"The Artist" is unlike any movie I have ever seen.  Brilliant, engaging, surprising, and gorgeously filmed, this movie is an example of creativity and ingenuity at its best.

It's a silent movie!  The images are striking and the music throughout is perfectly suited to each scene.  (What a monumental feat it was to score this movie, where there is no dialogue and the music must portray the mood and guide us through the story!)

I think that one of the reasons that this film has such an impact is because it's a quiet film in a very noisy time.  We are all constantly bombarded with stimuli and information everywhere we go.  Video screens flash and scream at us in stores, on billboards, even in restaurants.  So along comes a simple but brilliant film with no talking and it's like a breath of fresh air!

It's no secret that I've been frustrated the last few years with overwriting on the marching field.  It seems that every moment in every show must be busy, noisy, and built for the shortest attention span imaginable.  In some of the worst offenders, nothing seems to last more than a few seconds or contain any development.  This is exhausting and, worst of all, all too often NOT interesting.  At least to me….

I just completed an 886 page novel about Van Gogh.  Although it taxed my patience at times, the accumulated effect of that slow read was a huge understanding of the man when I was finished.  The amount of information and the repeated stories of his failures and difficulties (and occasional triumphs, of course) left me with a profound sense of the man's genius and the huge distress of his problems.

But many marching shows today are not even short stories!  More like a series of tweets.

It would be my sincere desire that every single DCI or Marching Band designer would be required to see "The Artist" and experience the wonder of a beautifully paced but quiet film that packs a huge impact.  It's really a clinic in what's possible.  Here's hoping!  (and….go see the film!  You'll love it!)