Started reading David Thomson's THE BIG SCREEN today and I swear I must have experienced six or seven shocks of perception in just the first equal number of pages. The perception does not have to do with what he sees, but how he understands what he sees, how different yet complementary that understanding is to mine, and how he shades it in the sharing of it. It's a rare pleasure to read about film and not feel you are being counseled or advised or worked-up but that you are following, with amusement and deepening appreciation, of your own free will, someone who is at least one step ahead of you and has a spring in that step.