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Updates will be few and far between for a while. It isn’t that I have stopped watching films on a daily basis, it is that now they are of a decidedly homogeneous variety. I have been approved to write an honors thesis, something I am very excited about. It is about America’s cultural memory of Vietnam, which includes historical events, campaigns, memorials, books, comic books, music, and, of course, film. Therefore, since I was approved for this thesis about a week ago, I have only been watching Vietnam films – a genre I was already familiar with, one I will soon be very knowledgeable about. So, in an effort to keep this blog alive, I have decided to use my recent fixation as an entry. The first widely viewed Vietnam film was John Wayne’s 1968 The Green Berets . Filmed during the war, it has the feeling of a World War II movie more than a Vietnam movie – the Vietnamese are portrayed very similar to the Japanese in The Bridge Over the River Kwai , and John Wayne’s patriarchal figure ...

Although summer does not technically end for another three weeks, I am back at college and working like a dog, so, as far as I am concerned, it is over. The summertime is typically when the biggest films of the year are released – not the award winning films, but definitely the films that justify Hollywood’s bloated budgets. This was a summer of sequels – another Harry Potter, Planet of the Apes, Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Scream, Hangover, Fast and the Furious… not really my thing but definitely movies that you probably heard much about. My favorite two films of the summer were not sequels, they were the rarity in the summer film scene – original, highbrow auteur pieces that still managed to bring in profits. As in, the kind only Woody Allen or Terrence Malick can create. It was a tough decade for Woody Allen. After a frighteningly prolific career, it seems as if he ran out of steam in the 00’s. I for one enjoyed most of the movies he directed in the decade, but admit they do n...

War films are a dime a dozen, so much so that even individual wars are now their own genre of film. There is a distinction between World War II films, Vietnam Films, the wars of old, and even fictional conflict. As a history major I am required to write a long essay for my degree and give a presentation, and mine will involve Vietnam films – I might dedicate a whole entry to that later. I am a big fan of the war genre, and could probably turn this entry into a top ten list if I really wanted to. My favorites are the ones with the best photography of the wars – All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, and The Thin Red Line. These films instill the fear and despair in the audience that is felt by the soldiers during battle. As a student of history, I am also a big fan of war films that recount stories, such as Joyeaux Noel, Downfall, and Gallipoli. Although dramatized, they offer a bit of insight into the events in a way that differs from a primary source. Thirdly, I love war f...

Note: I originally wrote this article in 2011, and in July 2015 accidentally deleted it. When I reinstated it I decided to revise a lot of it. I find that I miss Roger Ebert whenever a great film is released, as I would love to be able to read his thoughts on films like Birdman or Boyhood. I highly recommend the documentary about his life, titled Life Itself.   The film critic – perhaps, in many ways, the most useless job on the planet. Nobody lives or dies, goes hungry or starves, or makes any important life change whatsoever based on the opinion of a film critic. I decided not to go to film school because I could not see myself doing anything important with a film degree. Most audiences pay no attention to these journalists, and often critics are the butt of a joke for poorly rated popular filmmakers. Still I am very grateful for those who have taken up the occupation – I personally read film criticism and, obviously, write it for my own enjoyment. I am a fan of AO Scott, Pe...

I have alluded to being a student of history, and not film, a number of times, and this fact becomes especially relevant when I watch old movies – for our purposes, 1939 and before. To most film buffs, an old movie is appreciated for everything it achieved with its limitations, and for how well the story has stood up over time. While I would agree with them, I get a little something more out of it as well. An old movie is a relic of its time; we, the viewer, can see a contemporary portrayal of the great depression thanks to Frank Capra, we can see German innovation thanks to Fritz Lang, and we can laugh with the long deceased Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. The actors and directors are long dead by now, yet we are forever linked to them through this wonderful medium. Many young people today think this man launched the world into the biggest war in history What really sets my generation apart is that we will be the first generation without a single living link to these old films. Soo...

When I was a kid I used to watch Home Movies on Adult Swim, a show about kids who try to make movies with a hand held camera. I remember the main character, who was the director, saying at one point that he was going to switch roles with his friend and become the actor, because every director wants to act, and every actor wants to direct. Hollywood keeps proving this statement true. Spike Lee regularly appears in his own movies, Tarantino has done it, Kevin Smith wrote Silent Bob for himself, David Lynch acted in Twin Peaks, Martin Scorsese, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Fritz Lang, the list goes on of directors who have appeared in their own films. Then there are those who have had full time jobs as both actors and directors, most notably Orson Welles and Clint Eastwood. Both of them can be studied in either context, and often appear in their own work. But what I’m getting to are the actors, who make it big in Hollywood, and then try their hand at directing. These films are what interest...

I apologize for the second lapse in updates. I moved back to America from England, and have not been moved to update since returning to my native country. I’ve still been watching new films on a daily basis, however, and have a whole list of new entries I want to put in eventually. As long as I am sure my opinions are better than yours, I will continue writing. Anyway, now that I have put myself on a pedestal I suppose I must deliver, so here’s an entry I have been wanting to write ever since I began this blog, a best to worst list of the films of Quentin Tarantino. I, like every other college age male, am a huge Tarantino fan. He is at the same time subtle and extreme, and his overall style is so personal that within minutes you can tell you are watching a Tarantino film. So, from the bottom, here is a list of his films. Missing from the list will be True Romance, Four Rooms, Sin City, and the episode of CSI he directed, as I don’t classify them as Tarantino enough to make the cut...

This is, first and foremost, a film blog, and I intend to keep it that way, but there is something I want to say that isn’t about films, and I need a public forum, and this is all I have. I have been into punk music for years now, and that extended into folk punk. One particular artist, Pat the Bunny, has had my attention for a while now, his bands Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains and Wingnut Dishwashers Union, are my favorite of the genre. Johnny Hobo’s songs will make the listener extremely sad, and Wingnut Dishwashers will make them happy again. His albums will mark anyone willing to listen, and I classify him as a great inspiration. For those who don't know, this blog is named after lyrics from a song posted at the bottom of the page - "And in my dreams, I am dirty broke beautiful and free." In December 2009, Pat went into a year long rehab program for a longstanding drug addiction problem, and when he came out half a year ago he started a new band, Ramshackle Glo...

Being a huge fan of auteur work, I am always on the look out for new directors that distinguish themselves against the backdrop of Hollywood. I enjoyed watching as Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky became accepted by the mainstream, and I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Miranda July, Jamin Winans, and Rian Johnson. Directing is an extremely hard field to break into, and most filmmakers have to give up all their artistic integrity in order to break into the Hollywood system. Being the son of David Bowie certainly helps though, and that’s whom I want to talk about in this entry, Duncan Jones, aka Zowie Bowie. Being the son of a rockstar certainly has its advantages, such as being able to pool funding for your film projects, but Jones still has to be able to convince people that he has personal artistic merit. His first film, Moon, was very successful in convincing people of that, myself included. An independent science fiction film, Moon tells the story of S...

I did a guest entry over at First Signs of Trouble, on my disapproval for Steven Spielberg. Go check that out and his other entries. Blog: http://firstsignsoftrouble.blogspot.com/ Entry link: http://firstsignsoftrouble.blogspot.com/2011/05/guest-blog-spielberg-giving-audiences.html

Star Wars fans tend to think of their films in a bubble, separated from the narrative of film history. That’s fine really, they know more about these films and the story than any other. It’s a fun and fleshed out universe, and if your willing to suspend your disbelief to the fullest extent, it can give you unlimited pleasure debating plot points, motives, back stories, or revision (Han Shot First! see above) What I want to do though is different from a regular fanboy blog, and contextualize A New Hope in film history, and underline its importance there.         I, unlike most fans, prefer A New Hope to The Empire Strikes Back . I love meeting the characters, the quotable dialogue, Luke’s realizations, the rescue of Princess Leia, and the explosion of the death star. I have always maintained that if the film had failed and no sequels had been made, the first film is self contained enough to stand on its own. However, in 1977, it did not fail. In fact, the oppo...

There is a lot of symbolism in film that people tend to overlook, the most obvious example being rain. Rain scenes are a pain in the ass to film; it doesn’t show up unless properly colored or backlit, it can be costly depending on the severity, it requires extra resources, can be noisy, and, obviously, makes the actors wet. Yet, several famous and beloved films go through the hassle of creating rain scenes. Spiderman, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Seven Samurai, Minority Report, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Raising Arizona, Millers Crossing, Platoon, Inception, and, most famously, Singing in the Rain, all have well known rain scenes in them. Hell, David Fincher even uses rain as a supporting character in most of his films. So, what’s the point, you might ask, if it is such a problem creating rain sequences? Why should directors bother? Well, different films use weather differently, so here are a few examples and how the effect works in each. So far in this blog I have been over...

How many times have you walked out of a movie, or talked about a movie you’ve recently seen or heard about, and heard someone say - “The book was much better.” Fair enough statement usually, except it is often followed with a phrase like “The books are always better.” I can’t stand that. Why should filmmakers bother adapting literature for the big screen if, in fact, the book will always be superior? Besides the fact that popular book adaptations such as the Harry Potter or Twilight films will gross nine figures regardless of whether or not they are any good, why should anyone bother with anything else? The truth is that the film is often better than the book. Now I am not arguing which is a superior art. Literature is much more important to intellectual thought than films are, and I would not ever open that statement up to argument. Part of it has to do with the work that’s placed on the reader with books; another part is the rich history of literature, compared to films which are on...

        Being in England during the NBA playoffs is hard for me. I was okay with not being able to watch the regular season, but as the Lakers and the Celtics are both being driven out I find myself desperate to watch these games. I’ve been a big basketball fan for a couple of years now, so to hold me over in these difficult times I watched two films about the sport. The first was Spike Lee’s He Got Game , starring Denzel Washington and, one of my favourite players, Ray Allen. The film is centers around a father son relationship between the two; Denzel’s character is imprisoned and is allowed out for a week to convince his estranged son to play for Big State University. Although the plot sounds a little iffy, the film is in regular Spike Lee top form. However, it was the second film I watched that I want to talk about now.         In 1988 PBS sponsored a couple of filmmakers to make a half hour television special about two kids from Chicag...

As I have mentioned before, I am a History major at Drew University doing six months abroad in England, and it is History, above film, which is my true passion. As a lover of both, it is often difficult to reconcile the two together. Films can be a great teacher of history, as they have explored Rome, Vietnam, both World Wars and the lives of several leaders and events in depth and from multiple angles. On the other hand, history is often inconvenient for filmmakers, so they take great liberties with rewriting it for their benefit. Directors like Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg are notorious for this. JFK, while undoubtedly a well-constructed film, is an appalling dishonor to American history. Shindler’s List, which the American Film Institute put in its top ten American films of all time list, packages the Holocaust, one of the greatest failures in human history, as a success story, choosing to focus on 6,000 people who are saved rather than the 6,000,000+ people who died. I simpl...

During the entire decade of the 1980’s Martin Scorsese chased after the success of his earlier years. He released Raging Bull in 1980, generally agreed upon to be one of the best films ever made, but failed to achieve another success on the same level until Goodfellas in 1990. The King of Comedy bombed hard at the box office, After Hours also failed to live up to commercial expectations, The Color of Money saw him jump into mainstream film making, and The Last Temptation of Christ barely succeeded in making back its budget, but very successfully pissed a lot of people off. It’s arguable that the most successful thing Scorsese created during the 80’s was the Michael Jackson Bad music video, although I won’t be the one making that argument. What I find most influential of this decade of work is the film After Hours. Starring Griffin Dune, the film marks the first time in over ten years a Scorsese film was not headlined by Robert De Niro. Dune, for his part, plays the part in way similar...

As a resident of New Jersey, New York City has always been within easy distance of me. There was a time two years ago when I would visit the city weekly. Now that I live in Old York, three thousand miles away, I realize how lucky I was to be so close to such an amazing city. As of now my only connection to the city is through the films I watch, and it is amazing what different directors make out of the city. I’m not talking about Marvel Superhero films that blow up the city in every film or hacks like Oliver Stone who film it in an outright pedestrian manner; instead, I’d like to highlight three directors and the diverse ways they shoot the city. As expressed in my last full-length entry, I am a huge fan of Woody Allen. And seriously, when discussing the way directors use New York City in film there’s no better place to start than him. He has continuously lived in New York City his entire life, and with the exception of Love and Death and Sleeper all of his finest films are New York f...

I just finished my second procedural essay this week, so I finally have time to write a new entry. I know it’s been a while but I hope to soon move back to a regular schedule. When I was nine years old I went with my older brother’s friend Tom and his mother Kathy to see a double feature. Mission to Mars and Erin Brokovich were both playing, and I was excited to see my first R rated movie. I remember it quite well, hiding my face throughout most of Mission to Mars, terrified of the deaths and the sacrificial suicide, and then laughing and having a good time in Erin Brokovich. That was the first time I decided that the MPAA rating system is nonsense, and I still stand by that today. Now I do not want to turn this into an article on censorship and ethics, that is a much longer argument that I’m not prepared to enter into. The simple matter is that the way the MPAA rating system works is harmful to movies. Filmmakers such as Darren Aronofsky, John Waters, David Lynch, Kevin Smith and...

There is one thing that every big name director has in common– they all at one point made their first film. In some cases the directors were experimenting, seeing how they could push cinema to its edges, because they had everything to gain and nothing to lose. David Lynch’s Eraserhead is probably the definitive example. Other times, directors make their debut with something safe and mainstream, such as David Fincher’s Aliens 3 . The directorial debut can go on to define their careers, such as Kevin Smith’s Clerks , or these films can be completely forgotten- Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire remains virtually unseen. What makes these films special is that their directors do not have a defined style to fall back on, they are usually not receiving funds from studios, and the director is filling more jobs than they would if they had the resources. This morning I watched Joel and Ethan Coen’s first feature film, Blood Simple . This was before the Best Picture Oscar for No Country for ...

Confession time: Robin Williams has always been one of my favorite actors. As a kid I could watch and rewatch his quick wit and crude manner in Popeye, Hook, Mrs. Doubtfire, Flubber, and, my favorite, Aladdin. As I’ve grown up, his serious films have continued to impressed me, such as Good Morning Vietnam, The Fisher King, Insomnia, Death to Smoochy, One Hour Photo, Good Will Hunting, and his smaller roles in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen or Deconstructing Harry. Williams largely avoids the hit or miss factor that plague so many other actors – if he’s in it, the films probably good, and probably because he is in it. So here is my homage to one of the best actors of all time. Robin Williams’ big acting debut was the character of Mork in Happy Days, and its spin off Mork and Mindy. His show ran for four seasons, and Williams earned a Golden Globe for his performance – his first of four. While Mork and Mindy was on the air, Williams starred as the titular character in Robert Altman’...