Come one, come all.

Welcome to Homefront Film School, brought to you by Dr. Criddle's University of Life. I'm a young filmmaker, currently taking a year out between high school and film school, and my mission for this blog here is to watch and chronicle films. What kind of films, you ask? A little bit of everything. From big-name classics by Kurosawa, Welles, Ford and Kubrick to z-grade science fiction and horror schlock; from acclaimed, popular fare to off-the-beaten-path cult pics; from the silent era to the digital age, I'll watch it and judge it on its own merits.

Unfortunatley, I haven't got a review for you today. Instead, I've got one rather hilarious, and another somewhat somber film-related headline. I'll give you the funny one first, and then depress you afterwards - Disney vowed to abandon two-dimensional cel animation altogether if their most recent endevor, Chicken Little, made gobs of money, and children and parents have been only too happy to comply, eagerly telling one of the world's most beloved art forms not to let the door hit its ass on the way out. However, according to an article in the New York Daily News, a small handful of cherubs and their parents were suitably punished - in a cruel and humorous twist of fate, the reels for the CGI livestock fiasco was switched with a new Dominican film called Andrea, which opens up with a man hanging himself from a tree. The theater, unable to afford eighteen years of therapy for all of the little blighters, offered them free tickets to their next screening instead. Pretty damn funny, if you ask me.

And now I've got you all good and chuckly, I'm going to drop the depressing ball on you. Martin Scorsese, America's high priest of cinema, has announced his retirement from feature films following his next movie, The Departed - an Irish Mafia tale which will star Jack Nicholson. It seems a little disheartening that the man who gave us Raging Bull and Taxi Driver is saying he's finished with Hollywood, especially to someone who is trying to get into the movie industry, but truth be told, I thought many of his recent projects weren't quite up to snuff with his classic films, and it's probably due to high-budget studio bungling. If he can do himself a Bob Dylan documentary with more control and more room to get passionate than he can with a film like Gangs of New York or The Aviator, more power to him. However you look at it, the guy's had a terrific run. Adios.