The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Days 10 & 11

The MFF ended early for me because of time constraints and an aching back, but I'm still really thrilled with the films I did see, more than 20 in all. As always, I plan to keep a list of the films I wasn't able to see that looked interesting and look them up on Netflix when they are released, and will review them at a later date.

Once again, I had a fabulous time, and even though the experience was pretty tiring (and I get to go back to work after 11 days away tomorrow!) I'm sure I will have completely forgotten the work involved and will look forward to covering next year's festival again. Overall, I had some fantastic experiences and saw some great movies. The MFF crew and the volunteers all did a great job and should be thrilled with the results.

Until next year...

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Day 9

A new day and a new venue - today is the first day I'm going to the Ridge in New Berlin to see a couple of movies, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm not sure why I have a dislike for this theater, but I try to avoid it in favor of seeing films at other theaters if possible. When I got there I discovered that the film festival was relegated to the back theaters which are kind of small. Perhaps they were looking at crowd control, and that putting the two screens at the back of the theater would solve that, but then why is the North Shore so much more successful and their MFF theaters are in the front?

Turns out that for all of my grousing about the venue changes since the reincarnation of the MFF, going to the Ridge made me yearn for the comfort of the North Shore, even with the crowds and travel time investment. While the number of people there was really great for the festival and was very encouraging, the lines were interminable and I could tell people were starting to get annoyed. With several older people in line who looked like they needed a place to sit, there was one small bench in the entire wing, and for a time it was taken up by MFF volunteers. Seating didn't occur until about 10 minutes before the start of the show, and once in there, the auditorium was kind of small. This was fine for the first film I saw, Who is Harry Nilsson? because it was at 4:30 and there weren't more than 2/3 of the theater's capacity there, but the subsequent film I saw, Lemmy, had a really good crowd. Even larger was when we got out of Lemmy and saw the line for the Date Night shorts that almost reached from one end of the hallway to the doors on the other end. It was pretty nuts, and while I was on the fence about staying for a third movie that night, knowing the size of the crowd and the discomfort of the seats after a while I decided to head out early. I have three films to see there Sunday so that should be kind of interesting, particularly Metropolis, since it's 2 1/2 hours long. I'm finding myself actually dreading it. I wish I were spending my last day at the North Shore instead, but I promised my boyfriend, Chris and one of my close friends, Jay, I'd see it with them.

Speaking of Jay, it was because of him that I went to see Lemmy tonight, and it was so much fun experiencing a MFF film with a friend. Though surrounded by an audience, so much of the MFF feels solitary to me since I see all of the films by myself, then come home and type about it on my laptop. When I get home every night, Chris asks me how the movies are and I can pretty much only give him a one word answer because I just don't feel like talking about it, frankly. Eventually, after mellowing out at home a bit, I sometimes disclose a little more information, but not much. So it was fun to sit with Jay in the theater and hang out, especially since he and I egg each other on with laughter, which there was plenty of during Lemmy.

Two more days to go. I think I'm going to be watching the other Netflix movies tomorrow in lieu of going to the theater, and I'm done obsessing over the number of films I see this year. To evoke one of my least favorite sayings of all time: "It is what it is."

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Day 8

I do feel pretty recharged, so I think that despite the fact that I feel I missed out on some movies the last two days, it was a good decision to catch up on my writing, etc. Past years, it sometimes took weeks after the festival to get caught up on everything, so I feel like I'm in a really good place. After counting the remaining movies I have scheduled to attend, I'm going to be less than 30 (28 to be exact) but I'm not going to beat myself up about that since that's still the most films I've ever seen at a film festival.

In an effort to ensure that I get a seat at Feed the Fish, I decided to skip the early show and come to the theater early, which turned out to be a great idea since it is packed. I was in the ladies' room before I saw the line and overheard two teenage girls saying, "What the hell is Feed the Fish?!" I knew it was going to be a sold out show, but didn't know it was going to be insanity.

I'm normally one of a few pass holders in most screenings, but this time I was in line with about 40 other pass holders. Craziness. I still got the seat I was gunning for though, since it wasn't in the stadium seating part. Of course, I not only had to share the seat next to me, but they apparently had to bring some chairs in as well.

Yikes, I was just inadvertently in a picture that three old ladies in front of me had taken. (Who does that?!) Though it wasn't my choice to be in the picture, my Dad, The Mad Photo Bomber would be proud.

Thank god for roomy seats, because I am officially a sardine at this point. Unfortunately, the guy next to me is maniacally rocking back and forth so it's shaking my seat as well, and I don't think the list of symptoms on the bottle of Alleve I just dug out of my messenger bag is "motion sickness". I'd tell the guy to knock it off but I guess that's what rocking seats are for - working out your aggression and making the person next to you seasick.

Waiting for the film to start, I have to wonder what the draw is for this film, since it was sold out before the festival even began. Maybe because of the Wisconsin connection? I also spotted Ruth Schudson, Bernice from the film Baraboo, in the audience.

Woohoo! Tony Shalhoub is here. I'll admit to getting a little giddy about it, and even more giddy after the film when our paths crossed and I introduced myself and shook his hand. Tremendous. Really nice guy - so "normal". The talkback with he and the film's director, Michael Matzdorff was great - Shalhoub kept taking more and more questions. Too bad the Marcus theater couldn't figure out how to get the house lights up because it was just unprofessional and lame to look at shadowy figures in front of us instead of their faces. I couldn't even take a picture with the flash going.

The late show of the evening was Winnebago Man and I was immediately put on notice by the entry of two douchebags who were so drunk that I could smell the alcohol all the way across the theater the instant they stumbled in. Of course, the warbled, "I'm too drunk to watch this HAHAHAHA!" would have been an additional clue. The theater filled up pretty fast, and the audience was a mixture of some people who were juvenile enough to find yelling, "Winnebago!!" 45 times really funny, and regular schmucks like me who just thought it was an interesting subject. The movie was short, but it was late, so when they announced there was a short beforehand I almost fell out of my seat. Oh well, I still got out of there just before midnight.

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Days 6&7

Nothing really to see here! I decided that it would be best to spend a day or two getting caught up with all of my writing and reviews, plus get a few things done around the house as well, so I took Tues. & Wed. off to write, write some more and recharge. I also found a couple of the films on Netflix instant so I am lucky enough to watch about 3 of them here and experience other films in the theater instead. All told, I think I'll still hit my goal of seeing 30 films during the festival.

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Day 5

Three promising films on tap today, including the film that I've been waiting the most to see since the films were announced, Breathless. Fatigue is really setting in, and I think I'm going to need to take some time off soon in order to catch up with writing and just generally recharge. I think it probably sounds funny to someone that attending a film festival is exhausting work; you're sitting in a theater after all, but it genuinely is.

The first film of the day is Monica & David, which is a documentary about a couple with Down's Syndrome who get married. The film's subjects are here, as is the director, and I actually found this out because I saw them walking to the theater in the parking lot. They looked really sweet, chatting and holding hands. The talk back following the film was very interesting - I know that I miss out on a lot of director/actor talk backs by staying at the North Shore theater because I think there are a bunch of them that attend screenings at the Oriental, but I have appreciated the ones I've been able to see and hope that the festival continues to offer those. I still regret not being able to see Susan Sarandon, but it was announced too late for me to be able to change my film schedule without blowing out the whole day, so I had to weigh what was most important to me - seeing films or listening to Sarandon and screening one of my least favorite of her films.

Then there's a documentary about two ballet dancers in Brazil that I'm only seeing because it's between two films I scheduled, but if history has told me anything, I'll probably end up loving it because I started out lukewarm on it. It seems that I've encountered at least a dozen or two of films in the six years I've covered the festival where some of the best movies came out of nowhere and were originally time fillers.

Finally, there's Breathless, that I'm really glad isn't going to be in the Ultrascreen since the aspect ratio would be all weird on that big screen. I'm a huge French New Wave fan, and Breathless has been on my "must watch" list forever, so when I saw that the festival was going to offer the newly restored version it quickly shot up to being the #1 film I wanted to see. There was a great crowd for it, which was really encouraging since I immediately felt a common bond with everyone there, because they not only came out to a 9pm show on a school night for a classic movie, but a classic French movie to boot, which is all good in my opinion.

By the end of the night I was Fidgety McSquirmsalot and while I was loving the movie, was wanting to get the hell out of there, so I can tell it's definitely time for a break and regroup day.

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Festival Day 4

A full day ahead - I have scheduled at least three, maybe four movies for today. Unfortunately the last movie scheduled is one that I really want to see, so there's no going home early to write and I'm not going to get out of here until after 11:30 pm.

My first movie today is Baraboo, and apparently the demographic for the film is old because I would say about 90% of the audience is over the age of 65. I'm not sure what's up with that, considering the driving force behind seeing the film, for me at least, is the fact that the director worked with David Lynch, one of my cinematic gods. Anyway, I'm not the fastest person in the world, but when I'm here, I have an agenda, so my triangular work space of Theater 1 - Potty - Theater 2 is sacrosanct and today it's been obliterated by swerving around kids from the children's film festival and old people seeing Baraboo. Oh well.

Oh, scrap that - I'm surrounded by old people and an infant who is sitting with his mom in front of me. I'm not sure what's more annoying, the threatening little cries coming from the kid or the old ladies behind me clucking about it.

Apparently one of the people in the movie was in the audience (she's old too) who joined Baraboo's director, Mary Sweeney for a talk back after the movie. It was a really good sized crowd - about 250 people and 35 walkers. I think that Wisconsinites really have pride in their home-grown movies. (Note that Feed the Fish, another Wisconsin film, was apparently sold out within the first day of the festival.) On a personal note, I was delighted to finally see Anna Krutzik, who introduced the film, as I have worked with her via e-mail on getting my press credentials the last two years and she has been an absolute delight to work with.

Next was My Dog Tulip, an animated film for adults that caught my eye in the program book immediately and was a must-see in my schedule. Apparently it's one of Program Manager T.J. Fackelman's favorite films of the festival, as he introduced it as such. Another great crowd of about 200 - other than one or two sparsely attended films, there have been some really great audiences at the screenings I've been to, regardless of day, time or subject matter. And truthfully, there are probably better numbers at the ones at the screenings I haven't been to since I always seem to miss the films that win the audience awards every year. I'm not sure if that's a particular talent of mine or if I just choose the "different" movies, (neither explanation would surprise me) but there we are.

Against my personal wishes, as I always want to see as many films as I possibly can, I decided to skip the screenings after My Dog Tulip in favor of dedicating some time to catch up on reviews. I made the final decision when I left the auditorium and saw mayhem outside of Bhutto, the one I had planned on seeing (apparently it was another sold out show) and after looking at the other film choice, I reluctantly decided it would be best to just bite the bullet and sit down in the lobby with my steno and write some reviews.

Unfortunately, that was short-lived because it seems that when one wears a press badge, it invites questions: "Who do you work for? Is it the Journal?" "How many movies are you seeing?" Normally I wouldn't mind questions, but A) I'm pretty antisocial and B) I had a job to do. So after getting up to go to the ladies' room and getting assaulted in there by an old lady in her walker who didn't understand the concept of "I have a web site." I decided to go out to my car and catch some chilly, chilly air.

But I was chilly and alone, and listening to classic alternative on XM satellite radio and by some miracle, had parked close enough to the neon marquee where I could actually see what I was writing, so all was good in the world. Two hours later I was caught up with at least well-thought out outlines that I can fully flesh out later, and since I've resolved myself to write nothing more than mostly capsule reviews (or I would probably go insane with the volume of films I am seeing) it shouldn't be too bad to catch up in front of the laptop.

I don't regret missing a film to see it, but I really hope The Revenant is worth sticking around a few hours for. I have old tired eyes and a newly DVR'd Mad Men waiting for me at home.

I'm not really sure what the deal is with The Revenant, but it looks like it's kind of a zombie movie, and I'm all about zombie movies. However, I'm also a complete wuss when it comes to horror films and make it a practice not to see them by myself (if at all) so I definitely had some trepidation going on. (It turned out to be completely unfounded.) Meanwhile, true to form, while I'm sitting in the theater a little nervous (especially since thus far I was the only person sitting in the lower section, with about 30 people sitting in the stadium seating behind me) and despite the plentiful number of actual "good" seats available above me, someone sits down in the weird single seat directly behind me. WTF?! My first thought was to move, and then I thought screw that, I was here first. At least if I get killed during the movie my reviews are caught up.

Following The Revenant, there was a talk back with director Kerry Prior, who seemed like a nice guy, but the whole thing was just awkward. The weird person behind me had left by that point and I was the only person left in the lower row, and he decided to stand in the middle of the theater, so he was essentially behind me during the talk back, so I wasn't really sure where I should be looking or how I should position my body, so I just kind of decided to give my nails a really thorough examination. Then there were the hopelessly awkward questions asked by the audience: "Do you have kids?" What the hell? Even Prior couldn't mask his surprise at that one. He was like, "...why?" Then there was one question by a guy who, if you can sound like a presidential assassin, he was one, that was so unintelligible that I'm pretty sure Prior just skipped over it and moved on. Meanwhile, it was the longest talk back ever and when I finally got out to my car I was once again one of the last people there.

To home, to bed 3 hours past normal time...

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Day 3

Got up today and everything seems slightly "off" - I hope this isn't going to be indicative of my whole day. I got out of the house late because I kept dropping things, or couldn't find anything; a t-shirt that is the exact same size and style of every other shirt in the closet is fitting weird and making me look like the Michelin Man, and I'm struggling to pack and close my messenger bag which houses no more or less than it did yesterday. Ugh. Not the way I wanted to start a long day at the festival. At the very least I'll be here for more than 8 hours and 3 movies.

To top it off, there are a million kids running around the theater lobby because of the children's film festival. Great idea, and I'm glad that they're doing it, but the local kid traffic and noise is horrifying.

Tonight is also the screening of Jack Goes Boating in the Ultrascreen theater, which apparently is sold out. This unfortunately kills my fantasy of having a jump seat, space to write and a place to put my messenger bag because a woman came late and wanted to sit with her husband, so the woman in the two-seater in front of me offered to sit next to me so they could. Nice gesture, but then the late woman spent the next ten minutes thanking the woman while I rearranged my stuff and gingerly put my nice leather bag on the kind of sticky floor. Bah. I realize that the empty seat had to be filled, but listening to them congratulate each other over their solution until the movie started wasn't part of the deal.

While I'm being a curmudgeon, what's up with all of these people coming in to a theater 5 minutes before the movie starts or later and then complaining loudly that there are no good seats left? I scooted into the theater a half hour early and was relieved to get a mediocre seat because it was already filling up. Meanwhile, the MFF needs to figure out how to have their volunteers explain the whole "reserved seats" thing because once again, every conversation around me centers around "why are some seats reserved? It says $10 all seats on the web site!" Maybe I'm just hungry, tired and jonesing for some fresh air and a cigarette after being in the theater for 7 hours, but people are getting on my nerves more than usual today. I saw a couple of great movies though, so ultimately, it's all good.

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Day 2

Holy buckets, day 2 started out at a frantic pace and I almost didn't make it into my first movie. Note to self- everyone on the planet goes to the North Shore Theater for 5pm matinees on Fridays. Granted, I only gave myself about 30 minutes at the theater before the first show, but I couldn't find any parking that didn't involve me practically parking in the town of Glendale (about 10 minutes South of the theater, for anyone reading this unfamiliar with the geography of the theater). When I finally did, I had about 5 minutes to get from my car-to the theater-to my seat. Yikes. But here I sit, puffing away from the effort with about a minute to spare. At least I will get to see a good movie (I hope) that looks interesting. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so, because there are a good 250 people here for a 5:45 show. When I came in I slunk into one of the lower section side seats to create the least amount of disruption, and was grateful for that seat, even. Turns out, it's my new favorite spot in this particular auditorium.

Poor Managing Director Kyle Heller. He's introducing the film and having to contend with this really hilarious uptempo Spanish music playing in the auditorium, which he found really distracting, but was pretty hilarious to the audience, well, me at least. He was actually getting pretty annoyed and kept dropping hints into the microphone that went unheard. Can't blame the guy. Catchy music though.

The racing around continues, because my next film begins 15 minutes after the first one ends, (and it's starting a few minutes late) so I make sure that I jump up the second it ends and book next door. I made it with a couple of minutes to spare, but I've quickly discovered the differences between the two main auditoriums they show the films in - Theater 1 is bigger and it rocks because there are a lot of great vantage points to sit from, and since everyone gravitates to the stadium seating anyway, I get perfectly good seats on the ground floor that give me space to work in and a quick exit strategy when the film ends. (Unlike when I see movies any other time, at the MFF, I jump up the second the film ends so I can get to the bathroom and get situated at my next venue.) Theater 2, which is the one closer to the lobby, is smaller and doesn't have the same good vantage points on the ground level, so I either have to do stadium seating or try to get one of the two back rows of the floor level. Plus the seats are really squishy so if you apply any kind of pressure to the back of the seat you're practically in a La-Z-Boy, which is comfy, yes, but when you've been sitting in theaters for 7 hours, sleep aids are not welcome and especially when there's no one in front of you? It's really easy to lean back and put your feet up on the seats in front of you. By the 9 or 10pm movie I'm usually ready to sit in an rigid-Amish made chair despite the protestations from my ass. It may seem like I've over-analyzed these theaters, but let's see what your mind turns to after spending half your waking hours in the same two places?

Anyway, my second movie was in Theater 2 so despite the fact I got there minutes before the show start, I still got a back row ground seat and there were about 200 people behind and above me, so everything was okay. UWM Peck School of the Arts Dean Wade Hobgood introduced the film and mentioned (not sure why, maybe because of it's association with UWM?) that the LGBT film festival is going to be at the Oriental Theater this year. I'm either way out of the loop and it's been there before, or that's new, but either way, it's cool and I'll probably try to check it out.

VENGEANCE. It's a great word and pretty much the only way I can keep going tonight. VENGEANCE. It's just before 10:15 and the final movie tonight is, yes, Vengeance. (I wasn't just repeating the word psychotically or anything...right.) Now, I'll admit it. I'm an old lady. Maybe not in earth years, but hey, I work at 8am normally and so my bed time is somewhere around 10:30 - 11:00 if I'm feeling saucy. Plus my eyes get super tired faster now (boy, I'm really going to be primed to be one of those complaining old people when I go to the home) so it actually is a physically improbability that I'm still at it tonight. But VENGEANCE! It looks like a good movie, so here I am with...20 people. WTF?! That's pretty surprising considering the late start shouldn't be much of a deterrent on a Friday night. Wusses. Or maybe the general public knows better. I shall soon see, I suppose.

A note to whoever is running the show - at this point I've seen 4 films, which means that I've seen the sponsor trailer 4 times. Only once (at opening night) did the trailer start playing without a hitch; every other time so far, either the screen was too blurry to see anything for the first 10-20 seconds, or there was no sound... my "real job" is in Marketing and lemme tell you - the more than 90 sponsors would be pretty pissed to see that, especially since the problem is always in the beginning when they're showing the big guns.

Walking out to my car after the movie ended was pretty funny though; there were about 10 cars in the entire lot so obviously we were the last ones standing at the theater and there was probably a really annoyed teenager waiting for us to get the hell out of there.

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival Day 1

The 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival is finally here and, after experiencing some minor (though major when trying to deal with it!) technical difficulties, I'm pleased to share some of my experiences and film reviews of the films I am seeing.

I am spending the majority of my time at the Marcus North Shore Theater, a large multiplex in Mequon, WI that has been one of the two major homes of the festival since its reboot last year. The other major venue is the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee, and this year they added a third venue, the Marcus Ridge Cinema in New Berlin. By sticking around one primary venue I am not able to experience all of the films offered, but I discovered last year that I can see a larger amount of films this way, and that the programmers of the festival do a great job of showing films more than once at other venues so there are only a couple of films I feel like I'm really missing.

It seems that, despite the fact that I have more time off from work now than ever for the MFF, I feel a little discombobulated; maybe I just need to get back into the swing of things since I haven't been spending a lot of time the past year going to the movies as much as I used to. Part of that is a result of having a connection at the Times and Rosebud cinemas, my local neighborhood theaters, part of it is that there hasn't been a whole lot released that I've wanted to see, and also, there's so many other movies to watch that could be so much better than what's offered in the local multiplex. I've never been a fan of the multiplex to begin with and always feel a bit of a culture shock when I go based on the sheer volume of people and shiny things to look at, so I guess my initial unsettled feeling doesn't surprise me too terribly much.

I AM pleased, however, that I managed (barely) to meet my goal of seeing 100 films in the year 2010 before the MFF started. Some friends and I made a goal of seeing 100 movies in 2010, but I had set the bar a little higher for myself because I'm a huge nerd.

Opening night was held in the theater's Ultrascreen auditorium, which is really not my favorite way to see a film, but it certainly accommodates a large audience, which is what turned out for the MFF's opening film, Blue Valentine, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.

As a press pass holder, despite the fact that I am granted immediate access to the theater and my choice of seats, I tend to try to not abuse the privilege and often choose a less desirable seat (what do I care, I just want to be able to see the screen clearly and have a little elbow room in order to write in my steno pad), but sitting in my seat waiting for the film to start, I came to two horrible realizations. First, that I'm completely addicted to my cell phone and I never had realized it. I was meeting Chris for dinner after the film and when I realized that I didn't have my Blackberry "just in case" I actually started to sweat a little, which was really depressing. Secondly, I realized that regardless of venue or event, there are always going to be people who endlessly bitch about things they know nothing about. In this case, a woman in front of me was loudly castigating her companion for suggesting to sit in the upper level of seats because "they're for the people with better tickets!" despite the fact that there were actually just a few reserved seats up there, presumably for major festival sponsors. Now, part of this was the fault of the MFF because while I was in the lobby I overheard a misinformed volunteer tell a crowd of about 300 that they can sit anywhere but the reserved seats since they "only had general admission tickets" which of course begged the question of how they could have gotten better tickets on the web site when it said all tickets were $10, etc. It was a really frustrating conversation to overhear, especially when she started involving other (already seated) theater patrons who started to go into a tizzy about how it was unfair, etc. All of this because someone was misinformed. I just wanted to throw my steno at her, but instead of just documented the situation, which, in the long run, was probably the best course of action to take.

The film drew a really good crowd; except for a few seats here and there in the upper and lower section, the only available seats were the really crappy ground floor ones. The spotlight came on the stage and the big cheese, Artistic Director Jonathan Jackson stepped up to the microphone to introduce some people. It seems like forever ago when we would run into me at the Oriental during the Milwaukee International Film Festival and he would call me "popcorn" (I was writing for a web site called Smart-Popcorn at the time) and I think it's so great that he's in the position he's in. This is clearly a guy who has made films his life and his passion for sharing foreign and independent cinema with Milwaukee is huge. Before introducing Greg Marcus, CEO of the Marcus Corporation, he said, "Welcome to the 2nd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival. I've been waiting 352 days to say that." Greg Marcus was gracious and said "We believe small films need a voice. Budget doesn't depict quality." Which was nice to hear from a guy who makes a substantial living off of showing mostly crappy big budget films. After, Chris Abele, another major sponsor and head honcho for the festival said, "I'm passionate about art and Milwaukee Film does great art."

Meanwhile, there's this really strange guy sitting in the front who is clapping for everything and answering rhetorical questions really loudly. I know that there's always someone like that at things like this, but it never fails to amuse the hell out of me.

In his introduction of Blue Valentine, Jackson said, "I was under pressure to screen a good follow up to last year's closing film, Precious. I think we did this with Blue Valentine and we are only the 3rd or 4th festival to screen it."

The sponsor trailer this year is pretty ingenious, and though I'm sure I'll be sick of it after viewing 12 or so, I think it's their best one ever - a black and white send-up of a 40's era fast talking advertising guy pitching the beauty of logos to a table of executives. There are more than 90 sponsors this year for the MFF (always good to know who the sponsors are because I feel good about patronizing their businesses if I can) and I think their businesses are given their due with this clever short.

Before leaving the stage, Jackson said, "We have 192 other films screening at the festival. You must see them all", which got a chuckle from the audience and made me feel like my predicted film count of 32 or so was not as great of an accomplishment as I thought it was. Who am I kidding, by day 3 my ass is going to be begging for mercy and I'm going to be longing for a big comfort food meal after subsisting on granola bars and Twizzlers, so if I can make it past 30 films I'll be fine with myself. Obviously, the challenge is to maintain the writing, because for every 2 hours of film I watch, there's about 2 hours of writing/posting/blogging involved. I think with a little patience and a lot of hard work, I'll