Sonic Cinema

Since I first went in 2009, Atlanta’s Dragon*Con fantasy convention has become a staple of my life. It’s the closest thing to a yearly holiday I have, and it’s, in a way, more important a moment for celebration than my birthday. That sounds terrible, but in reality, it’s very true. The 2012 edition turned out […]

I don’t know what it was about July and August that made me so, for lack of a better word, lazy about going to the movies. I worked a lot of day shifts at the theatre, so going to a movie after work should have been a no-brainer. However, after a relatively strong start in […]

It’s been said by people much smarter (and more knowledgeable) than I am (like Roger Ebert and Francois Truffaut) that the experience of watching a film is one that can be not just entertaining but deeply profound, truly cathartic, and singularly moving. Of course, it helps with me that I’ve been practically obsessed with cinema […]

Every decade since 1952, the British magazine, Sight & Sound, has conducted an “official” poll of film critics, historians, and, for the past twenty years, filmmakers from around the world in order to compile what many see as a “definitive” list of the ten greatest films of all-time. No, Roger Ebert is not wrong when […]

As I was doing theatre walks at my full-time job recently, I saw posters such as “Magic Mike,” “The Expendables 2,” and thought about the two movies I had seen earlier that day (“Rock of Ages” and “That’s My Boy”), and began to ask myself the question above. Over the years, I’ve found that my […]

In November 2006, I received an email from a filmmaker looking for a review of their film. It was the first such request I had gotten, so I was pretty excited, and enthusiastically replied that I would be delighted. A short time later in the month, I received the screener for a film called “Royal […]

So in 2010, I decided to structure my blog about the first four months differently than in previous years. Realizing I still hadn’t really posted the distinctions between why one film gets a certain grade over another, I decided to use my annual blog for January-April to do so. Unfortunately, I’ve missed a great deal […]

Last year, you might recall that I posted an old term paper I wrote back in college about the movie ratings system, and whether it needs to be changed. Well, this year, one movie has inspired me to look back on the issue with regards to one particular genre. By now, I’m sure that most […]

This year, I was struck by a revelation…after the nominations, the Oscars are actually pretty boring. Until the nominees are announced, there’s still a degree of suspense about who/what could get nominated: “Will Gary Oldman get his first nomination?” “How many Best Picture nominees will there be?” However, from the day of the nominations until […]

Snooch to the Nooch! Well, with the Oscars finally happening on Sunday, it’s now time for my final look at the nominees, and a look at my final predictions (all nominations listed in order of preference), and whether they’ve changed in the past month. Before I get to the festivities, though, an update on where […]