Blogging and Thinking

The Thinking Blogger Award meme has been going round the blogs I read like the flu around a daycare center. I am pleased and flattered to have been coughed on by my old pal Moviezzz. (I am probably even more pleased to see another of his nominations - another of our old pals, Evan Waters - interviewed in this week's Friday Screen Test at DVD Panache. Very cool.) It's been fun watching the praise flow around the film corner of the blogosphere, because by god there are a lot of blogs that have earned it - and this is another way to find another dozen blogs I ought to be reading every day.

So then: Three rules has the thinking blogger award meme:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

Three rules, and five blogs that make you think. Lots of blogs make me think - narrowing down, even trying to avoid blogs already named (in this meme outbreak), ain't easy. These are all blogs I find informative and inspirational (that's foreshadowing, by the way), that (with one rather huge exception) I don't see linked to nearly as much as I think they deserve.

1. Roslindale Monogatari - Michael Kerpan has been a regular (perhaps the leading) poster on the Ozu yahoo group since I started reading it, and now he has a blog. He posts weekly roundups of films seen, mostly Asian, especially classic Japanese films - with summaries and screen shots, lots and lots of screen shots. His blog is a constant reminder of the depth - the unexplored depths, even to as much of a Japanophile as myself - of Japanese cinema, and he is (at the blog and elsewhere) a great source of information about those films.

2. Strange Culture - RC left a couple comments here a month or so back and I started reading his blog and it has quickly become a favorite. He writes about films, religion, culture, their intersections - posts like his recent pair on information and inspiration are pretty darned near the definition of "blogs that make you think." Good stuff.

3. Quiet Bubble - Walter at Quiet Bubble is another polymath -writing about film, comics, literature, music, roadside attractions, sometimes all at once - always elegantly and engagingly. I don't have much more to say - click the links, and it should be obvious what I mean.

4. Talk to me Harry Winston - Tram writes about movies, plus politics, culture, art, etc., all with wit and insight. And her blog is where I found the links to Todd Haynes' Superstar! (Still available, by the way.) Another fine site.

5. And finally, engaging in a bit of unabashed hero worship - even though he's probably been named as a "thinking blogger" about 50 times already.... The inventor of the blog-a-thon, and, as far as I'm concerned, the center of the film blogging universe (the best comment section there is) - Girish Shambu.

And that's it - thanks again to Moviezzz for pointing to me, and it makes me happy to be able to recognize some of the other blogs I have enjoyed and learned from. Thanks to all!