Introductions and Explanations -- i.e., Why I named my blog "John Carpenter, Terrence Malick and Me" even though I've never met them.

You're probably wondering about the name. No, I've never met John Carpenter or Terrence Malick, so I guess you could say that naming my blog after them is "lying" because it implies that we've had some wacky adventures together, fighting ninjas or smuggling guns to Guatemalan rebels or something. (Only in my dreams, sadly.)

No, the name is symbolic of my love and respect for two of America's best, most original directors.

Carpenter and Malick? Good and original? Are you crazy? Maybe. Professing admiration for these guys would probably get most mainstream critics laughed out of the office. To most people, they stand for everything that sucks about modern movies: 99% of critics hate how Carpenter makes intentionally goofy movies (with bad actors and worse dialogue), while almost every "regular" moviegoer that I've talked to gritted their teeth and started mumbling obscenities when I mentioned Malick's non-linear structures and poetic voiceovers (which emphasize tone and mood more than plot and character).

But that's the mainstream opinion. The non-mainstream opinion -- the opinion I'll stand by until the day I stop watching movies (or until an important newspaper pays me $15 million to say otherwise) -- is that Carpenter and Malick stand for everything that's right about movies.

Don't misread me: I'm not bashing traditional movies (some of my favorite movies fall into that category) and I'm not saying that Carpenter and Malick are better directors than, say, Scorsese and Spielberg; I'm just saying that it takes a lot of guts to make a movie where Kurt Russell surfs down Sunset Blvd. (Carpenter's "Escape from L.A."), or a WWII movie where the shots of trees run longer than the battle scenes (Malick's "The Thin Red Line"). Guts that most directors don't have.

It's not about quality, it's about daring. Movies are "dream factories," after all. Writers and directors, armed with large budgets and larger imaginations, can create almost anything in the world. A flying city in the sky. A massive, 100,000 sword battle between elves and goblins. A world where an ex-wrestler can find a pair of "special sunglasses" that reveals what he's always suspected: that rich people are actually aliens from outer space who control the world with an antenna on top of an L.A. TV station. And when the sky's the limit, does it really make sense to box yourself in by thinking small?

Over the next few weeks, months or years (sky's the limit), I'm going to use this blog to explore some unconventional movies, directors or movie-related issues -- issues that you might have come across before, but brushed off because they seemed too "stupid" ("A movie without a plot? What a pointless idea.") -- and hopefully change some misconceptions you have about movies. Who knows, maybe I'll convince you to see something that you might have otherwise avoided.