Coming to a theatre … er … bookstore near you: Reel Roy Reviews, Vol. 1: Keepin’ It Real! Just wanted to let you know the exciting news that this l’il ol’ blog of movie reviews is going to be a book released on February 28. You can find out more at this link: www.open-bks.com/library/moderns/reel-roy-reviews/about-book.html

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About the book…

Reel Roy Reviews, Vol. 1: Keepin’ It Real is a compilation of essays composed in tribute to (and sometimes frustration with) the art-form known as “cinema” —with a few theatre, music, and concert analyses thrown in for good measure. As a populist at heart, Sexton’s sensibility is grounded in a desire to see good stories, well told.

For Sexton, film is an encapsulated medium. Whether 90 minutes or three hours, a movie tells one story—beginning, middle, and end—introducing you to new friends, enemies, and locales in an efficiently designed delivery mechanism. With a good film, Sexton feels you get the experience of reading a novel (whether or not the film is in fact based on any work of literature) in a highly compressed fashion.

In the best movie-going experience, your brain leaves your body for a bit, you take a mini-vacation to places you might not otherwise ever see, and you return to your regularly scheduled life a bit changed, perhaps enlightened, and hopefully re-energized.

Sexton notes, “I try to respect that (for the most part) these are show business professionals putting (ideally) their best feet forward and that they are human beings with hearts and souls and feelings. I hope I never seem cruel. I don’t mean to be. These writings are off-the-cuff and journal-style and come from as positive a place as I can muster….Approach everything and everyone honestly and with positive intent and offer candid feedback with an open heart and as much kindness as possible.”

About the author…

Roy Sexton is a small town boy who never quite fit in but learned how to survive playground games with a sense of humor, a bit of style, and a love of movies. He has been blogging at www.reelroyreviews.com for a couple of years now to an audience of … tens of people. He writes, “I tend to go see whatever film has been most obnoxiously hyped, marketed, and oversold in any given week…art films? Bah! Won’t find too many of those discussed here. And every once in a while, I may review a TV show, theatrical production, record album, concert, or book (yeah, probably not too many of those either).”

Sexton aims to make his friends and family suffer through at least one community theatre production with him in it annually; he is a marketer and strategic planner by trade; but he mostly just wants to enjoy life and pop culture, to help our animal friends, and to live and let live.

Sexton, a graduate of Wabash College who also holds an MA in theatre from Ohio State and an MBA from the University of Michigan, resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a cinematically adventurous auto engineer and two amiably neurotic rescue dogs. He is also the son of Susie Duncan Sexton, whose two essay collections Secrets of an Old Typewriter and More Secrets of an Old Typewriter, are published by Open Books.