"Even now, many years later, his heart always lurches at the sight of a woman in a red trench coat."

I don't get how people who are serious about life and culture are not serious about their movies. There's a new film out called Picasso and Braque Go To The Movies and the premise of it is that artists like Picasso were greatly influenced by film. A prominent voice behind the movie belongs to Martin Scorcese who is a major proponent of film is an art form.

I'm in the middle of watching Paris Je T'eime. It is a compilation of eighteen movies; each film is five minutes long. How do you make a meaningful movie in five minutes? Each director takes a different approach to that question. At first I thought the pieces were going to be continued later because the first three seemed to end in the middle. The ones that followed made it clear that these were self contained pieces.

Number seven blew me away: “Bastille” by Isabel Coixet. It starts off being about a man who is on the verge of telling his wife that he's having an affair and wants a divorce. It then takes a turn and has a clear arc; a well developed beginning, middle, and end adding up to a complete film that could have been two riveting hours long. Coixet does it all in five minutes. This one little film epitomizes film as a high art form. Beautiful.