January 3

Here is the idiotic quotation of the day, from Mark Peranson, the editor of Cinema Scope: "Let me make a controversial statement: by and large, a film that most people have heard of is by its very nature less interesting than a film that only a few programmers or critics have seen." And I thought I was elitist. The great novelist and book critic Arnold Bennett taught a hundred years ago that there is no simple relationship between a work's fame and its quality; a famous book may be a good book or a bad book; an unknown book may be a good book or bad book. You would think that lesson would have sunk in by now. Peranson's thought is illuminating with respect to the recently announced TIFF Cinematheque best-of-decade list; his sort of preening -- "It's a better film if I've heard of it and you haven't" -- seems to have been a guiding principle for a number of the participants in that survey. I'm all for celebrating the less-known, but this sort of haughty attitude wins cinephilia no friends or converts.

Oh well, on to more positive thoughts! The excellent litblog The Mookse and the Gripes ran a very nice comprehensive feature on all the short fiction that ran in The New Yorker in 2009, and is running an ongoing discussion forum on New Yorker short fiction this year. This kind of effort is genuinely helpful, as opposed to divisive statements from the likes of Peranson:

http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2009/12/21/year-in-review-the-new-yorker-short-fiction-of-2009/

Among notables born on this date are J.R.R. Tolkien -- I think you've all heard of him; actors ZaSu Pitts, Mel Gibson, Dabney Coleman, Robert Loggia, and Ray Milland; musician Stephen Stills; Ukrainian composer Borys Lyatoshynsky; opera librettist Metastasio; British Prime Minister Clement Attlee; Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero; Australian novelist Henry Handel Richardson (like "George Eliot," a male pseudonym for a female author); poet John Gould Fletcher; English novelist and dramatist Douglas Jerrold; Expressionist painter August Macke; Maxene Andrews of The Andrews Sisters; Quebec dramatist Marcel Dube; film directors John Sturges and Sergio Leone; and the eccentric singer/songwriter Van Dyke Parks. What a great crew!