My explanation has a long version and a short version.
SHORT VERSION: Last year, two of my new years' resolutions were to watch more films and start doing yoga. This year, my new years' resolution is to actually complete last year's resolutions. So it was either this or Film Stop Biting My Nails.
LONG VERSION: From my (elementary) knowledge of yoga, I've gathered that what makes yoga fun is (1) cool music and (2) the fact that it's one quick step away from Jedi training. It all comes from a desire to connect to a deeper spiritual force which (surrounds us/penetrates us) brings us closer to peace. And it tricks us into exercising in the meantime. This, in my opinion, is exactly what film does and should do. It tricks us into thinking we're being served up escapism while actually making us confront and contemplate the real questions of life-- all while making it seem effortless. Even terrible films do this inherently if you think about it-- they make us delve into the psychology of the filmmakers to examine why the hell they spent their time making this movie. On top of that, film is a deep, connecting worldwide force that collates the human experience and reduces it to basic, universal needs to which we can all relate. Most of the time, at least. That's the power of film.
I love watching movies and TV, breaking down about what I liked, what I didn't like and what I would have done differently (for better or worse). So that's what I'm going to do here. And more than just talking about whether or not I liked a film, I'm going to look at specifically why it failed/succeeded, enumerate the aspects that were good versus those that were bad, and in general use the experience to further my knowledge of filmmaking and story. It sounds pretentious but then so does yoga.
My rating system for films, from best to worst, is going to be like this:
Theoretically these are cumulative, so a rating of "Glad I Saw It" means that it also exists and is interesting. For example:
JURASSIC PARK (1993)
JURASSIC PARK: THE LOST WORLD (1997)
JURASSIC PARK III (2001)
Sometimes films might skip steps in between.
BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2001)
It's important that these faces are on a continuum because more than focusing on if/why films were bad, I'm going to focus on why they weren't good enough. The whole idea of filmmaking as an industry is to make a product which is good enough that people will deem it worthwhile to spend two hours of their lives watching. Every film has the potential to get to "Mindblowing," but most of them stop about halfway there.
Now that you've gotten all the way down here, I'll go ahead and admit that the "film" part of the title is kind of a lie as well. Even beside the fact that a lot of the things I'm talking about will probably have been shot on video rather than film-- I'll also most likely end up talking about TV shows and probably books in addition to movies. So it's really more about story in general than film specifically. I could have called it Story Yoga but that if you say that too fast, it sounds like a protagonist in a Dostoyevsky novel.
So that's my plan. I'm going to watch films, start doing yoga and attempt to delve into the mysteries of plot, story and character. Hopefully I'll learn something through both.
I know that in a world inundated with film review blogs, shouted opinions, would-be Roger Eberts and actually-are Roger Eberts, it may seem like another blog professing supposedly original criticism is the last thing we need. That may be true. But then again, filmyoga.blogspot was still available, so whatever.
