Introduction

Okay, so this is my first blog posting, so let me introduce myself. My name is Dave Van Houwelingen, I am an accountant who works in Toronto, but currently lives in Burlington, ON. In July, I am getting married, and hopefully soon thereafter I will be moving to Brantford. My future wife is Cristina, and she is a teacher. But all that stuff is boring, so let's move on to the business at hand.

I love movies. I have loved them for years, and see approximately 200-250 movies every year, and that doesn't include all the older movies I watch or rewatch in a given year. My next two posts will be dedicated to sharing with you my top 10 movies of all time, as well as my top ten (or maybe 20) movies for 2008. Think of these as a little like getting to know me and my movie tastes.

I love all sorts of movies. From modern day American blockbusters, to the earliest days of silent cinema, there are few movies that I will not watch. My favorite directors of all time include: Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Steven Spielberg, Ingmar Bergman, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, John Ford, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Stanley Kubrick, David Fincher, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean Renoir, John Huston, Robert Bresson, Oliver Stone, Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen. And that's just off the top of my head. There are major directors I don't much care for as well - Jean Luc Godard being foremost among them (sorry, but I really don't like being called stupid in nearly every frame of every one of his films that I have sat through_ - althought admittedly, Breathless is a masterpiece.

Why do I love movies so much? It's hard to say really, although I think it has something to do with the fact that I think movies are perhaps the most all encompassing artform there is. It's part painting, part music, part writing part acting, part photography, part just about anything else. In two or three hours, a great film can make you see things in a completely different light. They are, in short, magic. But, like Pauline Kael said, and Roger Ebert never tires of quoting, "Movies are so rarely great art, that if you can't enjoy great trash, there's no point in going". I agree whole heartedly with that sentiment. Few movies every year would actually qualify as "great art" - perhaps no more than a handful each year. And yet, I love going to the movies each and every time. I tire of critics who constantly decry the "death of cinema" and who every year, complain that it was the worst year for movies ever. If you don't like the movies, then stop going.

So, what can expect from this blog if you are to become a regular visitor? Many things. This week, I hope to get reviews up for Confessions of a Shopalholic, Coraline, Friday the 13th, The International, Push, The Uninvited and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Hopefully, in the future, I will be able to get these reviews up a little faster in the future. I try my best to see everything I really want to see opening weekend, and will do my best to get reviews up before their second week in release. But that all depends on how much time I have to spend watching movies, and when I can get them up. For the most part, that is what this site will be dedicated to - movie reviews.

But there will be other stuff as well. I already mentioned that this week, I hope to get my top ten movies of all time, as well as my top 10 movies from 2008 up on the site. I will also provide my Oscar picks for this year's ceremony. Hopefully, I can also get up my list of my most anticipated movies of 2009 up (and for the first time ever, the number 1 spot is not the new Martin Scorsese movie!). I will also provide other random musings. I cannot guarntee that everything will be movie related, as I do have a tendancy to rant about just about anything that pisses me off or gets me really excited, but for the most part, that is what you'll get when you come here. I hope you enjoy it.