Great Directors dir. Angela Ismailos

I've been meaning to watch this documentary for a while. I mainly watched it for Lynch, Varda and Linklater but found out about other great filmmakers.

What was great about this documentary is that I got to find out about many filmmakers, that worked from the 1960s to now. I wish Ismailos got a deal to make this a television show, most of the interviews were short. I hear that the DVD has plenty of deleted features with many more interviews so I'll have to get my hands on that.

Again the film should have focused more on less filmmakers but it was nice to know a little more about various filmmakers. Ismailos did a great job, even though her voice over seemed a bit forced. My list of to watch films has gotten way longer after watching the film.

Sherlock Jr. dir. Buster Keaton

My favorite class this quarter in college is of course Intro to Film Studies! I love this class obviously because I love film and I do obnoxious things like talk to the professor during her office hours and read extra in the textbook.

Our first film was Apocalypse Now which I already saw and should have written about but oh well. The second was Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. which I've been meaning to watch for a while. I expected to love it and I did!

Most of my film studies class is filled with Bio and Chem majors who think silent/black and white/old films are boring which makes me sad. My whole life consists of silent/black and white/old films! Even though Sherlock Jr. fits into those categories I found that most of my 500 fellow classmates liked the film. This 1924 delighted everybody because it's so different from what we have today. Nothing can beat Keaton's slapstick comedy.

Comedy nowadays has changed drastically, it relies mostly on dialogue. Comedy back in 1924 had to rely on slapstick and vaudeville tricks to entertain the audience. I don't think I can ever get tired of Keaton's vaudeville acts, they are way more amusing than any Will Ferrell movie. This film gave me a sense of simplicity-the story is very simple. Most of the action happens in the dream Keaton has while working the movie projector.

Face it, no movie nowadays can top Keaton's humor. Sherlock Jr. encouraged me to watch all of Keaton's movies on Netflix before the next class!