Movies Then and Now

I am going to the movies alone since I was about 10 years old.
I am a fan a buff but movies became my life my obsession my job.
I experimented with making movies in High school and then in the army and then went to film school when I moved to NY.
I always thought I will end up directing, but this year something happened and I understood that I love reading scripts and finding directors and helping everything to come together. I love to produce and it was something new, I always thought that producers don’t do anything and just get all the glory but it is really a hard work to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

So movies were my life for almost all my life now and I watched thousand of them in all the languages and I go to film festivals religiously.
Usually I go to about 4 movies a month, but something happened and since May I have seen about 6 movies in a month and it’s not including dvd’s or online.
In the last 3 days alone I saw 5 different movies in the cinema and it’s crazy, This year I have been 37 times in the cinema not including film festivals or shorts. It’s more than I think I did anything, It means that I was in the cinema more than once a week.

I decided to write it after I saw “Julia and Julie” this weekend and Meryl Streep was inspirational and Julia Child was an icon and we all have ambitions and thoughts and we all want to be heard.

The year that changed my life was 1994 when I saw five films in the cinema that changed the way that I look in movies.

The First was “Reality Bites” about the X generation with Winona Ryder that was always my personal Icon and the reason I wanted to make movies in the first place.

The Next one was “Speed” with Keanu Reeves which I watched like 127 times to this day and I am still not bored.
Then there was “Farinelli” an Italian film that I just fell in love with.

“Interview with the Vampire” that I just loved and was too young to watch, so I sneak in.

The last one was QT “Pulp Fiction” it had such a buzz before it came out that we just knew that it’s something different and something we really wanted to see.
The film that changes everything for everyone invented a whole new genre and made us believe that art is possible even in commercial films.

Since then I became a huge Tarantino fan and watched every film he is done or been part of numerous times.
Tomorrow is the premiere of “Inglorious Bastards” that I am sure will become a phenomenon and a cult.

So in the lat month I watched “ Public Enemies” which I recommend “Blood- The last Vampyre” was ok “My sister keeper” was kinda slow and not fulfilling. “I love you Philip Morris” with Jim Carey is full of promise but will be very hard to market.

“The Soloist” was very long and confused. Then came”500 days of summer” that every one just loved and I did not. I did not connect but loved the clothes and the accessories but not the acting or the plot.
This weekend we saw “G.I. Joe” that was a lot like “Judge Dread” and “Troy” bad dialogue, cool action sequence Sienna Miller was really impressive. “The Ugly Truth” that was Rated ‘R” Gerard Butler was great and obnoxious and I can’t remember Katherine Heigl character name but she did a good job. Then “Julia and Julie” was funny and refreshing and “Funny People” was very long but funny at times.
I finally saw “Seven Samurai” first time on the big screen and it still had magic and power, I grew up on a lot of American films but I did saw all the masters and all the classics from Orson Welles “Citizen Kane” to Bergman to the French new wave to Hollywood in the Seventies and I read all the books about cinema that I could Find and I do have official education in film and film theory and I do consider myself more knowledgeable than the random person that you meet.

So in conclusion you can always count on the classics most of the new films have nothing new or exciting to offer but I am very excited about “Inglorious Bastards” and I hope to see a lot of new and good films.