I’m not sure if this is everyone’s experience or just my comparative brain at work, but there seem to be occasions where the media I’m consuming comes together in a weirdly synergistic way. I’ll be hyper-focused on a sp…
If I was asked to choose the single, most important moment in my life when cinema truly affected me for the first time, I would, without hesitation, say Return of the Jedi on the big screen at a pokey little cinema called The Metro in Ashton-Under-L…
Of all Jackie Chan’s films, why would I choose to discuss 1997’s Mr. Nice Guy, one of his mid-period and largely forgotten starrers? Why would I skip past the films that made audiences sit up and pay attention to his unique, comedy …
ARE THE SHADES OF PEMBERLEY TO BE THUS POLLUTED?! Joe Wright's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE came out towards the beginning of my freshman year of high school. I approached it with a healthy dose of skepticism (although, perhaps, slightly inflated for a 14-y…
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”—Aristotle “I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence.”—Ricky Bobby Y’all, I love this movie. It played a huge role in Mac&…
I first saw Wet Hot American Summer several summers ago when I was a Cabin Leader for a stay away camp in New Hampshire. Movie Night was a tradition at camp. First, the whole camp would watch a movie together. Then, after we put the kids to bed, the…
As far back as I can remember, Martin Scorsese has been my favourite director since I first caught Raging Bull on TV in my early teens. It came at a time when I was discovering that cinema was an art-form, and Raging Bull, with its grainy black and …
There are so many reasons that Legally Blonde is one of my all-time favorite comfort films. For starters, it’s hilarious. Elle Woods introducing Bruiser Woods (her tiny dog) and herself as “Gemini vegetarians” gets me every single …
When it comes to film nemeses, some obvious contenders come to mind. Batman and the Joker. John McClane and Hans Gruber. Sarah Connor and the T-800 (although to be fair, they do team up in Terminator 2). But there’s one unsuspecting pairing I&…
The first time I watched Moonstruck, I was a cynical 19-year-old going through what was then the worst year of my life – in fact, the worst year I could conceive of anyone having, barring a famine or world war. Having just watched the film for…
There is nothing quite like the experience of Walter Hill’s 1984 film Streets of Fire because it manages to successfully combine so many elements from history, mythology, film, television, and music to create an amazingly anachronistic music v…
It’s always the perfect time for me to listen to Elton John’s musical arrangements and incomparable vocals fused with Bernie Taupin’s timeless lyrics because together they cover almost all variations of human emotion. While listeni…
*Note: this week's blog post is a little different. I'm posting in a paper I wrote in graduate school (from November of 2000!) on the play Much Ado About Nothing, but be assured--it's still germane to the film as well :) The first thi…
T.S. Eliot is my favorite poet. It’s not only that I love his command of imagery and the subjects that he tends toward[1], but his rhythms and choice of language are often perfect to me. He has lines that, apropos of nothing, live …
When I was a much younger human, I managed to stuff in even more movie watching than I do now with my only “reel” obstacle being the MPAA. Now, while there are many excellent films rated PG-13 and under, the lingering problem for m…
I am a massive fan of music and a huge fan of movies. Putting music and movies together is even better than the idea to combine chocolate and peanut butter. Movies trade in emotion and the right song in the right place can amplify those …
When it comes to writing papers for school, people fall into two different camps – those who finish early and those who procrastinate until the last possible moment. I am most decidedly in the second camp, because I enjoy the excitement …
I’ve talked a few times on the podcast about how my media taste as a child was directly related to not liking anything that my dad liked. It was not that I intentionally tried to be a contrarian with him; we are polar opposites in any nu…
Even though I’m a voracious reader, I have somehow managed never to read a James Bond book until recently. (I also never saw a Bond movie until Die Another Day came out in the 00s. Now I have seen them all many times over, since Jo…
Stephen King is very well known as a supernatural horror novelist, and there is really no mystery as to why. His early career is a greatest hits of weird literature. His first three published books were Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, …
In the 80s, MTV was awesome. They played tons of videos of music you actually wanted to hear, at least if you were me. Michael Jackson and Madonna were on heavy rotation, but it wasn’t the same song over and over again ad nauseum (…
I’m the kind of person who finds it very easy to get lost in fiction. Books and movies both. I live in my head a lot of the time anyway, so when I read or watch something that I find very engaging, the world around me disappears.&n…
When Harry Met Sally stands tall as my second favorite romantic comedy of all time (my number 1 pick being Moonstruck), with everything being a solid 10 in each and every department. I would not even know how to begin tallying the total number of ti…
As childless adults living far from our family members, Christmases at Chez Macey are pretty chill nowadays. That’s not to say we don’t commit full force to the Christmas spirit; both John and I are huge fans of the holidays. …
