Caught Killer of Sheep with some of my classmates tonight. Charles Burnett's 1977 MFA Thesis Film at UCLA was shot in Watts on weekends and could not be distributed due to the cost of music licensing. Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film & Television Archive restored the movie and transferred it to 35mm from 16mm, Steven Soderbergh put up half of the $150,000 to secure the music rights, and the movie is making a limited tour of the country. It is a stunning black and white elegy to life in the ghetto, and that's before considering that it was shot as a film school thesis.

Thank goodness they secured the music rights (to all except "Unforgettable" by Dinah Washington for the last scene of the movie, but it's replaced by an encore performance of "This Bitter Earth" which is just as gorgeous); the soundtrack is amazing.

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