http://chud.com/articles en-us N/A nicknunziata@gmail.com Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:39:41 EST 20 http://chud.com/articles/blogs/877/subtly-intact-in-an-endless-world-of-blah-blah-blah-or-Rari-Quippe-Boni.html


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]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/877/subtly-intact-in-an-endless-world-of-blah-blah-blah-or-Rari-Quippe-Boni.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/730/Fade-to-Black-Label.html
Ah, and then I stumbled upon Black Label.  It is cheaper than the all-too-fancy sounding Pabst Blue Ribbon, and just as delicious.  It is so cheap in fact that my Uncle, who owns a bar/restaurant gave me a six pack when I asked him to sell me one.  But these are the least of my concerns, what is far more important is the ol' badass factor that comes with it.  You are drinking something that is calling itself Black Label...this way you know that this shit is for real!  None of that "infused with lime" shit here, you are getting the real deal.  A badass Beer that has been shared by many badass men that existed before your time.  Steel workers, mechanics, miners, construction workers, town drunks with Bukowski dreams and Waits playing in their head.  This is a Beer that tells you just how badass you are...I mean it's fucking Black Label, the kind of sweet nectar that the devil dreams about and the rebel uses to fuel his drunken fist fights.  So as I sit back and marvel at the crimson and gold can with the distinctive sign of badassnes written on it in big bold letters, I toast Black Label Beer, and the fact that is bringing the badass back to drinking! 


]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/730/Fade-to-Black-Label.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/541/Not-So-Tardy-to-the-Party-War-inc.html War, inc.  Cusack was on the verge of brilliance, channeling his stellar mumbling performances from his previous characters, a little Lane Meyer, a little Lloyd Dobler, and a whole freakin' lot of Martin Blank.  And the latter seemed to be one of my big problems with the film.  Now, don't get me wrong Grosse Pointe Blank was an amazing movie, and late in the nineties reintroduced my internal love for both Cusack and the Violent Femmes, but I'm just not sure if I wanted to see it again, with a little less whimsy.  Cusack's  thinking hit-man seemed a little too lost and forcibly rough around the edges, and the nightmarish flash-back sequences left me disinterested and a little angry with the fact that they existed at all.  He was a much more believable troubled hit-man in Grosse Pointe, and you didn't even need corny flashbacks to tell you so.


The man behind the helm of this film, Joshua Seftel, borrows a little too much from here and there with mixed results.  The tone of the movie is off the charts at some points. I felt as though Seftel took a dash of Mel Brooks, a dab of poignant Terry Gilliam at his satirical best, and then mixed in some Michael Moore at his obesely annoying worst.  The political and social messages were valid, but there was no real digging into the film to find them.  They were nicely placed on the surface and there was no way you could avoid them...which can be a problem.  Say you are somebody who just watches movies for entertainment value, you might not be my most favorite person because of this, but still at a base level that is what movies are supposed to be.  The overtly obvious message of this film can easily turn those people away from the large levels of enjoyment that can be had in this film.  Although I said Seftel borrows heavily from the aforementioned directors, their names alone (minus Moore) should let you know just what kind of great visual and mental entertainment you are in store for.  In the end it doesn't really take a genius to figure out the message behind the film anyways, so there should have been no real reason to make it that obvious.  The overall effectiveness of the message is drastically hurt by the fact that you don't get the satisfaction of figuring it out on your own.

As far as certain social messages go though, this film contains a great one.  Almost every part of the film that deals with Hilary Duff's character, pop-star extraordinaries, Yonica Babyyeah (yes that is actually her name) is perfectly acted and extremely valid in today's celebrity-worshiping climate.  The bit with the sex tape is quite funny.  Overall I am quite surprised that I enjoyed Hillary Duff's performance,  and although it wasn't quite a stretch for her, it was still good.  Joan Cusack played the same character she usually does, and one almost exactly the same as Marcella from Grosse Pointe, but as usual she was still good and great fun to watch, as was Ben Kingsley and Dan Aykroyd.  The only character I could really care less about was Marisa Tomei's journalist-with-a-huge-heart Natalie Hegalhuzen.  It was the same blah character you see so much these days, a journalist who will do anything for the story, with a ridiculously large humanistic streak.  If anyone the sees this film watches the t.v. or reads the newspaper you know most journalists don't actually care this much about people, or telling the truth for that matter.  In the end I don't really feel that Cusack's character even needed a love interest, and if she was taken out all together the movie would have been just as good, if not a little better due to lack of another Hollywood contrivance.

Although this whole review so far has concentrated mainly on the negatives, overall, this movie was quite the enjoyable experience.  And if you've seen the trailers, liked Grosse Pointe Blank, or likes the idea of a hit-man hitching a ride on a quadriplegic's motorized wheelchair all the while with guns-a-blazin', then you'll see the movie anyways and enjoy it despite it's faults.  Therefore I really didn't feel like I needed to explain what made this movie good, because most already know.  I watched this over a week ago and am just writing about it now because I've been quite busy, but the time off to think about the movie definitely helped me give a better critique.  The faults of this movie are just too much of a hindrance to be overlooked, but in the end it's still a good time.

6.9/10


]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/541/Not-So-Tardy-to-the-Party-War-inc.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/484/Not-So-Tardy-to-the-Party-The-Strangers.html The Strangers  was a well crafted piece of horror-genre love, and I took to it immediately.  The friend I saw the movie with was telling me about previous reviews he had read of the film, and said that one critic called it Funny Games without anything behind it.  This exemplifies one of the huge problems I have with critics these days (other than the fact that barely anyone ever breaks down the formal and theoretical aspects of a film, and just gives their opinion with nothing to really back it up, other than the fact that they are published and you are not therefore you must listen!) most of them feel that if a film doesn't have a political or social message then the movie has nothing to say at all.  Well as I'm sure you all know, this is complete shit.  What about a film that comments on the conventions and the overall make-up of it's own genre?  Films making a statement about film are just as important as films force-feeding you some convoluted left or right wing message, just look at Sunshine, as a film it was well made (even though the end was a horrible let down), but what it had to say about the present and future of cinema was pretty damn amazing!

The Strangers does indeed have a message, and that message is that horror movies aren't old news yet.  You haven't seen everything that can be done.  One of the main problems I have with the film is that it didn't flesh out its ideas quite well enough.  It was so close, but never reached the full potential that was hiding around every corner.  One of the major problems I have with horror films is their use of music to tell you when to be scared.  If a horror film is truly a good horror film, shouldn't the audience feel fear when things are scary, not when the music swells up and tells you that it is scary, or even worse, when the music swells up and tells you when things are about to get scary.  The sound in The Strangers was top notch, and other than a few of those previously described moments, I feel that this was one of the strongest parts of the film.  Every door and window knock was loud and punctuating.  The soundtrack, with great old warblers thrown in with some contemporary folk artists, fit the mood and the environment perfectly.  Bryan Bertino even took a page out of Gaspar Noe's book, and utilized gut wrenching noised over and over again to both annoy the viewer and also raise the tension level.

The other thing that made this movie was Bertino's use of framing.  About half way through the film you start to expect the masked terrorizers who pop up out of nowhere and linger in the shadows to be in every shot.  And why is this you ask?  It is because Bertino would often frame his characters from a distance, and using wide angle shots, give a lot of "empty space" to the frame.  That empty space is the perfect habitat for a random "pop-up" to come and scare the shit out of you.  Or better yet, to not show up, which in the end became even scarier, because you are sitting there wanting that empty space to be filled, wanting something to happen and when nothing did it drove you mad, but in the best way possible.

My only real issue with the film was the end, which I don't want to discuss fully for the people who haven't seen this film yet.  If it was about 8 minutes shorter this film would have been almost perfect.  Hell, I could have sat there fore three hours just watching the masked killers toy with the two main characters.  It is obvious to see that Bertino has a deep fond love for this genre, (as evidenced by his use of the opening narration) and he knows what works and what doesn't and tried his best to make a film that showed the genre its potential.  If the remake, and obviously the original, Funny Games and The Strangers have shown horror filmmakers anything, its that torture-porn is out, and smart visceral horror films are in! I hope the trend continues.

8.3/10
]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/484/Not-So-Tardy-to-the-Party-The-Strangers.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/443/TARDY-TO-THE-PARTY-Lars-and-The-Real-Girl.html Lars and The Real Girl late the other night, and while I remember being entertained at certain points in the film, when it was all over nothing really changed for me.  I actually had to go back to look at a few things because I had already forgot them.  Therefore I am honestly left with not a whole lot to say about the movie.  It started a little too quirky for it's own good, but that seems to be the new in "indie" thing, quirky characters that you can't help but love because, well, you just feel sorry for them.  I found myself feeling nothing for Lars (played aptly by Ryan Gosling).

Cutesy quirkiness aside, one of my other major problems with the film was just how structured it was.  For a film that is dealing with, on some small level, fetish acceptance, and more obviously contemplative outsider characters, the camera never really gave anyone the chance of development.  The camera never just lingered for a few seconds after the action of the plot took place to watch the characters struggle with a situation or just go about their daily routines.  You saw the action and then there was a cut to the next moment that would move the awkwardly devised plot forward.  There was only one brief scene in which the camera seemed to loosen up, and where the movie felt actually human to me, and this was the bowling scene.  Characters were left to react to the game and each other, and it flowed freely around the space, bringing the characters to life for once.  Unless young director Craig Gillespe had every intention of making the film as lifeless and still as Bianca, (the sex doll with a heart of gold played elegantly by a sex doll with a heart of plastic) in which he would have been greatly successful, the movie just floundered and flopped like a dieing fish, and fell apart completely at the end when the town experienced an It's A Beautiful Life moment and all came out to support Lars in his time of need.

After thinking about it for a little while though, there were actually two ways this film could have been good...but I think these theories are a stretch.

THEORY 1: Lars is actually kind of a funny asshole and just pulled the greatest prank ever on the people around him:
          
           After being completely fed up with everyone in town telling him that he is weird and introverted and trying to force his hand into some relationship to stand up to the "norms," Lars cracks    and decides to make everyone in his town feel just as silly as they make him feel.  Therefore he goes out and buys a sex doll, convinces the local medical doctor/convenient-therapist that he is delusional and that the only way to make it go away is to force the rest of the town to go along with it, and then laughs every step of the way as every person in town acts like a complete asshole when they give the anatomically correct Bianca a job, invite her to parties (without Lars), and actually vote her onto the school board (I am not kidding about these by the way, this shit actually happens).

THEORY 2: The film is actually a send up of the monotony of Hollywood story conventions:

           Although this theory is a little more plausible, it is still kind of ridiculous.  If Bianca was actually a stand-in for the basic female role in Hollywood films, and her existence was a comment on how it doesn't really matter if the girl is there or not, the story tropes we are used to can still be played out just as we expect and we'll roll with it, then this film would be marginally better.  Of course this would mean that the overall meaning was that the female character in any movie is just an objectified stand-in, just a good set of tits and a working vagina, and that Hollywood can just replace them with dolls and we will still be invested in it anyways.  I am in no way a feminist, in fact a lot of the time hardcore feminists really annoy me, but the fact that Gillespe manages to make his movie work with the doll in the roll, and that you would really have to read into this movie to see this as the overall meaning of the film, and also the fact that there is no other feminist portions of the film, or really strong female characters, makes me think this wasn't the truth behind the movie when all is said and done.


Also, the soundtrack was quite reminiscent of Jon Brion's score in Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, and the fact that they kept using that same piece of music over and over again, really bugged me and made me think that Gillespe was trying to make someone else's movie masked in some of his poorly fleshed out ideas. 

Even though this has been mostly negative, the film was still watchable and entertaining and Ryan Gosling and Emily Mortimer were quite good in their respective roles.  Overall I would give the film a 4.9/10.  Almost reached the 5, but not quite there.
]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/443/TARDY-TO-THE-PARTY-Lars-and-The-Real-Girl.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/426/TV-hasn039t-given-me-brain-rot-just-made-me-a-little-apprehensive-at-the-movies.html The Walking Dead series from beginning to where the last I had issue left off.  Therefore I decided to dive into some T.V. shows I had been putting off watching, mainly due to lack of T.V., or because I heard about them too late in the game and wouldn't even know where to begin if I just started watching what was on at the time.  Now I wont go into the details of how exactly I gained access to these shows because Big Brother is always watching, but I will say that it had something to do with the some sort of pirate infested web site and a program called transmission for Macs.

This did allow for me to watch some really great T.V. shows one episode after another with no commercial interruptions.  Over the next month and a half I gorged myself on amazing television. I started with LOST, I had seen the first season but had missed a lot, so I went back and started from the beginning again to give myself a little refresher.  Then I moved onto the first two seasons of The Wire, then I caught myself up on both versions of The Office, and the first two seasons of Extras, and finished with a bang with the all-too-amazing one-two punch of Battlestar Galactica (the mini-series right up to the end of season 3, webisodes included, thank you scifi.com), and Band of Brothers.  After this I had to take a little break.  It was far too much amazingness at one time, and I needed to give my brain and senses some time to recover.  Also the winter rager that had happened around the area had taken a little bit of a break, so I decided to venture out to the movies and catch Children of Men, it was in its last few weeks of playing and I was already behind with all of my friends, and I also had been craving it ever since I first laid my eyes on the trailer the previous summer. 

I don't really want to get into how amazing the movie was, maybe at some point I will do a TARDY TO THE PARTY write-up on it, but suffice it to say, the movie was beyond good.  It was even beyond amazing.  It was the best thing I had seen in theaters in a long time, and possibly one of the best films I had seen in years.  But I couldn't help fighting this strange feeling deep down inside, a feeling that actually made me question my fimic taste, but this was a very short-lived bout of self doubt.  It had finally dawned on me exactly what this feeling was...I felt a bit robbed.  It has nothing to do with anything the movie did, but it has to do with my ridiculous T.V. watching session the weeks before I watched the movie.  Television shows have gained an amazing production value, and people finally realized that better than average writing is the way to go if you really want both an addictive show, and good ratings.  The characters are given more time to change, and show humanistic qualities, and the plot lines are given more time to flesh themselves out, and in the case of a few shows that I watched, almost a whole season's worth of time to come to completion.  In the end The Wire, and Battlestar Galactica were like 10 plus hour long movies, and since neither are done yet (actually The Wire is done, but I still have hours and hours to catch up on) there is no feeling of loss to have...there is still more coming.  All of this though, leads to the feeling I keep getting after watching a new movie in the theaters, a feeling of "is this really it?"  After seeing a T.V. show with the writing and production value of a movie, one episode after the other, without a commercial, any two hour movie just pales in comparison.  They always end up feeling like a snip bit of something grander, and I am always left wondering what happens now that this plot is done, what is in store for the characters, or what happens with this minor character, I want to know more about them.  And this is a result of being exposed to T.V. shows where those questions get answered almost always.  Both Battlestar and the Wire were good at taking a character you think is merely a minor one and giving them time to be expounded upon at a later date, and also loving every second of it.

I'm not exactly sure where I am going with this though.  I am not upset at movies for being too short, and I am not upset at T.V. for finally realizing its potential (and that most people like the 16:9 aspect ratio, and the cinematic feeling of immersion it gives you).  Maybe I should be upset at my self and my addictive personality, for watching far too much T.V., and for doing it in a marathon and commercial-free way.  Now that I am back at school I am watching less T.V. and more movies and I do feel this strange inner turmoil beginning to settle itself within me.  But I fear what the future has in store, with no places of business in my town clambering for summer help, and am constantly left alone all day, bored and with a fast internet connection.  It's only a matter of time before I want to catch up on The Wire or finally give Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing the fair chance that it deserves.  What will this mean for the summer movies I can't wait to see.  Maybe there needs to be group meetings for people with T.V. consumption problems.  I just find it weird that the feeling I get after seeing a movie is not one I like, but I still really don't have anything in particular I am mad at.  The great filmmakers should continue to do what they do, and T.V. creators and writers need to keep up the good work.  I think I just need to start looking at them the way they are, two different mediums of entertainment, and just appreciate that they are doing just that, entertaining me.

p.s. I still haven't gotten a chance to see the new Indy movie yet, but now that I have waited so long and everyone else has, hopefully when I see it soon, it will be my next installment of Tardy to the Party!
]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/426/TV-hasn039t-given-me-brain-rot-just-made-me-a-little-apprehensive-at-the-movies.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/414/Big-Nothing-leads-to-Big-Problems.html Big Nothing was a little gem that I had actually heard nothing about, but saw the cover, and then saw David Schwimmer and Simon Pegg, and knowing about their current (at the time) collaboration on Run, Fatboy, Run, I decided to give this movie a rent one night.  Best few bucks I had spent in a long time.  I don't want to give anything away to people who have not seen it yet, (but later in the blog I will be discussing the end of the film so turn away now if you want to watch the film first!) but suffice it to say, this film is one of the best and most clever little black comedies I have seen in recent years.  A few quick words about it should make anyone want to see it (if the simple fact that Simon Pegg is in it doesn't), but to sum it up a bit...porn, priests, septic tanks, axes in heads, solid acting, writing and directing, and a crying Jesus statue.

Now the reason I titled this blog ...Big Troubles, is because while the movie is great and quite the little find, the end is giving me some troubles, so I figured I'd lay out my interpretation of the end of the movie with the hopes that someone else has either a similar take, or a completely different one. 

BE WARNED!    ** MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD **

Hopefully that was a big enough disclaimer to save my ass from complaints. Now if you are still reading you have either seen Big Nothing, or don't care if you know what happens in the end, so if you are the latter, here is a quick catch-up.  David Schwimmer's character Charlie is suffering from a major neurological medical issue that causes him to lose his memory, so in order to combat this he memorizes little factoids, and then recites them all throughout the movie, mostly in times of stress.  So my real struggle comes in the end, when Charlie asks Josie (Alice Eve), exactly what kind of poison it is he is about to drink, and upon hearing the answer he chugs the flask.  I'll be the first to admit that I am usually the most cynical, glass is half-empty kind of guy and I usually read the bleakest outcome possible into a film if there is room for interpretation, but for some reason I feel hope in the end of this film.  It is my theory that Charlie knew exactly what kind of poison it was and the reason he was so ready some might even say eager, to drink it down was because one of those useless memorization facts was about this kind of poison, and he knew something about it.  I can't exactly say why, and there is nothing in the rest of the movie that alludes to his death or the idea that he lived, but I can't stop thinking that he knew something we didn't know, and that maybe, just maybe he did live through it.

I'll thread this into the forum because I want to know other peoples takes on this, or if there are people out there that read this the same way I did, so please let me know.
]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Sat, 24 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/414/Big-Nothing-leads-to-Big-Problems.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/409/Tarty-to-the-Party-Ruminations-On-The-Dead.html Night of the Living dead on Showtime, or HBO...one of those channels.  I had seen worse as far as horror movies go, surprisingly my parents were quite lax when it came to letting me watch movies, but I had seen the likes of Freddy and Jason on quite a few occasions, but this movie was the first movie that actually scared the shit out of me.  For a while afterwards I was a bit freaked out by the cemetery, but then I was reassured by the fact that zombies were slow as hell, and that my dad was packing some serious heat in his gun cabinet, I felt like we could fend them off.  But the damage was done, ever since that moment I was addicted to zombies and Romero, as soon as I gained a personal income I went out and bought Dawn and Day of the Dead, and even though I was a little too young to fully appreciate Day, I still loved them both.

It was only a few years ago when I realized exactly why I liked Night of the Living Dead so much, when compared to all of the other horror movies I had seen growing up, it was the reality of the whole situation.  Random people from different walks of life thrown together into an impossible situation with a camera there to document just how we have humans have evolved, and also how society had evolved up to that point in history.  As everyone knows, the results were magic, and the start of an amazing career.  This is exactly why I am a little saddened with Diary of the Dead.  While it is an excellent horror movie, it just doesn't hold up as both a Romero flick, and as an installment in the ever amazing and evolving Dead series.  I wasn't 100% on Land of the Dead either, but I still felt that Romero contained enough of that magic, wit and philosophy that made the other Dead movies amazing, and after a few viewings it bit it's way into my heart.  The acting in Land of the Dead wasn't the best, but with the inclusion of some some-what big named actors, it was at least easy to forgive and forget.  The same can not be said for Diary though.  The acting and the writing is even to cliche and poorly delivered to be considered some kind of meta-cinema action.  All of the characters were blatant tropes, and there seemed to be no apology for it, at least none that I could find. 

While Devin complained about the overly-good production quality of the whole thing, I felt that it was justified.  Films like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield made sense being shot the way they were.  As far as Blair Witch is concerned, the digital technology they used was the best most consumers, and even prosumers, could get at the time, and while I haven't seen Cloverfield, the footage I have seen looks like it upgraded with the times and was a logical grade of video that a college kid at a party would have.  But the kids in Diary are from a fairly large college and are using cameras and equipment that a lot of college filmmakers get to put their hands on, so in the end I had no qualms, and actually I loved that aspect of the film.  As far as complaints went on the overall editing and everything else that ended up in the final product, once again it was put together by kids going to a film school, so you'd hope they have at least some grasp on what they are doing, and at one point Jason even alludes to the fact that his girlfriend Debra (who edited the final film), was a good filmmaker at one point, and was better than he was.

The acting was poor, but for a while the script seemed to be going along at a decent enough pace, with only a few one-liner hick-ups thrown in here and there, mostly by the alcoholic professor, but then the movie hits the third act at the house and like the many rotting corpses in the film, it just falls apart.  It goes from tolerable to almost completely embarrassing in no time flat.  Also, can anyone explain to me why Jason's flesh isn't as attractive as everyone else's?  At two different points in the film a zombie comes from behind him to chase after someone else, completely ignoring the slow moving moron with the heavy camera in front of them. As long as I am ranting, I would also like to publicly profess my complete disgust with digital blood.  It looks like shit, actually not even, shit looks better than digital blood.  It looks like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.  I have seen video games with better CG blood than that being used in the film industry today.  Is it too much to ask that somebody just takes the five seconds to mix some damn Caro Syrup and red food coloring, it might not be the best, but it's cheap and better than what they are doing. 

Besides the sub-par acting and the eventual deterioration of the writing, I do have to agree with the CHUD staffers when it comes to Romero's delivery of his social message.  Where did all of his subtlety go?  He doesn't dance around it in this installment, he just comes out social-messages a' blazin', and gives the audience no where to run from it.  After reading the article the other day about his desire to make his next film about the idea of Tribalism I got quite excited because it is an amazing issue that I would like to see play out in his zombie universe, I just hope he can bring his wit and cleverness when it comes to it's delivery.

As a horror movie I would rate Diary at a 7/10, as a Romero Dead movie I have to give it a 4.5/10.  I have my fingers crossed for the sequel.
]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/409/Tarty-to-the-Party-Ruminations-On-The-Dead.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/404/There039s-a-first-time-for-everything.html
Moves are pretty much the be-all, end-all to my existence.  I graduated last December with a B.A. in Cinema from SUNY Binghamton, with a concentration in filmmaking.  SUNY Binghamton was concerned mostly with experimental and avant-garde cinema, therefore that is where a lot of my interests have been pushed.  One of the perks about this though, is the fact that if you can understand the basic point of an experimental film based solely on image and light and editing and the likes, then it becomes much easier to understand and appreciate a narrative film, where the ideas are much more upfront and prevalent.

I have been making experimental films for a little over four years now, but since there isn't much money to be made in doing this, coupled with the fact that I have no desire to a) edit news footage and b) shoot and edit weddings for a living, I have recently had to pursue other money making endeavors.  I was an apprentice butcher for a year in Syracuse New York, and now I am back at school getting another bachelor's degree, because hey, who doesn't want to do the first four years of college all over again? (sarcasm should be fully noted here.) I am currently studying French language with hopes to translate when I am done.

And now down to the good stuff, some of my favorite filmmakers are Jean-Luc Godard, Stan Brakhage, Akira Kurosawa, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze, Terry Gilliam, Michael Snow, George A. Romero, and Sergio Leone.  Honestly there are about a thousand and I could go on for days, but lists can easily become pretentious, boring, and by nature repetitive.

One of the things that I planned on writing about was a series called "Tardy to the Party," where I shoot the shit about older recent movies that I missed the first time around and/or much older movies that I am now just discovering, but I would like some feedback from the readers on this one.  If it seems lame, tell me.  Although, I might not listen and do it anyways, I'm always looking for some sort of feedback, or open discussion...I mean that's the point right?



]]> no@spam.com (Justin Swan) Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/404/There039s-a-first-time-for-everything.html