The Beginning

I miss studying film. It's true. Sitting in the dark, intimate classroom theater with my professor shouting, "Look! See! Show!," from the back of the room; my fellow students sitting by my side as we trek through genres of film, finding some enlightening and some too "generic" for our brilliant film student minds; examining frame-by-frame the composition of an image, a story, a life.
I had always loved film. I would regularly get somewhat obsessed with particular films and watch them over and over again within the span of a week, or even a day. Like a new song that you've just heard for the first time. You love it, so you put it on repeat until you know every word and every musical flourish. I would do this with movies. Of course, a song is 3 minutes and a movie is 2 hours. Yes, I would have to find opportune times to engaged in my obsession. Like when my family was packing up the moving truck for a move across state - I insisted the TV and VCR be the last thing to be packed, and sat and watched Private Benjamin three times in a row. It's a funny movie! I wish I could remember what I found so riveting about it. But I was ten. And that was a long time ago.

Although I hope my taste in film has become more refined, I still have an eclectic taste in films. From Fanny & Alexander to Dumb & Dumber to Terminator to Once Upon A Time in the West -- I still find slapstick hilarious; I'm still moved by beautiful cinematography; I still LOVE a great gymnastics film; I'm still exhilarated when a character expresses so much without saying too much. I do think that my tastes have broadened, however, and that my appreciation for the artistry of filmmaking has evolved.

I though it would be fun to take Time Magazine's "Top 100 Films" list and watch everything on it. I've seen a number of them already, but as an exercise I will watch them all again (in no particular order) and write about them. Give my opinion, my thoughts, my review. I'm not an expert, so this is meant to be fun - a way to get back into the delightful classroom theater and immerse myself in the artistry of filmmaking. I have a feeling I will end up throwing in some other films at the end of this (there is no Cassavetes or Mike Leigh on the list!!), but let's just see how it goes from here.

I hope anyone will feel free to share their own thoughts about the films that I post.