the screen), and then there's that sticky space in between what the director wants the movie to "do", or what the writer perceived the job of the movie to "be". All of this is a lengthy way of saying movies don't exist in one realm, and by talking about, reading about it, and blogging about it I'm starting to realize how many ways there are for us to think about movies. It's endless and amazing, and it's what makes commentary tracks on dvd's all the more enticing. Finally some answers! I'm thinking in particular of the media blitz surrounding Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse double feature. Although I'm willing to give these movies VERY little credit I do believe that the director's ideas and potentially ironic distance from the exploitation movies they loved will play with audiences in an interesting way. After all there will be people who go and see it purely for the objects it claims to deride at a safe cool distance. So, what does Grindhouse mean to Tarantino and Rodriguez versus me versus the 18-34 year old male that I'm confident they are targeting? I guess I'll just leave this thought with the fact that I'm glad diversity exists in all spaces, I really am. I also think Grindhouse looks like the dumbest excuse ever for two overgrown kids to go crazy with digital effects in order to recreate some nostalgia stained "authentic" American cinema.

So, what's on your blogging mind these days?

--R