The title of my site comes from the David Foster Wallace essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” in which he describes the way television’s “weird pretty hand” has captured his generation. While my interest lies in film and not TV, this phrase aptly describes the way that film has taken over my mind from an early age. Ever since my dad introduced me to Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God as a young teenager, I have been fascinated with the way that film can alter your mental state and create waking dreams, especially nightmares. This inevitably led me to explore the works of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, and I have been a committed cinephile ever since.

This blog is as much an attempt to expand my film knowledge as it is a place to vent my opinions. While my true passion lies with the horror and art-house genres (and, best of all, with the blending of the two), I want to become more literate in all types of film, and I think there is no better way to do so than by writing about it. Each week, I plan to review both a new release and a film from the cannon of a director I want to get to know better. Because I feel shamefully unfamiliar with the work of female directors, I will alternate between male and female directors for these series.

Beyond this, I think the best way to tell you who I am is to give you a list of my top ten favorite films. This list is constantly changing, and contains a mixture of high-brow and guilty pleasures (notice I say favorite, not best). And so, in no particular order, here are ten films I can watch over and over again:

 

Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman, 1983

3 Women, Robert Altman, 1977

Mulholland Drive, David Lynch, 2001

Wild at Heart, David Lynch, 1990

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry, 2004

Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, 1958

Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes, 1998

Jesus Christ Superstar, Norman Jewison, 1973

The Shining, Stanley Kubrick, 1980

Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972