Introducing My New Blog: Longview

Cinephilia: the term used to refer to a passionate interest in cinema, film theory and film criticism.

I think I've contracted acute cinephilia. Last year, I tried to list five movies on my best of the year list. I ended up with only three. This year it was a struggle to reduce the list to fifteen. Not that I've gone to the movies a lot. Overall, it's been four times; twice for the first and second installments of The Hobbit, and twice for the latest two Marvel movies: Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. No, I just watch a lot of DVDs. And usually, they aren't even new movies.

The Truly Great Man - My Understanding of St. Crispin's Day

Shakespeare is the number one best-selling author in the world, with Agatha Christie as a close second. (Taking into account that Bible has one Author, and He not of this world). But while Shakespeare is amazing as a writer, he really wrote to be spoken. When put in the hands of a brilliant director, like Kenneth Branagh, the result is magic. I’ve seen Branagh’s adaptation of Henry V several times, and it still gives me chills. Like Fiddler on the Roof, it’s one of the few older films that stand the passage of time.

There’s one scene in particular, near the end of the movie, which, without fail, makes my heart soar. King Henry V, nicknamed “Harry”, has led the British troops into France, and the Battle of Agincourt approaches. The French outnumber them by a large margin. It’s a pretty hopeless situation.

A fellow named Westmoreland laments, rather understandably, “O that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!”