Slowly making my way back to normal. Didn't go to the doc on Ralph Nader ("An Unreasonable Man") on Tuesday, but went to the Brooklyn Public Library for the opening of the exhibits... a much shorter subway ride. On Wednesday went to Shu Lea Cheang's press preview at the Chelsea Art Museum, then went to the press screening of the Argentine film "Family Law"; have seen Daniel Burman's other films, so was glad to see this one. On Thursday, went to the press screening of "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness"... handled by Wellington Love. The impression (from the initial press relase) was that it might be "precious" but it turned out to be rather scrupulous, and actually engaging. Much more than i thought it would be. It was lovely in terms of its costume/set design and (oddly enough) charming in its low-key consistency.

If i make it today, i'm going to try to make the screening of Rossellini's "Fear" at MoMA. I've seen all of the Rossellini-Bergman films, i quite liked "Fear" when i saw it years ago (the opening, for example, is very similar to the opening of Chabrol's "Les Bonnes Femmes" in its night scene of cars driving around a city square at night), and want to check it out. It's the only one i haven't seen several times. (Unless i'm mistaken, the German version is different than the English-language version; that much i know, because i did see the German version once, and i've seen the English-language version once.)

George Robinson's blog has a piece about the Czech Modernism film series at BAM; this is almost the same bunch of films which played at Anthology a while ago. But that whole period of filmmaking (1928-1934) is my favorite: i love that period of the changeover to sound, because it's one of the most inventive periods ever.

On Matt Zoller Seitz's blog, there's been links to other sites... there have been some interesting articles about Rossellini and Rivette because of the respective retrospectives. Interesting? There was a link to a recent interview with Rivette which was published online at Sense of Cinema, and it was... why do i expect people to be any better? The Rivette interview is horrifying! It points to a xenophobia, a narrowmindedness, a crotchety-old-man mentality, which is depressing. But then again, what did i expect? Rivette is now about 80, and there's no reason why he should keep up with the times. But the Eurocentric racism is really disgusting, followed closely by a hideous sexism.

Bill Jones says (on his MySpace page) that he has no heroes. And i know what he means. When i was young, and i met people (say, Rossellini) and they seemed so much bigger-than-life... but then, it was witnessing people really pigging out, being total creeps (say, Jean-Luc Godard circa 1970). So i became wary about meeting people, because some of them can be utterly charming (say, King Vidor) and others can be disgraceful (say, John Ford).

Does that change what one thinks about their work?