1. Endless Summer Fun. Just in time for high season at the multiplexes, my old colleagues at Time Out New York have weighed in on the 30 Best Summer Blockbusters Ever. How many have you seen? I’ve seen ’em all except for two (rather pleased with myself that I haven’t caught up with Armageddon; less so that I haven’t seen the great Alfonso Cuaron’s take on Harry Potter). Steven Spielberg – hailed as the man who invented the summer blockbuster – has three of the top five on the list. See if you agree with the choices and rankings.
2. What is the future of love for movies past? Over at IFC Indie Eye, Vadim Rizov has some food for thought in response to the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, as covered by Dennis Cozzalio at The House Next Door:
Young kids are, in fact, showing up to rep cinema as long as it’s attractively packaged as an “event,” something to build your weekend around. And this logic basically works for every film festival in the world when it comes to packing the locals in. But it’d be great if these people weren’t just interested in “old movies” as a genre, but as a gateway for all the viewing options they might not even know about. The TCM Festival is, of course, restricted to the past, but it suggests a potentially closed loop of cinephilia where compulsive sifting for new discoveries in back catalogs results in an ignorance towards what’s going on in the here and now — something that needs to be addressed if new audiences are to be found.
The kind of open access described by Rizov – to discover all kinds of films, old and new – is certainly one of the aims of this site. Could it be that online streaming film sites can fulfill the functions of a repertory cinema better than a bricks and mortar theater?
3. The Twizzle, fo’ Shizzle. For all his accolades and awards, indie filmmaker Spike Jonze is a SoCal skater boy at heart, as is clear in this ad he shot for Lakai footwear. See him show off his new move, “The Twizzler.” It’s molecular!