Aspect Ratio profile picture

Aspect Ratio

Film is like a battleground.

About Me

Cinephile? Movie lover? Film fan? Repository of mostly useless film facts & trivia? All of the above. I am thinking that My Space will be a good way for me to get some of my ideas about film out of my brain and seen by others. I also think that it can facilitate an exchange of ideas about cinema, and so please let me know what you are thinking about films past and present. Check my blog for some of my thoughts on film, and please respond with your own ideas. See my pics page for a gallery of film stills and movie posters.

My Interests

film, mass transit, cities, images, newspapers, airplanes, biographies, music, eating, radio, libraries, landscape paintings, architecture, caffeine

I'd like to meet:

Stanley Kubrick, Sam Fuller, Jean-Luc Godard, Douglas Sirk, Jon Jost, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Nicholas Ray, F.W. Murnau, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Kathryn Bigelow, Jean Vigo, Orson Welles, Nagisa Oshima, Raúl Ruiz, Freddie Francis, Claire Denis, Luis Bunuel, Frederick Wiseman, and so many more...

Music:

Beethoven, Verdi, James Brown, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Danger Mouse, DJ Shadow, Anthony Braxton, The White Stripes, Bernard Hermann, Ornette Coleman, Timbaland, The Eternals, Cecil Taylor, Prince Paul, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Fela Kuti, PJ Harvey, MIA, George Gershwin, Curtis Mayfield, Mike Post, and so many more...

Movies:

hard to choose but here are some favorites that come to mind. OLD: Barry Lyndon, Imitation of Life, Rebel Without a Cause, Two or Three Things That I know About Her, Hiroshima Mon Amour, The Sacrifice, Fanny &; Alexander, The Last Laugh, The Exterminating Angel, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Last Temptation of Christ, Man With A Movie Camera, L'Atalante, Spiderman 1 &; 2, The Ten Commandments, Mulholland Drive, Sans Soleil, Vertigo, Fireworks ("Beat" Takeshi), Y Tu mama tambien, The Naked Kiss, Heat (1995), Badlands, Black Narcissus, RECENTLY RELEASED: The New World, Friends With Money, Match Point, Grizzly Man, Broken Flowers, Cache (Hidden), Get Rich or Die Tryin', Nacho Libre, Babel, Notes on a Scandal, Grindhouse, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Darjeeling Limited

Television:

Frontline, The Wire, 30 Rock, Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes, Rome, BBC World News, Ebert & Roper

Books:

"Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen" by Larry McMurtry, "The Diary of Virginia Woolf", "Ada or Ardor" by Vladimir Nabokov, any Faber and Faber book about film (ala "Sirk on Sirk"), "My Last Sigh" by Luis Bunuel, the plays of David Mamet, "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin, "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, any world atlas and all the biographies in the new books section at the library, and more...

Heroes:

Nelson Mandela, Studs Terkel, Chris Marker

My Blog

Know Your Shakespeare

I was just talking with a friend about Shakespeare and I had the thought to pose this new question to you all:Name one of your favorite "Shakespeare" films. I don't just mean the straight cinematic i...
Posted by Aspect Ratio on Tue, 07 Nov 2006 07:35:00 PST

Cinematography

Famed Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist died on September 20, 2006. He was best known for his work with Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen. He had a long and illustrious career. I heard from someone li...
Posted by Aspect Ratio on Sat, 21 Oct 2006 06:39:00 PST

Pan and Scan

"You know that message at the start of a video that says this movie has been formatted to fit your screen? Well, I hope so otherwise it would be like... knuckle!" - Comedian...
Posted by Aspect Ratio on Sun, 08 Oct 2006 10:41:00 PST

Think back to 1996.

Think back to 1996. Bill Clinton was in his first term as President. We were all listening to California Love by 2 Pac and Cmon N Ride It by the Quad City DJs and everyone was dancing the Macarena. ...
Posted by Aspect Ratio on Sun, 24 Sep 2006 09:23:00 PST

A Dismal Summer

The summer officially ends in a few days and I was just thinking back on the movies I have seen during the past three months. The weird thing is that nothing really stands out in my mind. There were...
Posted by Aspect Ratio on Fri, 22 Sep 2006 07:23:00 PST