The Artist (9/10)

Each year I try to see most of the films that will potentially get nominated for Best Picture. Last year I saw 8 out of 10 before the Academy Awards aired and this year I plan to see all of them prior to the awards show. Having said that, there are already predictions as to which movies may be nominated for Best Picture in 2012 and among them is The Artist.  My wife and I saw The Artist just before Christmas. I had read a lot of buzz about the film since Jean Dujardin's (lead actor) won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival and the film itself had since received many awards and nominations. Much of the attention the film is receiving is due to the fact that it is silent (except for music). The movie reminded me a lot of Singin' in the Rain  as it dealt with the advent of talkies (movies with dialogue and sound) and the twilight of the silent film star. Dujardin's character, George Valentin, is a famous silent film actor who falls on hard times as talkies become increasingly popular. The film is incredibly funny and well executed. I felt like I was transported back in time. The movie was even shot in a 4:3 ratio (the image was square and had black bars on the sides of the screen as oppose to rectangular). The film is easily one of my favorites of 2011 (my top 10 list should be on here soon) and it will likely be one I show in my Lit through Film class in the future. I recommend this film to anyone who appreciates the history of film and the "innocence" of old time Hollywood. My rating is 9/10.

Getting to Know Matt, Getting to Know All About Matt!

Matt - Looking as pretentious as possible

I'm (one of) the other contributor(s) D-Bo mentioned in the initial post. Let me join Kevin in cheering him on for taking the initiative with a common movie device we all know and love, the slow clap. Mentally anyway, it's hard to type a slow clap without completely losing your audience.

I'd list my top 5s here as well but I have two of the same movies as Kevin, The Godfather & Usual Suspects, and probably three of the same TV shows, at least those (somewhat) currently airing, Justified, Community and Boardwalk Empire.

One of the reasons I was interested in joining Dan and Kevin on this blog was my wife Alyssa and I started to make our way through AFI's 2007 list of the best 100 American movies of the previous 100 years and I thought this would be a great place to share my thoughts on the movies as we go through the list. Expect a review of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? coming just as soon as I get around to it. You can see my reviews for most of the movies 100-68 over on my old blog - Pending Sobriety which I last posted to in June of 2011.

Hopefully, this blog will afford me the opportunity to really start blowing through that initial list as well as post my thoughts on all the other movies we see. Happy New Year!