The Eyes of This New Log

An inauguration of a new version of “A Year in Film”

“What is this and what am I doing here?”

I’m feeling particularly inspired in this moment, to at least jot down some inaugural words here in this new space, where I’ve at least whimsically decided will live the new version of my old child “A Year in Film,” a blog I’d once kept regularly but since let fall into disuse on the focal topic of the cinema (though there were occasional divergences; see “Quote: On Shame [2011]” for example). There, in years past, I faithfully and sometimes frivolously¹ recorded my personal takes on the latest film releases of the year, all culminating in an annual “awards ceremony” — a virtual celebration to exclusively my very own tastes in favor of the “best” of the year — with categories and a timeline initially drawn from but ultimately preceding (in both stature and time) the Academy Awards. My awards, dubbed “The Spyglasses Full,” have been the surviving heartbeat of that former column, they persisting through — {looks at date of the last post on “A Year in Film”} — the nearly six(!) years when the writing originally meant to support and explain them did not: In fact, last year, hoping to meld my aptitude for data visualization, my interest in design, and my affinity for (armchair — though who still really uses an actual armchair?) film criticism to salve my nostalgia for the times when I did actively write about the films I’d seen, I baked up an entirely new site, this time outside any popular writing service, to catalogue and therefore make accessible the on-going database of my film grades and film awards for anyone who may feel tempted or bored enough to read them. A personal exercise in Shiny use as much as an earnest attempt at democratizing my data, “Rich Picks” will continue to live on its own right (and, optimistically, soon start to carry the full score of my film takes this year) as a complement to the select “Rich Reviews” this new Substack promises.

And so it begins. I hope to:

• use this new space to describe the impressions, perceptions, reactions, and other takes (shallow or deep) I have about the visual art I see along the way and,

• in the spirit of feeling the extent of the umbrella,

  1. not limit the definition of this “visual art” to just film but rather include theater, television, painting, photography, etc. as they come too, about all of which I’ve had and I’m sure shall continue to have many thoughts (some of which have found their ways into expression here and there²) and

  2. not limit the scope of my titular “Reviews” to just those forms of visual art either but rather include also noteworthy food or travel experiences I have (some of which have also occasionally been written about in places³).

This outline is a bold, if vague, scope (perhaps more convenient for the unpredictable whims of my feelings about all those potential topics than truly well considered) but, in any case, it excites me. If it excite you too — no, that’s not a typo; we like the subjunctive here — I hope that you’ll feel agreed enough to

or even

with your friends.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

Selfie in Olafur Eliasson’s “Room for One Colour” (1997), installed in the National Gallery, Singapore, 2019.

1. See my review of The Fighter (Russell, 2010) for example.

2. See my review of the original Broadway production of The Little Mermaid (Wright, 2009) for example.

3. Mainly, glancing Facebook or Instagram posts, one or two which that ran deeper I may import here at some future points