Sean Axmaker

I was born in 1963 and spent my early years in Oregon, my formative grade school years in Victoria, British Columbia, high school in Hawaii, and back to Oregon for college. My serious movie watching began with STAR WARS (no sniggering back there!), where my love of all things science fiction kicked my burgeoning interest in movies into a mania. Goodbye sci-fi, hello silver screen. After numerous educational tryouts I settled into the University of Oregon in the Telecommunications and Film program. Silly me, I spent more time watching them than making them – and still do.

My writing career (I define the term rather loosely) started in high school, where my interests in theater and cinema prompted me to produce a mimeographed newsletter, read by all of five people. Undeterred, I wrote for school papers, the radio, spent six years contributing to the UO campus paper the Oregon Daily Emerald (two more years than I attended), and have contributed to just about every fledgling publication to rear its newsprint in Eugene (contrary to popular opinion, some of those publications are in fact still around).

After a misspent college stint, where I earned a Masters degree in Telecommunications and Film with my thesis on the career of Budd Boetticher (who?), I began my glorious career in video – 7 ½ years at Oregon’s finest video store Flicks and Pics (6 years as manager and resident movie buff), and 3 years at the legendary Scarecrow Video (one year as Inventory Manager).

Currently I reside in Seattle, Washington. In addition to writing for Nitrate Online and I contribute to Film.com ("On Video," a weekly guide to Video, DVD and Laserdisc releases, as well as periodic features) and to the Seattle Weekly. I’ve contributed essays to local film programs dedicated to John Woo, Wim Wenders and Orson Welles and program notes to Seattle’s Grand Illusion theater and I'm currently a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

And now the important stuff:

  • My favorite director: Howard Hawks
  • My director obsession: Orson Welles
  • My favorite films: choose from The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis, 1949), French Can-Can (Jean Renoir, 1955), Touch of Evil (Orson Wells, 1958), and a number of Howard Hawks films – Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Red River (1948), The Thing From Another World (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Rio Bravo (1959), and the vastly under-appreciated Hatari! (1962)
  • Favorite performer: Burt Lancaster and his million dollar smile
  • When I’m not watching movies: I’m usually writing or asleep.
 

 

 


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