COMING SOON: FILM 101

•January 3, 2013 • 3 Comments

One thing I’d like to do this year is to talk about film from the perspective of some of its concepts and terms. I’m going to try and write one FILM 101 article a month. I’m not looking to be the professor at the front of the class with this, but rather to start conversations about film from this angle. So that is, officially, coming soon (though perhaps with a different name).

In the mean time, check out this link from headinavice.com, where Tyson has been kind enough to post some of my formative questions to the film blogging community at large: headinavice.com/2013/01/11/question-time-viii-background-in-film

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Posted in Film 101, ~~ About This Blog ~~

johnlink ranks THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974)

•January 3, 2013 • Leave a Comment

For my first movie of 2013 I step back 39 years to one of the iconic horror films, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. My decision to throw this on is two-fold. For one, I march ever closer to 500 films and would love for certain icons of cinematic history to be represented on this blog. Secondly, I have a group of employees planning to screen the new TEXAS CHAIN SAW tomorrow night. Being a supposedly direct sequel, I thought it was time to revisit the first one.

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johnlink’s 2012 in review

•January 3, 2013 • Leave a Comment

In the past, this year-end review has been very number heavy. I’m less interested in doing that now. They still show up at the end of the blog, but I’m going to talk about movies more than talk about numbers. I’m not sure that anyone cares what the average ACTING score was for movies I had previously seen before (6.64). As always, though, this list is about movies I saw in 2012. I don’t make an effort to go out and see everything in theaters, so it would be pointless for me to talk about the best movies made this year. What follows, I hope, gives a bit of entertaining insight into the stuff I watched this past year.

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Posted in ~~ Year End Reviews ~~

johnlink ranks LA VITA E BELLA (LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL) (1997)

•January 1, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Finishing it up around ten minutes to midnight, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL turned out to be my last film watched of 2012. It’s a movie I’d never seen before, but always meant to. It wraps up a year with 191 movies watched, far and away the most I’ve watched in a calendar year since starting this project. It leaves me at 495 rankings after four years, which means I’ll hit number 500 sometime in early January. Anyway… on to the write-up.

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Posted in ~ L ~, ~~~ 1997 ~~~
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johnlink ranks MEN IN BLACK 3 (2012)

•December 30, 2012 • 3 Comments

Well, I went into 2012 wanting to get through a whole bunch of movie series. I was fairly effective in doing so. I also started a bunch of series I did not finish. MEN IN BLACK 3 is an attempt to do a bit of mop up work. This series was spread out through the year. I watched the first one on 1.10.12, the second one on 5.5.12, and then the newest one on 12.29.12.

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johnlink ranks RED TAILS (2012)

•December 29, 2012 • Leave a Comment

This is the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black 332d fighter group. George Lucas had been trying to get this project off the ground (if you’ll forgive the pun) since 1988. It took him 24 years to get it to the screen, though his role is limited to Executive Producer. This turned out to be the final film of LucasFilm before their acquisition by Disney.

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Posted in ~ R ~, ~~~ 2012 ~~~
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johnlink ranks 388 ARLETTA AVENUE (2011)

•December 28, 2012 • 1 Comment

I’ve always been a Blackberry guy. But, sadly, my phone was introduced to some chemicals a month or so ago and I’ve been living with a 2004 Razor ever since. Last night, I got the upgrade to an iPhone. One of the first things I did was to load up the Amazon Prime Instant Video ap. While I don’t think I’d go and watch LAST OF THE MOHICANS on that little screen, it is perfectly suitable for a late night horror flick or a talk-heavy comedy or drama. I went with a found-footage flick starring the troubled Nick Stahl.

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johnlink ranks LOVE ACTUALLY (2003)

•December 26, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Being Christmas, Liz wanted to watch something festive and uplifting. All for that idea, I was happy to watch LOVE ACTUALLY again. A really sweet large-cast movie about the definition of love, this is a film which embodies the Christmas spirit without being a film wherein people are buying Christmas Trees and confronting some sort of specifically ‘Christmassy’ problem.

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Posted in ~ L ~, ~~~ 2003 ~~~
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johnlink ranks RESERVOIR DOGS (1992)

•December 23, 2012 • 4 Comments

For me, Tarantino was a big influence on the way I approach movies. I was ten when RESERVOIR DOGS came out, but I first saw it as I was entering high school. RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION were revelations. The way a movie worked, the way a movie played out, the way a movie spoke… it was as if all those things changed because of these two movies. So, as I approach 500 movies for this site, how is there no Tarantino anywhere on here to be found? That needs some fixing.

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Posted in johnlink favorite flicks, ~ R ~, ~~~ 1992 ~~~
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johnlink ranks FARGO (1996)

•December 20, 2012 • 1 Comment

Well, here we are, 489 movies in. And for the first time, I had to go back and check to see if I had written something up on a movie or not. I couldn’t remember writing an article, but I feel like I’d seen this movie recently. I suppose that is a good place to start the compliment parade for FARGO: it’s a movie which stays present in the mind.

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