Having stayed up last night watching the entirety of Ellen Degeneres bringing us the Academy Awards I feel like another thing I should share with you is that I Like Films. And you could say I'm qualified to talk in this area, perhaps more so than any other.
Film has played an interesting role in my life, like music, football and tea, it has been with me seemingly every step of the way, from being the kid I was in 1990 to the man I am now.
From watching The Lion King and Aladdin as a nipper and The Godfather and Goodfellas when I was little older, maybe not as old as I should've been, these films have informed my taste, views and outlook on life perhaps to a greater extent than any of the books I've read or any schooling that's passed me by. So, Disney films and gangster films, they might seem like polar opposites, and I know which you'd rather have your child watch, but the morality in the end comes down to being good, wholesome and kind ... the bad guys always end up dead or imprisoned, even if Ursula, Jafar an Cody Jarrett are hilarious, it's quite obvious to anyone with any semblance of sense that these are not the positive role models !
Along with my brother, I'm an avid list maker, bordering on OCD, we love to get together and decide what are our favourite cartoons, Oscar winners, comedy films, you name it ! And whilst we don't often agree, sometimes we do, it's always good fun, everyone has, and everyone's entitled to an opinion, great conversations ensue. And it's not likely that someone is going to beat me up when I tell them that I don't like The Lord of the Rings films, we'll probably just have a chat about it and enjoy a cup of tea, and maybe a biscuit.
I think one of my favourite appropriations of film talk with music is when Noel Gallagher said that "Oasis is Star Wars and Radiohead is Blade Runner", they're both great, have different levels of mass appeal, and they mean different things to different people.
And so to my qualifications, well I've a First Class Honours degree in Film & The Visual Arts, I could tell you an awful lot about Ealing Comedies, cinema verite and Third Cinema, but we'll save that for another conversation ... and don't get me started on Pixar Animation Studios !
Here's a video of me talking about 3 films that have "resonated with me" ... I hope you find it interesting and enlightening ... and I hope you feel I've got a long career as a talking head ahead of me ...
Here's some links to have a read of my essays ... if you've a lot of time on you hands ...
Film & National Identity
Scarface
La Grande Illusion & Poetic Realism
British Cinema & The Spiv Film
Hollywood & The Beatles
The Man In The White Suit - An Introduction
The Man In The White Suit - Ealing & The Historical Context
The Man In The White Suit - Textual Analysis
The Man In The White Suit - The Legacy of The Man In The White Suit
My Beautiful Launderette
I Know Where I'm Going (Powell & Pressburger)
Hollywood & Sunset Boulevard
The Jazz Singer
Singin' In The Rain
Nicholas Ray
Douglas Sirk
Robert De Niro & Jack Nicholson
Women & Cinema in the 1950s
Alfred Hitchcock & Rear Window
Documentaries & The New Documentary
19th Century German Nationalist Art
Pop Art
Winston Churchill, David Lloyd-George & The Liberal Reforms
Beauty & Truth - An Essay (2002)
