An Introduction
'Greetings my friends!'
A little introduction to The Image Loft. I am Mervyn Marshall, I'm a nineteen year old about to start my second year of my BA Single Honors Film Studies degree in Queens University Belfast.
So I've been wanting to start something like this for about three months now. Something always came up, usually my own five star procrasination skills, but after spending a good two days mulling over a title I finally gave up and settled on this one... Which I'm already regretting and will probably have deleted this blog and moved on to something else by the end of the day. So if I'm still here by the end of the week, you'll know I couldn't think up anything more creative.
So what is the purpose of this place? Well, I've been writing reviews online on various message forums for years now and this is my first dip into the Blogosphere and I see it as sort of a dry run. I really just hoping to get something set up so I could get myself out there and have something to show if ever I needed it. Also I see it as a challenge to myself, if I'm capable of putting the effort into this sort of thing before charging off to buy a domain name, so for now a free Blog site will do. I'm hoping to update a couple of times a week depending on my watchings and what I'm musing on over the first few weeks. When I go back to Uni late September then I will have to juggle my time between social, school and work life but that shouldn't stop me from getting at least one update out a week.
So, movies. It's why I'm here and it's hopefully why there is a least somebody else here with me. Actually, I'm just going to take a small spot here to apologise in advance to my all my friends, casual internet acquaintances and of course my beautiful girlfriend because you see, they're going to be harassed with this over the coming weeks, and for that I am sorry.
Anyways, back to movies. I didn't really have much of a choice regarding my obsession. Both my dad and sister are massive movie fans and the former has led me to many of my favourite films. But really if I could pin it all on one person, it would probably be this guy:
'Mmmm cinephiles.'
That's right Japan's biggest movie star is probably the reason why I just watched Visconti's The Leopard a few hours ago when I get down to it. I've written before on my admiration for the series but I plan on doing one here in greater detail. But anyway as a young mite growing up in Northern Ireland I don't know how I managed to fall into the ropey, cheap 1950/60s Godzilla films, and just in time for the crappy Emmerich 1998 movie, whatya know even at five years old I'd already seen my childhood crushed by Hollywood. I can trace the line back pretty clearly; Godzilla turned to Akira. Akira turned to Satoshi Kon's wonderful mini-series Paranoia Agent which (along with my love the Silent Hill Video game series) eventually brought me to David Lynch (and Hitchcock and Kubrick etc etc.) Okay so it's not that interesting to anybody other myself but it's funny (or maybe worrying) that one of the key figures in my development and overall life is a man in a rubber dinosaur suit.
Okay, okay movies! I guess I should work on this tangent thing next time... I don't really want to get into why I love movies, I don't really think I could answer a question like that now or ever with text honestly. Film is something I've used to define myself since I was pretty young, but it only took off inside me as the thing I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing when I was fifteen years old and watched Mullholland Drive for the first time.
This film truly opened me up to the power film had as an art form. It is my favourite film and one I owe a great deal to. Seeing that love reflected in the recent Sight and Sound poll made me feel all gooey inside, hopefully one day I will be casting my vote for this film as the greatest movie of all time along with the other critics out there.
[Calling it now, by 2032 Mulholland Drive will have entered the top ten, by 2052 top five and 2072 numero uno. You heard it here first folks!]
And with that I think it's time we got this underway with some real shit. I hope this introduction served to catch somebodies interest out there! If not, I may at least get invited to a press screening from time to time...
Peace out and good times, folks!
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