Anniversary thoughts

Having completed 16 years of writing this blog, I’ve recommitted to the vocation of film commentary in the past year, while seeing my approach come into greater relevance, with more options in the voracious-viewing, all-streaming environment. 

And I’ve developed a conversational voice that comes easily and naturally.  Just as Pauline Kael enlisted her reader in a collective “we,” I imagine the reader as a “you” who understands where I’m coming from, and is interested to know my observations on film or television.  Of my nonstop viewing, I can say what I appreciate and why, and “you” will know whether you might like it as well.

As for where I’m coming from, I offer this pledge of allegiance or statement of mission:

Cinema is my handle on the world, and “Cinema Salon” is my “handle” on the World Wide Web. 

I subscribe to Roger Ebert’s definition of cinema as a “machine for empathy.”  In retrospect, I see that as one of the reasons I became so involved with film in the first place, as an Aspy’s exercise in reading other people’s faces and emotions.

Films are my frame of reference, the lingua franca that I speak.  In conversation, I have to refrain from constantly drawing comparisons to this film or that, in response to whatever my interlocutor is saying.

Visual media are literally my window on the world.  Ideally, I am an armchair traveler to near and far, a passive participant in the press of events, a recumbent scholar of issues and emotions, an idly intrepid explorer of nature’s beauties.

So you know I’m going to continue watching cinema, and continue talking about it, for as long as I can.

[Coming soon:  an unusually timely rundown of the best television and film of 2020.]