About

I write about Classic films so that you don't have to

This site is from Erik Weems. I write about films I have seen and like to design mock posters for the films. To view my main graphic design web site go here. To view more of my artwork online go to erix138.com

Why has the site changed so much?

If you have been coming to Cinemagraphe over the years, you may have noted how much it has changed visually as of late. The site once was prioritized toward film stills and screenshots from movies along with the written analysis and reviews.

However, as the internet has developed into a more professional (and legal) arena for communication, copyright has become a paramount concern, and in an effort to avoid all issues related to copyright, photography has been culled significantly.

Original introduction

Many highly-praised films that delight the film critics aren't quite as worthy as they are said to be (have you ever decided to watch a film that is coated in plaudits, only later to wonder why that was?)

The average film is actually a bit better than what movie critics will allow (after all, the role of the movie critic tends to straitjacket the mind to steer toward denunciation and not praise). Of course, there absolutely are bad movies, but even they can contain interesting aspects, depending upon how you approach them.

Some films simply appear at the wrong moment in time to be appreciated (Carpenter's 1982 The Thing seems to be a straight-forward example, brushed off by film critics as a dunderhead exercise in effects instead of the meditation on humanity which has garnered it a fairly large and appreciative fanclub today).

Our issue of enjoying film (and why are we watching movies at all) seems to dwell somewhere in the middle of the movie critic divide between issues of quality, fashion of the moment, and elements that seeped into the movie unbeknownst to the people actually making them (I watch Sternberg's Blue Angel and get a reaction to it that was never intended by the director or his girlfriend Marlene Dietrich. When I read about the movie I sometimes am struck that I somehow watched a different movie, though one containing all the same cast and dialogue, and one I can agree with any regular film critic for it being an awfully well-done and unique movie).

Sitting in the dark and watching professional actors pretend to be people they aren't showing us a story that never actually happened (even if it is "based on a true story") is a peculiar activity, and begs the question: what really is a movie?

This site was begun September 6, 2006.

If you need to talk to me, use this email address for contact:

Write to me at erik [@] eeweems.com

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