Movie Reviews

One last project, and then I won’t burden this blog with anymore projects for a while, I promise.
As the above title of this post indicates, obviously I’m adding movie reviews to my list of ongoing blog features (Book reviews, retrospections, and “better know a city”s).

Regular readers of this blog of course know that movie reviews have been by no means absent from this blog since its inception. (Kill Bill -Part 1, Kill Bill 2, The Passion, Troy, Lost in Translation, Fahrenheit 911, The Grudge, The Glen Miller story, The Benny Goodman Story, Batman Begins, Star Wars III, Harry Potter, Memoirs of A Geisha, The Last Samurai, Munich, V for Vendetta, Superman Returns, The U.S. Vs John Lennon, Godzilla: Final Wars , Battle Royale
And my wrap ups: Oh, the movies I've seen parts 1, 2, 3, 4)

But I want to make an official project out of it so that I don’t have to keep coming up with excuses for chiming in my two cents. Since I’m usually not the type of person to see a movie on opening weekend, I always feel the need to apologize by saying something like, “I know this is old news by now, but I just wanted to say a couple words about such-and-such movie.” This is especially true now that I’m back in Japan and all the movies open up late over here. And that’s not even counting all the video rentals and classic movies.

Truth be known, there were a lot more movies I would have liked to comment on over the past few years, but just couldn't justify it. I know a blog in theory is about anything the blogger wants to write about, but it just seemed a little out of left field to start out an entry by saying, “I saw an old 1950s movie the other night that none of you have ever heard of. I just want to write down my 2-cents.” But if it becomes a project, like the book review, I don’t need to justify myself. Every book I read gets reviewed on this blog, whether I think it’s of any interest to anyone else or not. Now the same is true for movies.

This has been a long time coming, but I've delayed doing it for two reasons.
1). I've been trying over the past few years (sometimes with limited success) to watch less movies and read more books. I don’t want to give myself a reason to watch more movies (i.e., feel that I’m being productive when I’m watching movies because I’m generating blogging material).

2). The book reviews have already taken over this blog, but I can’t read a book a night. I could easily watch a movie a night though, and then this blog would be completely swallowed up by reviews.

But I'm hoping that these two reasons may cancel each other out. I’ll try and avoid watching movies, because I’ll know that each movie I watch is essentially a homework assignment for this blog.

And besides, despite my best intentions, I'm bound to watch some movies. I’m just as much a sucker for the Hollywood blockbuster as anyone else. It is already a foregone conclusion that I will see the next Spider-man, Harry Potter, and Simpsons movies. And not to mention all the movies and videos I watch with friends as social activities. So I might as well give myself a place on this blog to reflect on what I've seen.

So in the coming weeks and months watch for some but, hopefully, not too many movie reviews on this page.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
Endymion received scathing criticism after its release, and Keats himself noted its diffuse and unappealing style (see, for example, The Quarterly Review April 1818 pp. 204-208). However, he did not regret writing it, as he likened the process to leaping into the ocean to become more acquainted with his surroundings; in a poem to Haydon, he expressed that "I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."

Link of the Day
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