Hello all! A new year and a new start. This year I am indeed making a resolution which I pledge to keep throughout the year. It began with a challenge from my boss at work. He was leading an meeting for our church’s band members and techies, and compelled us that if we find ourselves at the end of the year at the exact same level of skill – be it in musicianship, technical ability, or in our personal endeavors – that we will have been bad stewards of the talents and lazy in our development. This message touched me and so I decided to be the gung-ho idealist and set a few goals for myself this year.
A great number of my goals pertain to becoming a better husband. I have only been married just over a month and yet I think this the most appropriate time to begin working on this burgeoning new relationship. Some of my new purposes aim at advancing myself as a filmmaker and a technical director, striving to become better at my job and at the jobs I hope to have in the future.
However, the ambition I am putting considerable effort into, which shall see the most accountability here, shall be my endeavor towards advancing myself as a film critic and scholar. Since leaving University last May, I have not had the same level of opportunity to continually develop my skills in analyzing, studying, and particularly writing about cinematic topics.
Therefore, I am beginning a new project. With no Summer Film Challenge to occupy my blog life, I am starting into a new project: one that is not yet titled. The rules of my new Challenge are as follows:
- Each month I must write one essay on a subject with in Film.
- The essay must be minimum 1200 words.
- Subjects must be on a topic specifically in the realm of film; not media, not art, not video games or even television. My goal is not to develop my skill in writing on any subject, but rather to focus in on making observations about the medium I first became interested in and one day hope to teach.
- The essay must be finished within the month. I may write an article outside of the blog and post it at after the month is up. I may choose not to post the article at all if I think it has potential for publication elsewhere, but I pledge here to at least post a treatment of the essay here, though again this would not have to be within the month deadline.
Before I embark on the first of these cinematic explorations, some housekeeping is necessary. On a personal note, as I have already stated, I got married in December to my beautiful and wise wife, Emily. We have been delightfully happy over this past month and have been wandering that long trodden road of learning to live in such deep personal connection to another. The honeymoon was great but it is time to get back to real life…which finally has a stove in it.
Second, I want to confirm that one of the upcoming month’s essays will be the very long overdue Firefly and Serenity review. To be honest and a bit spoiler-y, I wasn’t overly fond of the series and thus have been taking my time crafting a careful response, as I know I face the threat challenge of my close friends who adore the show. So, most likely in February be looking forward to that final SFC12 review.
To begin this new challenge, I would like to turn attention toward that most classic of holiday movies. Frank Capra is well known for tugging American heartstrings and tickling our funny bones with such classics as Arsenic & Old Lace, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and You Can’t Take it with You. But perhaps his most famous work, the film which more people have seen and connected to than all his others, has to be the towering emotional giant of It’s a Wonderful Life. Shown every year a hundred times around Christmas, this film is far more than the holiday title as it has been pigeon-holed, touching the lives of viewers around the world for 68 years.
So, please join me in just a few days for my exploration of the Central Problem of George Bailey’s wonderful life!
Tyler D. Welch 