Allow myself to introduce... myself -Richard

You know, I never introduced myself.

Last week, Sherman told us a little about himself and what makes a good movie to him. Maybe I should do the same.

I can't tell you my earliest movie memory, or when I KNEW that I loved them. Hell, I don't know that I could tell you much about the movie "D.A.R.Y.L." other than I loved it as a kid (We all have guilty pleasures). What I can tell you is that I love stories.

Beautiful shots are wonderful and a soundtrack can really add to a movie, but it is mostly fluff to me. Now don't get me wrong, they are a HUGE part of the process, I just don't linger on them like Jeremiah does. No, my favorite part is the characters.

My favorite movies feature great characters, as do my favorite books, comics, games and television shows. I would much rather see a character grow than a panning shot of the landscape. But take what I am saying with a grain of salt; truly great stories need both.

Take Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series. King takes you to the land of Midworld. You can see the lifeless plains in "The Gunslinger" and the desolate beaches of "The Drawing of the Three". Yet you can also imagine Roland's face and the jacket that him nemesis Randall Flag wears. And you see Roland and his Ka-Tet grow. I weeped like Dick Vermeil after a kickoff return when a character died or left the group, and I did this because I knew them, I felt close to them and I felt for them.

My favorite movie of all time is not a prefect film. I would not even give it 5 stars; maybe 4 1/2 but never 5. That is "Princess Mononoke." Very rarely does an animated film show emotion like Mononoke does. Hayao Miyazaki creates a world of strife and war, of Gods and demons against mortals. But he also creates a world filled with multi-dimensional characters. I love this film because of that, and when the end credits rolled the first time I watched it, I could not help but release the emotion that movie built up inside me. I didn't cry because it was sad, or because I was happy. I cried because I was told a story that will forever be etched into my brain and I knew I could never experience the mystery of it again. I will always be waiting for the camera to zoom up and the flowers to bloom over Iron Town.

Enough of this whiny bullshit though, a new review comes out Wednesday.
See you then,

-Richard