Matthew A. Hawkins

Well recently I’ve been thinking about what the mass majority of people watch for entertainment. I would be as so bold as to say that most major/popular movies have not changed much since the earlier 80’s when we saw the likes of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and other action heroes change the culture of movie entertainment. What started out as new and exciting has shaped the way people view movies and often neglect films. Rocky & Predator were awesome the first time around, but is it still good for round 6, 7….
Transformers is a poor excuse of a movie. The original cartoon movie does a far better job of telling a story. The overuse of lens flares, sexuality and terrible dialogue… the thought of it makes me puke a little in my mouth.
I watched a talk by J.J. Abrams at TED a while ago that has me thinking about what a good film has in it. He shared a clip from Jaws and showed how the story of Jaws actually has hardly anything to do with a shark. The story within the story. A good film can often tell one story within another and sometimes even within another. I find now that I’m looking for the deeper point of the story other than the obvious plot.

So, on my journey through production, I’ve decided to start moving away from the vast 90% off Blockbuster shelves and start looking for, enjoying and boasting about the 10% of films that rarely get shared or enjoyed. That said, I don’t think that the 90% of North American driven movies are all bad, but I do they think they lack any true creativity (aside from the special effects) and are often forced upon people; case in point, Avatar… Avatar was terrible.
I am going to become an advocate for the forgotten. A reminder for the lost. I’m going to keep my dollars away from the movie slaughterers. Sure I’ll occasionally watch those other movies, my wife doesn’t necessarily enjoy all of my film choices, but you just won’t hear anything about those mainstream movies from me.
What film have you recently watched?