There are moments that you start wondering about the strangest things and this week’s question is an example of that. As I’m a big fan of movies I watch a lot of them and often try out movies which I might not enjoy. But unless a movie is really horrible I always feel that I should finish a movie and not turn it off. In the days of the VHS tapes this would sometimes mean fast forwarding through bits, but now more options are available, one of them being able to play back a movie at a higher speed, but keeping the pitch of the voices. There are DVD players which support it and various apps which also do so. I think it is a great solution for not spending as much time you’d like on a movie while still finishing it. Now I don’t use the feature often and if I do it’s movie I don’t want to spend time on reviewing them, but I am wondering:

Do you ever watch movies at a higher speed and what is your opinion on using this feature?

The problem with loving movies is that you really don’t have enough time to watch as much of them as you’d like. Sometimes you have other things to do, but there are always movies which either you have seen or you can easily do something else while watching them. I occasionally start movies knowing I won’t give them my full attention (for example documentaries where the information which is said is most important or movies I’ve watched before) and am wondering if you ever do the same:

Do you ever play movies in the background while you are doing something else?

It’s question time again at the start of the week. This week I want to ask you about your aspirations as a movie maker. Now I never really had the urge to direct movies/documentaries, but I have always enjoyed the process of filming and editing (mostly vacation movies and a couple of weddings). Last week though I started wondering again (even if it only was a little bit), simply because of the Black Magic Pocket Camera. I had never heard of it, but I think I saw on Criticwire that the price for it was slashed by half. It means you can get very good camera, especially built for making movies for around 500 dollars, which shows that with the right idea everyone can get quite far. Just that development made me wonder for a bit if I should be doing something creative with a camera, but then reality dawned on me that I’d never have the time to think of an interesting story/subject to film or if I had spend the time on executing it all. So my question to you:

Do you have any aspirations to make movies/documentaries yourself?

Hi, hope you have enjoyed yourself. This past weekend jazz was everywhere over here as it was time for the yearly North Sea Jazz festival. Although I didn’t go to the big performances (Robin Thicke, Pharell and other (more jazz related) artists), I did catch part of them on TV and saw some live performances walking through town. This made me think about something you don’t see reviewed a lot: Documentaries which consisting of a concert. I started to wonder about why that might be the case. Could it be because the people who will watch them in general will see them for the artist(s) and their music, not how it all was shot and therefore will probably love it. Then I started thinking about concert recordings which stand out because they are more than just music and usually it are the ones which have behind the scenes footage. One of my favourites is Dave Chapelle’s Block Party, where it wasn’t just about the music but about the people too, not even the famous ones. So my question:

Do you review concert registrations and if not what would you think be the difficulty in doing so?

The past weekend I went to see Transcendence (I’ll probably write a review for it soon), which has a cast with quite a few famous faces. While watching it though (especially at start of the movie) I initially didn’t mind that, until I suddenly saw Kate Mara appearing. It was just a “throwaway moment”, but because I know her face (in my case from House of Cards) I knew immediately that there was a whole lot more to her character. It wasn’t just some extra and that, even if it only was for a moment, took my out of the movie experience. This made me wonder (even though I know those famous faces are selling the film):

Do you think having a famous actor/actress in a specific role can take some tension away or take you out of a movie because you know they must have a big role? Would you prefer less famous actors/actresses in those type of roles?