Random Notes
This month was a good one in terms of films seen. I had the pleasure of finally catching up with Japanese director Sion Sono's latest two films, the intriguing Guilty of Romance and the jaw dropping Himizu. The latter pretty much blew me away, and I expect it will be high on my year end list.Saw quite a few classic films for both of my current Czech New Wave and Palme d'Or Winners features, highlighted by a rewatch of The White Ribbon. I also managed to watch a pair of recent Bulgarian films, that maybe didn't impress me as much, but they did show a lot of promise of good things to come from that country, and I think Avé has a strong chance of being selected as their official submission to the 2012 Oscars.
While everyone was out seeing the new Batman, I went to a screening of an excellent, inspired by the 80s, locally shot sci-fi film, called Beyond the Black Rainbow.
It was also a busy month for major festival news. Another Norwegian film scored big, with The Almost Man by Martin Lund winning the Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary. While some impressive lineups were announced for the upcoming Locarno, Venice, and Toronto film festivals.
This month also saw the unveiling of a couple features I helped create for the LAMB. The updated LAMBtable, which replaces the old difficult to manage HTML table and the ugly temporary spreadsheet with a fully searchable and sortable version; and also a minor facelift to the Banner Gallery, adding some cool hover effects, and making it far easier to update and maintain. Check them out if you haven't seen them already.