Everybody Be Cool

Hello, everyone. My name is Aaron (online handle: SamuraiFrog), and I’m just honored to be here. I run a little blog called Electronic Cerebrectomy that, to my great surprise, Nathaniel noticed sometime last year and occasionally points out links to. I would categorize myself as a serious dilettante; I talk about everything. But film is one of my top categories, and the watching of them is something I’ve invested most of my life in.In school, I was always disappointed by how little people really cared about seeing older movies (and when I say older, that tended to mean everything since before 1980). I always said that I was going to marry the first girl I ever met who knew who John Ford was. But I’m not one of the film snobs, either. I tend to like most of what I see (though I do have an extensive lists—I’m one of those people who make lists—of movies I just thought were truly, truly awful).

As for my own favorite movies…everybody thinks I’m just being showy and pretentious when I say my favorite movies are Lawrence of Arabia and Spartacus, but those are two films I can watch and get lost in over and over again. I genuinely love them. My other favorites are Tod Browning’s Freaks, Walt Disney’s Bambi, Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King…agh, just too many to name! I love a lot of movies.

I’m actually pretty unprepared for this. I hope I can write a couple of insightful and/or humorous posts. I’m working on something now about the proliferation of women directors working today and what direction I hope they’ll go in (it’s been a hundred years, is a different viewpoint so much to ask, really?).

Like Indiana Jones, I’m just making this up as I go along. But I’m grateful to Nathaniel for the faith he’s showing in me here. I’ll try not to let him down.

Be cool.