Movies and goals.

This summer I stayed at Ithaca working for campus center and event services.  I was very busy and worked over time for five weeks.  This left little time to watch movies and television.  This semester I want to start watching more television and movies again, but at the same time I want to broaden my horizon.  Looking at Mubi amazed me by the size of its collections with classics that I really need to see like Chinatown.  Also coming into the school year I bought American History X and The Boondock Saints 1 and 2.  I really love all three of the movies.  What I love about American History X is how it switches between using color and black and white.  I think it is a really brilliant way to tell the story.  My goals for the class are to create the best projects I can.  I am hoping to be able to write some scripts for some of the projects and see where they end up.  I am very excited for the class and I can't wait for the projects to get underway.

Goals for the class and what not

Since a lot of others have been posting about their summer and expectations for the class and what not, I figured why not? I'll do it too. Like everybody else in the class I have an interest in movies and obviously I have an interest in making them and being apart of that process. Unlike quite a few of you guys, my summer wasn't spent on a movie set or as part of an internship somewhere. I just worked at a grocery store all summer so I'm definitely ready to get back into making some cool stuff again. Now for my goals in the class it's pretty straight forward. Really all I want to do is improve on what I've already learned. Intro to Field taught me some basics but I'd really like to dive in and see what I can really do. I've done a few projects but I would definitely like to do many more.

Watching More Movies

         I spent my entire summer working as a camp counselor and had no time to watch television or movies. When I had free time at camp, I would often sit with my friends and talk about movies. I soon found it hard to engage in conversation because I realized I hadn't seen many movies. For example, a thirty minute conversation about No Country For Old Men came about and I just sat there awkwardly because I was the only one that hadn't seen the movie. I compiled a list of movies I wanted to see which includes No Country for Old Men, but I never took the time to watch the movies. Some other movies on the list include True Grit, There Will Be Blood, Tree of Life, The Birds, Deer Hunter, Children of Men, Silence of the Lambs, and many others. Recently I watched The Big Lebowski for the first time and thought that everything about the movie was excellent. I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers and the cinematography and writing was excellent. The all star cast made the movie amazing and the absurd characters give you a view into the strange world of bowling. I also saw Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom last week in an indie movie theater near my house. The film was truly amazing in all aspects. Wes Anderson's unique cinematography was unlike any movie I've ever seen and it made me want to go out and film something in a way that has never been done before. Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, and Bill Murray put on a great performance as well. Like The Big Lebowski, the characters in Moonrise Kingdom were absurd and nontraditional by any means. The child actors in the film were amazing and when I searched for some of them on IMDB, I learned that many of the actors hadn't had much past acting experience in movies. Two more movies are off the list and I plan to watch a movie every day after I finish my school work. Over the years, I re-watch movies that I own on DVD but I need to expand my interests and make an effort to watch the classics and learn more about movies. I plan to create a never ending list of movies gradually watch as many movies as possible. In my film analysis class, we watch movies that break the norm and classic movies that every film student should watch. I'm exciting to see those movies and expand my knowledge in the world of cinema. I'm open to any suggestions as well.

-Matthew Clifford Hadley

A New Year

So as we all enter another year of our academic lives many of us set goals for ourselves, mountain tops to reach and pitfalls to avoid. For me, I would like to avoid what I did last year for my production class. I "half assed" a lot of the projects I did and that left me feeling unsatisfied. Since I had five years experience already with production in part of middle and all of high school I figured I could breeze through projects and I'd be fine. I made some decent films, but had the worst growth as a student,  which can make you feel pretty bad. I regrettably allowed my passion for producing stories to fall by the wayside for unimportant reasons. So one of my goals for this class is would be push myself even further than I have in the past, and not just keep going with the flow. This is going to be one busy semester! So to everyone else reading this I wish you the best and go after what's important to you!
-James Majeau