Cinema Aficiona
Cinema Aficiona
Welcome to Cinema Aficiona: A celebration of great films that have withstood the test of time and remained in the general anthropological library of brilliantly communicated human experience.
These meetings were originally hosted on Akira the Don's Discord server as part of a weekly event to celebrate meaningful stories. I recorded the sessions, commissioned original music from Billy the Bard 11th, artwork from Bellvonartsy, and had them edited by Hailey Lain for my Locals supporters. Now that more than a year has passed, I'll be updating this page weekly with the episodes for public access to anyone with a free account subscribed to my Locals.
01 January 2023
Yojimbo (1961) Akira Kurosawa's 1961 classic "Yojimbo". This is a phenomenal movie that inspired Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars trilogy along with countless other remakes and homages, most notably for me, Genndy Tartakovsky's animated series "Samurai Jack". Look forward to a master class in framing and show-don't-tell with Toshiro Mifune's iconic portrayal of a wandering Samurai who plays two rival gangs against each other as a bodyguard for hire.
08 January 2023
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) Last week we watched "Yojimbo" from Akira Kurosawa, and this week we'll be seeing the best known remake of that movie, Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars". Made in 1964, starring the fantastic Clint Eastwood, and featuring music from one of my favorite composers, Ennio Morricone. This film was one of many that coined the term "Spaghetti Western" due to its production and filming being based in Italy. Sergio Leone's direction and framing in this film were so iconic that nearly every "western" since has pulled at least one scene from this trilogy in homage or imitation.
15 January 2023
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) Sergio Leone’s final movie of the Dollars Trilogy: "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." This film, released in 1966, and was the most successful of the Dollars Trilogy in America. The iconic theme from Ennio Morricone has been imprinted in the Western genre ever since, such that even people who have never seen the movie likely have heard the two-note trill from the recorder followed by a “Wahh wahh wahhh~” lampooned somewhere. Get ready to enjoy the Western that put the capstone on the trilogy that defined what a “Western” was.
22 January 2023
Airplane! (1980) Now that we've finished our 5 week run of "Yojimbo", "Yojimbo the Fanfiction" parts 1-3, and "I Can't Believe It's Not A Western", I think it's time we take a bit of a turn on the subject matter and present an iconic and timeless movie that falls squarely in the realm of the Comedic: The classic 1980 film, Airplane!
This parody of the popular disaster film genre of the 1970's took a near 1-for-1 base from the 1950's drama "Zero Hour" and turned the tension-drenched plot on its head with slapstick, visual gags, word play, and unexpected joke resolutions.
Airplane! was once "proven" to be the funniest movie of all time with a laughs-per-minute calculation of 3 per minute in 2012, incredible considering it just turned 40 in 2020. Likely a target for the current cancel cult these days, we'll be watching the original and uncensored version. If you've seen it before, you know you're in for a solid 90 minutes of entertainment. For the newcomers, prepare to reset your baseline for what constitutes a proper comedy.
This parody of the popular disaster film genre of the 1970's took a near 1-for-1 base from the 1950's drama "Zero Hour" and turned the tension-drenched plot on its head with slapstick, visual gags, word play, and unexpected joke resolutions.
Airplane! was once "proven" to be the funniest movie of all time with a laughs-per-minute calculation of 3 per minute in 2012, incredible considering it just turned 40 in 2020. Likely a target for the current cancel cult these days, we'll be watching the original and uncensored version. If you've seen it before, you know you're in for a solid 90 minutes of entertainment. For the newcomers, prepare to reset your baseline for what constitutes a proper comedy.