Howdy. 

How have ya been? Step into my office here and let’s chat. It’s been a while. Since the last blog post, I’ve reviewed quite a few movies. If you want to see what I’ve been watching, you can check out my thoughts on The Quick and the Dead, 300, Across the Spider-Verse, Renfield, Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, Oppenheimer, and Barbie. I’ve also watched a few that I haven’t reviewed like Amadeus, The Apartment, and so on. My Letterboxd has all the details. 

Last blog I mentioned that I was traveling to SC to visit family and see one of my brothers graduate from high school. It was a great trip, had a lot of fun. The only complaint is that I was expecting 80-90 degree weather and got low 70s instead. It may look like he’s taller than me, but that’s just an optical illusion. I am a full 6 feet tall. It’s what my license says and you can’t lie on government documents. 

Summer has been busy. 

After I got back, it was just business as usual for a little while. Nothing super crazy until late June. I went to a Tyler Childers concert (awesome) down in St. Louis (gross). As a Chicago Blackhawks fan, I try to avoid STL whenever possible. It was a great concert, not my favorite artist but it was a solid show. I went with my two best friends so that made it worthwhile. 

The guy in the middle with the wild t-shirt on got lost and we found him running around the parking lot with only one slide on. Somehow he managed to lose a shoe during his escapades. After the concert, that same guy got married a few weeks later.  I was co-best man with our third best friend, the one with the beard. We gave a pretty good speech and the wedding was awesome. It was a solid weekend. 

July was pretty quiet, nothing super crazy except the cinematic triple header of a lifetime. Barbie, Oppenheimer, AND Mission Impossible all debuted within a few weeks of each other. I went to the theater probably 4 or 5 times in July and it was fantastic. My theaters are usually only crowded during a Marvel release window so to see that many people getting in line and being visibly excited about something new was awesome. I want more event cinema like that. 

Over the last weekend in July, Ashley and I went to southern Illinois to take a little trip. We found this cool Air BnB that was sorta like a tree house. It was the hottest freaking weekend of the year so far so we sweat off about 10 pounds a piece but it was very comfortable and cozy inside.

Outside of trips, I bought myself a “professional” camera. I’ve always had a passing interest in photography and video making but never devoted much time or effort to it. I decided I want to have a better understanding of what goes into movie making and as Tarantino said “Making a feature film yourself with no money is the best film school you can do”. 

I did a lot of research and with the help of Ashley’s brother Nic, I settled on a Panasonic GH3 with a 25 mm lens and a few other pieces of gear. It’s so nice to have a dedicated machine that only does one thing so it’s essentially distraction-free. Everything on the Southern IL trip was captured on the GH3 and edited with Lightroom Cloud on my iPad. I’m hoping to sharpen my skills enough to take it on my honeymoon to Italy later this year and eventually make a couple of fun short films with my friends. 

So that’s a wrap on my summer. What about the movies? 

I’ve decreased my number of regular posts to just whenever I feel like writing them. I have been way happier with my writing since there’s no self-imposed crunch and I can just watch stuff without having to hyper analyze it. I’ve really been enjoying movies a lot more because of that. I think I’m going to continue with this strategy for the foreseeable future. There’s no downside other than decreasing engagement, but that’s not why I do this. 

I think I may start to post more short-form reviews just on Instagram. Something in the form of Letterboxd posts just to keep up the pace. I don’t want to write 750+ words about some mid-tier movie that I only half paid attention to. I think that the more casual I can make it, the happier I’ll be long term. 

Thanks for reading.