Why me? Who me?

What qualifies me to write a blog on film? Absolutely nothing, my understanding though, is that is the point of a blog. People who really have no qualifications on an issue spouting off about it. Why do they do this? And by they I must of course include myself. I think we do it for one of two reasons. Either we think we are incredibly interesting on a topic and all will read on the edge of their seats awaiting the next entry with baited breathe, or because we are passionate about something. I hope I fall into the later category but I suspect all bloggers fall into both camps. I'm going to be nice to myself and say I'm in it 3/4 passionate, 1/4 I must be incredibly fascinating who wouldn't want to read what I think. But aside from this maybe there is another reason, a more personal reason. Maybe it isn't about sharing my thoughts with other so much as sharing them with myself.

"With his self did he say? What's this all about? What's he up too?"

Please, please bear with me here I'll explain my meaning, and I believe after I have written the post and posted it you'll have a chance to post comments so please refrain from blurting things out again. Thank you ever so much.

Yes with myself. I don't believe I am the first person to come up with the thought that we solidify ideas by making them real, we make them real by expressing them. I'm not sure who first thought this up, probably Aristotle, Socrates, Issac Newton or perhaps Al Gore. Anyway I doubt very much that it is a new thought but one I believe in completely. When I was a TA in film classes at Moorhead State University I came to realize that if you simply lectured to students they tended to disengage, if you included them in discussion they developed thoughts and ideas. For me it is much the same with writing, surely everything I write I am thinking or believe, but until I actually write it out, make it concrete it's just an ambigious half thought floating around inside my head getting jumbled together with memories of first kisses and weightWatcher points. So I think one of the attractions of blogging for me is to stop thinking random thoughts and haveing sort of half baked beliefs about film, the type that are just right in my head but still a bit gooey in the middle when cut open, and to actually formulate the theory/idea/thought. To fully bake it as it were. Now, that's not to say that we will actually approach anything on the order of a theory in this blog but I think you get the drift yes?

Hello?

Oh, right you are waiting until I post to reply, very considerate thank you.

So that's Why Me? Who Me? now that's another question, thus the use of a second question mark, see it's really not that difficult to follow if you watch for those little clues. Well if you are reading this blog I imagine you are doing so because you know me and are afraid I'll ask if you have, so no point in going into biography here, chances are very good that you know me peripherally at least, possibly well, almost certainly sexually. Instead I will say that to me film is essential, not to say that my body would die without it, but at times I suspect my mind would, or perhaps it is my heart. That gets to the "heart" of the matter actually. For me a great film or indeed even just a good film is a film that makes me feel something. Emotion, sometimes so hard to express in real life. Often it's hard to verbalize what we feel and if we cannot acknowledge it, the emotion can be like the idea that is never writen out or spoken, vague and sometimes frustrating. But we select a film and we watch it and it moves us and we feel the emotion, we don't have to make it concrete ourselves it is there, it exists outside of ourselves but also within. Response to a film can be deeply personal and unique, which is why I may love "Moulin Rouge" and someone else cannot sit through it. We all experience a film in our own way, and it can affect the way we see the world or ourselves or each other.

So Here's what I like a film to do; make me laugh, make me cry, turn me on, scare me, make me question, make me think, make me dream, make me 12 again (actually I think I prefer 14). Remind me what it feels like to fall in love for the first time, or to face something I don't think I can overcome. Show me what a father should be, a husband should be, a friend should be, and almost as important what they should not be. Sometimes life can be kind of depressing and frustrateing and messy, and when your feeling like that the best thing to do is to put in a movie. In movies, in the best movies they get it right, which is so hard in life. Sooooo to end on a positive note here's the 10 best films (that I can come up with spontaneously at 11:30 PM) to put in when you need to see something just right. In no particular order.

1. Flirting
2. Say Anything
3. Juno
4. Me and You and Everyone We Know
5. Mr. Hollands Opus
6. Shadowlands
7. Once
8. Beautiful girls
9. Dangerous Beauty
10. Annie Hall

Until next time.....