“Bloggers and the writers who turn out well-crafted pieces on their own websites are free to write what they want. The best of them, such as Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule or Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun or Farran Nehme Smith at The Self-Styled Siren, give public voice to the way movies function as private obsession.

“Their film knowledge is broad and deep, but they wear that knowledge lightly. They understand that the true appreciation of any art begins in pleasure (and not in the “work” of watching movies). To read them is to read people grounded in the sensual response to movies, in what the presence or look of a certain star, or the way a shot is lit stirs in them. Reading these writers, I often feel that I’m in the presence of people dedicated to the notion of collective cultural memory in an era when instant obsolescence is the rule.” — from a non-linkable Charles Taylor piece about film criticsm in the Fall 2011 issue of Dissent.

I love Morgan and Smith but who the hell is Cozzalio? I haven’t been to Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule once in my life. Not once. Before this evening, I mean.