Back. Again. Yet Again.

It has been a strange, long and difficult year so far. I began the year with kidney stones and have spent the entire summer recuperating from carpal tunnel release surgery. Since the first of the year I have lost a good friend and colleague, Damien Bona, a fellow founder of the Iras, Andrew Sarris, in so many ways my intellectual mentor, Chris Marker, whose work redefined my understanding of the cinema and what it can do.

It hasn't all been sadness. I'm halfway through my first year as artistic director of the Washington Heights Film Class, and that has been a splendid reminder of why I came to this party in the first place. I always find it refreshing to teach a basic film appreciation class, because it forces me to re-examine first principles, and that is something every critic should do frequently.

The result, however, of the various highs and lows of the third year thus far is that has been difficult to keep up with this blog, in part because of my own personal what-have-you, and because I haven't been going to that many movies. I'm not going to make another of my biannual or monthly promises to be more diligent, but there are a sufficient number of exciting new films on the horizon and I hope that will motivate me to post more often.