Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
I'm not dabbling. It's more scouring. Dabbling is pejorative but I know you may not realize that.
Don't expect too much from Wonderstruck.
No, Baker's not a "miserablist". See Tangerine.
I'm a huge fan of Dekalog and it can't be watched too often. Admire Ozu but don't watch him enough. However, I think one has to both watch great older films and the new ones, all the time.
I am having the distinct pleasure of watching DEKALOG on a theater screen , on Criterion BluRay. I will definitely watch Tangerine.

Susan Sontag, among others, has talked about the "excess" or "plenitude" of cinema, meaning that it's impossible to attend to everything available for perception in any second of cinema; so many systems of signification working conjointly and consistently that I often feel I am dabbling when I am experiencing a movie for the first time. I cannot honestly claim to have more than a superficial understanding of the movie. What I ask from a movie is to compel me to watch it a second time so i can explore how it does what it does.

It has often been said that camera movement and editing are (the) elements of film style that are uniquely cinematic, but film reviews typically ignore them (understandably perhaps, to concentrate on genre, plot and character development)because it seems natural to use available time and energy on story construction and take for granted the stylistic or aesthetic aspects. I notice that my students often forget that everything they see and hear results from decisions about how to manipulate the viewer's perception, attention, thoughts and feelings. Often part of the enjoyment is to disregard the cogs and wheels and stratagems and become immersed into the diegesis. Then you watch it again to understand the experience. So, the term dabble was descriptive of my experience and the fact that the writing about film I prefer is the kind derived from repeated acquaintance with the film under consideration.