Kathryn R. Altman

I've been on a huge Altman kick for the past year, and it scares me that I'm running out of new ones to watch (think I'm down to Prairie Home Companion, Kansas City, and some of those weird ones he made in France), but this big coffee table book lovingly compiled out of his archival material will sustain me.

It includes a weird letter from Richard Nixon and a really nice essay by Kurt Vonnegut on Nashville with this:

"Most that has been done with a movie camera so far has been as silly as a penny arcade. But now Robert Altman has used the camera to produce a ribbon of acetate that, when illuminated from behind, projects onto a flat surface in a darkened room anywhere a shadow play of what we have truly become and where we might look for greater wisdom. The name of the film is Nashville."… (meer)