I’ve had an amazing time in Sarasota over the past week but, alas, I’ve headed back to New York for my next event: I’ve been invited to take part in the Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism and Feature Writing, a five day series of workshops and panels co-sponsored by the Museum of the Moving Image and the New York Times. I’ll be blogging as much as I can from/about the events, which run through Tuesday. In the meantime, you can browse the schedule and the list of participating speakers and journalists at the Museum’s website. Let me know if there’s anything in particular that you’d like to hear about.

As my fellow participant Doug Cummings puts it on his blog, “With the demise of so many newspaper and magazine film critical positions, and the continual growth of serious film writing and discussion on the Internet, this is an interesting time to be reviewing the state of the art.” Swap out the word “interesting” for “terrifying”, and you’ll get a sense of why this was something I wanted to be a part of. In order to write a movie blog for a living, you have to be completely present-focused; it can actually be a liability to look too far into the future. These next few days, for me, are all about taking a few days to confront the void that I spend most of my time pretending is not standing right before me. Wish me luck!