I try not to make it a habit of steering you, dear readers, to other Web sites, but The Movie Club is back! Essentially an insider-y movie-critic wank-fest, the Slate-curated endeavor features five writers who go back and forth debating the year in movies via 600-word-or-so online missives — a wet dream for those of us who think about movies deeply and obsessively and how they impact and reflect the culture at large but probably a big bore for those with little patience for such seemingly narrow, esoteric conversations. —-
This year's club includes Slate critic Dana Stevens, who serves as a moderator of sorts, freelancer Dan Kois, Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, freelancer Matt Zoller Seitz and L.A. Weekly's Karina Longworth. That's right, three of the five are ladies, a refreshing turnabout of the norm.
I suppose it should come as no surprise that they've already bandied about much of what I discussed in my own looks at the year just ended: the conceit of crafting a top 10 list; 3-D as the savior of our movie-going future; the different reactions to Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan; and the emergence of conceptually complex films that blur the lines between reality and illusion, truth and fiction, satire and sincerity.
I stopped reading at entry six — wherein they discuss Sofia Coppola's highly contentious Somewhere, which I've yet to see — but one of the unquestioned highlights to that point is Seitz's unearthing of this genius Inception button, to which I'm now addicted.
Now I just need to get Stevens to invite me next year.
