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.

Fake Criterion Covers of Woody Allen Films

Woody Allen has pieced together a prolific career. Along the way, he has changed cinema forever by putting himself out there in ways that few–if any–other filmmakers ever have. He has mastered comedy, drama, and mystery, all while racking up one iconic image and scene after the next. His work hearkens back to the 1950’s heyday of arthouse cinema, at least in part due to his maniacal and devoted obsession to his hero, Ingmar Bergman. And for that reason, it’s a shame that his work hasn’t received the Criterion treatment, presumably because of rights issues with MGM and because Allen is a proponent of keeping his film releases mostly free of extras. However, it’s fun to imagine. And so here are my imagined covers of Woody Allen Criterion covers, even if they’re not likely to happen any time soon.

100 Things I Love About the Movies

I passed a milestone recently here at TDYLF. Thanks to the help of the editors over at IMDB, I passed the 100,000 Hits milestone on Sunday (with a whopping 80,000+ of those hits coming just since September 30th). To celebrate, I’m beginning a brand new series called “100 Things I Love About the Movies”. To be sure, there a LOT more than 100 things that I love about the movies. As such, this has the potential to become a series- 100 Things I Love About Horror Movies, 100 Things I Love About Foreign Movies, and on and on. I present to you the first edition of “100 Things I Love About the Movies”.

12 Great Moments in Movie History, Using Stick Figures

Here are 12 Great Moments in Movie History, using stick figures. In short, I’ve used Adobe Illustrator in the exact wrong way it’s intended to be used. I’ve used it to try to replicate the childlike stupidity and simplicity of MS Paint drawings. You can click on any of these to get a version with higher resolution. Enjoy!

Five Scenes That Made Me Laugh ‘Til I Peed (almost)

You know how this goes. You’re watching a comedy and it slowly builds up the humor to the point that you just can’t take it anymore, and your sides start to hurt.

Just to clarify, no movie has ever actually made me piss my pants. Hooray, bladder control!