I Know It All

Greetings and welcome to my blog.

I've been toying with the idea for a while of starting one up. I tried for a while over at myspace but I just never kept up with it. Maybe things will be different here.

The idea of having a blog has always been a bit weird to me. At first a lot of the blogs I would read were just like public diaries. I doubt anybody really cares how I spent my day, nor do I really care in sharing the details with you. Lately the world of blogs has expanded and become quite useful. Some have quite the journalistic vibe to them and have been used for great power.

As political as I can be, I highly doubt I'll be doing any of that here.

So what will I be using my blog for? Well to write about movies of course. If there is one thing I am passionate about it is film. I love to watch, analyze and discuss about anything to do with film. I'll write about some of the films I've seen recently, some I've been wanting to see, and other various discussions about different aspects of film. Maybe I'll get others invloved to help me out. I have a few ideas already that I want to try out and write about, but I'll get to that later.

So what makes me qualified to write about film? Well nothing really. I'm just a film lover like many of you. Although I have worked for far too many years in one video store or another, and that has given me an opportunity to watch lots and lots of movies. Lots of them mediocre, some quite good. I've taken several film classes and writing classes, but that means nothing when it comes down to it. Art is so subjective. You either like it or you don't, and often times your reasons for your like or dislike comes from a very personal background that you bring with you at all times when watching a film or listening to a song or reading a poem or looking at a painting. Your reasons for likeing something will differ than my reasons for liking it, and vice versa. But that angle for discussing and disecting something often times leads to very engaging and informative discussions. It helps to see things in the story or acting that I may not have thought of or seen.

In the end that is what I want. I want to get into lively discussions about various films, old and new, so that I may see them in a whole new light and in the end perhaps it will help me become a better writer myself. I hope you find this blog informative, engaging, and fun, and I implore anyone reading to please participate in sharing your opinions and offering any ideas you may like to see or contribute with as well.

So to start things off I figure I'll offer up my opinion of the most recent film I've seen in theatres: Knowing.





There was really only one reason I wanted to see this film and that was because it was directed by Alex Proyas. Proyas is one of the many directors like David Fincher, Spike Jonze, and Michel Gondry that came from the world of music videos. They have a wonderful sense of the visual medium and what the camera is capable of doing. I was a big fan of Proya's first two films, The Crow and Dark City, but I felt I, Robot was kind of lacking so I was hoping for a much better outing this time.

The premise is that Nicholas Cage's son's school participates in an event where they dig up a time capsule from students of the same school from 50 years prior and his son receives a drawing on it with nothing but a bunch of numbers. Cage, being a briliant professor in astronomy and lecturing on things like randomness in the universe, finds that the numbers on the sheet are not random at all, but instead contain the dates of all of the biggest disasters of the last 5o years, including how many die and the latitude and longitude of each event. The scary part is that there are still three events that have yet to occur, and the last one is only the date and is missing the rest.



There is plenty of cool effects and action scenes that keep the film entertaining. The suspense is strong and I really didn't quite know where the film was going and I was actually pleased with it's outcome. There are a few scary guys that appear occasionally that kind of came out of nowhere and offered a really creepy element to the film. At first I thought it was just random but they do serve a purpose for the ending which I liked, and it seems that the ending is what is really upseting so many people. Without giving anything away, from talking to people and reading reviews, it's the ending the ruins it for some. I'll just say I did not mind it at all and I thought it worked perfect for the story.

There are quite a few different themes that are explored and I thought some of it was very similar to Dark City, which is probably why I enjoyed it. It is, afterall, a sci-fi film. One of the things the film explores is our place in the universe, and if we are alone or not. Like Dark City, this film offers up the opinion that we are not alone, but it also shows the interest an alien society would have with us and how fascinated they are by our behavior. We are definitely an interesting species and the things that make us unique are a wonder to behold, such as the idea of whether or not we have a soul and what that means. This was a theme that was the driving force in Dark City and it is again apparent here in Knowing, but just not to the same extent.

And that brings up another of the theme's present in the film, that of faith. Cage is a man of science and the son of very religious man, in fact he's the son of a priest. Cage lost his wife a year ago and has been having a hard time coming to terms with the knowledge of a God that would do this to him. In a way this theme is very similar to that of Signs. The characters in both films are dealing with the same crisis of faith and really in a way facing the same conflicts that they must overcome. The final event is definitely a thing of science and something explainable and unavoidable, but the people of faith will approach it as the work of God punishing man. Without trying to give too much else away I'll just say that I enjoyed the final event and I thought it was handled appropriately, as well as the character's final resolution with his faith and place in the world.

There were times when the dialogue could have come across as quite cheesy and over the top, as well as some of the events, but I think Alex Proyas handled them quite well. There is enough balance of action, suspense and terror to make the film thrilling and fun. If you are not a fan of sci-fi then you may find some of the elements ridiculous and bad, but if you go in with an open mind then I think it's a fun popcorn film. Nothing earth shattering or original by any means, but a fun night at the movies.

Well that's it for now. Thanks for reading, and please leave me some comments and feedback. Until next time...