The 1000 Movie Journey

Today I finally got a chance to go see the incredibly successful film adaptation of the very successful young adult book, The Hunger Games.  It's proved to be an unstoppable force at the box office, and has been getting generally solid reviews from critics.  But how does it stand up to my keen and discerning tastes?

The next movie we'll be watching is a 1989 import from Hong Kong.  Literally the only other thing I know about it is that presumably it involves a killer.

Oh hey look Chow Yun Fat!  There's another thing I know about it!

Hi everybody!

I've been getting back into television shows for the first time in a while, so I decided that I'd like to have a separate place where I can just have my TV reviews, instead of having them all mingled with the film ones over here.

I'm very excited to announce the creation of The Electronic Fireplace, which will be the place to go to for reviews of both current shows and ones that are no longer on the air.  At the moment I'm planning a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon, but I envision this new blog as having a number of different shows reviewed.

So stop by!  The official launch will be this Sunday night, when I'll be reviewing both Mad Men and the season premiere of Game of Thrones.  Are you as pumped as I am?  You should be!

Since 1923, the Walt Disney Company has had its share of questionable decisions.  From unpleasant racially motivated propaganda cartoons in the 40s (hey, Warner Brothers did it too) to the Native American sequences in Peter Pan.  What I want to focus on today, though, is the messages some of the Disney films send to their viewers.  I don't actually believe that watching any of these movies is going to screw up the minds and hearts of children, but Disney is a huge corporation that does have a significant influence on the youth of America, so it's important to at least look at these things, right?

Moving on to the first of several Woody Allen films on our list, this is Broadway Danny Rose.  The story of an agent with a veritable stable of second and third-rate acts, who has to get an alcoholic singer's mistress to an important show to avoid a career-destroying meltdown.  Having worked in talent management, I can recognize a lot of Danny Rose in agents I've worked with.

We all ready for another terrifying foray into scary German silent horror?  Good, because the next film on the list is Faust, a silent film adaptation of the classic story of selling your soul to the devil.

To celebrate the first anniversary of the 1000 Movie Journey, we're going to watch one of my favorite short films ever: Un Chien Andalou.  This is less of a movie by normal standards, and more of a surrealist art piece that uses the medium of film.  But I love it for the exact same reason I love looking at melting clocks and elephants that have giant tubas for trunks.  Because sometimes it's fun to see something that is so zany and out there and think:

And to stand in awe of the frankly amazing nonsense the human mind is capable of.

Hello all.  Today is the one year anniversary of my very first movie review!

It was The Sound of Music, and it was roughly the length of a Bible.

I've learned a lot since then, and I've really enjoyed watching all these great (and let's face it, not so great) films, writing about them, and of course, hearing back from my wonderful readers.  Especially my mom, who tries to stealthily comment anonymously so that I won't know it's her.  It doesn't work, but it's appreciated all the same!

Just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who's been reading and following along with me over the past year.  Brace yourselves, because we've still got a long way to go.


Oh and hey, if you think that you missed any of my reviews over the past year, and you're losing sleep at night over the thought of losing out on any of my oh-so-clever witticisms, I happen to have a handy dandy link to my archive that I update whenever I remember to regularly.

The 1000 Movie Journey Archive

It's also available on my right-hand side bar.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to another 10-15 years of reviewing this insanely long list of movies!

Here's where we separate the men from the boys.  That's right, folks: it's Ingmar Bergman time.  I'm reminded of when I took AP English in high school, and our teacher assigned a frustratingly difficult novel for our summer reading.  Her rationale was that she wanted to weak out the weaklings before we started the class in the fall.  That's sort of what Bergman is for film.  He's just not for the faint of heart.

We're all familiar with the pop culture juggernaut that is Harry Potter.  But what if it wasn't a literary phenomenon, leading to a $7 billion blockbuster film franchise?  What if it was just a modestly budgeted, offbeat teen comedy from the 80s?  Who would be our wizarding heroes then?