Bernardo Villela is like a mallrat except at the movies. He is a writer, director, editor and film enthusiast who seeks to continue to explore and learn about cinema, chronicle the journey and share his findings.
When I posted an update in January of last year hinting at the eventual installment of the BAM Awards I figured I would post all the winners, including the special awards written up in separate posts, at the same time. Because that’s how I’d come to do it lately. Though I didn’t expressly stated, I thought I would do so again…
…but as I got to drafting some of these posts, I realized I didn’t want to have any of the honorees lost in the shuffle of a barrage of new posts all on the same day, so starting tomorrow (March 6th, 2024) I will post one of the special category winners daily. I will pause on Sunday and more than likely live blog the Oscars, then release the remaining BAM Award results on March 11, 2024 as previously planned.
This is just a quick site update to say that I will begin to phase back in the use of foreign titles starting tomorrow (i.e. original titles of foreign films alongside the English-language translation of the title). It was a practice I did away with due to both some laziness on my part and an unsubstantiated self-consciousness about using the original title coming off as somehow pretentious or pedantic.
This movie is not just about Search Engine Optimization, but one that I find relevant to many films, as their original titles might say something that can only truly be conveyed in the film’s native language and needs to be altered in order to communicate the same idea in English.
The Chambermaid Lynn (Das Zimmermädchen Lynn) (2014)
In short, the more I learn about language, my native one and foreign ones, the more this move seems necessary.
In beginning to build my Best of 2023 a few days ago List I realized I never made my Best Films of 2017 on Letterboxd public after the BAM Awards. It is now. Enjoy!
Since Pestilence has made itself omnipresent in our lives things have been slow on this blog.
However, even before this New Year began I started working on making this year more active on this blog than 2022 was, with the most recent post being in June.
The first bit of business is that the BAM Awards will be occurring with nominations coming on January 23rd and honorees being announced on March 11th. Each a day before the Oscars do their thing. Yes, I will live blog the Oscars if only since at this rate Timothée Chalamet will likely be in a sheer dress.
But there will be short films posted, some reviews, and if I get to writing them some thoughts on the current state of things because Warner Bros. Discovery by themselves are giving us all enough to be angry about.
More to follow soon. Happy new year, such as it is.
It’s been far too long since I’ve posted here, but the ongoing pandemic has changed pretty much everything about everything. There have been times where I’ve felt the itch but not scratched it, so some housekeeping will have to be done to get this site more active again. First, some updates on year-end stuff.
Usually, around this time I will have announced the BAM Award winners and on occasion posted a film discoveries list. That’s obviously not happened yet this year, not only that I’m ill-prepared to start soon. Also, in recent years I’ve been scrambling and have come close to making what I would consider mistakes in my nominations as decisions have been made nearing the deadline. To avoid that phenomenon, and to give myself time to gather my thoughts, I will announce nominations on Monday, February 7th (the day before the Academy Award nominations) and will announce winners on Saturday, March, 26th (the day before the 94th Academy Awards).
My qualifying period will remain unchanged: January 1, 2021-December 21, 2021.
Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Podcast (Logan Kim) in Columbia Pictures’ GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE.
Film discoveries will be posted before then.
And I might be doing a 31 Days of Oscar series of posts again in March, and have considered rounding up films for Short Film Saturdays as I viewed quite a lot of shorts in 2021 (it’s what most of my Criterion Channel viewing was).
Other updates will follow, but at least giving myself the start of a new plan for this site will allow me to more easily balance this with my other writing interests (another update on that will follow). One thing I wanted to was to have more Film Thought posts, but I have forgotten to jot down some of my ideas in that regard, but it’s something I will most definitely consider.
In the meantime hold tight. Posts will come anew with greater frequency.
My last post on this page went live just after the pandemic. However, I wrote it before everything went upside down.
Most of the time during this year I’ve been either reading or writing to escape into fiction of my own creation and not. For a lot of the year I didn’t watch many movies, in the beginning watching movies reminded me that I couldn’t “go” to the movies.
I’ve recently updated my author page for anyone interested in my fiction.
As the pandemic has dragged on and I started to miss the ritual of watching movies I started incorporating it into my daily schedule. You can follow me on Letterboxd to see what I’ve been watching.
However, like many people what I gravitated to were comfort films or older new-to-me titles. What is under consideration for my annual BAM Awards skews more towards shorts this year, and I’ve not broken them down into considerations yet.
I’ll not do shortlist, but nominations on January 3rd and awards on January 10th should still happen.
I have no idea yet what they’ll look like and they might be bad like much in 2020, but for years I’ve come to realize that when you can’t see everything personal awards are more like a yearbook. You may feel differently in years to come, but this is how you felt and reacted at the time.
It’s been a craptacular year, I’ve not seen much, but I will try and celebrate what made it less so.
I’ve decided that Blogathon’s might be the best way to get me back in a film-writing groove. As such, I have entered two forthcoming ones…there may be more soon to follow.
Two I am currently drafting, so I will have three coming back-to-back-to-back.
For the above blogathon I will be writing about Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.
As I’ve had occasion to mention when I have happened to post this year: I am still here. Until late Spring (early Summer in the moviegoing calendar), I at least stopped by to say “Yes, I am still here, but here’s why I’ve not been as active…” that slowed to a halt after a guest post on Rupert Pupkin Speaks.
“Life finds a way,” can mean a lot of things and one is that it can get in the way a bit.
Much of what was occupying my time earlier in the year still was and is: much more fiction writing, some in preparation for the next volume of this series of short stories I’m working on and some for other pursuits.
I hope to be able to post more next year. One thing that spoiled me in 2017 and into early 2018 was that I had many reviews ready to post for older titles that kept the site active without my adding to the backlog of content. Maybe knowing I have to create the BAM posts will bring forth more posts afterward.
The Movie Rat 