Introduction

I am Ben Kitchen, a 4th-year University of Cincinnati student in my third year of the Electronic Media program. I am hoping to graduate in December 2014 with a Journalism certificate and Spanish minor. 

I am taking Going to the Movies: 20th Century Classics for a few reasons: 1) It's an Electronic Media elective, so there's that; 2) I love movies; and 3) I love writing. In high school, I took a similar class called Intro to Film, where we discussed and wrote about films such as Casablanca and Blade Runner. I'm looking forward to taking a similar class in a collegiate setting.

Some of my personal favorite movies are Clueless, Heathers, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Donnie Darko, and The Graduate. I enjoy vapid romantic movies like The Notebook (although I firmly believe that Nicholas Sparks is an awful writer and all of his other books-to-movies are horrible). I also like foreign films, such as the French-Canadian film C.R.A.Z.Y. and Pedro Almodóvar's La mala educación. Almodóvar is one of my favorite directors. I'm a big fan of Gael Garcia Bernal as an actor as well, and I really appreciate New Mexican Cinema.

–Ben