After several days of technological dissonance, I've finally gained access to our blog. The logistical reasons for said dissonance are far too tedious to recount here, so I'll get right to it: I've seen 10 films over the last 60 hours, some good, some OK and none less than interesting.

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Brian DePalma's Scarface hits Blu-ray for the first time on Sept. 6. In celebration of its release, Universal Studios is screening the movie 7:30 tonight in selected multiplexes across the country, including locally at AMC, Springdale 18 and Regal Deerfield.

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I just finished reading Shock Value, Jason Zinoman's entertaining look at “how a few eccentric outsiders gave us nightmares, conquered Hollywood and invented modern horror.”

The book celebrates a genre and group of filmmakers often ghettoized when compared to the better-known New Hollywood revolution of the 1970s, a rightly celebrated period and movement — roughly between Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980) — that was investigated in Peter Biskind's equally entertaining Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

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Cincinnati World Cinema continues its eclectic programing this week with The Perfect Host, a nasty little thriller featuring a gleefully perverse performance from David Hyde Pierce, which screens 7 p.m. today and tomorrow at the Carnegie in Covington.

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As it has every other corner of our cultural and economic landscape, the current recession hit the Sundance Film Festival hard, resulting in fewer films being picked up by the handful of distributors that still exist — and that still care about the types of films that need their nurturing. Couple that with the festival's unfortunate embrace of questionable Hollywoodisms over the the last dozen or so years, and the onetime champion of American indie cinema had lost quite a bit of its luster.

Enter John Cooper, who took over as director in 2010, and who is intent on moving the festival back to its artist-driven roots. Cooper's efforts seem to be paying off, as Sundance 2011 unveiled a diverse, interesting crop of films, some of which are actually getting distribution and coming to a theater near you.

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Another summer is rapidly winding down, which means it's almost time to assess the relative quality of the movies that have graced our screens over the past three months.

I said almost because there are still a few weeks left (the season traditionally runs Memorial Day to Labor Day) and, more importantly, there are still a handful of movies I've yet to catch — from high-profile studio stuff (like Cars 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the latest Harry Potter) to smaller indie offerings (like Buck and Project Nim, not to mention a host of titles that have yet to open here — most notably Miranda July's The Future, Michael Winterbottom's The Trip, Azazel Jacobs' Terri and Raúl Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon).

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Jaws was on TV the other day. Though too young to have caught its initial 1975 theatrical release, I've since watched it at least a half-dozen times, each exposure inevitably sucking me back into its simple but exhilarating story all over again.

This time I was struck by how different Jaws is compared to the sleek, sequel-laden, CGI-driven summer fare of today. Watching a drunken Quint (a thoroughly convincing Robert Shaw) stomp aroundJaws' grimy, pathetic boat — which is a character unto itself — is welcome aesthetic shift from the alienating pixelated mayhem of Thor, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Captain America and the like.

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The latest 48 Hour Film Project: Cincinnati rapidly approach. Founded by in 2001 by a pair of independent film producers in Washington, D.C., the project has now spread to 80 cities — I think this will be the eighth Cincinnati version — on five continents.

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We have a odd-ball batch of opening films this week, including a pair of documentaries (one about a fascinating 1970s experiment on a chimpanzee, the other about a money- and fame-hungry woman disguised as a political and cultural leader); a pair of genre mashups (one a sci-fi western starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, the other a romantic dramedy featuring yet another beguiling turn from Ryan Gosling); and a 1980s cartoon staple that probably should have stayed untouched by studio executives.

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A couple of days ago I wrote about news regarding the release dates of George Clooney's Ides of March, much of which was shot in and around Cincinnati. Now we have Ides' first trailer, which gives us a much better idea of the film's tone and focus.

Here's Ides' official synopsis, the contents of which are readily on display in the tension-laced trailer, which centers heavily on Ryan Gosling's campaign press secretary character:

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