Cinematographer Rod Santiano has completely overhauled his website and blog, which brought to the surface a bunch of clips worth taking another look at.

One that brought back some fond memories for me was a clip from New York Doll, a documentary Rod largely shot about Arthur “Killer” Kane. I had first seen it in 2005. A bunch of us had just moved to Utah from Southern California to work on a series of children’s movies. In the middle of our first winter here, we piled in a couple of cars and headed up to the Sundance Film Festival, where it was screening.

It was my first trip to the film festival at Sundance. The place was suitably crowded and chaotic, but that helped contribute to the good vibe. I kept my eyes peeled for celebrities, but no luck. Other than Rod, that is.

We crammed inside the makeshift auditorium and watched the movie. I’m not just saying it when I tell you that it blew me away, it was so good. I confess my expectations are a little modest when it comes to being entertained by a documentary. I fully expect to be informed, of course. But thoroughly entertained along the way? Too much to hope for, right?

Wrong. New York Doll delivered on all fronts. I knew next to nothing about the band going in. It’s not exactly my style of music. But the story, centering on Arthur’s journey from glam/rock/punk icon to fallen and long-forgotten down and outer, clearly ravaged by his years of excess, to his conversion to the Church years later, and his eventual reunion with his band, with whom there had been some bad blood, left me speechless. Along the way, for bonus points, it taught me the complete history of rock and roll, as well as a heightened appreciation for the Word of Wisdom.

A sublime story of redemption. Check out this clip, New York Doll, from Rod’s freshly overhauled site.

Yes, Rod’s a friend. And yes, he very kindly helped me tidy up this blog with a spiffy new banner and font choices (thanks, Rod). But those are not the reasons his blog is the first to be featured three times on MDB.

It’s simply because he currently has the coolest blog in Mormon daddy-dom.

It’s celebrity week on his blog, “Notes from the Set,” as he is recapping the interviews he shot for the Billy Joel documentary, Last Play at Shea.

As you can imagine, a documentary on Billy Joel is likely to open some doors that are normally not easy to open. In addition to his interview of Billy and Sting, which were his first two blog postings featured on this site, this week’s posts on his site have included recaps of interviews he shot of Steven Tyler, Garth Brooks, Roger Daltrey, and everybody’s favorite Uptown Girl, Christie Brinkley.

But probably my favorite of the bunch so far is the post where he recaps the time he flew from Billy’s concert at Shea on Wednesday to London, interviewed Sir Paul on Thursday, the flew back to NYC on Friday to continue shooting Billy’s concerts. Rough life, I tell ya. Read all about his Sir Paul encounter here.

And as cool as that was, be sure to read how he topped off the London trip at the end of his post.