Welcome to Pottersville

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 ...