A plan set into motion...

Here we are at my oft-ignored blog. Nobody is reading this. Perhaps Kelly is but maybe not.
In the coming year, 2007, I want to write about the movies I see, the books and the comics that I read. My big plan is to watch 104 movies in 2007. I'm not at the 365 level, and never will be with my job (when I have one). I figure a baby step would be averaging two movies a week. I would like to have counted December 31st but I will not. (12/31/06 I watched 3 moives; "El Topo" [which I'd seen before but barley remembered], "Chldren of Men", and "Notes on a Scandal")

Last night, January 1st, I watched "Time of the Wolf" by Micheal Haneke. I liked it very much. I gave it a rating, based on the Netflix rating system which has taken over the movie rating world, of 4 stars. It contains many things that I like in both subject matter and execution. Without summarizing the entire movie, it's about a mother and her two children surviving after the apocalypse. That is a favorite subject of mine, since the "my favorite movie is Road Warrior" days. Not sensational, it was the quietest, most medetative, worlds end I've ever seen. Huppert sets the tone, performance wise, early in the film. Her face concealing the horror of her husband being shot in front of her. Even her vomiting was understated. Haneke is chasing Bresson at moments in this film but not veering too far into failed imitation, as I believe he did in "Cache". The extended shots of stillness or "nothing" are few and feel powerful in their depiction of the beauty of nature and landscape amid the suffering. The conclusion, which I will not spoil, wasn't oblique, as in some of Haneke's films. Overall the film felt like realist science fiction cinema and that's a compliment. ;-)

Interesting side note: I applied to work on the English version of Haneke's film Funny Games, directed by the man himself... I didn't get the job.

With any luck I will have at least 51 more of these and hopefully 104, one for each movie. They will vary in length.

Wish me luck... hello... is anyone there...