This one’s obvious, but it’s important enough to say here. Suppose you’ve paid $11 to see royal period piece The Favourite (plus another $8 on snacks), and you’re really getting into it. Then, the glow from a fellow audience member’s phone catches your eye. “There are some movies that have their spell broken by the presence of a phone,” Yoshida says. Keep your phone out of sight. You’ll pay greater attention to the story, and you won’t ruin the experience for other theatergoers.Pay attention to the whole frameOne of freelance critic Candice Frederick’s favorite scenes in the heist thriller Widows features a long, unbroken shot where Colin Farrell’s politician character and his campaign manager, played by Molly Kunz, are in a heated discussion in a car. The viewer doesn’t see their faces but instead watches as the camera captures the changing landscape around the car. “We don’t see them because the director wants us to look around,” Frederick says. “These moments when you’re not focused on the characters’ faces and you think it’s downtime — in that scene, there’s so much being said. It really implores you to watch the screen, because, in addition to that, there’s a whole bunch of things happening on the street that we’re supposed to be looking at.” Don’t miss an opportunity to take in some plot development just because the camera isn’t focused on the stars.Go in with an open mindFrederick and Yoshida agree that knowing as little about the film as possible allows for a more enjoyable viewing experience. This means staying away from spoilers, obviously, but it also means avoiding reviews or cast interviews.“It might taint [your experience], meaning it’ll influence it in any way,” Frederick says of reading reviews beforehand. “You don’t want to go in with the notion of what the film’s trying to tell you.”But you can — and should — use recognizable names as reference points to new films. If you’ve enjoyed prior work by Bradley Cooper or Alfonso Cuarón, for example, this familiarity might be enough to sway you to see A Star Is Born or Roma without any knowledge of what the films are actually about.Once the credits roll, you can do some Wikipedia digging to make discoveries like, “Oh, interesting: This shot was borrowed from that movie,” says Alonso Duralde, film critic at TheWrap. Also, if you were enthralled by a particular actor’s performance, you can scour their IMDb page and check out more of their work.

http://www.wdir1.com/link/734694/the-art-of-dying-a-valuable-message-from-bruce-lee-about-our-ego

Awards season can feel like showing up for the first day of school without doing the summer reading: Your friends are talking character development, plot, conflict — and you’re left in the dark, suddenly wishing you’d put in a little more effort.But you’re hardly alone if you haven’t seen (or even heard of) some of this year’s Oscar-nominated movies. The divide between mass and critical appeal has fast expanded over the past few decades, according to a New York Times analysis, with the year’s biggest box office hits now rarely receiving a nomination for best picture. Titanic was the highest-grossing film of all time when it won best picture in 1998. At last year’s awards, by comparison, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape Of Water, which grossed $195.2 million worldwide, took home the top honor, while the year’s top-earning flick, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, raked in a cool $1.3 billion and wasn’t nominated.“You don’t really need to know anything about cinematography to recognize when something makes you laugh or makes you think.”Award voters and critics value elements like plot intricacies and dynamic camerawork, but those things can seem inaccessible to the average viewer. Still, even if your genre of choice is the Fast and Furious franchise, it’s not too late to approach movie watching with a more critical eye. Below, the pros explain how to take in a film — any film — the way they do.Take cues from the first 10 minutesYou’ll know pretty quickly what kind of movie experience you’re in for, says Vulture film critic Emily Yoshida. Are you seeing something that’s heavy on dialogue and story, like Spotlight, where you’ll need to hold onto what the characters are saying? Or is it a film like Roma, where much of the story is told through visual subtleties? “You figure out where the action is in terms of what the filmmaker is trying to do,” Yoshida says. “That determines how you actually watch it.”Put your phone away