You'll see, it's all clear - you were meant to be here...FROM THE BEGINNING...

Thank you, Emerson, Lake & Palmer!

Welcome, my fellow lovers of film and the opinions that make them special to you. This is a blog about movies (obviously!). Now, I know what you're thinking..."Oh, great, another blog about movies. Who cares! They're a dime a dozen. Why should I waste my time with THIS one???" Well, normally I'd say you're absolutely right - the last thing you need in your life wasting your time is ANOTHER blog about movies. In fact, now that I think about it, what the fuck am I doing here bothering with this crap???

(just kidding! Don't go anywhere!)

Okay, what I really hope will make this movie blog different from others you may have seen already is that I will not be writing typical film reviews because I am NOT a professional film journalist. However, it might be helpful for you to know that in addition to being a practicing architect on Long Island, I have been writing screenplays for nearly 20 years and I was a film critic for my college newspaper at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. So rather than waste your time with traditional bullshit babble you can read in the newspaper or watch on the news, what I will be sharing with you (besides a quick and brief review) will be the thoughts, feelings and memories I have with each film I watch and discuss.

I'm 49 years old and I've been a movie lover nearly my entire life! When I was a kid, it seemed that I lived and breathed movies, especially since they seemed so few and far between. My parents were both not ones to take my younger brother and I to the movies much. For them, it typically seemed like a waste of time and money. So there you have it...a kid who loved movies and barely got to ever go to them (how's THAT for being born under a bad sign??).

For those of you born in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you'll still remember a day before the DVD player, the laser disc player, the VCR and the Betamax - when, if you wanted to see your favorite movie again after its initial theatrical run, you had two choices - hope to Hell the studio would re-release the movie in theaters or wait for the movie to be broadcasted on pay-tv and television. And when your favorite movie was going to be shown on TV, chances are you spent at least a week prior in great anticipation of being in front of the TV from the moment the ABC Sunday Night Movie started. Sometimes I still think those WERE the days!

Then in 1984, the impossible finally happened in my house - we got our first VCR! It was a Quasar with a pop-up eject tape insert and fake wood finish on the top of the machine. From the day I learned how to operate the RECORD button, I literally went apeshit! I taped nearly every movie on television! I would actually sit there with the remote and hit PAUSE on and off every time the damn commercial came on so I would have as clean and smooth a recording as possible. And my video tape labels - shit, don't get me started on that! I've had pathetically neat handwriting my whole life and it came through on my video labels. You want an example? When I taped STAR WARS, I wrote it down on the label to look just like it does when the movie scrawl opens. How's that for a lesson in anal retentiveness, people?

Now, as I've said, I love movies. As I got into my adulthood, I had the freedom to pretty much go whenever I wanted. By the time I was in my twenties, it seemed that I was going to see EVERYTHING - every blockbuster, every sequel, every remake! I was going to my local multiplex so often, the management was preparing to put in my own private salad bar!

Then, about ten or so years ago, something happened to change my entire outlook on going to the movies. You know what it was? Perhaps one of the most inconsiderate inventions ever to populate our species...THE SMART PHONE! It is this gadget that has managed to destroy what used to be my favorite personal leisure. Yes, movie pests have existed for decades upon decades. But these electronic gadgets of mental masturbation have brought out the worst in people's rudeness and inconsideration inside a dark movie theater. And even if most people have enough of a tiny brain to know that they shouldn't be talking on their iPhone during a movie, when the fuck did it become acceptable to jerk off with your brightly-lit, incredibly distracting iPhone during a movie when it's pitch dark???

The other point I should probably mention happened to me about five years ago. I suddenly had this realization that I was wasting my time, money and whatever brain cells I manage to use in a day on seeing sequels, "threequels", remakes and franchise films. We all know that Hollywood does not know the meaning of the words "original story" anymore. But it seems that during the last decade, the recycling of previously-used screen material has become like a serious cancer! And let me tell you, I never used to feel my age until they started remaking movies from the '70s. But what I consider more important about movies is that I believe they're meant to be more than just your average Friday night Hollywood greed-grubbing event that is meant to sucker the average "Triple Ms" - MASS MULTIPLEX MORONS!!! The fact is I truly believe that when done with a certain degree of wit, intelligence and originality (whatever's left of it), movies have the power to reach us, teach us, inspire us and perhaps enable us to discover a part of ourselves we never knew existed. In the words of John Lennon, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

Well, the end results of my frustration are two - the first is that when and if I do decide to take a chance and see a movie, the first thing I do is wait at least a week after something has opened and preferably, it's an art or indie film that is playing in whatever remains of local neighborhood movie houses (and there ain't that many of them left!). The second is that since I finally went DVD back in 2001, I have built up a very extensive movie collection of over 800 titles of every genre. It's a collection I've spent time and money building and one that I do take a certain degree of pride in.

So now, with your patience, I'd like to share it all with you. What I propose to do is start watching every one of my movies from the beginning of its alphabetical order (from Abbott to Ziggy) and share my words with you after each viewing. I invite you to take part, to comment, to share, and maybe, if it's possible, to look at movies in a different way than you may have before reading my blog.

So, here we go...