We are in a class!!

I have noticed that a lot of people have gone off the beaten path with their blogs and it makes it difficult to make comments and learn things. The point of these blogs is to talk about things you have learned and relate them to current events or just talk about what you have learned.

To get myself back on track, because I myself am a culprit of getting off the beaten path, I will talk about the interesting things I have learned so far from this class.

I have learned a lot by perusing through the Chapters and watching some of the screenings posted each week. Before this class I had no idea how film started or how filming worked before sound. Learning about silent films and the 75 man orchestra that played through film was fascinating to me. I think that it must have been really difficult to film and act for a silent film because there is no dialogue it is only actions. I have also learned a lot about the different film industries and it was interesting to find out how Hollywood dominated the film industry. Hollywood films were being exported to countries especially France because France was showing a lot of Hollywood films in their theaters.

Go Outside? Do Homework?

I felt it was necessary to do a post about something that has affected people everywhere and especially college students. The term is "binge watching" and it is when you watch a certain show in a short period of time. For example, a week ago I binge watched the first season of the Blacklist and it was 22 episodes on Netflix and I finished them in a week.

I know a lot of you can relate to me about this phenomenon and it does not have to be a recent show either. I know people who binge watch old TV shows like Spongebob and Zoey 101 on Netflix. I myself found myself binge watching Entourage one summer and was able to finish all 8 seasons way too fast. It can take over our lives sometimes and especially on a rainy day there is nothing better than binge watching a great TV show.

So, how does everyone else feel about this? What do you binge watch? Any suggestions?

Movie Critics

Chapter 4 in a Short Guide talks about the different approaches to writing about film, and the different approaches to analyzing a film. This immediately made me think of the job that a movie critic. A movie takes all of their knowledge about the film industry and creates an educated analysis of the movie. They talk about everything from the plot, the directors techniques, and even the individual performances. Then they take all of that data and they form an opinion on the movie, a personal opinion because there is no right answer as to whether or not a movie was "good" or not.

This brings me to my next point and I will use Rotten Tomatoes as my example because it is the top site used in showing the rating of a movie. All of these critics send in their reviews or post them or whatever they do and Rotten Tomatoes generates a general consensus. If more than 60% of critics enjoyed the movie then the movie is considered "fresh"; and then the opposite is "rotten". Stick with me here because this is where I tie it all in. Even if a movie gets terrible ratings from the critics "opinion" the only way to see how successful a movie was is to look at its gross profit.

So these movie critics use their personal opinion to tell you whether or not to see a movie or not. This brings you to my question to you, Why do we listen to them? Seriously why do we listen to movie critics?

I am the biggest offender of this. I literally go on rotten tomatoes and if I see a 25% for a movie I will not go see it. Which makes me realize that maybe I should become my own movie critic and stop listening to all these writers. If I read too much into the reviews it could prevent me from seeing movies that I could possibly really enjoy.