My partner and our chairman (and our Visionary Leader), Barnet Liberman, and I want to thank the IndiePix community for helping make this event — the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors — the success that it was. Thank you.

AJ (our co-host, from whom this idea sprang) and Danielle can tell you better how magical this event seemed, but not in some “never-never-land” way — magical in the sense of historic. I think we felt that this was a moment when a community of filmmakers and friends gathered to say — like Jason Kohn said in his acceptance speech — (except I’m going to quote from another movie) “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more!”

OK — step back here — the fact is that the affection and camaraderie among the attendees from Germany, Denmark, Brazil, and all over the States — as well as the warmth and good wishes of the many Academy Award winners who were among the presenters, and in the audience — the sense of good will was awesome. And the sense of community was part of the historic quality of the event.

IndiePix was warmly congratulated for having helped pull this off, and we were overwhelmed by the wave of affection that we received.

I want to share that with the IndiePix community. We did what we should have done. We did more than we thought we could. We did what we had to do. We did what we thought you would have wanted us to do. But we could not have done any of it without you.

Those who visit our site, who support IndiePix filmmakers, who browse our catalog of great independent films — we could not have done this without you. You are the ones who gave us this opportunity through your support. And I hope you are proud of us for having given back to the community through this wonderful event.

There is more to do — and we’ll soon post Jason Kohn’s acceptance speech so you’ll see and hear his challenge. But I think we can — together — do much more. And we are emboldened to try with your support.

Thank you.

This is the quote, attributed to my filmmaking hero, Chris Marker, that long greeted visitors on the True/False Film Festival’s website. Chris Marker, the brilliant cinema-essayist/Marxist/philosopher, would have had a blast at our inaugural Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Film this past Tuesday night. As one of the only people in New York who hasn’t blogged about it yet, i feel a little bit of guilt, but the truth is I’m still recovering. And well, magic is hard to process and analyze. So once the stardust dissipates into the atmosphere, I will be able to take stock of what was truly one of the most incredible nights of my life. Until then, I leave you with a couple of photos from the event.

Atonement is a movie that starts out engaging and ends up off-putting. The visuals of the first (let’s say) section are shimmering and colorful and somehow detailed enough to be realistic. And Keira has never looked better. The scene in which she and James McAvoy get physical up against the bookshelf is some hot, hot stuff. And then the little blonde girl tells a lie and James goes to prison. And then… and then… and then I have no idea what happens. It’s like a totally different movie. Gone is the compelling narrative structure and rich eye candy. This movie has so many jumps forward and backward in time it’s like a poorly written episode of Quantum Leap. And don’t even get me started on the “twist ending” that seemed to have audience members unanimously reevaluating their place in the universe. It comes off as yet another unnecessary layer of confusion. Does this chick ever tell the truth?

I have not been a fan of the web 2.0 concept and social networking as the tidal wave of the future.

I know. MySpace had 55 million users in February and Facebook had 20 million. (Nielsen ratings) So what’s your point? Go along with the crowd? I don’t think so.

If you are on Facebook you can use “Flickr” to list the movies you like and then the other 19,999,999 people on the service can see what you liked and give you a “hot or not”. Great. Another popularity contest. An internet push toward conformity, toward going along. Just what we need.

You can’t list independent films. Maybe we should fix that.

But … just the other day, the New York Times (when it wasn’t busy covering the latest yellow journalistic scandal) found time to report on a study that says that 7 out of 10 people who are deprived of their cell phones and internet connections become depressed. Those seem like highly repeatable scores. We could all probably agree that those are reasonable numbers. But so?

About the same time, the Financial Times (really probably consistently the best newspaper today) reported on a study about loneliness. The researcher had concluded that perhaps the feeling of loneliness is a darwinian mechanism to drive us into groups because humanity needs community and the opportunities for specialization that communities offer in order to survive and thrive. Someone said something like: “it takes a village … “

How interesting is the combination of these two reports? Maybe the blossoming of social networks — via cell phones, text messages, and internet sites — is really driven by some biological/genetic force that is bigger than all of us.

I may have to take all of this a little more seriously.

I read the book when I was 12. Imagine that. How I was not scarred for life is beyond me. Maybe I was. Then I saw the movie. Let me take this opportunity to ask Mom and Dad, “Guys, where were you? You let me watch this?” Pet Sematary contains a moment, one of those moments that made you lunge for the VCR, that still scares me stiff to this day. I actually have a list of those. In no particular order…

1. The reveal of Judge Doom’s true identity in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It made red eyes and high voices officially uncool.
2. When Angelica Huston takes her face off in The Witches. Again, I had read the book, and again, I was like, “Fo real?”
3. The shot of the dead girl in the closet in The Ring. Saw it in theaters with my girlfriend in high school. Figured PG-13, blonde reporter, haunted videotape… how bad could it be? Bad. BAD.
4. I shit you not, the ending of an episode of the Goosebumps TV Series, in which these kids’ friends turned out to be thin, green, bug-eyed aliens who were just fattening them up to eat them. Bummer.
5. When Zelda sits up in bed in Pet Sematary. More on that…

I recently watched Pet Sematary for the second time. I am ten years older. I watched it at night, but with all the lights on, the volume way down, and half looking at my laptop. I also watched it entirely on the menu screen, so that the movie itself only occupied the top right-hand corner of the screen. It still scared the ever-loving shit out of me. Zelda has reacquired the role of “character who I see standing behind me in the mirror before I turn the lights on in the bathroom when I get up to pee in the middle of the night.”

Pet Sematary is a hell of a horror movie. It was Stephen King’s first crack at a screenplay, and he did a bang up job, as did director Mary Lambert. The movie is creepy, atmospheric, sad, upsetting, gory, violent, and ultimately inspired. And proof, without a doubt, that “sometimes dead is better.” Make that always.

Tops my “haven’t seen it yet but most want to” list this week.