blog assignment 1.3

"The Dude abides, man....."
And now for the third installment of this blog assignment. This one asks about my favorite movies. Let me start in reverse order.
What format do you watch movies in and why?
I watch about 90% of my movies on my computer. I can watch it in hi-def, and pause and start at my leisure. For me, starting and stopping a movie is almost a requirement. I don't always have the attention span for long plot developments, so I will start a movie, pause it, start a second or even a third movie, pause it, return to the first movie, pause it, go make food, find something else to do, come back and un-pause the second movie, etc. The trouble comes from all that ranging from "all occurring in 20 minutes" to "spanning several days". I do keep the plots separate and follow the dual story lines. Many of the movies I like are classic and/or "foreign films" (that's right not all movies are born in Hollywood xD )and would never be carried in local theaters. Renting movies was fun for a while, but technology caught up with it. I do not see a reason to travel to a store to pay $7-and-change for 1 movie. Netflix is priced about the same with a (for now) bigger selection. Torrent files are free and can be blue ray quality (1900x1080p) without owning a Blue Ray player. With strong virus-protection and taking the time to read the comments for feedback/If-it-worked, anyone can find some of the most obscure titles. This also works for TV and books (text and audio both). I usually watch movies in .avi or .wmv format. The quality is high on AVIs and WMVs have really good compression codecs. Sometimes the higher quality flicks are in .mp4 or .mkv , but those files are big and tend to not play on as many players, including my Xbox. Xbox will play .avi and .wmv through the USB connection and a USB Flash Drive. The other major selling points for watching my movies in the privacy of my own home is a) I don't have to dress up (if at all), and b) most movie theaters don't have a liqueur license yet.....Why is that last fact important? ...Moving on.....
What movies do you really like and why?
First all time favorite movie I'll talk about is The Big Lebowski. THERE IS NEVER A BAD TIME TO WATCH THIS MOVIE. I tend to gravitate towards comedies and this is a particularly witty one. The movie starts with a clever and semi-cynical sounding cowboy giving a monologue. The protagonist, known as "the Dude", suffers from a case of mistaken identity which leads to several colorful side-plots meshing together with an all-star cast. This movie is also incredibly quotable. To give an earlier on example to avoid spoilers, two thuggish men burst in on a very surprised Dude. After a brief interrogation, one of them turns and picks up Lebowski's bowling ball. "what the F*** is this?" he asks. While wearing sunglasses, at night, inside, and with a tired smile on his face, the Dude calmly looks at his attacker and says "obviously, you are not a golfer." Priceless. Over two-thirds of the jokes in this movie are hidden in side comments, situational irony, and good timing from the actors. Not a "fart-joke" kind of movie.
Next movie came out in 2003 and is a Japanese film called Zatoichi. This is a story about a blind masseur who is secretly the world's #1 samurai in disguise. He hobbles from town to town righting wrongs similar to a samurai cross between Batman and Robin Hood. This story has samurai, ronin, geisha assassins, Yakuza, murder, betrayal, comedy, sword fights, and special effects. Plus, two good guys are pitted against each other, so you are not sure who to root for. The story is no slouch of a tale, but the editing is what really captured my attention. The director intended the blood splatter effect to be similar to the blooming of a rose. This results in some awesome fight scenes. The soundtrack was also really notable. In many scenes, the music syncs up to video and plot seamlessly. Farmers in a field hoe on beat. Carpenters working on a house saw and hammer percussively in time to the songs (which are instrumentals). Another upside to this movie, though a lot of the target audience in America wont go for it, is that it is in Japanese with English subtitles.
Third movie I want to discuss is a suspenseful movie called The Thing (circa 1989ish?). This movie stars many major actors of the time, but really focuses on Kurt Russel's character of the bitter helicopter pilot for a remote research facility out in the middle of Antarctica. The team realizes too late that they have uncovered an alien that specializes in changing its appearance to blend in perfectly with its intended victims. That in itself is enough to catch my interest, but then comes the puppeteering. The Thing is made by rubber, goo, and a whole lot of stop-motion filming (take a picture, slightly move the puppet, take a picture, slightly move the puppet, repeat...) These days so many movies rely on computers for special effects and monsters that everything starts to resemble a cartoon. Plus, I don't care how great an actor they are, they all act better when there is something to act with or at, as opposed to a clear space in the room where they are supposed to have onscreen chemistry with an object or character they could not see until post-production.
I was going to stop at three movies tonight, but if you read this far then I have a real gem for you. The movie is called Mary and Max. this is a true story of an 8 year old Australian girl becoming the pen pal for a 56 year old Autistic man in New York. There is a dark, film noir feel  too the whole thing. It starts out shot in black and white and then slowly takes color as the story takes shape. The icing on the cake is that the whole movie is animated in clay-mation. Think of a dark, yet true, version of Wallace and Grommet infused with Edward Gory (the author).
I think of gone on long enough for now. Thanks for reading xD