I Gotta Be Me #3 - Thoughts on Cinema

Have you ever taken a look at a list of the top ten movies at the current box office? If you have and you consider movies an art form rather than disposable entertainment, you must feel as disheartened as I do sometimes about the state of our culture. I would say on average that maybe 3 or 4 of the top 10 movies are actually worth paying money to see at the theater, for those of us who actually care about movies. The rest are usually either big, dumb action movies, romances built almost entirely on treacle, or comedies that seem to cater to undiscriminating 12 year olds, yet are marketed to adults. Rare are the films that are actually challenging, original, intelligent, with memorable stories and interesting characters. A few years ago, I actually overheard a couple of teenage girls lauding the classic film Citizen Kane at my local library. Maybe we yet have hope. Last week, on the blog, I wrote that I would only review contemporary films from now on. I have changed my mind and have decided that if I so choose to, I will review films from any and all eras, and any and all genres. I watch movies from all eras and genres, so I see no good reason to pretend that I watch contemporary films only, certainly not because I might gain more readers(yet lose myself in the process). I watch a lot of contemporary films, but I also love old black and white films, foreign films, silent films, and documentaries. Cinema is one of the great modern art forms:  less subtle and intellectually absorbing than literature, but perhaps even more empathetic and humanistic in its immediacy. To take the potentials of the art form and devolve it into entertainment to be watched today and forgotten tomorrow is to throw part of our cultural heritage into a wastebasket. If you love cinema like I do, avoid bad, even mediocre movies like the plague, because culturally, that's what they are.

Movie Review: Reds(1981)

10/10 Reds is Warren Beatty's masterpiece. As a director, he has only four films under his belt, but Reds easily trumps the other three  in seriousness, substance, and importance. It concerns the early 20th century journalist/radical revolutionary John Reed and his various relationships and dealings in politics. Reed (Beatty) was a converted socialist who believed that he could make a difference with his journalism and his direct involvement in party politics in both the U.S. and Bolshevik Russia and he was right. His book Ten Days That Shook the World is a classic in political journalism and his direct involvement in the U.S. and Russian socialist parties was ambitious and sincere. This film was obviously a labor of love for Beatty and it shows in every frame on the screen. Only someone obsessively fascinated with this story could have made a film this detailed and emotionally satisfying. At over three hours, never does it feel obligatory or boring. Interspersed with the fictionalization of the story are various short reminiscences of people who knew John Reed personally, and this adds gravity and humanism to an already humanistic story. But as John Reed travels the road of socialism to its logical conclusion in communist Russia, he eventually finds that the authoritarian system there is as insidious and malicious as the capitalism in his native land. Diane Keaton is just as impressive in her role as Reed's wife Louise Bryant, ever suffering and ever caring. Jack Nicholson is strangely enough perfectly suited to the role of  famous playwright Eugene O' Neil, onetime paramour of Bryant and friend of the Reed's. This is a film that almost certainly would not get made today, with the intense vilification of  Socialism in America since even before this film was made. It is, in fact, something of a miracle this film even got made at the time that it did. It treats the subject of socialism fairly and sympathetically while at the same time recognizing that authoritarian systems of all kind, whatever the name, are corrupt by nature. This film is something to be admired and treasured and deserves its place in the world film canon. Essential!

Nice to Meet You...

Hmm, my first blog post ever. What to put? I guess introductions are in order. My name is Brian Lackey from Moberly, Mo. I am an aspiring Electronic Musician who is hoping to meet some new people, discover some cool blogs, and to be honest, attract some people to my blog and my music. I will be posting about my life, my work, and my love of the arts, particularly movies, music, and literature. I have very eclectic tastes in all 3.

For those of you familiar with Electronic Music, my music could be labeled as variously IDM, Experimental Electronic, and/or Electronic Dance, at least as of now. For those of you not very familiar with Electronic Music, but curious, I highly recommend this list...http://www.listology.com/enigmazach/list/200-greatest-electronicdance-albums. Go to http://grooveshark.com/ from there(most of the albums should be there for free listening) or your preferred music listening website.  I am more than sure that I will release albums in the future under completely different styles within the general framework of Electronic Music. To get a taste of my music, simply type nairboman or nairbomanmusic into Google or go to http://www.wix.com/nairbomanmusic/nairboman, my official website.

Yet, I am not only here to market myself, but to revel in the joy of creative writing and to see what I think about the experience of blogging. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to tell me. I have always been a writer, and have written stories, essays, poetry, and non-fiction for my own pleasure, but I got burnt out on it for awhile, and hope to get back into it eventually.

I also have the ambition to become a movie writer and director and have made some amateur films in the past.

For now, though, professionally, my goal is to market and sell my first(double) album Here We Go..., which will be released in download form through CDbaby in May through its own site and various online stores including Amazon, with a physical CD release hopefully soon thereafter.  I hope you will give some of my music a listen and tell me what you think of it.

I will be posting two or three times a week for now, most likely all on Fridays(as I am busy marketing my music the rest of the week), but possibly more in the future. I will be blogging more in future posts about the personal details of my past and present life, what inspires me musically, my music itself and the marketing that goes along with it, as well as reviews of movies and music and occasionally literature(it takes a while to read a book after all...lol). I hope you will find my posts enjoyable, entertaining, and informative. I hope you like my music too. :) Cheers!