Final Film Blog

 Well, this has been quite a journey of reviews and theories this semester, and I'm so happy that I took this course and gained a better understanding of something I'm already so passionate about. It's weird going back to different movies that you love and looking at them through a completely different lens, but I feel like that's what I've gotten out of this experience. I also finally got to watch a movie like Breathless, which had been on my watchlist forever, and I was able to know the significance of it because we went in so much depth over its history. I've somehow gained an even greater appreciation for film.

I wanted to bring in an article that I had favorited last year and only recently found again, in order to talk a little bit about the writers process and why it's important to me. The article covers a movie I've mentioned in class before, and that's Magnolia. It is one of my all time favorite films and I just love the way Paul Thomas Anderson talks about how he wrote the script and made it come to fruition. There is a quote in the article about the creators burden, that really relates to my post about the Fabelman's and really makes you feel for PTA, "I’m a film geek; I was raised on movies. And there come these times in life where you just get to a spot when you feel like movies are betraying you. Where you’re right in the middle of true, painful life. Like, say, somebody could be sitting in a room somewhere, watching their father die of cancer, and all of a sudden it’s like, no this isn’t really happening, this is something I saw in Terms of Endearment. You’re at this moment where movies are betraying you, and you resent movies for maybe taking away from the painful truth of what’s happening to you" (https://brightlightsfilm.com/short-takes-cinematography-but-it-did-happen-paul-thomas-andersons-magnolia/#.Y5tKoezMIUo). It's a type of feeling that I feel like everyone can relate too, because everybody always feels like the connect to the dramatization within a movie, and wants to express it in that form.  That's why I feel like I connect to the writing aspect of film so much more, because it is like an itch for me and so many other people to express their emotions in that grandiose way.

I also think the movies I connect with reflect the way I think about life and the way I think. It's interesting to see what resonates with people the most, and that's why I made an IMDb account 2 and a half years ago. I've put every movie I've ever seen on a list and rated them all to help me track what I'm watching and have a better understanding of what sticks with my. It's simple to do it just takes a lot of time to remember everything you've seen or stumble across it, but then you have an organized layout of your favorites. Any film theorist or film fanatic should use either IMDb or letterboxd to keep track of all of it. My love for cinema grew greatly when I was able to be organized in that way, and so I keep track of both the films I watch and the articles and videos about how they were made to remember little quotes like the one from the making of Magnolia. https://www.imdb.com/user/ur114221791/checkins. This course has been a great journey and I can't wait to continue on my path of experiencing cinema while taking what I learned from this experience.