Introduction to the Blog

Times are always changing. The world is never the same today as it was yesterday. People's tastes. The styles. The what is "in" remains in a constant state of flux. Art, whether it is paintings, poetry, sculpture, music, and theatre have always been in that same state of ever changing tastes. So too is true about technology, an every changing race towards the next greatest gadget, gizmo, or device that will push the world into it's next step in the every evolving world.

Never has there been a convergence of art and technology like that of the motion picture. The art of photography multiplied several times over and played consecutively in rapid fashion of 24 frames per second to give the illusion of movement has taken off and soared beyond all imagination. With time came the advent of story, music, recorded sound and dialogue, as well as color, computer technology, and so forth. Film has always been changing, improving itself, flowing with the times and it's audience. What was significant then may not be as important now, but there is an appreciation for where film has come from. That is what this blog is to be about.

I am a self-proclaimed "film buff," with my degree in film and a reasonable library of movies. I too have an appreciation of history, where we came from, where we are going, and how we got there. Anthropology and sociology are psychologies that have always interested me. The studying of how things got to be where they are now and why people feel ways about certain things and react in certain ways. They are fascinating to me.

Perception is a great thing in the art of studying, and for me that carries into film. Film has such a wide range of history and perceptions. The flapper girls of the 20s, the pro-USA wartime movies of the 40s, the clean cut family of the 50s, the turmoil of the 60s, the grittiness of the 70s, the bright colors of the 80s, times change. And being films they are frozen in time with celluloid, and give us the opportunity to view them again and again.

The idea my march through film history started in Florida. I was in line for "Tthe Great Movie Ride" at Disney's Hollywood Studios Park in Walt Disney World. The attraction is in a building who's facade is a recreation of the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. In line you wait in a recreation of a great movie theater and watch many trailers of grand movies ranging from the old musicals, to gangster films, to Raiders of the Lost Ark. This brought me back to my love of watching grand movies in grand old theaters. There is nothing like it. It is a true spectacle, the way movies should be experience. There I thought wouldn't it be great to watch all those great old movies again? Also I noticed how different the styles of the movies where, the shot composition, the colors (or lack of), the shadows, the editing, the wide shots and the close-ups. It made me think of how different the times are and how the audience watches their films through generations. So I thought that I could try to watch these movies and much more. I've seen a lot, but there are plenty I still need to see and those I would love to see again. So the idea was hatched.

Next came the execution. First off, I am not watching every film ever made. That would be ridiculous. For every good film there are thousands of bad ones. I was going to watch significant films. Films that meant something to film history, American history, world history, significant to it's time and place, if it revolutionized the way we watch films, films seen as special then or today. It is quite a criteria to try to meet, but it has it's limitation. Most of this will be done with the help of Netflix, which I have had for years and am very happy with, and other libraries that are available to me. Netflix's library is large, but not everything I want to see is on it, so I will miss some films here and there. My movies of choice come from a few places: Starting with the AFI list of course. The top 100 movies both 1998 and 2007 lists, as I think the 2007 helped add more depth to the original list. Also the Top 100 Laughs list as comedy is very important to history and film, and I believe comedy is more difficult then drama, plus we all need a good laugh. Help also came from my AFI Film Desk Reference, a good, well rounded book that covers film history and gives a large amount of knowledge of film and it's progression. The book broke down year by year significant films and it gave me a great starting point to discover my road through motion pictures. This helped lay out the starting point of this journey that will congeal into a more solid path as time goes by with the evolution of the motion pictures through the years. Also there is my own film knowledge that leads me to discovering certain films of importance.

I am not going to cover every film I find in all of these places, but I feel I can cover most of them. I hope to enrich my appreciation for this wonderful art of motion pictures from it's infancy to today (Lord willing). Film has been around for a little over 100 years, but it has made a huge impact in our world I hope I can bring some of it's past back to life through this blog.