A hearty welcome to all new visitors here at Long Pauses. My traffic spiked a few days ago thanks to a link from South Knox Bubba, who officially announced my enlistment in the Rocky Top Brigade. More on this tomorrow.
Now to a more pressing concern. To anyone who may have heard me on the radio this afternoon, let me apologize: I can’t believe that, when asked in the final seconds leading up to a commercial break to recommend a single film to listeners, I spat out Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane! I don’t even like Citizen Kane. I mean, it’s an important film — a great film, even — but it’s not a film that I’ve ever particularly enjoyed. Given a few minutes to think about it, I can now confidently say: If you want to experience Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in a single film, get yourself a copy of Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. It’s available on a fantastic DVD from Criterion, and it can also be rented on VHS from the downtown Knox County library. Some other sources for film recommendations:
- Sight and Sound’s Critics Poll
- The American Film Institute
- Send me an email, tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll gladly make some suggestions.
Also, if you’re at all interested in the topic of my and T.M.’s discussion today, read this article that I wrote for Findings. It fleshes out many of the issues that we rambled through today.
Oh yeah, and a word of warning: this is my blog page, where I rant on a variety of subjects, including politics. Politics is always a sensitive subject, but even more so given recent circumstances. Be prepared to be offended by some/much of what I say. I also like to write about films and books. To learn more about me read the, um, about page, and to get a better sense of the purpose of Long Pauses, read my responses to the two books that most inspired it: Thomas Merton’s life-altering New Seeds of Contemplation and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time. The Denise Levertov poem that I mentioned on-air can be found here.