Explaining Earth to Extraterrestrials Using Five Films

Wunderkind film writer Sam Fragoso from Duke & the Movies has cooked up a doozie of a blogathon this week. This is the task at hand:

Extraterrestrial forces land on Earth. Unknowing of our planet and society, you can pick five films from the history of cinema that represent humanity. What titles would you choose and why?

It’s a really unique concept. At its heart, the blogathon is about boiling down all of humanity and civilized history into five films. As a human, I feel that I’m uniquely qualified to select five films of my own, each for specific reasons.

There Can Be Only One!

There are many cinematic debates that have raged on for years. These debates provide two options–two icons or two tremendous films–that are strikingly similar, and yet still distinct from one another. Almost universally, they’re presented in black and white. As the title suggests, there can be only one option chosen as a favorite. There’s no room for gray area. I find that notion horribly misguided. I can love pizza and beer equally, for instance. Having said that, the debates are still a whole lot of fun and they’ve made me try to learn more about the other side far more than I would have without the debates. Here are some of my favorite debates, and my verdict.

20 Cool Posters for Silent Movies

I get paid to be a graphic designer. Mixed together with my love of movies, it’s only natural that I’d have an appreciation for interesting movie poster art. Each year, studios produce several outstanding posters for their various movies. It’s nothing new. They’ve been doing it for years, going all the way back to the silent era. Here are 20 of my favorite posters for silent films. Much thanks to the IMP Awards website, which houses most of these:

The Big Fat List of Directors I Don’t Talk About Enough

I love talking about movies. So do you. Why else would you be here? In the discussion process, it’s very easy to become enthusiastic about certain directors and their films. And the unfortunate byproduct of the genius of these various directors is that it’s easy to fixate on them, often at the detriment of other moviemakers who have plied their craft with similarly deft touches. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve seen at least a few articles about Ingmar Bergman, Buster Keaton, Louis Malle, Luis Buñuel, Martin Scorsese, Edgar Wright, and the Coen brothers. But there is a humongous list of other directors that I love just as much, if not more, than many of the names on that list. Here’s a list of directors that I don’t write about nearly enough.

The Black Sheep of Director Filmographies

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The majority of film directors have a unique style, an imprint that they place on all of their films. It can be something as significant as David Lynch’s surrealism or something as minor as Quentin Tarantino’s car trunk POV shots. A large part of the fun that I have in watching movies is seeing a director’s style develop, recognizing what they’re doing, and seeing the patterns when they do these things again and again. However, there are occasions where directors have films that break from their own conventions. They create something entirely different. They create a black sheep, as it were. These are films that stand out (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse) in their catalogue. Here are several examples:

Director: Robert Altman
Film: Secret Honor (1984)
First and foremost, Robert Altman is known for drowning his viewers in overlapping dialogue. His characters all speak all at once. It’s quite an immersive feature for the viewer. Some may find it distracting. Personally, I find that it makes me feel like I’m in the room with his characters. You find it all over the place in Altman’s movies. Imagine my surprise when I watched Secret Honor, a movie that featured only one character (a fictionalized Richard Nixon) and his endless monologue. It’s a credit to Altman that the film works so well. It’s also a testament to the film’s sole actor, Philip Baker Hall.

Enjoy the Scene-ry: Five Pitch-Perfect Scenes

Back before Christmas, I wrote briefly about some scenes from the last ten years that made my jaw drop. I’d like to re-visit the concept without limiting myself to the last ten years. Here are some really amazing scenes of cinema, along with a brief description of what it is that I find so magnificent about them. They’re all over the map, too. I hope I’ve got something for most everyone.

Takin’ Hollywood Down to South Park

You’ve no doubt seen the results of the various South Park character generators on the internet. I spent some time monkeying around with one of them the other day and had a blast. While it’s not necessarily anything new, it was still a lot of fun. The generator I used to create these can be found at www.sp-studio.de. Feel free to visit and play around with it. Here’s what I created:

The Boardwalk Empire Collection
Nucky Thompson, Jimmy Darmody, Chalky White

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