This is probably a “me” problem but as I watch all these silent films my esteem for every single director has gone up, with the sole exception of…Murnau. I’m not really buying what this guy is selling! I’m sorry if this offends!

“You know what these tight ends are so relaxed about? Prostate cancer screenings.”

Back home after a week at IFFR. The film of the festival is Chronovisor, but I had a good time with the Tetsuya Maruyama retrospective, the experimental shorts programs, James N. Kienitz Wilkins The Misconceived, Xacio Baño’s After the Cities, and Roy Cohen’s Far From Maine.

Watched The Materialists on the plane and can’t see what had people so incensed about this one, except perhaps the fact that it begins with Dakota Johnson walking south along Cooper Union but then cuts to her at Waverly and Greene, which is the other direction.

I wrote entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation. It's not quite in time for MLK day, but if you feel like reading entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation, I've got you. (Please read this I worked really hard on it.) fcardamenis.substack.com/p/the-birth-...

I wrote entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation. It's not quite in time for MLK day, but if you feel like reading entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation, I've got you. (Please read this I worked really hard on it.) fcardamenis.substack.com/p/the-birth-...

Some thoughts on two Erich von Stroheim films and D.W. Griffith. open.substack.com/pub/fcardame...

Just published: My favorite films that I watched for the first time in 2025. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/top-50-fir...

Just published: My favorite films that I watched for the first time in 2025. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/top-50-fir...

Buster Keaton shorts are significantly better than Charlie Chaplin shorts but very few Keaton features hold up to any Chaplin feature. I don’t think this is a novel observation but watching a lot of them in close proximity really demonstrates how true it is.

I learned about Satantango as a 13 or 14 year old when my only understanding of foreign films was Amelie, In The Mood For Love, and Kurosawa. Watched all his films early in college and suddenly understood there was another way to do things. RIP Bela Tarr you went hard every time.

Over on my new Substack, some observations about Fritz Lang's Spiders and Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, alongside their relationship to serials and Louis Feuillade. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/old-langs-...

Over on my new Substack, some observations about Fritz Lang's Spiders and Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, alongside their relationship to serials and Louis Feuillade. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/old-langs-...

Happy New Year! Two things I want to do this year are write more and support my newborn, and I'm hoping Substack can help me with both, so please sign up for my thoughts on old movies and more! Thoughts on Fritz Lang silent films will drop soon. fcardamenis.substack.com/subscribe?pa...

Marty Supreme is termite The Brutalist

Over the last two months I have watched silent cinema almost exclusively (83/88 films) and this has been an invigorating and joyous experience. 10/10 would recommend to all.

Did Baby Jesus have colic

Bruce Springsteen sings like he really does believe Santa Claus is coming to town.

You guys hip to Les Vampires? Makes so much of what comes after feel unnecessary. You can see Renoir and Lang both in it! Theater, documentary and a touch of the surreal; memorable performance by Musidora; as fun as North By Northwest!

Much consternation at the Nitrate Picture Show for choosing Veit Harlan’s The Journey to Tilset as the blind screening. I think this was a bold and brilliant decision, for reasons I hope I can elaborate on elsewhere.

They should make the jalapeños spicy again IMO

Another IFFR in the books. 8 days, 31 screenings, and about as many glasses of white wine and hours of sleep. Best film I saw was this avant-garde masterpiece. boxd.it/l0la

Londoners…if you’re cool and free this evening, HMU! I’m in town, one night only.

We need a list of the top eccentric dudes in Bob Dylan songs. The Dancing Child in a Chinese Suit, the Diplomat Who Carried On His Shoulder a Siamese Cat, The Hysterical Bride in the Penny Arcade—These folks had very little representation in popular music before Dylan.

RIP to Garth Hudson, who was the last living member of The Band. Always loved what he did for Like A Rolling Stone on both the ‘66 and ‘74 tours. Here he is on the latter. open.spotify.com/track/68qKGz...

Apparently this makes me something of a rube among the intellectual commentariat but I actually don’t think that combining things an actor did in different takes or moving them around a scene is the same as making it sound like an actor does something they don’t actually do.

I think TP:TR being 18 hours has made people overlook this, but: Lynch spent most of the 21st c. unable to get funding. At a certain point he seemed to give up entirely on getting a feature funded. Lynch! The best US filmmaker of the last 50 years! What is the industry good for?

David Lynch was probably the greatest, most inventive Hollywood(ish) filmmaker since the Golden Age. His films were infused with an enormous belief in the unique emotional truths sound & image could access but a keen awareness of the dark side of all forms of escapism. RIP, king.

It's unfathomable how bad the IFFR website is. If the description "a kaleidoscopic all-archival exploration of the work of intrepid mid-century utopian neuroscientist John C. Lilly" doesn't compel you to click, you wouldn't know it's Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens!

One of the funniest things to ever happen

The fires show that some widely inhabited parts of the country are simply not safe to inhabit. We can’t rebuild there and need to relocate people to safer parts of the country. That this is getting buried beneath other fights doesn’t bode well for how we deal with/prevent future climate disasters.

Incendiary live cut of Dylan’s best Born-Again song. You’d have to be Blind Willie McTell to be a better guitar player than Mike Bloomfield! open.spotify.com/track/2MsI60...

Folks are not appreciating A Complete Unknown enough. For the first time, men everywhere can talk to their girlfriends about Dylan without watching their eyes glaze over. This is Chalamet’s doing. In a month or two, when the world has moved on, you’ll realize how good you had it.

I’ve always supported congestion pricing because it will cause fewer people to drive in Manhattan and will raise some money for the MTA, but it never occurred to me that it would also give us the privilege of watching the tri-state’s biggest narcissists have meltdowns.

🎶Man to woman Or woman to man? Man to woman🎶

For those attending IFFR 2025 (hi!), here’s what’s screening on film. Cinema Regained: The Red Badge of Courage La Nott’e’l giorno Focus: Through Cinema...: Ballad of the Cart Short/Mid-Length: Am Telefon Milena Fina A Patriot of These Woods 2020 Unearthed The Individual Skeyesee Razorhead

People who booed Dylan for going electric are always mocked for their myopia but I think if you listen to popular guitar music from before July 1965 and then listen to what Mike Bloomfield does on “Maggie’s Farm” at Newport it’s actually easy to see why it broke so many brains.

My mother-in-law keeps talking about parents who have someone dressed up as The Grinch enter the house during their gift exchange and start taking away the presents from children and she doesn’t understand why I think this is hilarious.

Quite the year I had

Just hearing about the death of the great Shyam Benegal. Ankur: The Seedling is a remarkable film, and Mandi (Market Place) is not far behind. R.I.P. to a still-underrecognized great.

Watched Juror #2 yesterday. Really good script (albeit a bit on-the-nose at times). Visually undistinguished (some will no doubt exalt it as “classical”). Good anyway! Once upon a time we got 100 Hollywood movies a year as good as this one but now we get 3, so it seems special.

Does anyone I know ride for Jacques Audiard? Retrospectives in NY and LA, now another at the Santa Barbara FF. To me he’s the guy who made a movie I liked in high school (A Prophet) and then some festival garbage whose acclaim befuddles me (Rust & Bone, Dheepan, Emilia Perez).

The WNBA is fumbling Caitlin Clark like it’s one of her teammates trying to catch her passes.

Is the best needle drop of the year (non-“Evergreen” division) “Dirty Boots” in Last Summer?

Probably gonna delete this but if we actually think prison sentences are too long, too many people go to prison, etc. we need to be honest about what that means. An awful corrupt judge already under home confinement due to age getting off after 13 years instead of 17 is fine.

So how exactly did a new consensus emerge around 1999 as the “best movie year” over, say, 1974 or 1960 or (yes) 1939?

Jotted down some thoughts on Dersu Uzala and they came out sounding a bit more negative than I feel about the film, but regardless: letterboxd.com/forrestc/fil...

I am also available for 15 years at the price of $765M.

I think I inadvertently sparked a Discourse yesterday, so I feel the need to clarify that I actually do kind of like Nosferatu, and I admire a lot about Eggers as a director. His films are still a bit self-conscious and underbaked to me, but he'll make a great movie one day (more than one, in fact).

Dave Eggers's Nosferatu, like Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things before it, poses the question, "what is the point of shooting on 35mm if you're just going to make it look like that in the DI?"