sdnative1
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
So Long
An existential fissure has opened in the universe. The thought of your retirement rattles the tectonic plates of my own mortality. I’ve been reading your reviews since a time when a southern Democrat without public marital issues occupied the White House and I could still ink a “1” on the left side of the digits when I wrote out my age. I’d like to say that the disquiet I have is some sort of empathy for you and your confrontation of your life’s passage, but that would be a lie. My discomfort is nothing but straight-up self-centered sympathy for my own loss: the loss of a cinematic North Star. Something has gone that I took for granted, and films will never be the same for me. In truth, I used you Duncan. I used you and your reviews. I used them to save me time and disappointment. I have never been much bothered by the loss of $2-$4-$6-$9.50 in going to see a bad film. It has always been the lost hours that truly griped me. Life’s too short to spend watching bad films. (Unless, of course, it was you watching those films so that I wouldn’t have to.) But now that’s over. And I’m left adrift to attempt to discern the quality of films I haven’t seen from the writing of other film critics. Suddenly, I feel nauseous. Maybe some reminiscences will calm my stomach. I remember first reading your column and being perplexed and annoyed, but, for some reason, I kept reading anyway. I remember trying to figure out your non-standard rating system until it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, one star was not an indictment of awfulness but simply meant “mediocre”—worth seeing, but not worth going to see. I remember opening the Reader to your column first for many years. I remember the post card you sent me with Clint Eastwood on the front in a response to a letter I wrote to you about how I wrote to Jules Feiffer in regards to his script for Resnais’ "I Want to Go Home". I remember your strong appreciation for Robert Wise and his work, an appreciation so strong that it inspired me to go meet him when I had the chance to do so and being glad I had done so. I remember many times sitting in a darkened theater as the startling pop of an old soundtrack announced the scratchy black-and-white opening credits to a film I would never, ever, have gone to see without your recommendation—and that I would have missed out on forever. In short, Duncan, you ruined movies for me by showing me what films could be. I don’t think I can ever repay you for that. Bon voyage, DS.— November 12, 2010 4:08 p.m.