A Year of NC at the Movies

It’s been a year since Rob Gray joined the crew at Numéro Cinq and took over the nascent NC at the Movies series. Only a year, but he has made himself a mainstay of the community. I originally set him up as a kind of duke or baron in my Internet kingdom. I said he could do what he wanted within his fiefdom. And he has made that slot unique, bizarre, macabre, exciting, erotic, stylish and always surprising and delightful. He has contributed dozens of short movies and movie commentaries. I don’t know of another publication with a feature remotely like this. It’s gone well beyond any editorial fantasy I might have had at the beginning.

Not only that, but as an editor with his own domain, Rob has brought in other exceptional movie commentators — Jon Dewar, Sophie M. Lavoie, and Megan MacKay. He has also contributed poetry, fiction and a complete screenplay to the magazine. And just last issue he started a new hybrid series of publications, coupling  poets with critics in a single hybrid piece — see “Stray Dog Poetics” with poet Shane Rhodes and critic Rob Ross.

To acknowledge Rob’s profound (and, yes, often exuberantly eccentric) contributions to NC, I’ve devoted 10 slots on the slider at the top of the page to some of my favourite pieces, including, yes, the ever popular Treevenge by Jason Eisener (the Christmas movie that proved to me the truly depraved nature of Rob Gray’s mind) and Pedro Pires’s Danse Macabre (which I adore — go figure).

I look at the list of movies and, momentarily, I bask in the glow of accomplishment — we really have created something unique and beautiful at NC.

dg