Introduction: 2006 One Man Film Festival

Now is the winter of movie lovers’ discontent. The studios, still trying to shake off their post-Oscar hangovers, dump last year’s bad decisions—Failure to Launch—into the multiplexes. Meanwhile, erstwhile distributor of indie and foreign films Wellspring Media has been swallowed whole by hype-and-cash-bloated mini-studio The Weinstein Company:

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0609,kaufman,72356,20.html

It’s already too late to catch most of the Oscar-nominated films in theaters (how did I not see Munich?), yet still too early to see them on DVD.  

So what’s a movie fan to do? Join me here. Over the next few weeks I’ll be programming a little virtual film festival I’ve dubbed “The 2006 One Man Film Festival,” offering up a list of 10 or so exemplary films from a variety of genres, more of a sampler of the riches of cinema than a series of proverbial top 10 lists.