About

A little about myself..

I am a geek… nerd… whatever you kids are calling it these days.  But not like those fake geeks on Big Bang Theory (I dislike most CBS comedy btw), I wear my Dawn of the Dead t-shirt with a sense of purpose!  I can say that first and foremost, I am a movie guy.  My love of the visual arts stemmed from the cinema and has grown to engulf television and comics.  I have very fond memories of watching movies.  From staying up late until my parents fell asleep so I could pop in a borrowed VHS copy of John Carpenter’s Halloween and being freaked out watching it in the dark with my brother to rolling around on the ground laughing while watching Planes, Trains & Automobiles with my dad (I was laughing so hard because my dad was having trouble breathing as he was laughing himself to tears).  The great thing about movies is that they can be such a great communal experience.  Reading a book, while valuable unto itself, doesn’t allow you to share the experience of a great comedy or horror film together with family or friends.  I don’t think I ever truly saw Goonies until I was able to see it with an audience at a midnight screening.  Sure, I had seen it many times before, but seeing it with a large group of people who shouted out lines and did the truffle shuffle while Chunk did it on screen just elevated the experience and was probably one of the most fun times I’ve had in a movie theater.

I prefer the theater experience to any other despite the occasional drawback like texters and other cell phone related buffoonery.  But if I can’t see it in a theater, I definitely enjoy watching them on blu-ray.  While some people aren’t totally convinced on the whole blu-ray format, I am a huge fan.  I am a sucker for great image quality.  But what a lot of people don’t understand about the format is that it does not exist to make every movie look extremely polished like some high budget film of today.  It is meant to bring the films that we all love to the home video screen in a way that it was originally intended and I think it can be downright amazing watching a film from 20, 30, hell even 50 years ago and see as much detail and clarity as the original source can provide.  At times, it can make me feel like I’m watching the movie for the first time despite having seen it numerous times before.

So before I go on and on about the nostalgia I have surrounding movies or how I wish Drive-In movie theaters were still prominent, I think I should try and wrap this up a bit.  This blog was created with the intention of sharing news/reviews of things that I love and finding a venue for helping to support the artists (of movies, tv, comics and even music) that I respect and want to help promote their work.  And sometimes, it’s just nice to get a discussion about the media arts going and enjoying a nice back and forth.  So if you see something here on the blog or on the twitter page that sparks something in you, feel free to leave a comment or send a message.

Ben McBride