1. The Interrupters
2. Melancholia
3. Beginners
4. The Future
5. Meek’s Cutoff
6. Tree of Life
7. Martha Marcy May Marlene
8. Bridesmaids
9. Weekend
10. Putty Hill

Runners up: Terri, If A Tree Falls, Bill Cunningham New York, Tabloid, Jane Eyre, Superheroes

Still need to see: Margaret, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Take Shelter, Pariah, Into The Abyss, Bombay Beach, Buck, The Skin I Live In, Like Crazy, Tomboy, Project Nim, Senna, My Week With Marilyn, Certified Copy, Like Crazy, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Marwencol, Cave of Forgotten Dreams

“Cinema is an indirect art…it conceals as much as it reveals.”

Tom Perrotta, author of Election, Joe College, The Abstinence Teacher and Little Children, has written a new book called The Leftovers. It’s about a Rapture-type event and sounds really interesting. I’m adding it to my reading list. Perrotta and his novel were featured in a NY Times article this past Tuesday, and I found the following quote really insightful and true:

“You know, you just watch people leave the world, and you get this sense of living among absences. So I think it was a kind of midlife book. There I was reading about the Rapture, and I started to think, I know that feeling. I know that feeling of being left behind. We’re always being left behind, we’re always living in a world where there are these spaces where people we knew and loved used to be.”

The last stanza of Carl Sandburg’s poem Omaha:

“Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears from a dirty face.
Omaha works to get the world a breakfast.”

start posting on this again. First step taken.

“Truffaut once said that all great directors must sacrifice some aspect of filmmaking to achieve something brilliant — in essence, the bedsheet never covers the whole bed. And no one has worked harder to go as deep as possible exploring the complexity of human interrelationships than Cassavetes, and while he did love other aspects of film, he would give up anything — the framing, the editing, the continuity, the smoothness of the story, paradoxically even his own understanding of the characters — to reach a certain ecstatic emotional depth. He wanted you to feel as intensely and thoughtfully about his films as you did about your own life, and sometimes (perhaps by definition all the time) that means you can’t fully understand them.”

-Hadrian Belove, Programmer of Cinefamily in Los Angeles

Beautiful and sad.

Photo Gallery: The Ruins of Detroit.

“As a photographer and documentarian I happily place my fate and faith in reality. Reality is my caretaker, the provider of subjects, themes, experiences — all endowed with the power of truth and the romance of discovery. The closer I adhere to reality the more the honest and authentic my tales. After all, knowledge of the real world is exactly what we need to better understand, and possibly, to love one another. It’s my way of making the world a better place.”

- Albert Maysles

FILMS
Daddy Longlegs
Fish Tank
Winter’s Bone
The Exploding Girl
The Tillman Story
Black Swan
Greenberg
Catfish
Inception

Films I have yet to see that could make their way onto the list: Somewhere, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Blue Valentine, Dogtooth, I Am Love, Tiny Furniture, The Fighter, Rabbit Hole, Waiting for Superman, Carlos, White Material, A Prophet

MUSIC
Beach House – Teen Dream
Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday
Sleigh Bells – Treats
Lower Dens – Twin Hand Movement
Drake – Thank Me Later
Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz
The National – High Violet
Best Coast – Crazy For You
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Runners up: Grass Widow – Past Time, Warpaint – The Fool, M.I.A. – Maya, Vampire Weekend – Contra

BOOKS/STORIES
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Safari and Ask Me If I Care by Jennifer Egan
A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates
Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor

Beach House – I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun