I am a fan of movies and one of the movie directors that I love is Jon Chu. First, he is only 27 years old. Second, he has some Chinese roots and so he certainly knows how to choreograph an action movie or in the absence of which, a dance movie. And that is what he does in Step Up 2 the Streets which opened last Valentines nationwide because the movie is tagged as a romantic flick for b-boying fanatics and they number a lot in the hip-hop community of the United States. It all boils down to marketing actually. But coupled with marketing, one must also know the technical skills in making a good movie such as the choreographed dance moves in this case. And that is why I am taking an online course in movie directing because living here in Burbank where my single mom who raised me up cannot sustain me anymore in a formal college education; I need to find out a way.

This particular program that I’m taking will last up to two semesters long. For me, that’s enough education where I can launch a career as a Hollywood director. After all, such directors as Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino are school dropouts. To be a successful movie director, one must be a successful movie critic first. A movie critic is different from a movie reviewer. A movie reviewer only tells his or her audience why he/she likes or dislikes a particular movie. He/she does not explain on why the movie is good. For me, Step Up 2 the Streets is a good movie because this is the first mainstream movie which actually pays tribute to the b-boying community. The b-boying community has been there since the start of the millennium but up until this point, there has been no movie made about it that is released widely. And by the way, Cassie, an R&B artist with a natural talent for dancing, is in this movie. She must have been very glad working with Jon Chu.

Another movie released this week is Jumper. Jumper chronicles the travails of a teleporter. It would have been impressive if the production shoots in all locations that are specified in the movie but they are not. Most of the locations are limited to Tokyo, Rome and Mexico. Scenes that are supposed to happen in Cuba, Dubai and Egypt were all shot in Mexico. But the most impressive thing about the movie are the interior scenes of the Colloseum in Rome. In fact, this is the very first movie that was allowed to shoot inside the awesome site that is the Colloseum. No Italian movie has even done that thanks to the awesome persuasion of film director Doug Liman who introduced us to the first installment of the Bourne movie series. With those two movies alone, there are lots of things we can learn and they are as diverse as they can be. Imagination is without frontier. And I’m taking up that challenge.