Yes, folks, that is correct, I will be spending my holidays with a man obsessed with religion...how apt! Apt, I say! (to quote Lisa Simpson) Beginning December 7th or so I will begin my second attempt to cover a director's oeuvre. Ken Russell is the man the majority of you voted for last month, and I have to say that you all must hate me. I don't want to tip my hand to how favorable or unfavorable my retrospective will be, but let me just say this: I have now moved through all of Russell's mainstream 60's and 70's films...and I can only think of two that have made this endeavor worth while. But I'm here to please the voters, and the voters wanted Russell, so I will deliver. I'm a classical music and opera neophyte, so I think naturally some of Russell's early looks at musicians and artists were right over my head. I tried my hardest to look at them objectively, but some of these films could only take me to a certain place because of my lack of knowledge about composers. That being said, I will give it a go in about a month, and the retrospective will be the focus of this blog all December (with some more capsule reviews of 2010 films sprinkled in). I hope you'll join me; it should be fun times. See everyone in a month.
