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What i watched in 2020:

 I'm not going to go through everything obviously and also because cinetrakt the service i use to keep track of everything has from time to time lost clumps of my ratings which is highly annoying so I'm now changing to letterboxd here's my full profile: ‎yoyocrazybones’s profile • Letterboxd most of my ratings are on their 50 or so are missing which I'm trying to resolve. Anyways I'm inly going to point out films which i gave a 10/10 or specifically impressed me enough for whatever reason. The reviews are going to be fairly short to make sure this isn't really really long. True Romance 10/10 amazing film with an awesome shootout and Brad Pitt as a stoner who lays on a couch the entire time. Andy Murray: Resurfacing 7/10 a film which somehow made me care about tennis. The Report 8/10 just in general love films about exposing the corruption and absolute rubbish which goes on in government and confirms my beliefs we should tear it all down :) Malcolm X 10/10 Denzel

Westerns: the genre that fell in on itself

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 Westerns were the most popular genre in America in the 50's and 60's but unlike other genres have never been able to make a real comeback and there are a few reasons for that but I have a theory in real life the "western era" was a relatively short period of time only lasting around 30 years which leads to western productions whether intentional or not sometimes looking uninspired or copied because unlike with other genres say first world war films westerns almost always had the same story track even making certain actors famous for mainly playing western roles like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood combined they have made 162 westerns this causes a big problem if a genre which for decades has been dominated by very similar story threads and actors when people want something different there isn't alot of places to go. obviously writers still went different places with westerns but there was mixed success too different poo western too similar unoriginal.  Next there i

Societies fear as representations in film

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 This is a fairly big subject firstly because fear is different for different countries in the U.K. there isn't a shared fear that a polar bear may maul us which may be the case for towns inside the arctic circle secondly because fear changes over time so representative examples from the 50s aren't likely to match ones from the 90s. Often it takes at least a little while for these fears to manifest in film because it usually needs some sort of catalyst or time for it to be worth showing it in film so that it shows as more than just an irrational fear  This is Tetsuo: the iron man this is a Japanese film which represents fears in 1980-1990s Japan during this time Japan started to become a competitor in electronics bringing lots of money into the economy. The film follows the titular Tetsuo as he is cursed to become a being of Iron the fear of many in Japan in that time was that this technology would begin to trample over their rich history and culture. The film quite literally s

Character survival in franchises

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 character survival in franchises is a difficult thing to manage because kill too many characters your film loses its heart kill too few and all danger shown on screen is moot because no-one is gonna die. Star Wars was fairly good with this for a period of time because main characters died yoda, uncle ben, darth Vader, the emperor, han solo frozen in carbonite then killed in no.7 the entire Jedi order dying off in episode 3 while not entirely balanced main characters died so danger was always there until episode 8 this is where things started to go wrong Han had already been killed in a horrible betrayal that was solid that was good but then starting in episode 8 they began wiping the slate killing Luke, leia, wiping c3po's memory bringing back the dead emperor, snoke, Finn gets brutally hit with a lightsabre in episode 7 in 8 he is magically better there are other smaller examples but those to me seem the most egregious but then it was clear in an instant what they were doing they

Pixel games: the return of retro

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Originally I was going to do a blog post about game graphics but I realised quickly what I had to say about them wasn't unique or a new viewpoint but I did get to look at some funny pictures anyways here is a link if anyone wants to know more about graphics fair amount of profanity you have been warned! Bad Graphics - YouTube Since videogames came into existence alot of developers have tried to make their game look as realistic as possible and because of this whole styles and looks of games were left by the wayside so someone could make sure that every hair on a random characters kneecap looks as realistic as possible in an attempt to immerse the player. but what most developers haven't realised videogames aren't about immersion half the time they are about creating a universe so that a player can do as much dumb stuff as they want with no repercussions when I play GTA 5 I'm not playing to immerse myself in the city of Los Santos I'm playing so that I can blow up a

Subgenres

 A while ago I watched The Burbs a 1989 Horror, Mystery film starring Tom Hanks it starts quite well with some surprisingly good music used just to set the scene. But it quickly devolves into a confusing mess the plot isn't confusing mind you but style wise it is a mess. it has 2 big problems the first one is balancing/consistency now horror comedies can be good The cabin in the woods for example is a great meta commentary on horror films in general but it is difficult as comedy and horror are just innately different genres to make it work though you have to haver a balance otherwise it stops being a horror film or a comedy film and just goes into the other genre until the script remembers its got to be both pulling the viewer out in this film you're likely to get cinematic whiplash. The second part is consistency now this is fairly similar to the balance problem there is a difference consistency means that for a majority of the film you have to have equal parts horror and co

Analysis of my top 100 films

 No I'm not out of ideas even if it looks like that I just thought it would be cool to put up but then I realised it only applies to me and it is just a list after all so analysis then its back to your irregularly scheduled content. First its not a set list my method was to put every single film onto a word document and then go through picking the ones which stood out most and repeating it so its not exactly scientific. even then similar films did seem to get grouped up some by accident obviously but Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the river Kwai numbers 17 and 18 are right next to each other I think because they're by Peter O'Toole who's style certainly had an affect on me. It happened more than once The Gentlemen and snatch both by Guy Ritchie are numbers 61 and 62. Bong Joon Ho, Christopher Nolan, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock and the Russo brothers are now clearly some of my favourite directors I think its differ