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  • Author: Robert Hamer
    February 23, 2013

    I knew this day would come, and it is with a sense of both excitement and sadness.  By the end of my long deployment, I will have earned the most difficult and significant achievement of my life – Surface Warfare Officer Qualification, and finally perform the mission that my ship and I have been training toward for over a year.  On the other hand, I must sacrifice the time and effort I have placed into a site that has grown so much in such a short time.

    As our Editor himself would agree, what makes me value Awards Circuit is the staff – all the different backgrounds and perspectives on film from all walks of life.  To proudly welcome Nicole and Tiff into our family, I will be assisting Clay in integrating them into the staff top tens dating all the way back to 2000 before my departure.  After that, for operational security purposes, you will not be hearing from me for a while.  But I will not be gone forever! One of my shipmates advised me a long time ago not to let the Navy become my sole identity, and I will hold to that.  Come late 2013/early 2014, I will be back to resuming my full staff writer duties. Read more on Oscars 2013: Will Win/Should Win (Hamer)…

    Author: Robert Hamer
    December 12, 2011

    Read more on Circuit Round-Up (Week Ending 12/11)…

    Author: Robert Hamer
    December 10, 2011

    “In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. Of the horse…we know nothing.”

    And who more appropriate a filmmaker than Béla Tarr to attempt an answer to that question?  For those unfamiliar, the Hungarian director is somewhat of an arthouse celebrity whose singular brand of style is among the most instantly recognizable in the world: extremely long and painstakingly choreographed takes, shot in stark black-and-white photography, that last for several minutes (this film supposedly has only thirty in its entire two-and-a-half hour running time, though I wasn’t counting), usually in chaotic settings on the margin of reality that strangely feel like some plausible corner of human existence.  He also is one of the most divisive auteurs in the world; some – like me – believe him to be a brilliantly unique and challenging voice in world cinema, and others who find him an embodiment of the worst of artsy pretension. Read more on The Turin Horse (***½)…

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