Boulevard Review under new owenership

I had to restart this discussion mostly because I had some life-changing circumstances that amounted in the loss of my e-mail addresses. YOu don't use the account and apparently, they sweep it out from under you. They need the web space I guess. But I'm back, as much as I can be for now... I was writing a little bit about movies, the communal experience they create, etc.
Something about the movie Constantine which I have now seen both on the big screen and DVD. The big screen was where it made its mark the loudest I think. Unless you have a big screen television (which I don't) the magnamious nature of that film is somewhat subdued by the glass tube.

I wished I could have said something definitive about Good Night and Good Luck, one of the last suckerpunch movies I had the experience of viewing in the theater. I have this feeling that it's not going to get much more than a head nod out there. Mostly, because it's too true to form. It had little to no humor that I can remember, because George Clooney, David Stratham, Richard Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson spent their entire time going right for the jugular. Driving the mechanism forward. You could almost sense the bare bones anchors and pulleys "behind the scenes" were just around the corner. Its intensity held the fort right from the opening scenes.

But I think I need to say something about the chronicling of historical events that Hollywood seems to embrace as parody, political commentary, and the preponderance of the motives the directors hold as justification for releasing just films. Good Night and Good Luck was one such example of this film.

L4yer C4ke w/ Daniel Craig. Just watched this film which now occurs to me as being somewhat over the top, in a way that separates it from Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I didn'tlaugh I think once and I don't imagine its because I had a headache at the time. To me, these movies are, like the style of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, a matter of form over substance. But style is the frame on which a film like this stands. The characters of Morty, Jimmy and Temple are characters which stand out in my mind as definitive. You'll remember Craig because of the hard lines of his chin and cheek bones. The hard edges of his face reflect a familiarity with the likes of Mel Gibson and Steve McQueen. I just heard of Craig a few months ago as the epitome of the new James Bond, but you have to wonder where Hollywood has been keeping him. As a hard character, one with some depth, but mostly the brawn that is required to create a just-under-the-radar kind of icon. I haven't seen the special features on this one yet, and don't know if I really need to. It was an average film, really, just mostly that I haven't really seen a solid one for quite some time, and I thought maybe this one could serve as an outsider.

Honestly, I'm somewhat clueless about how to write about film or cinema and make it sound artful. I'm not saying that I don't have people around me anymore who can talk intelligently about movies. I don't entirely know if and how you do that, other than the fact that there are film journals out there that could get the juices flowing. I have a book that I bought on a whim at one of these chain book stores, Agee on Film, which taught me that someone could be powerfully devoted to "writing about film". I always joked with my father about how we could go into business together, being film analysts,or something in that neighborhood. I still remember watching Bridge on the River Kwai on the Fox Saturday movies. They showed that movie like every week, but the real gist was that I couldn't ask him about a movie that he hadn't seen. That probably goes back into the sixties, and doesn't reach the span and breadth of Agee.
He was writing about every single movie that came out in the late thirties and forties and of course, he probably got them all published in the big newspapers in the country. Seems I can hardly go a week of doing a crossword puzzle without running into his name.
Still my mother was partly responsible for my love of movies, as we used to go to just about every Tuesday matinee during the summer when we grew up, watching greats like The Money Pit, Great Outdoors, Spies Like Us, WarGames, Stargate, Space Camp, Big, The Natural, the list of movies was endless. The older I got the more convoluted the list. Let's face it, once you've seen The Godfather trilogy, GoodFellas, The Killing Fields, Marathon Man, Chinatown, The Two Jakes, The Graduate, Apocalypse Now, Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Four Hundred Blows. Touch of Evil, The Killing or Lolita, your sensibilities about film change dramatically. yet there's so much junk out there too, and I'm not always sure that some of the films I just listed don't fall in to that category.

I have to admit I have an agenda. Might as well just put it out there for all its worth. It's a lofty goal, but not many of my goals are quite as lofty as someday reaching the notice of someone as esteemed as Josh Corey. I was glad the other day that he pointed out a poet named Lilac on his site. A forty-something year old woman from Lebanon ? (you'll see my details are never handy so I go with what I can remember)that travels back and forth between Phoenix and Beirut. What a combination, I mean seems like that stacks the deck in your favor as far as having something to say that hasn't been said. What do I know, though, I was born into white America and have resided there most of my life. I mean, I went to see movies during most of my later teen years, and as anybody knows, spending time in movie theaters doesn't afford you a great deal of color. I'm the guy in the baseball bleachers with the chino pants and the ball cap, sitting underneath the facade to keep from getting sunburned. I'll admit it. Nevertheless, I was classically trained at Creighton University to read and write poems. Four years, I am convinced, is not entirely enough, especially since you have to go through at least two years of core classes before you get to the real grease, that place where all you're doing is reading great poetry and trying to perfect a craft. That was where I wanted to be, where I still like to be.

I heard about Josh Corey and the Cahiers de Corey from a local poet, a guy I have a great deal of respect for on a personal level and as a literal masternmind, Steven Langan. I know he's been in Jacket and Double Take probably among others. I guess I can brag by saying that I knew him before he got published. I also happen to know that's not his main occupation. But I won't go into that, mostly to protect or adhere to something like personal integrity. I could talk about film tonight, but my time is somehwat limited, instead, I plan on creating a poetry blog, at the risk of having my life's work at once scrutinized. But my biggest problem has been getting the written word onto the screen. I still haven't made it into the 21st century as a writer. I have this nice newer model of a laptop, which I have failed to use entirely properly. But I want to get some of this stuff down, so I can look at it. So's other people, should they want to, might see as well.