semi-feeble commitment to try again

Obviously I wandered away from this new attempt at blogging (good thing no one is watching-- excellent foresight on my part), but I'm now going to give it another go. I don't have any substantive entries prepared, thus this quick, silly entry to merely announce my intentions.

I would like to clean up this blog and remove this entry and the first entry and leave only the "real" entries like the Malle one. These kind of blog explanations, apologies and self-analyses probably won't interest readers when and if there are some. But as with other blogs I've read, they sometimes help to get the blog rolling (no pun on "blog rolling" intended).

Entries I had been formulating but may never come to fruition were an entry on my very negative encounter with the film work of Mark Sandrich and his philosophy on film, for which Astaire and Pandro S. Berman also share blame. I saw the movie Top Hat and was disappointed and found it empty and lacking a soul. Then in the bonus materials on the DVD I learned that these three musketeers had this "blueprint" theory of filmmaking where they mapped out for every Astaire/Rogers movie where funny moments, musical moments, sad moments and dance moments should occur (i.e., about 20 minutes in, we need this sort of thing to happen). Seemed very contrary to the interests of art, but I guess I was holding off on this scathing post until seeing more Sandrich films. Difficulty there is I'd already been put off seeing more.

Another entry I was formulating was on DVD bonus materials or something. Or it might have been on the annoying practice of including the music or key dialogue from the films in the DVD menus before you've seen the movie ("priming" you to have a recognition/fondness for themes that ought to be introduced to you [and maybe surprise you] at the point in the film at which they are first used-- even Criterion does this in their menus). In any case, the passion seems to have waned on that issue for now, but perhaps will return and be followed quickly by a substantive entry on the subject.