No, not THAT kind of award, silly. This kind.
Tim Lucas, the formidable talent behind Video Watchdog (the magazine and the blog), not to mention the most mind-blowing cinema-biography ever (Mario Bava: All The Colors of The Dark), was kind enough to bestow upon this site the Dardos Award, a mysterious honor, but a real one. An honor that comes with an obligation. To wit:
"The Dardos Award is given for recognition of cultural, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the web.
The rules are: 1)Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog. 2) Pass the award to another 5 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know that they have been selected for this award."
The five I'm passing to are after the jump.
The rules as I read them imply that the award is best bestowed on single-author blogs, so that's what I'm sticking with. (Apologies to the great Vinyl Is Heavy, not to mention The House Next Door.)
The Self-Styled Siren: Of course. Campaspe is an elegant, engaging, often moving writer. Sometimes I believe she has the most exquisite all-around sensibility on the web entire.
Like Anna Karina's Sweater AKA Filmbrain: Andrew Grant has a keen eye, a ready wit, and a depressive disposition, making him not only one of the finest critics in the blogosphere but one of its most endearing personalities as well. He's unfailingly passionate, sometimes to the detriment of his emotional well-being, which makes him all the more admirable. Yes, he's a friend, but all of the above can be readily gleaned by reading him, which you should.
Girish: How someone can be so thoroughly erudite and so supremely humane is something of a mystery to me. But I aspire to his condition nonetheless.
Cinemasparagus: Craig Keller is acute, thorough, sometimes epigrammatic, sometimes contrarian, and has, with a notable exception (which we'll get to some other time) one of the best bullshit detectors around.
Cinetrix: One of this blogger's earliest inspirations, and I know that goes for a lot of others, too. Nobody is better at seemingly off-hand brilliance, of both the snarky and non-snarky varieties.
There you have it. Awardees, go and do likewise!
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Criminy, you sure are handy with a compliment when you want to be. I'm ashamed to admit that, while I know OF all these sites, I don't frequent them. Part of that is because I'm a bit late to the whole "frequenting of blogs" thing, but also, in the case of Girish, for instance, his erudition is so erudite that every time I've been to his site I feel like I'm in way over my head.
Posted by: bill | January 21, 2009 at 01:09 PM
I think you deserve an award for having the balls to post on Big Hollywood.
Posted by: Dan Coyle | January 21, 2009 at 01:12 PM
What? I'm sorry, it will be a while before I can respond ... must install shunt to deflate my overgrown head after reading such effusive praise.
Your other assessments are dead-on accurate, however.
Posted by: Campaspe | January 21, 2009 at 02:15 PM
Crikey, it's an honor to almost-but-can't-because-of-the-rules be nominated. Great choices all around, Glenn.
Posted by: Keith Uhlich | January 22, 2009 at 09:08 AM
Wow -- I'm all chuffed over here! I haven't won anything since being voted "Most Likely to Suffer a Nervous Breakdown Before 30" in high-school.
Posted by: Filmbrain | January 22, 2009 at 11:51 AM
Yea... thanks for the non-nod nod, man. Glad we're "great" over here. Like, a lot. That's some rare company, I gotta say.
Posted by: Ryland Walker Knight | January 22, 2009 at 12:52 PM
Shucks, thanks! I'm adding this to my C.V., even though "earliest" does make me sound like I should be wheelchair shopping with my secret bunkermate Cheney...
Posted by: cinetrix | January 22, 2009 at 05:25 PM