This blog was started out of a selfish need to write about movies. As a graduate student pursuing a doctorate in cinema studies, I've been immersed in the movies my entire life. I began writing on movies in high school, and decided to turn film criticism into a full-time occupation when I completed my Bachelor's degree and decided to tackle a Master's. At this point, I'm staring down the long tunnel that is my PhD dissertation, a project that began in earnest when I was five years old and watched Back to the Future (1985) for the first time.

To this day, I can't explain the appeal of that film to this pre-schooler, but it's lasted for over twenty years. In part, it motivated me to explore the cinema in greater detail. It started with trips to the neighborhood video store where I rented VHS and Laser copies of everything from Allen to Altman, Carpenter to Chaplin, Hitchcock to Hughes, Spielberg to Sturges, and Welles to Wyler. After the bonafide "classics" came those of the cult variety: Argento, Corman, Fulci, Romero, and virtually everything released by AIP in the 1960s and 70s. In college there was Fellini, Kurosawa, and the Western genre, from Curtiz and Ford to Leone and Peckinpah.

In between screenings, I'd browse trade papers like Variety, industry glossies like Premiere, technical accounts in American Cinematographer, and special effects digests such as Cinefantastique, Cinefx, and the occasional Fangoria. Not much has changed. I still peruse most of these magazines, except now it constitutes professional "research."

Getting back to the film that started it all, I was reminded of my own formative moment with cinema after reading one of David Bordwell's recent blog entries. He eloquently reflected on our "Adolescent Window," a time in each child's life when the "cultural pastimes that attract us then, the ones we find outselves drawn to and even obsessive about, will always have a powerful hold."

It's worth quoting one more passage, since it spurred me to start this blog. He writes, "Your taste was unerring. These teenage passions represent a big chunk of the finest part of you. In some secret place you are still as uncomplicated as you were then."

My childhood obsession with movies began with one that has remained a perennial favorite. After sloughing through the mine field of a Master's thesis, two doctoral exams, and endless course work that would make any student of film question his allegiance to the medium, a single viewing of Back to the Future was a sure-fire way to reignite the passion.

If you've stumbled on to this blog, then you're probably wondering what separates this stream-of-consciousness blog about film criticism from all the others. I'm passionate about cinema and its relationship to technology. I'm firmly grounded in the films and trends of American post-war filmmakers. With my dissertation focusing on changes in American sound practices since the 1970s, the words "Dolby" and "THX" will likely find a home here.

My skepticism of "grand theory" may constitute a grand theory to some, but my own research and writing concentrates on the changing nature of visual and sound style in contemporary Hollywood films.

I've been offered the Deleuze kool-aid, but refused to drink. Psychoanalysis seemed like a good idea at the time, but I've grown wary of the prophets who claim to unlock the "meaning" of cinema and society with the "male gaze." I've grown tired of the post- crowd, who feels it necessary every five years to re-negotiate Hollywood's relationship with "postmodernism" and "post-classical" style.

With all the theorizing that aims to deconstruct and reveal, we've lost sight of the movies. Maybe with this blog, the techniques, technologies, styles, trends, and impact of the movies can be embraced.