Justin Cecil's Blog

  Growing up I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go into space and explore a new frontier. By the time I entered high school I realized that my math skills were nowhere near where they would need to be to get into space, plus I was developing new interests as well. As I was leaving high school I went back and forth between either going into filmmaking or becoming a flight attendant (like my mother before me), due to my growing love of movies and lifelong love of travel and airplanes. After earning a Bachelor’s degree, doing volunteer work in Israel for nearly two years, and living in the state of Washington where I worked customer service jobs and focused on getting into the airline industry, I am now living abroad and teaching English. Funny how life works sometimes.   Anyway, I’ve noticed something similar about the careers of being an astronaut and a flight attendant (other than the fact that they both go into the sky). At first they may seem very dissimilar...

  I came across an opinion article the other day from a concerned mother. It was titled “I raised my kids on Pixar – and it has ruined classic cinema for them.” In the article the writer and concerned mother states, “Pixar has ruined this generation: they have no attention span and zero tolerance for mild amusement.” No. Just… no. One could rightfully claim that other factors in our modern day society have contributed to a fair amount of people with short attention spans. The influence of cell phones and the Internet, while they have brought a lot of good in the world (like me being able to write this blog!), has probably without a doubt done this as a side effect. However, Pixar is not at fault here. And the company itself has not “ruined” classic cinema for younger generations. In the article the writer states that she tried to entertain her children with movies that she grew up with. Do you know what movies she mentioned that she tried to show them? “Beavis and Butt-Hea...

  “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” - Leonardo da Vinci           I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of the Renaissance man or woman, a person who strives to do multiple things in a variety of fields, to do whatever interests them. Most people think of Leonardo da Vinci and others of the actual Renaissance period, or perhaps of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. Rarely do we think of people in our own time as potential Renaissance people; more often we look towards specialists in modern times.  There are actually many examples of modern day Renaissance people, and I’ve written a couple of previous blog posts about them. Here are five more that I’ve thought of. Dennis Hopper –  The late Dennis Hopper was best known as an actor and filmmaker for his work in films such as “Easy Rider” and “Blue Velvet.” Howev...

  When I went to the University of Central Florida about a decade ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long!), the film director Jason Reitman came over to give a Q & A. Below is a picture I took of him, and I even got to shake his hand. At this point he had already directed the film “Thank You for Smoking” and “Juno,” and would soon premiere his film “Up in the Air,” which I would say is one of my favorites of his. “Up in the Air” is a 2009 movie in which George Clooney plays a man named Ryan Bingham, a “termination assistant” and motivational speaker. Basically he is paid to fire people on behalf of companies not willing to do so; since this was made during a dark time for the American economy with many people being laid off, it was a very timely film. Bingham is one of those perhaps rare people that truly loves his job, and revels in the fact that he gets to travel around the country and fly in planes most days of the year. While he doesn’t work as either a pilot or a fli...

  Back in the 1960s, a lot of people thought we’d have flying cars by the year 2000. It’s 2020 now and we’re probably still a little ways away from flying cars. I’d love to see them come to fruition at some point in my life, although realistically I think the automobile industry should first focus on making vehicles much more energy efficient, and perhaps also self-driven. Flying cars have been a staple in science fiction for decades upon decades, but perhaps they’re most famous in the classic cartoon “The Jetsons.” I was just looking at the opening of “The Jetsons” on youtube and there are a couple of things I noticed. One thing is that while it still looks futuristic, stylistically the animation feels very much like the 1960s. This is pretty common in science fiction, for the style to look like the era it was made in, or for people to look and behave like people from the era the series or film was made in rather than the future. If you watch “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the cloth...

  I wouldn’t consider myself to be an expert in Greek mythology (although I honestly think I might know more than the average person). When you read and learn about a particular thing, like an author’s work or perhaps even some of the works of an ancient culture as a whole, you might notice recurring themes and ideas. And there is one common theme I’ve noticed in a lot of stories from Greek mythology. Never piss off a god or goddess. One prominent example involves the goddess Artemis (one of my favorite ancient Greek deities). She was the goddess of hunting, the great outdoors, wild animals, chastity (she decided to remain a virgin her entire life, unlike many of the Greek deities who slept around with countless people) and the Moon. When she wasn’t answering the prayers of worshippers, Artemis could often be found outside hunting and simply having a good time. In fact as a child, when with her father Zeus, she asked him to fulfill several wishes of hers. These included but w...

  Not too long ago I mentioned a brief, bizarre nude scene in the Werner Herzog film “Heart of Glass.” Personally I’m not against nude scenes in movies at all, but I feel like they should at least kind of fit into the story and make sense. For this article I now want to discuss another strange nude scene from another European film, this time from the 2004 French movie “A Very Long Engagement.” “A Very Long Engagement” stars Audrey Tautou and was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, both of whom were involved in “Amelie,” one of the first foreign films I ever saw. Jodie Foster, who is fluent in French in real life, also plays a supporting character. It tells the story of Mathilde, a sickly but beautiful young woman cursed with polio, who tries to find her presumed dead lover during the trials and tribulations of World War I. Throughout the film Mathilde meets soldiers and their lovers who suffered during the war, and there are several scenes showing the horrors of the First World W...