One moment of "the sublime": "Smash" had been stumbling along all season, when there was a moment when Anjelica Huston was sitting in the hotel lobby (the musical-in-the-show is having its out-of-town try-outs) when the lounge pianist (played by Marc Shaiman, the composer for the series) starts to play the Kurt Weill "September Song". Huston goes up to him and says she loves that song, and he asks her if she knows it, and she says, of course... and then she proceeds to sing it! And that moment brought tears to my eyes, because when i was growing up, we had the original recording of "September Song", which (of course) came from "Knickerbocker Holiday" (book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill), and sung by the star of that show... Walter Huston! Anjelica Huston paying tribute to her grandfather: show business doesn't get better than that!

My gosh, it's been two months since my last post, during which time i've been taking things slowly. Haven't really seen as much as i would like, but one curiosity has been watching some movies on TV at odd hours, when HBO or Showtime dumps a lot of the movies that haven't been released (or, if released, on such a limited basis no one noticed). Suddenly, you realize that someone like Mena Suvari or William Hurt has been working in the last two or three years, just not always on projects that have made an impression.

There were a lot of odd events, as well as sad events. This year, the Film Society of Lincoln Center has been preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the New York Film Festival; last month, Amos Vogel, who co-founded the festival with Richard Roud, died. Vogel was an indispensable part of the film culture of New York City, starting with his founding of Cinema 16, the invaluable film society which helped to introduce so many filmmakers to American audiences. Amos and Marcia Vogel really were the dominant film programmers in the 1950s, creating eclectic programs which included documentaries, avant-garde films, foreign films. It would be hard to imagine the development of film in this country without Amos Vogel, because one thing he did was to provide distribution for many of the films he programmed at Cinema 16, and so short films by Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Georges Franju, and many, many others were able to be seen across the country.

I have to say that i didn't know him well, but i knew Amos and Marcia Vogel enough to say hello and talk to them at various film events (especially at the press screenings for the New York Film Festival). But two years ago, Marcia Vogel died, and now Amos Vogel has died, and with them goes an important chapter in the history of film. A few years ago, i noticed that i wasn't seeing Amos and Marcia Vogel as much, i suspected that ill health was affecting them; now they're both gone, and i must say i miss them, because they always had something to say about films and the culture surrounding cinema. What i especially enjoyed were those moments when they would have a (mild) disagreement, Marcia would always try to find some merit in something Amos would be adamantly dismissing.

The case of Etan Patz was reopened. That was very distressing; we had moved to Soho a few months after the disappearance, and during the next two years, the police would make periodic visits to the buildings in the area, sometimes bringing dogs to try to find some traces. I remember taking the police to the basement of our building, as the dogs sniffed the floor and the walls. I also walked them through the stairwell. But we'd gone through that; the confusion now was what possible new evidence could there be to reopen the case at this time?

There have been a few movies i've seen in the last two months. I wish i had been able to see more from the New Directors/New Films series; i'm looking forward to seeing some of the films from this year's Human Rights Film Festival, as well as this year's BAM CinemaFest. Some of the interesting films now making their way around the country are the restorations of Lionel Rogosin's "Come Back Africa" and Shirley Clarke's "The Connection" (which are being distributed by Milestone). It's so important that these films have returned to be part of the discourse on film and history.

But the most exciting cultural event of the last two months has been... Lena Dunham's HBO series, "Girls". So we're back to TV, and we're also back to that "downtown" mentality which was highlighted in the 1970s and 1980s, only now that mentality has gone through generational permutations.

More later.

I don't want to go into all the side effects, but i didn't really have that many during treatment, but the side effects started to pop up last week by Monday, and by Wednesday (the day after the radiation therapy ended)... well, there they were! For example: i started to get a rash (from dry skin) on my right leg. I've been putting cream/lotion on it, and it's slowly going away, but it didn't show up during the actual treatment (my legs were exposed during the radiation) but it happened at the end. Oh, well....

So i took it easy. But one note: yesterday (March 18) would have been Damian Bona's birthday; instead, there was a memorial service for him. I couldn't go (i was afraid i wouldn't be able to sit for more than half an hour without rushing to the bathroom), but Damian's death (January 29, 2012) was particularly poignant, coming as it did just before the end of award season. Damian represented one of the great paradoxes involved with movie love: he and Mason Wiley had done such meticulous research for their book "Inside Oscar" (and Damian would update it after Mason's death), so he really didn't have any illusions about the way the Motion Picture Academy was set up. Yet Damian couldn't get over wanting the more deserving (in his view) nominee to win. He still felt that it was unfair that Grace Kelly had won for "The Country Girl" as opposed to Judy Garland for "A Star Is Born" in 1954. But that's the way the Oscars work (which is why i never bother with "Who Should Win" in those various Oscar polls; often, the best person isn't even nominated). And Damian would know it, but he couldn't help getting involved in the idea that the Oscars should represent some standard of excellence. (Should, but rarely do.) And Damian would always have very pointed comments about the insanity involved in the not-quite-campaigning that some stars go through.

Saturday (March 17) was St. Patrick's Day. For the occasion, TCM showed a bunch of "Irish" movies, and i watched "Shake Hands With the Devil", "The Rising of the Moon" and "Young Cassidy". "Shake Hands With the Devil" i had seen as a child, and i've been afraid of seeing it again, because i had memories of it as being particularly brutal. Well, it wasn't (really) but it was the fact that, by the end, the character played by James Cagney becomes so fanatical in his rebellion that he starts to execute people he feels have betrayed the cause. When he shoots Glynis Johns's character... that was one of those moments which really struck me when i was young. So i was glad i saw it again, it does hold up as an intriguing look at the Irish rebellion. (Michael Anderson was one of those directors who seemed relatively anonymous; he's credited with the elephantine "Around the World In 80 Days" but his better movies include "Chase a Crooked Shadow", "The Wreck of the Mary Deare", and this one.)

I didn't know if i'd actually seen "The Rising of the Moon" before; it's such a rare film, and it hasn't shown up in decades. But once the movie started, so many scenes were so familiar that i realized, yes, i must have seen this. (For example: the line-up of the protesters in front of the prison in the last segment.) I think it's one of the better John Ford movies from the 1950s, and i find it infinitely preferable to his other Irish idyll, "The Quiet Man". The film seems modest (it's in black-and-white, and it's less than 90 minutes long) but it's crowded with characters (and Ford allows the mostly Abbey Theater cast a lot of leeway) and each of the three segments doesn't really overstay its welcome. It's a lovely example of Ford's particular talents, and i think it should be better known. (I also feel that way about his London-set film, "Gideon of Scotland Yard".)  John Ford has become a rather ambivalent figure in cinema history; some of his worst traits (his sentimentality, the pictorialism that can slow down the pace, the traditionalism) have turned off a lot of people in the past few decades. Once, Ford was the most universally acclaimed American director, but that started to erode in the 1970s. There were a lot of reason for this, one of which was that, by then, Ford was often in ill health, but he would get contentious when people would come to interview him, and that didn't go over well. And there would be a lot of sniping: of his four Oscar wins as Best Director, it's now fashionable to say that Alfred Hitchcock was "robbed" in 1940 (when "Rebecca" won Best Picture, but Ford won Best Director for "The Grapes of Wrath") and Orson Welles was "robbed" in 1941 (when "How Green Was My Valley" won Best Picture, and Ford won his third Best Director Oscar for that film). Hitchcock (in fact) would always gripe about that. (I don't see why: even in 1941, when the New York Film Critics gave "Citizen Kane" the award for Best Picture, the award for Best Director went to Ford.) And no one seems to feel that Ford was robbed in 1939, when it was obvious he should have won for Best Director for "Stagecoach" (he won the New York Film Critics award, and was nominated) as opposed to Victor Fleming for "Gone With the Wind". Come on: it was known (at the time) that Victor Fleming didn't direct the whole thing, but that kind of block voting was so common for the Academy. Still, Ford may have been "overrated" (whatever that means) but now, he's often severely underrated. And "The Rising of the Moon" shows him in a modest but very pleasing mode, and its current obscurity doesn't seem warranted. And for sustained achievement, Ford's run from 1939 to 1941 ("Stagecoach", "Drums Along the Mohawk", "Young Mister Lincoln", "The Grapes of Wrath", "The Long Voyage Home", "How Green Was My Valley") really is spectacular, even given the one bummer in that period, "Tobacco Road". (And "Tobacco Road" has its defenders, though it is so severely compromised that it comes off as a precursor of the Ma and Pa Kettle movies.)

I remember going to see "Young Cassidy" when it first came out; it's one of the better examples of the Hollywood biopic, though i never understood why Sean O'Casey wound up being renamed Johnny Cassidy.

Cancer is insidious: it can attack anywhere. That said, from the last time i blogged, i've been involved in a month and a half of radiation therapy, which ended yesterday. I tried to maintain a regular routine: wake up, go in for my radiation therapy before 9 AM, and then resume my daily life. But it didn't work out that way. I was warned that, by the last week, i might feel very tired. And that happened! I tried to go to the first press screening for New Directors/New Films, and i was exhausted immediately after: i almost fell asleep on the subway home! So i decided i couldn't risk that again....

But before that, i did go to screenings, i have watched television... award season came and went, and i didn't do too badly in the IndieWire CriticWire poll. What i found interesting was that there were some surprises: usually, by the time the Academy Awards happen, the various guilds (SAG, PGA, DGA, et al) have given out their accolades, and the Academy Awards usually follow suit. This time, it didn't go according to the pre-plan (the biggest surprise: Viola Davis had won the SAG Best Actress for "The Help" but the Oscar went to Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady") so, if this had been known, there might have been more suspense going in. Not that it matters. I've given up watching award shows: even the Independent Spirit Awards tend to be a drag (in the case of the Spirits: the enforced sense of comic relief has long since become strained, and when it's not embarrassing, it's strenuous). And now, with the instantaneous feedback, you can always find out the winners without having to go to the trouble of watching the inanities.

I haven't had that many side-effects, but i've let my hair grow. I know that it's chemo that causes hair loss, but i'm keeping my hair just in case.

I've been seeing a lot of movies i missed on TV: "The Tempest" (i had missed the screenings and never felt the urge to see it, because i'd heard so many negative comments, but it wasn't as bad as i'd been led to believe); "Hanna" (i remember how excited a number of women critics were because of the premise, it was rather like a pubescent replay of the critical excitement that a number of women claimed to feel because of Jodie Foster's performance in "The Silence of the Lambs"), "Charlie St. Cloud" (another case of it-wasn't-as-bad-as-i'd-heard; why this film should be given the credit for wrecking Zac Efron's career i don't know).

But i should be back in action in a few days, and there's a lot to look forward to; however, one thing was that during February, there were several events which i really couldn't get to. Several friends premiered movies as part of MoMA's Documentary Fortnight, Jim Hubbard with "United In Anger" and Roddy Bogawa with "Taken By Storm", but both were showing at 8 PM, and by 9 PM every evening, i was definitely starting to fade (in many cases, i'd be asleep by then). This also meant that i missed a lot of things on TV: i just couldn't stay awake for "Revenge" (what did happen? how did the season end? i heard about the kiss between Gabriel Mann's character and Ashton Holmes's character, but i didn't see it) or "White Collar" or "Psych"....

So the whole of February... it's not so much a blur as it was a slow month. But a few notes: of course, TCM did its usual 31 Days of Oscar, usually a month to miss, but there were a few highlights, one of which was the showing of "Holy Matrimony", a charming pseudo-English comedy directed by John Stahl, with an Oscar-nominated screenplay by Nunnally Johnson based on Arnold Bennett's story (which had been filmed before in 1933 as "His Double Life" with Lillian Gish and Roland Young). The 1943 cast had Gracie Field (in the best of her American movies) and Monty Woolley (at the peak of his star status; he had been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor for "The Pied Piper" the year before, the same year that he starred as "The Man Who Came to Dinner"). Monty Woolley's career wouldn't really decline so much as Woolley would be eclipsed the following year: in 1944, Clifton Webb would create a sensation in "Laura" and would become the specialty star that Woolley threatened to be. (After all, how many acerbic, superior, gentlemen-of-a-certain-age bachelor stars can there be at any one time?) Webb would become one of the biggest stars at 20th Century Fox from the late 1940s through the 1950s; though initially a co-star (in "Laura" and in "The Razor's Edge", both of which he would be Oscar-nominated for), by the time of "Sitting Pretty" (1948) he would be toplined as one of Fox's biggest male stars. (It's Webb who is top-billed in the 1953 "Titanic" as well as the 1954 "Three Coins In the Fountain".) Plus he starred in a series of comedies where he played professors or various types of "experts", starting with "Sitting Pretty" (for which he got his third Academy Award nomination, only this time as Best Actor and not Best Supporting Actor): "Elopement", "Dreamboat", "Cheaper By the Dozen", "Mister Scoutmaster", "Mr. Belvedere Goes to College", "Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell", "Holiday For Lovers"... one curiosity about most of these movies is that Webb was often seen as family man, or someone who had to deal with children ("Sitting Pretty", "Mister Scoutmaster").

On Saturday, TCM devoted their evening programming to Clifton Webb, starting with "The Razor's Edge" and going onto "For Heaven's Sake" (playing a guardian angel of a child!), "Mister Scoutmaster" (which i hadn't seen in decades... it didn't improve with age), "Sitting Pretty" and "Boy On a Dolphin". His reputation within the industry was enormous: he had been a huge star on Broadway as the greatest dancing star (and yes, reviews at the time showed that he was regarded as the greatest, outclassing Fred Astaire, who was regarded as the lesser half of the Astaires, his sister Adele being considered the true star of their act) and by the 1940s Webb had made the transition away from musical comedy. He had triumphed in the Broadway production of Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirits" and was on tour when Otto Preminger (as the producer) decided to cast Webb in "Laura". After the contretemps (the original director, Rouben Mamoulian, was fired and Preminger was then called upon to direct), "Laura" would be one of the big hits of the year, and Clifton Webb would be established as a star in the movies. Vincent Price (in numerous interviews over the years) has stated that the entire cast had been getting along very well under Mamoulian, but once Preminger came in, the cast started to feel uneasy. The congeniality that the cast enjoyed under Mamoulian was gone, replaced by an often tyrannical regime. The only person who seemed to thrive was Webb, because he was grateful that Preminger (as producer) had gone to bat for him with Darryl F. Zanuck (Zanuck had wanted Laird Cregar in the role); but Price always credited the hostility on the set with enhancing the movie, as he said, the fact that everyone was on edge and uneasy added to the atmosphere of suspicion and apprehension  which distinguished "Laura". One interesting note: Robert Osborne mentioned that Webb had been offered the part of the director in "The Band Wagon" (the part eventually played by Jack Buchanan), but by that point, Webb hadn't danced in over 15 years, and he was loathe to show up when he wouldn't be at his best. He had his reputation as a great dancer to consider, and to get back into shape would have required a lot of rehearsal time, months of hard work, and Webb just didn't feel he could get back to where he could keep up with Astaire. But it's unfortunate, because there's no record of the talent which made Webb one of the big Broadway stars of the 1920s and 1930s. But Clifton Webb did become a movie star, and one of the most unusual stars of the 1950s.

I'd been meaning to keep up with more regular blogging, but Christmas came and then various health issues, and, voila, more than a month passed. And a lot has happened. Today (Tuesday, 24 january) there was the announcement of the Academy Award nominations. Yesterday was Chinese New Year; it was also the night when Turner Classic Movies devoted the whole night to Max Ophuls. Of course, i've seen all the films shown, but in some cases ("The Reckless Moment") not in a while. I've been catching up with movies i missed during the year, and every so often, a movie will be on TV (Showtime or HBO) that i missed on release. One example (which i watched on Sunday) was "Lebanon, Pa." I've been to press screenings for the Dance On Camera series that will be at the Film Society of Lincoln Center; i've been to press screenings at Film Forum.

So there have been a lot of films seen, and i want to start to write about them. For instance: i'm really fascinated by what people are doing in terms of what used to be called "dance films". Obviously, this was occasioned by seeing Wim Wenders' "Pina", which i thought was one of the most inventive dance films i've ever seen. And i've seen a lot. And then i saw Frederick Wiseman's "Crazy Horse". Having also seen his earlier "Ballet" (about American Ballet Theater) and "La Danse" (about the Paris Opera Ballet), it was really instructive to see how his style has evolved (and it has): the new digital technology has allowed for greater flexibility and a greater visual freedom, and so the focus is different, because "Crazy Horse" seems slicker and less gritty, less "real" than "Ballet".

I'm trying to remember everything i've seen in the past month, and it's a lot. It's even something like Renoir's "Diary of a Chambermaid" which was on TCM last week: i haven't seen that film in about a decade, and it was fun to see it again. The thing about Renoir is that there is this reputation as a naturalistic, realistic director, which isn't true: throughout his career, there are always those films which are extravagantly artificial, highly theatrical, and wildly stylized. This can be seen in "Nana", in "La Chienne", in "The Golden Coach", "French Can-Can", "Elena et les Hommes", and it's certainly true in "Diary of a Chambermaid". Renoir allows everyone to go beserk in their acting, and it's funny.

More and more, i find there are always movies to get passionate about, and that makes me happy.

Once again, it's been a while since i've posted, and i have been catching up on movies. I've submitted my lists for the annual Village Voice/LA Weekly and IndieWire polls; as usual (and this time, not really by design) i only mention any particular film once, which means that if i decided to list "Martha Marcy May Marlene" for the performance by Elizabeth Olsen (which i did), then i chose some other film for the Best First Feature category (this year, "Circumstance"). But it was such a good year for movies! Of course, i'm only going on films released in 2011, and i keep finding more films which i forgot i saw which were released this year. For the record, my Top Ten Films of 2011 were: 1) "A Brighter Summer Day"; 2) "To Die Like a Man"; 3) "The Mysteries of Lisbon"; 4) "Film Socialisme"; 5) "Nostalgia For the Light"; 6) "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives";  7) "A Dangerous Method"; 8) "Putty Hill"; 9) "Le Quattro Volte"; 10) "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975". My choice for Best Director was Cristi Puiu for "Aurora" which i felt was very tense and suspenseful for its almost three-hour running time, so that was an impressive achievement. But i also thought that Nicolas Winding Refn's direction was spectacular in "Drive". There were just a lot of good movies. In fact, it might be better to say there were a lot of great movies.

I've also been catching up with movies on HBO and Showtime, things like "The Adjustment Bureau" and even the Harry Potter series, including "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1". (I have to say, about the Harry Potter series, it is a bit of a slog, but there's always somebody that turns up, some eminence or near-eminence in the British acting pantheon, so there's always something to look forward to, and some of the effects are delightful. The pacing is a little stolid, i keep wishing somebody among the various directors would be a little less reverential, but i was surprised at how enjoyable i found the whole series.)

The VV/LA Weekly poll had the category "Breakthrough of the Year": this seemed like the obvious catgeory for Jessica Chastain, who wound up in seven movies which were released or completed in 2011: "The Tree of Life", "The Help", "The Debt", "Take Shelter", "Texas Killing Fields", "Coriolanus" and "Wilde Salome" (this was her first movie, another Al Pacino documentary about a classic play, but the editing is supposed to be completed and the film awaits release). But other breakthroughs (the category is supposed to include anything that could be considered a breakthrough) for me would include BAM CinemaFest, which i feel has finally come into its own as a film festival; Michael Fassbender with four movies ("Jane Eyre", "X Men: First Class", "A Dangerous Method" and "Shame"); and the fact that many independent filmmakers (including Todd Haynes, and Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini) were able to find a way to accommodate their work to the demands of cable TV ("Mildred Pierce" and "Cinema Verite", both for HBO), as well as many documentary filmmakers who had their works on cable TV with movies like "Bobby Fisher Against the World" and "Borg/McEnroe: Fire and Ice". Martin Scorsese had two documentaries this year which were on HBO: "Public Speaking" (his portrait of Fran Lebowitz) and "George Harrison: Living In the Material World". If independent filmmakers were trying to figure out ways of working with HBO or Showtime, several Hollywood veterans were involved in new network TV series: Jonathan Demme as executive producer and sometimes director of "A Gifted Man", and Philip Noyce as executive producer and sometimes director of "Revenge". And this was also a year when so many people came into their own: Ryan Gosling has been doing excellent work for a decade, mostly in independent films (he had a brief fling with Hollywood when he did "Murder By Numbers" and "The Notebook", but he retreated from that, fast, and really sought out independent projects which excited him) but this year, he made two movies which certified him as a star: "Drive" and "Crazy Stupid Love". Brad Pitt proved, with two movies ("The Tree of Life" and "Moneyball"), what a fine actor he has become. Viola Davis found herself finally receiving major recognition for "The Help" (the acclaim for her work in "Doubt" a few years back might have brought her that recognition if the film had been a box office success, which it wasn't). And (aside from "Circumstance") there were quite a few amazing first features this year: "Martha Marcy May Marlene", "Margin Call", "Pariah", "Take Shelter" and "In the Family", the last a self-distributed film by Patrick Wang which would have been the type of film i would have championed if i was still involved in programming on the festival circuit.

So all in all, an amazing year. It was a year when film was in transition: new methods of filmmaking, new modes of presentation and exhibition, new formats. But movies were still getting made, and so many movies were finally finding their way to audiences. And i haven't even gotten into everything that happened this year, including the developments in 3D filmmaking: Werner Herzog (with "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"), Wim Wenders (with "Pina") and Martin Scorsese (with "Hugo") finally used 3D as an integral part of their artistic vision, rather than just as a gimmicky adjunct, and the results were breathtaking. In fact, "Pina" was my choice for Documentary of the year, and i have to say why: i detested Pina Bausch's work, i went to three of her concerts when her company was first brought to the US (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), and all three times, i had to walk out. The incessant repetition, the unrelieved po-faced angst (i remember Arlene Croce's description of Pina Bausch as "an entrepeneuse of despair"; i love that, "entrepeneuse" like "poetess"), the unmodulated dynamics: enough! Yet the film was so skillful in presenting snippets of the works so that the dances seemed palatable, and the 3D cinematography was so tactile and sensual, the entire film was transporting. The damned movie made me appreciate Pina Bausch in a way i hadn't before. And that's quite an accomplishment! So for that reason, i had to say "Pina" was a revelatory documentary, as well as a major advance in the problem of putting dance on film.

But there's so much more. Of course, the year was swamped by comic-book franchise movies, but if you didn't go to any of them (and i didn't), there were always good movies to see.

My goodness, i have been playing catch-up with the New York Film Festival, and i have to say that, so far, it's been quite a solid festival! But this year was one of the most fraught years at the Film Festival: several of the press screenings were full, and i got shut out of several screenings. But among the films that i didn't get to, i have now seen "The Descendants" and "Pina" and "Shame"; all proved to be intriguing, and exceptional in their own ways.

BAM has been having a puppet film festival, sponsored by the Jim Henson Foundation as a way to announce the new Muppet movie; they press screened John Turturro's "Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy", another panel in his essays on Italian culture, this one centering on the Sicilian marionette theater. The Walter Reade Theater is having an Edward Yang retrospective, and they press screened "A Brighter Summer Day" which i hadn't seen since 1997. BAM will also be having a program of recent Portuguese films (they press screened "The Baron" from 2011, one of the most tactile black-and-white films i've seen, the incredible depth of the cinematography was like 3D without the glasses); Walter Reade will be having the Spanish Cinema Now series (they press screened "Extraterrestrials" and "Every Song Is About Me", the former a whimsical low-tech sci-fi romance, the latter an attempted whimsical romantic comedy, attempted whimsy is actually another way of saying dud).

There's a lot more to write, but the thing that's holding all this up is more medical tests, more doctors. Oh, well. But tonight i should have time to reflect on the movies i've seen, and some of the books i've been reading (i decided to take the plunge and read a bunch of movie-related memoirs, including Michael Lindsay-Hogg's "Luck and Circumstance", Piper Laurie's "Learning to Live Out Loud", James Wolcott's "Lucking Out"; next up will be Diane Keaton's "Then Again".)

Once again, it's been more than a month, and an eventful month it has been. Among other events: the New York Film Festival came and went, and i tried to make it to as many press screenings as i could, which wasn't easy since i was overwhelmed with more medical tests and procedures, and on three occasions i was shut out of the screenings. But this year seemed to be quite a solid festival, i didn't see anything that i felt was really deficient.

I shall be writing on a number of the films i did see in a little while, but i wanted to make a few comments.

I went to the opening for Jonas Mekas's photo show at Agnes b.'s store in Soho; Jonas seems to be in fine shape, and his children Oona and Sebastian were there, which was amusing, since i hadn't seen Sebastian since he was a child! But Jonas and i remarked on how sad the summer had been, with the deaths of many friends/associates/compatriots in the avantgarde cinema. David Stone, Jonas's brother Adolfas, Robert Breer, Jordan Belson, and George Landow. George Landow's death was particularly difficult to hear about, because he had become almost a recluse, and, though it was easy to keep track of his activities (any new film of his was sure to show up at events like the Views from the Avant-Garde of the New York Film Festival), to keep track of him was not as easy. I wasn't the only friend who lost track of George (who renamed himself Owen Land some time in the late 1980s); after he left his teaching position at the Art Institute of Chicago, he started on a very peripatetic existence. I knew that he had been ill in the last few years, but, aside from that, i didn't know much else. But, still, it was a shock to find out about George's death (he died on June 8, 2011). P. Adams Sitney has a very touching essay on "Owen Land" in the November 2011 issue of Artforum; it was quite illuminating (for example, i didn't realize that George and P. Adams had been friends since childhood, their families living as they did in the same apartment building in New Haven, Connecticut). That George had started his career as a teenager was something i knew; i met him at some point in 1970-71. This idea of teenagers in the avantgarde is crucial (i think) to understanding the explosion of the arts in New York City during the 1960s. But i lost touch with George in the mid-1980s, and so i had no idea of the difficulties of his life (various illnesses, etc.).

Yesterday, Larry and i went to the press preview for "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties" at the Brooklyn Museum. We had anticipated it to be a show of the museum holdings of American art during the 1920s; instead, it turned out to be a remarkable and wide-ranging show with works drawn from an incredible array of institutions across the country, such as the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. It's a wonderful show (curated by Teresa A. Carbone), which serves as a corrective to the simplistic narrative of abstraction-as-artistic evolution which is part of the master narrative of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum.

So a lot to think about....