Here are my Favorite Pre-2022 First-Watches and Discoveries of 2023:

“Humoresque” (1946)
“Max and the Junkmen”
“Le Trou” (“The Hole”)
“Streets of Fire” (1984)
“Le Corbeau” (“The Raven”)
”The Man from Laramie”
“An Impossible Love”
“Women in Love” (1969)
“Splendor in the Grass” (1961)
“Bruno Reidal, Confessions of a Murderer”
“A Girl Missing”
“Black Sunday” (1977)
“Lover Come Back” (1961)
“César and Rosalie”
“Twentieth Century”
“Bad News Bears” (1976)
“Elizabeth Harvest”
“Serenity” (2019)
“Pastorale 1943”
“Fran”
“Executive Decision” (1973)
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On the evening of September 17th, I volunteered to introduce the Vancity Theatre’s screening of Park Chan-wook’s cult classic “Oldboy” (2003). This is what I had to say about it.

Good evening. My name is Christopher Beaubien and I am honoured to be here.

Very soon your heart will be pounding in your chest. Your stomach will sink into its knees. And we’ll all be grinning ear-to-ear watching “Oldboy” in all of its 4K glory.

How many of you are seeing this movie for the first time?

Back in 2005, a horror movie buff loaned me a VHS copy of “Basket Case” and then he challenged me to show him a really scary movie. I hate to disappoint and I knew just the movie to show him. Once I had the movie set up to show my new friend as well as 30 other people (Don’t ask), he asked me — he was so excited:

“Chris, is this movie really scary?”

I assured him it was.

Then the air turned to chill and his face betrayed apprehension.

He asked me again, “Chris, is this movie really scary?”

I told him it was.

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Peter Greenaway’s sumptuously decadent film A Zed and Two Noughts (1985) is one that sates both the visceral and cerebral palettes. One of the main themes that Greenaway presents is his “…fascination of twinship… particularly conjoined Siamese twins.”¹ Not only do the twin brothers progressively shed their individualistic fashion traits to look more alike, but Greenaway also conspires to make the composition of select shots throughout the film look synchronized. In this particular image of a lavish, heaven-like hospital room, the left side of the frame is practically mirrored with the right side. Production designers Ben van Os and Jan Roelfs place the furnishings to reflect one another across each other with a mathematical exactness.

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This is my best impression of a lamb.

Last Saturday, Cinelation was submitted as the #922 website in the Large Association of Movie Blogs (LAMB). Special thanks to Rachel, one of the site’s leading authors, who took my website into consideration and posted it.

The next day I was encouraged by Max Covill of Impassioned Cinema who found Cinelation through the LAMB. Judging from his output, the name for his website is very appropriate.

Of the livestock available, thank goodness the LAMB’s mascot is an adorable, fluffy one instead of grotesquely characterized variant.

Like this one:

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It’s time to get to the bottom of this. Every time I play one of my DVDs for Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue (1988) series, I see the Facets Video logo: Six seconds that quickly fade in and out with fourteen movie clips a half-second each. Over the past seven years I have been able to identify four of them, which means I should be watching more films released by Facets prior to August 19, 2003.

I thought about getting in contact with Facets and asking them what these titles are, but what fun would that be for you cinephiles out there?

If you know which movies belong to any of these still images, write it in the comments and I’ll credit you along with the answer in this article.

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