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Hello and Welcome!

I've been itching to start a blog for a while that discusses movies as a matter of art, and not just on whether one likes it or dislikes it. I am interested in the "why" in this blog. The cinema is a representational mechanism of the real, the phenomenal, and the existential. I want to talk about and discuss with others the merit of films, yet too many films today are only given the occasional approval or disapproval after the screening. "What did you think?" "I loved it!" "I hated it!" But why do we feel this way? Was it because of the composition of the frame? The audio-visual juxtaposition? The actors presence on the screen? Maybe it's because no one wants to consider movies as an art. This argument persists today as it did at the beginning of the twentieth century. Which leads us to the spectacle of cinema today.

Cinema today is in an awful state of affairs. The three-dimensional craze has gone too far! I'm tired of seeing Disney Classics and spectacular sagas like Star Wars, re-released in three-dimensional space. Avatar was a beauty, don't get me wrong. Truly an amazing spectacle. But should that lead to encasing all of the films we know and love into a space filled with depth? What was wrong with a flat animated picture? Movies today are being forced to jump on the 3-dimensional bandwagon just to keep up with each other. Several are put  into 3-D last minute, when they weren't even filmed for the purpose of 3-D and for what? Just so Little Johnny can dribble mouthfuls of popcorn onto his seat after seeing antelopes assault him and his pal Simba. The cinema needs to be knocked from its spectacle high horse.

I do believe that there is potential to every new technological development in cinema. I mean look at the reception sound received after the Jazz Singer (1927). It was doubted at first and then welcomed with open arms. Sound has so many possibilities when partnered with the visual and I believe 3-D can do the same, but treating it as something to be tagged on to a movie just so people can have the option of paying the extra service charge to experience some extra thrill denounces cinema and places it along the track of a theme park attraction. Something to be experienced on a level of exhilaration instead of a level of beauty.

The possibility of representation of three-dimensional space can dress the filmic dimension that was flat. It can add nuances to the two-dimensional space and reveal the realism in life to a sharper degree, but only if it is used effectively.