greenbelt: films of the year

a heads up for anyone heading to greenbelt this weekend - i'm doing a film review of the year seminar. here's my brief thoughts on the themes that have surfaced in the films of past year, along with a draft list of the films that i've appreciated the most since last august bank holiday. love to hear your thoughts.

THEMES
angst-ridden artists as the keynote of our time
commitment in relationship matters
post-9/11 cinema
the rudest film ever made
god works for disney
peter jackson has too much power
50 cent's movies are worth the price of his name
make peace with your own death
the usual waste of time popcorn
smart popcorn
god is at the edges


FILMS
grizzly man
brokeback mountain
junebug
40 year old virgin
an inconvenient truth
the constant gardener
the three burials of melquiades estrada
a history of violence
good night, and good luck
syriana
munich
cache
the new world
paradise now
crash
superman returns
little miss sunshine
thumbsucker
walk the line
the beat that my heart skipped
pavee lackeen the traveller girl



for what it's worth, my three favourite films of the past year are
junebug
little miss sunshine
the new world

what is blogging for?

so, i've been at this blogging malarkey for a couple of weeks now and i'm enjoying it. it's kinda nice that some of you out there are happy to connect with this blog.

i am intrigued by one thing, though - last week i wrote a post about the president of iran and his veiled threats against the u.s. one of you good people has responded to this post. the next day, i wrote a short of review of the new will ferrell movie. TEN posts in response!

perhaps there is a lesson in the fact that the score is currently ferrell 10, ahmadenijad 1, but i just wanted to say that i'm eager to see traffic on the political stuff as well as the comedy!

easy rider at last

just saw 'easy rider' for the first time - yeah, i know that makes me look ridiculous, but there's a lot of films out there that i wanted to watch first. to be honest, i found it boring and pretentious, with a few nice landscape vistas thrown in to make it a not entirely unpleasant experience.

having said that, this isn't what some people called 'amerika' in 1969, and it's easy to see how 'rider's impact depended on it's cultural context...rebellion and freedom seen as two sides of a coin etc etc etc. though once you think about the fact that the legacy of the 'freedoms' of the 70s turned out to be ronald reagan's presidency, and the groundwork that it laid for today's administration, perhaps 'easy rider' represented both the beginning and the end of a movement.