Category Archives: Film Reviews
Using Synchronicity in Art
Discussing how Synchronicity plays a role in art… (As a side note, the term ‘synchronicity’ was actually coined by Carl Jung, Freud’s greatest student. The structural model of the id, ego, and super-ego was developed Freud. So I was experiencing a Jungian experience regarding a Freudian concept. Interesting…) Have you ever experienced synchronicity and then […]
Why Care About the Hero?
I originally entitled this post: The Best Fight Scene Ever. Part Deux. But then I realized that this article is just as much about how movies make us actually care about the hero as opposed to just watch them go around and do things without any emotional involvement. Note: There are a few plot spoilers […]
The Original “Matrix”
If an artist has a pedigree, Gibson is surely the Wachowski Brothers’ grandfather. Just finished reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the origin of the both the term “matrix” as it is used in The Matrix, and the word “cyberspace” as it is used in real life. (In fact, it may have well had a hand in the […]
Documentary Mishmash: Super Size Me meets Waste Land
My friend Ryan Grassley has outdone himself. First of all, let me just say that Ryan should be working in Hollywood as a voice actor. I have no idea what he’s doing in Panama! Ryan was the star of my short animated film Death Pad. He is Light. Check it out, then keeping reading below. […]
Popular Fiction as High Art
As an artist I consider my self eclectic and postmodern. One of the tenants of postmodernism is that of recycled culture, and the influence of both “high art” and “low art” (i.e., popular culture) without distinction. John Storey, in his book Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, states that the postmodern approach would “no longer recognize the […]
The Best Fight Scene. Ever.
I’ve been watching a lot of martial arts movies lately. I plan on making martial arts movies. (Every time I watch a movie, it’s research. I love researching. Work is play and play is work. ) Last night I watched Drunken Master 2. (Hong Kong, 1994. Released in the U.S. six years later as “The […]
The Problem With Hollywood
Been reading Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez. Talks about how he made El Mariachi for $7,000 and his exploits trying to get it sold. This is from one of his journal entries when he went and met with people from Spanish-language Direct to Video distributors: “I asked Benjamin directly if he felt any […]
Hiroshima Mon Amour
You must watch the 1959 French film Hiroshima Mon Amour before you die. That is a direct order. A masterpiece by Alain Resnais, who also directed Night and Fog (1955), Hiroshima Mon Amour helped kick off the French New Wave, and was also famous for being the first film to explore the use of mini-flashbacks, […]
Woo’s A Better Tomorrow, the Action Genre’s Seminal Film
Watched “A Better Tomorrow” — Sam Raimi says John Woo is the master of the action genre just as Hitchcock is the master of suspense.¹ So Woo’s films are a required text for anyone intending to make action films. Here’s what I loved about A Better Tomorrow and what I think separates Woo from the […]
