Apologies abound, no movies, and a final look at Zeroville.

Oh jesus.

I missed a day of my Criterion Quest. I promised myself this would never happen, that come hell or highwater I'd always post something, but due to a series of technical issues, and a general level of distraction, yesterday, for the time ever, I completely was unable to post.

It's alright. A one time thing. An outlier if you will. I promise you can, from this day forth, return each and every day to this site and find a brand new post from yours truly. I'm here for you my baffled readers, and never again will I let you down.

...

Alright, so this time I might. I've been in San Francisco and I haven't been spending any time watching the one Criterion film I brought, and I'm pretty much the biggest Criterion Quest failure of all time. I'm not going to mince words, or make excuses, but this is getting silly. In the next week, I'm going to buckle down, power through a few of the classics and have something actually movie-related for you. As of now I'm thinking about changing the name of this blog to Failure Quest or Excuses for Not Watching Movies Quest or How Noah Failed Something Else In His Life Quest. You know something positive for the kids.

On a movie related note, I finally finished Zeroville and let me tell you, quite a mind hump. Steven Erickson does an amazing job of ramping up the weirdness to the nth degree at the end of the book, and all of sudden you're dug in to the deepest parts of Vikar's brain. You're cruising along with his fevered, hallucinatory trip through film and this sort of obsessive series of events that culminates with a conversation with a ghost and a whole lot of sadness. I don't know if I fully understood it, but I certainly couldn't put it down. This is not a book for those of you who are looking for straight forward narratives or easily found answers. The title comes from a Criterion film Alphaville (25) and this book is just clusterfuck of filmic allusions. Scenes from films, themes from films, actual films - it's a film orgy and pretty amazing read.

Tomorrow: For All Mankind (54)

I think they call this a "bender" and this thing called a book.

I have been staring at my computer screen for the last twenty minutes in a sort of hazy fog. I've been attempting to think of some intelligent way to relay the fact that instead of spending my last two days of non-work filling my brain with Criterion Films, I've been filling my gut with booze and my liver with pussy yellow goo. The holidays, at least in Sanders' Town are a boozy affair and with a pretty consistent stream of friends and foes in and out of Seattle in the last month, it's been upped a notch this year.

But the holidaze has come to an end and with it my month of hazy remembrance. With the New Year upon us I've dedicated myself to upping the ante on creativity and hopefully adding a few new things to this sort of scant little blog. I'm thinking about previews of upcoming films in the series, maybe a guest writer or two, and, uh, well anything else that bubbles out of my brain pan.

Again, apologies for so many movieless postings in the last three weeks, these days of holiday cheer are a real burden on intelligent thought.

I have been filling some of the moments of coherence though digging in to a great book The Other Sanders' gave me for X-Mas.

I like this book for a variety of reasons. One, it's written in a sort of staccato prose that beautifully captures the almost-autistic thought process of it's movie-crazed protaganist. Two, it's about a movie-crazed autistic person and to a scary degree I not only envy his life, but sort of resemble it. Three, Stephen Erickson is just a revelation as a writer. One of those guys who's been cranking out gems for like ten years, and you almost feel bad stumbling upon his stuff so late. Other Sanders' Brother claims that this book prompted him to abandon his love of glamour in Portland (I kid) and move down to Zeroville itself, Los Angeles to try and make his way as an actor. If a book can inspire that sort of recklessly exciting decision making from the typical cautious Sander's family, you know it's got to be pretty amazing.

Books! Check 'em out.

Monday: A preview of what's next.