jaws – Page 2 – Smug Film (1/7/13

My First Feature Film Is Almost Done

I’ve told this story a billion times so this time I’m going to try to include some more details. When my late grandpa, Tom Easton, was ten years old, he saw Fantasia in the theater. He always wanted to be a cartoonist but his dad was cold and distant and thought cartoons were for kids and no way to make a living. But despite that lack of encouragement, Tom did some cool things. He avoided combat in the Korean War by teaching art on base and drawing army posters.
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The 10 Nicest Movies Ever Made (If These Movies Don’t Make You Cry, You Have a Black Heart)

Field of Dreams. The undisputed king, for sure. But here’s ten other great ones.

It was a really tricky thing putting this together because they’re ranked on niceness, not goodness. Number two and number five are the best movies on the list. But they aren’t the nicest.

Niceness is even harder to define than coolness. Niceness is a warm and fuzzy feeling that a lot of art can generate. Probably the most popular example would be Norman Rockwell paintings. Niceness, like coolness, taps into our primal brains somewhere. We’re wired to feel it because it connects us to each other. But the problem with niceness is that it borders so heavily on cheese. Cheese done right is transcendent. But cheese done wrong is, well, cheesy.
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The Idea of What a Movie Is: A Very Greg Journey Through Film

field
A movie.

Just a Bunch of Footage

Security camera footage is not a movie, but screened at a film festival with a name like ‘Big Brother’s Kung Fu Grip’ (or some artsy crap) it is. Andy Warhol filming the Empire State Building for nine hours is a movie—the video the real estate agent showed you of the interior of the house on Maple is not. It’s all about context and intention.
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The Guy Who Made ‘Kundun’

As you can probably tell by my posts here so far, I don’t like many movies. Movies suck. But even an old curmudgeon like me can’t help but love Martin Scorsese.
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I Do Declare ‘Compliance’ To Be The Worst Movie of 2012

compliance

Compliance (2012)
Written and Directed by Craig Zobel
90 min.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, I know, but when I see a title like Compliance, a red flag goes up in my head. It’s one thing to make a title short (Jaws is brilliant) but it’s another to give away the entire movie’s theme right off the bat. (Gee, I wonder what Shame is about. Perhaps it’s about doubt? No, that’s probably Doubt. What do you think the characters achieve in the movie Atonement? And so on.) When a writer/director/producer/studio chooses a title like Compliance, they’re announcing to the world that their movie is About Something That Should Be Taken Seriously, unlike those plebeian popcorn flicks with actually-great titles such as Drag Me To Hell or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. As a result, I tend to avoid such seemingly one-note movies. But, I am also ever critical of my arbitrary biases, so I recently decided to test my hypothesis by Netflix-ing this one.
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