By Mark Peranson

As one of the direst and most depressing seasons of tedious holiday Hollywood product comes to a limp head, we present another issue of Cinema Scope that tries best to ignore most of that, and instead reflect on the films that mattered on the festival circuit (and, some, beyond) these past few months. And many of these films, keen readers will discover, have certain common concerns having to do with how reality is represented, taking on this concern on a formal level as well. There are far too many films made in the world, and choices have to be made on an issue-to-issue basis as to what films to cover. So please keep that in mind, and do your best to read this Cinema Scope as a related whole, as opposed to a collection of isolated pieces.

You know, I could make further pontifications about trends in the world of cinema and pressing issues of our time and other shit like that, as is the custom in an editor’s note, but I never really care about those things—so instead I will turn to a more pressing issue for my time. It’s merely something that has really been bugging me recently—it bugs me more and more with each passing issue. Well, it’s really been bugging me for about five years.  This is also a subject of imminent concern to the way that Cinema Scope is presented to the public on a daily basis and, as such, may make this the most important editor’s note ever written. For the first little while in the life of any magazine, or any product in general, one can’t fault the public for taking a while to catch on to the nuances. And, yes, I know we haven’t spent tens of thousands of dollars on branding or advertisements of this antiquated product, the printed film magazine.

But still, people, the name of this magazine is Cinema Scope. Two words. Not CinemaScope, which I believe is a registered trademark of the 20th Century Fox corporation. Not Cinemascope, which I don’t even know what the hell that means, really. Cinema Scope. Two words.  Sorry, a one-word titled film magazine just doesn’t make sense.

Now there are a lot of words in the world, and not everyone is a perfect speller. But in every editor’s note for the last almost ten years, the title of the magazine, in its correct two word form, Cinema Scope, does appear (sometimes more than once!), which leads me to two possible conclusions (two, like “Cinema” “Scope”): nobody reads these editor’s notes, or nobody reads them carefully. I am thinking perhaps it is the latter. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t be bothering to write this note, and this note about this issue specifically.) I’m used to my last name being mispronounced, but come on people! Cinema Scope is not that hard. So some changes have to be made. Here’s a start: one might think it would be a good idea to pay attention to the title of a magazine before pitching its editor/publisher stories. My new rule, my New Year’s resolution if you will, is that I am no longer responding to emails where the name of this magazine is misspelled. The same goes for any bills that are sent to my attention. Now, happy holidays everyone.

Mark Peranson