French Cinema

I know, I know. I need to start blogging regularly again! I've been dying to but I've been kinda lacking on the content front. So now, I have a topic. Thus I am blogging now to remind myself of said topic so that I  remember to research it and write about it. 


French Cinema. 


Currently, my experience of French Cinema extends only as far as French actresses in Hollywood films (Marion Cotillard, Mélanie Laurent), Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) by George Méliès,  À bout de souffle (Breathless) by Jean Luc-Godard, and The Artist, by Michel Hazanavicius.


All of this experiences have been rather incredible, actually. So I have come to the conclusion that the French know what they're doing when it comes to film (well, I ought to know that, seeing as France is home to only the most prestigious film festival on the planet). Therefore, I have decided to begin a blog series which shall be entitled An Introduction To French Cinema. So while I learn about all this amazing stuff, you can learn too!


One reason I'm choosing France over any other place in the world to begin my foreign film exploration is because France is probably the most important to the film industry. The film industry was basically born in France and the cinematograph was invented there, so quite obviously there's a lot of history to explore. I bought this book called Film History: An Introduction, and it's quite amazing and I plan to read it cover-to-cover, no matter how long that takes. It's got loads in there about French cinema among other industries, of course. 


Anyways! By publishing this post I have now committed to this project ... I'm not really sure exactly what I'm doing, so I guess it'll be a nice little adventure. Wish me luck :) 

Just gonna unload right here.

My brain is in a kind of sensory overload right now. I have to be at work tomorrow morning so I should totally be asleep but my brain was all YOU MUST WRITE and seeing as I haven't blogged it about a million years, here I am to unload all my current thoughts. Prepare for the word-vomit.

Firstly, I'm still overloaded from the interview I just had with one of the teaching guys at Sydney Film School. Pretty much got accepted. Celebrations will be had as soon as my 'letter of offer' arrives in the mail. Should be by next week. I'm pretty thrilled. Also really not keen to do the rest of the portfolio IFSS wants me to do, because my harddrive has crashed and so it means extra work to try and pull together photos. Haven't entirely ditched this possibility yet so will probably try a little for this next week.

Film school looks like it's going to be REALLY intense. I mean, the the teacher interviewing me today even kinda warned me it was intense. So I'm a little freaked out about that. Granted, everyone said that TAFE was going to be crazy intense and it really wasn't until the very last month. This, however, is probably a different story. Preparing myself for crazy-intenseness.

I have to say I'm a little worried that I won't be able to keep my cafe job if film school gets crazy. Every time I think about that my brain goes 'but you have to save money for your trip!' and then I try not to think about that. It will happen. It must. Also praying that something opens up at the dvd shop, because how cool would it be to study and film school and work in the dvd shop at the same time? I basically live there anyway....

Moving on to unrelated topics, I'm in the mood to right one of those average present-day kind of stories but have ZERO inspiration. Absolutely no scenes or key ideas are coming to mind. I can't even form a decent character or even decided on a name. It's killing me. I touched up a few scenes of the super power novel last week, but haven't done any writing since. Annoying. Got a crazy work week but hopefully some inspiration will come to me on my day off.

Been watching loads of movies lately, as per usual. Need to get back into some proper film reviews/ACTUAL BLOGGING, but for now will just list the stuff I've been watching lately to catch myself up:

Zodiac. David Fincher's true-story-about-a-serial-killer was quite brilliant. My love of Fincher has officially increased as expected. Also my love of Jake Gyllenhaal. Totally adorable.

The Godfather. YES I FINALLY SAW IT. Was a very good film. Keen for part two.

Rendition Road. Crappy film with a totally weak ending as I expected (was in the mood for something that required little thought), though half-decent acting from Ruffalo, Connelly and Phoenix. Also slightly depressing what with the 'bereavement themes' and all.

There Will Be Blood. Reallllyyyyyy strange, strange film. Beautiful cinematography though, so well worth it.

PIRATES! Caught one of the very last sessions in the cinema with Justin. Quite hilarious and very cute. Also a heavy user of this trope, unfortunately.... The amount of times we turned to each other and whispered "how is this G-rated?!"

Anyways, gotta go to bed. Would love to keep writing but my eyelid are drooping. Sleep beckons. Will lastly mention that I bought Film History: An Introduction by Bordwell and Thompson, it's big and fat and wonderful I can't wait to start reading it. Tata for now lovelies, glad to be back.

Screencap Saturday #3

Howdy!

Saw a film last night called The Beaver. It's been on my to-watch list for a while now for various reasons (Jodie Foster directed it, the DoP also did The Young Victoria, it stars Yelchin and Lawrence, etc).

The film stars Mel Gibson as the "very depressed individual" Walter Black, who develops an alternate personality through a beaver puppet that he finds in a dumpster. Walter uses this "Beaver" personality as his sole means of communication, until what seemed at first to be a kind of therapy spirals into a mania. Jodie Foster stars as his wife Meredith, torn between leaving him and helping him, and Anton Yelchin as his teenage son Porter, who is determined to be nothing like his father. The subplot involves Porter and his relationship with cheerleader Norah, who hires him to write her valedictorian speech.

The movie is fairly predictable but I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's very tasteful visually - there's some excellent use of block-color that I particularly appreciated, and the camera work is nice and clean. I don't think Jodie Foster has directed much before this film (2011), but I'd be interested to see what she does with directing in the future. Anyway, this is, of course, a screencap post, so here's 32 of my favorite frames from the film.

"It's a television show!"

Disclaimer: Spoiler alert. But if you've read the book, there's not too much to worry about, I guess. 

Howdy, folks. Previously I blogged about the incredible trailer that was The Hunger Games. For those of you who remember that blog post, it was me gushing about how brilliant the trailer was, even though I didn't much care for the book. Admittedly, my opinion on The Hunger Games series has altered somewhat. On reading the first book a second time I found more to appreciate about it. I still don't love everything about it, but it's become one of my more favorable YA novels of recent years.

So, the movie. The amazing EMPIRE gave me free tickets to a preview screening of the film after I entered their little 25-words-or-less competition. Yay me! Thanks EMPIRE. You're awesome.

Justin and I rocked up at Event Cinemas last night and stood in line excitedly with a rather mixed-bag of other ticket-winners. Unlike the crowd for the sneak peak of The Amazing Spiderman that I was also in, this sprawling line outside the theatre was filled with your average two-best-friends and girls-who-give-free-tickets-to-boyfriends, I was surprised to also find myself standing between old-people-who-probably-don't-know-what-they're-about-to-watch-like-how-did-you-even-find-empire's-website, and woman-who-brought-her-completely-ignorant-work-colleague-along. Interesting.

Anyway! Sorry, I like to ramble. Let's get on with the show.

As also stated in my previous THG-related blog post, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps the movie could be better than the book. In some visual ways, yes, I'll say it was. The film enabled us to see things only briefly mentioned and left to our imaginations in the books, so that was a plus. What director Gary Ross left out, visually, was a major disappointment.

I'll start with the beginning shots. Thankfully, this is where I was most disappointed with the movie, so this review (sort of) (somewhat) goes up from here. We're first introduced to District 12. I would describe what we saw here, but heck, I don't even know how to describe what I saw. Gary Ross, you really wasted this part of the movie.

Being a cinematography lover (DoP is my dream job, don'tcha know), I was admittedly shocked at Ross' choice of camera technique for conveying District 12. He chose to show us parts of this impoverished town in close-up shaky-hand-held shots. Like, ridiculously shaky. Like OMG-we-forgot-the-tripod-but-I-had-so-much-coffee-this-morning-who-even-cares! kind of shaky. Stop moving the camera around, guys, I can't see a thing. So yeah, I don't really I know what I was looking at. I think District 12 is a place full of boring poor people who play in the dirt? It's a good thing I read the book, then. To quote Stephanie Zacharek for Movieline, who I totally agree with: "You wonder, particularly in the District 12 scenes, why [Ross] didn't just screw the camera into the damned tripod: the stillness would have been classical and elegant and better suited to the emotional tone and texture of this part of the story". You said it, Stephanie. I don't know what he was thinking.

The camera also rushes through The Reaping, when all the kids file in to get their names drawn out of a glass bowl, two of them to be taken away to compete in The Games. By this point I understood some of his reasoning behind the shaky camera - the moments when Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss is trying to keep her composure while looking for her panicky little sister made perfect sense - but as for the rest of the movement in these early scenes, I was at a loss for why the camera was trying to force a urgency into my mindset. I was expecting an eerie stillness, like the stony faces of the children waiting, a subtle sign of their rebellion. So yes, I was disappointed that the camera was telling me what to perceive. In my personal opinion, I like the camera's framework to be invisible wherever possible, and I didn't consider these scenes to be an exception.

So, moving on. After Katniss takes her sister's place in an emotional farewell (yes, I cried a bit, okay?), we are swept with her and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) into another world, one full of color and weird people and stuff. I liked the portrayal of The Capitol, probably because I found that part the hardest to picture when reading the book, but I still felt there was something missing. If you've seen any of the promotional posters for the film, particularly the ones of Elizabeth Banks' Effie Trinket advertising makeup products or something, those alone gave more insight into The Capitol's materialistic mindset, and I felt that any real "heart" of any people in the movie, save Katniss and Peeta, was missing.

That being said, when all the tributes are presented on their chariots to thrill the obsessed audience ... well, that was pretty epic. Good soundtrack. CGI was a touch lame, but whatever.

I enjoyed some of the scenes in the arena better on screen than I did on page, like the tracker-jackers and the wall of fire. Action scenes like that don't always sounds as good on paper, so I was glad to get a visual (so having said that, I'll politely ignore the lack of variety in the actual scenery. I swear Katniss passed that same tree and mossy rock twenty times).

All righty, that's about all I have to say on the visuals. Let's get down to the nitty gritty - the acting.

Personal favorite is Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman, the host of The Hunger Games' television show, and the commentator overseeing the action in the arena. I'm a huge fan of Stanley, and was thrilled to see his name on the cast list when the film was first announced. He really was perfect in this role and I was glad to see he got plenty of screen time. Sadly, for other greats like Woody Harrelson (playing Peeta and Katniss' mentor Haymitch), the script diminished his role to a lot of sitting and standing in the background.

Lenny Kravitz as Cinna also seemed pretty good, but again he didn't have much to do on screen. Hopefully we'll see a little more of him in the second film...

Something the filmmakers did do well was the casting of the other tributes, particularly the Careers of districts 1 and 2. Although a lot of their screen time was nothing more than looking tough and sneering behind Katniss' back, they did it well. Definitely all cast for the smug looks they could pull off, but that is of course, exactly what we wanted from them. One of the better (brief) action scenes is the girl-fight between Katniss and Clove, the girl from District 2, which ends with the massive hulking dude from District 11 smashing Clove's head into the cornucopia and knocking her dead. Sweet. Also freaky. But good action nonetheless.

Josh Hutcherson delivers as Peeta, especially during his early scenes before the Games. I loved how much drive there was behind his character. Favorite Peeta moment was probably him waving to the Capitol citizens as the train arrives in the city, and Haymitch says "See, he knows what he's doing."

As for the impossibly young tribute Rue (Amandla Stenberg)... she was far too out of place in the arena. Now, I know that sounds weird when I say it, because she's only twelve and is supposed to be out of place, but the problem lies in the visual representation of her character. She's too clean, too casual, looks too much like she's supposed to be on the Disney Channel or some adventure movie for eight-year-olds. There was no wide-eyed vulnerability, no desperation, no sense of a girl forced to grow up too fast, just a girl.

It's Jennifer Lawrence that manages to carry Rue's character into the emotionally-invested zone. Katniss' reaction to Rue's death is perfect. She looks at her in the same way she does her young sister Prim (Willow Shields). The set up of this scene is perfect because you're purposefully reminded of Prim, and when Katniss whispers "I'm sorry" with as much emotion as you can squeeze into two words, I was tearing up. Then she garnishes Rue's body with flowers, and the scene is intercut with shots of District 11 swelling into an angry mob. If you're not crying by the time Katniss is crying, well ... either you're a hard-hearted blockhead or I'm a marshmallow. I know, I know, give me a good actor crying on screen and I'm an emotional wreck!

The point is, I knew this movie was going to be good as soon as I heard Jennifer Lawrence was playing Katniss (if you haven't seen her in Winter's Bone, what are you waiting for??), and she carries this film to make it a winner. She's just so watchable. She takes in everything around her and makes herself part of the set, part of the story. The bit where she wins me over (theoretically, that is - she'd won me over before she even started shooting) is her interview with Caesar Flickerman.

In the scene Katniss is wearing a dress with a hem that bursts into flame when she spins around, designed by her stylist Cinna. After she shows it off for the audience, she finally relaxes and we get her first ever genuine smile of the movie. What's great about Lawrence is that she's a totally different person when she's smiling. She has the ability to mask her emotions (something any great actor should be able to do), so when Katniss finally puts her shields down and lets the Capitol audience in, the real audience watching the movie is also drawn in to the character. Caesar Flickerman ends the interview by asking Katniss what she said to her sister after she volunteered to take her place. 'I told her I would try to win for her', says Katniss, and just as it's intended to be, that's the moment where we see the real Katniss Everdeen. If it weren't for Jennifer Lawrence's strong performance, this film would probably have nothing going for it but Stanley Tucci wearing a blue wig and laughing for some unexplainable reason.

Ten Movies in Ten Words

Two posts in two days, this is a record I haven't reached in a while! I have for you a list of my current Top Ten Must-See Films. Subject to change as I see more movies, of course.

This is a very subjective list, and is not influenced by what other people consider the "best" films of all time. It's more like, if someone were to ask me "what is film?" or "what are movies all about?" this is list I would give them. Right now, anyway. Ask me again in a few months' time when I've seen more movies and it'll probably be different. It was a HUGE struggle just to get it down to ten. I had another 5 or 6 that were vying for spots but missed out. 

I've called this post "Ten Movies in Ten Words" because ten words is short and sweet and cuts to the point (so screw sentence structure!). And this way you don't have to read big long opinionated paragraphs that will skew your own opinion. We don't want to start any arguments, here. 

If you're reading and you have your own blog (or even just a facebook) I encourage you to do your own "Ten Movies in Ten Words" post, because I'd love to compare. 

So without further ado, the list. In order by year. 

1. A Trip to the Moon (George Méliès, 1902)

110 years old. 14 minutes. Still brilliant, creative, and funny. 

2. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)

Ahead of its time, fast-paced, ridiculous. I laughed constantly.

3. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Let's just say I watched it thrice in one week.

4. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Creepy, clever, thrilling. One of Hitchcock's finest. Perkins is unforgettable.

5. The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987)

A loveable cult classic. Inconceivably quotable. Fantasy at its finest.

6. Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)

You haven't seen this? You uncultured swine! It's freaking genius.

7. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

It's about love! An artistic masterpiece! You'll want to sing!

8. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

THE TAVERN SCENE IS SO, SO GOOD. BRILLIANTLY EXECUTED. ARGH. 

9. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

Edge-of-your-seat dialogue. Incredible script, score, and acting.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

Beautiful cinematic artwork. 
Pretentious? Yes, but Lubezki's cinematography is breathtaking. 

And there you have it. Ten Films in Ten Words. Your turn!

Screencap Saturday

I've been wanting to do some kind of 'segment' on this blog, so I thought I'd start with something fairly simple. Introducing Screencap Saturday! Basically, I screencap a movie and put up sequences of my favorite stills. I find screencaps interesting because they literally do 'capture' a very purposeful moment in the movie. It makes me more attentive to the lighting, the framing, the facial expressions of the actors, the relationships between various shots, and the length of pans and dollys. Looking at various snippets from a film give you a huge insight into the director's style. I'll try and do Screencap Saturday at least once a month.

So I will begin with what is currently my all-time favorite film. Directed by David Fincher. Cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth. Editing by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall. I give you The Social Network, in 160 frames.

Stuff. And Movies.

So, as is typical of me, my blogging has failed again. It's pretty lame that I haven't blogged since I watched The Tree of Life.... So a quick update!

I had an awesome Christmas, and made t-shirts for my family.

I went to Carols in the Domain with some amazing people.

Celebrated NYE with the same amazing people.

And went on a camping weekend with - yeah - those same amazing people. Because they're amazing. And we cooked dinner all by ourselves and were cool.

Anyway! Back to the present. I got on here to blog because I've been reading this gigantic book that I got out of the library called Film History: An Introduction. It's incredibly interesting. I'm reading all about how film became a new medium and expanded into an art form, a method of entertainment, and new way to tell stories. I've decided that as I read through the book I'm going to watch the films from 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die that corresponde with the various chapters.

In the first chapter, the main two films mentioned are Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902), and Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903). It's crazy that they started making such elaborate films that early! Full sets and costumes, stop-motion and special effects. If you are interested in movies but have never seen Le Voyage Dans La Lune by George Méliès, you need to jump on the internet and view it on Youtube right now. It only goes for about 11 minutes, so you have. It really is an astounding piece of work for its time. I'm yet to watch Uncle Tom's Cabin, but I plan on doing that today. They use cool techniques like exposing the film twice to add in extra effects. 


And yeah. Hopefully I'll blog again soon but I don't want to make any promises unless I fail, ha. But I'll be back at some point. 


Oh yeah, and I got a twitter. So if you come on here and I haven't updated the actual blog, you can view my obnoxious tweets (I hate that word) in the sidebar about the Australian Open and the Oscars. Won't that be fun? I'm a loser, I know. 

The Tree of Life

Yesterday I watched Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, and after tossing and turning all night, my mind consumed with imagery from the film, I knew I had to write about it.

Before beginning this review I skimmed over the reviews that people had written on the movie's IMDB page. I only looked at the first page, but the review were pretty much 50/50, with users either rating it 5 starts, or 1.

I was prepared to jump on the Number-1-Rating bandwagon when the film first began with a quote from the book of Job, a strange glowing light and a whispery voiceover by Jessica Chastain. I was expecting it to be strange and plotless, but judging from the trailer I was also sure that the movie would be full of beautiful imagery and excellent cinematography, so I was determined to get through all 2 hours and 12 minutes, even if it killed me.

Well, I'm still alive. So many people said that this movie has no plot, and though it may be true that is it less of a chronological tale and more of a of an art form, there is undoubtedly a story, told nearly entirely through the camera. There is minimal dialogue in the movie, and for the most part I felt that this worked to its advantage. I'm a huge fan of telling important details completely through the camera, and in this movie Malick is the master of that.

The film is told through the eyes of Jack, journeying through the most memorable years of his life as a boy in the 1950s. The story is an impression of his memories: his complicated relationship with his father, his mother's love for him, and his loss of innocence. This film is a journey of faith, both for Jack and for the audience, relying on what he chooses to show us in order that we might understand him and his struggle with the two opposing forces in his life, emulated by his parents: grace and nature.

I found myself wondering how two people who were such opposites had come together. Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Inglorious Basterds) is the inventor father, priding himself on being a smart and strong man and wanting his boys to grow up the same. Throughout the film we see Jack wrestle with conflicting feelings of wanting be like his father and yet hating him at times. Pitt's character represents the world and he puts himself first.

Jessica Chastain (The Debt, The Help) is the gentle, graceful mother who showers her boys with love and affection. She cherishes the boys' childhood and reminds me a little of Wendy from Peter Pan. The film opens with shots of her character as a girl, and there are many occasions where we find her running down the street with her sons, laughing as she chases them, often barefoot and even jumping on the bed in one scene. She clings to innocence, rarely disciplining the boys but perhaps teaching them more than anyone the most important things they need to know in life.

Glimpses of the adult Jack (Sean Penn (Milk, Fair Game)) bookend the story, a troubled, lost soul who questions his place in the world. He is seen wandering through imagined canyons and through office buildings; his world is full of tunnels and empty spaces; he travels but he doesn't get anywhere until he meets his younger self near the end of the film. There are things he needs to reconcile with his past.

This movie is about so much more than meets the eye. The first half hour, images of nature and the beginning of the world, flash before your eyes as you view the rest of the film, and for that reason it's entirely necessary that the interlude is in there. It needs to be long so that it stays with you. It fits perfectly with the themes of nature and grace, and makes you think of the natural beauty and conflicting behaviour of the world, portrayed in each of the characters. The characters themselves are far more complex than they first appear to be, as so much of the story is told not through their words but through their actions. A scene in which Jack shoots his younger brother in the hand with a BB gun is followed not by his verbal apology but by the way he holds a fan towards his brother's face to cool him off, presses his fingers to his brother's lips to make him smile, and hands him a plank of wood to hit Jack if he wants. There are things that happen in glimpses, memories from childhood about a house fire nearby, an accident at the pool involving a neighbourhood boy, and the time the boys' father went away and they chased their mother through the house with a garden lizard.

For all the things I liked about this movie, no film is perfect, and there were two things that stood out to me that I didn't like so much. At times the classical soundtrack is over the top and a little offbeat, and I did find it distracting especially in the first half.

Twenty minutes into the film, during the creation interlude, we see some dinosaurs. The point of the interaction between two particular dinosaurs in this scene was to provoke this question:  What is that essence that drives us to commit heinous acts of violence one moment and act compassionately the next? This happens to the characters several times in the movie, so I understood Malick's need to provoke these thoughts from his viewers not just through the humans but through animals and nature, but I felt the CGI was an incredibly poor move. The wonder of this film comes from the fact that everything is natural. There is a scene where Jessica Chastain's character is walking down the street and a butterfly lands on her outstretched fingertips. I read somewhere that Jessica and the crew followed that butterfly for three blocks just to get that shot. And it really was perfect. It would have ruined it for me to learn that the butterfly was digital, and the dinosaurs did the same thing for me. Unfortunately, they actually turned up in the movie. This really took away from the experience for me, and I wish that they hadn't put it in. 

In saying that, this is a beautiful film, amazing because of the amount of time and effort it would have taken from all cast and crew to complete, a movie that stays in your mind for a long time afterwards. It's one of those questioning films. Not everything that comes to mind is answered by the end of the movie, but that's what life is like, isn't it? You wonder about things. You let your imagination run wild over what if and how and why?

My recommendation for watching this movie is to let everything go. Watch it with someone who won't talk too much during the movie. Turn out all the lights. Empty your mind of everything and just enjoy this experience, because that's what it is. It's not so much a movie with a beginning, middle, and end, but a expression of life and art. My final rating, only marked down for the cgi and partly for the score, is 4.5 stars.

Maybe it's just the lack of Christmas vibe? Or the lack of a Pond....

I was possessed by some weird compulsion to rent the Doctor Who Christmas Special when we were up getting movies tonight at Network video, despite a little voice in my head (possibly Keira?) telling me that it was terrible compared to the rest of the series. I got it anyway and now I'm sitting here watching it and kind of wishing it was over. Yet for some reason I can't turn it off. Maybe because the only thing I'm paying attention to is that glorious little bounce in Matt's fringe....

Fact drawn from this experience: Doctor Who is boring without Amy.

Conclusion drawn from this fact: Matt Smith and Karen Gillan cease to be amazing without the other, and hence should get married and have babies with epic hair.

Concluding conclusion drawn from this conclusion: Doctor Who might cease to interest me without the epicness of both Eleven and Amy. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it....

On another note, I also watched Sunshine tonight, and am happy to say that my love for Danny Boyle continues (he's also the director of Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, which were even more amazing). All the sound effects and subliminal frames were really cool. Go watch his movies!

Can I have your hair? Can I have it?

I hear climax music and a Scottish accent coming from the TV so I'd better return my attention to the Doctor and see what I'm missing! Tata.

So I've been watching Matt Smith run around in a bow-tie: A Doctor Who Review, Part 1

Did I say that out loud? 

Well, not really. I typed it. But yes, you read that right. I have spent the last week watching Series 5 of Doctor Who, starring Matt Smith and Karen Gillan aka Lily Evans.

Why, you say?

Why, after all this time, do I suddenly show an interest in the TV show that I've previously bashed?

Here's my explanation. I follow a lot of people on tumblr who love Harry Potter. A lot of people who love Harry Potter simultaneously love Doctor Who, and for the past week or so my dashboard has been bombarded with images from the recent episodes, a lot of which look exciting and pretty. Especially Matt Smith and Karen Gillan's hair. Here is one example of what I have been seeing:

This looks strangely intriguing! I said to myself. Indeed, I felt there was something different about these pictures/GIFS from the latest episode (or possibly episodes) than others I had seen. A new director, perhaps? A bigger budget? Maybe even just extra good graphics by the tumblr gang. Whatever it was, the TV show seemed to have a new spark, something that wasn't there before. Maybe something just sparked in me. Actually, if I'm honest I think the cinematography is what hooked me.

I wanted to watch whatever episodes everyone else was watching, but I realised that I couldn't do that without at least a little context. So last week I marched up the street and rented the first three discs from Series 5. And here, my friends, is my review. My personal opinion on the first 9 episodes with Matt Smith as the Doctor.
I will not be watching any of the previous series', but I might continue on after these episodes. What you must know, is that my current opinion on Doctor Who is based solely on these 9 episodes alone and that I do not intend to extend my opinion back to anything before Matt Smith. I have kept my viewing of Doctor Who a secret so as to avoid things such as "oh, but David Tennant was so much better", or "but you don't know any of the story before this!" or, "oh my gosh Erin like Doctor Who. WE MUST MAKE HER WATCH IT ALL".

Therefore, now that I have revealed this to you, I allow you to give comments, but not to drown me in all the goodness of Doctor Who fandom. Matt Smith and Karen Gillan hair fandom is accepted. 


Each brief review will be followed with my "Current Doctor Who Status" which is how I feel about the show based on the episodes that I have watched, and this status will evolve with the build up of each episode.

So folks, here it is. The opinion of me, the girl who once bashed Doctor Who, on Doctor Who.


Episode 1 - The Eleventh Hour


I was worried that I'd gone mad as I popped the disc into my computer and flopped down with Justin to watch the tardis (TARDIS? Tardis? Is capitalisation important?) fly crazily through the skies of London, but once the Doctor sat down in front of Amelia Pond with a bowl of custard and some fish fingers and said, 'Look at you. Just sitting there!' I felt a little better about just sitting there, watching Doctor Who... Especially since I knew about the whole custard and fish thing from Charlie's video.

Terrible graphics and dorky badguys are pretty much a given for Doctor Who, so I was prepared. However, when Amy stepped into the room that she didn't even know existed (emphasis for effect) and that freaky serpent thing nearly snapped her neck, I was actually rather impressed. Especially when it transformed into a human using a dormant mind and the man and the dog moved and barked together because they were the same life form. That was actually pretty cool. The suspense built up as the episode continued, we met a cute nurse named Rory, the freaky serpent turned into a freaky woman with freaky twins, Amy collapsed, the freaky serpent turned into itself, and the Doctor saved the world and whatever. Not bad for a pilot episode.

Current Doctor Who Status: Doctor Who is not that bad. 


Episode 2: The Beast Below


The episode that follows the pilot of a TV series is never very good, so I admit that my expectations weren't as high as before. That said, this episode really let me down. Honestly, it reminded me why I didn't watch Doctor Who. All the melodramatic music, the plot devices that spiralled into uselessness, the Queen that took herself (or her acting?) too seriously, and that sad story about the Star-Whale and the fact that it loved all the little children and blah blah blah. Not to mention the Doctor got really upset with Amy over the video and the beast saving thing. They barely know each other! I though he was a bit unfair. And she was a bit stupid. In short, this episode was lame, and I have nothing more to say.

Current Doctor Who Status: Doctor Who is so cheesy it hurts.  


Episode 3: Victory of the Daleks

In an effort to continue my effort and salvage my low opinion of Doctor Who, I continued on to episode 3. I can't say that seeing the word "daleks" in the title was very encouraging, but hey, I was watching Doctor Who. It's inevitable. At this point, Mum came into the room and saw what we were watching a groaned, but I found out later that she's never seen a single episode.

Going back in time is always an improvement from going into the future, in my opinion. Important things have already happened that the viewer might care about, and the real past is always less cheesy than the imagined future.

Winston Churchill and his army of daleks was much more interesting than the space whale. I found myself a little bored with bits of this episode, particularly the Doctor's lengthy speech and random outbursts over the daleks. I was a bit confused. Possible this is because of my ignorance of the previous episodes, but also possibly because the daleks were ridiculously stupid and couldn't tell a detonator from a shortbread biscuit. I also have a big problem with the daleks' arms. They're just not scary. It's like they've got a whisk on one arm and plunger on the other (they probably did for real in the 1960's). Not very gripping in my opinion, no pun intended.

And, as a side note, if I were Amy I would've freaked out when the Doctor disappeared in the tardis to meet the daleks while she stayed with Winston. Amy, if you don't remember, he didn't come back for 12 years the first time!

Current Doctor Who Status: Doctor Who could be bit a more scary. 


Episode 4: The Time of Angels

I asked for more scary, I got more scary. Don't Blink is the only good episode from the David Tennant series that I've seen (made a billion more times awesome by the appearance of Carey Mulligan), so I was pretty excited that the angels were returning.

During the episode, I got so excited I nearly wet my pants. Who knew a BBC science fiction show starring a man in a bow-tie could be so frightening?!

First, the angel comes out of the TV while Amy's trapped in the room.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any scarier, Angel dust comes out of her eye.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any scarier, they enter a giant cavern full of statues to hunt down the angel.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any scarier, ALL THE STATUES ARE WEEPING ANGELS.

And just when you thought you would probably die if it got scarier, the voice on the radio is actually the solider who has been killed by the weeping angel. Justin nearly cried.

Just when you thought the characters were going to get out alive and you were going to start breathing again, Amy's hand turns to stone and the Doctor's torch is going out!!!!!


They get free, but then they get trapped. And the episode ends. And you're lying there waiting for your lungs to expand for the first time in 45 minutes. Then Justin rolled over to face his bedside and saw this:

And freaked out like I've never seen him freak out before. I was in some crazy headspace between total horror, total hysteria, and total oh-my-gosh-that's-the-funniest-thing-in-the-world.

Current Doctor Who Status: Doctor Who is scary and awesome. 


Episode 5: Flesh and Stone

Glad that episode 5 continued on with the Weeping Angels, the next morning I kept watching. The fear factor had dissipated slightly now that it was 11am rather than 11pm, but built up again once Amy starting counting down from 10 ... Justin figured out what she was doing by the time she said 9, so we waited in tense anticipation for the Doctor and River to figure out what was going on. I must admit that the Weeping Angels are probably the best monsters ever invented, because you have to keep your eyes open to stop them coming at you, but if you look into their eyes for too long you can't open yours! It's brilliant. Unless you're the Doctor, you can't win.

That said, this is my honest opinion on everything, so I have to add that there were a few dramatic moments that bothered me a bit - particularly the piano score playing in the background while the Doctor gave his "you have to start trusting me" speech to a sightless Amy. I want to throw something at the TV and yell, "stop taking yourself so seriously you stupid show!" They're too low budget for that sort of thing. It sounds like a soap-opera.

Speaking of bad things, I just remembered there was a kissing scene at the end. I was very confused. And it wasn't even because I don't know what happened before this series. The end of this episode was just ... confusing all together.

Anyway. It wasn't all bad, as I said. That's a couple of bad bits in a lot of good bits, so we're still going good!

Current Doctor Who Status: Thanks to Matt Smith, I'm actually enjoying Doctor Who. 




Episode 6: Vampires in Venice 


The cute nurse from episode 1 is back! I spent most of this episode going, "poor Rory" which annoyed Justin a little bit. Thankfully the Doctor was nice about the whole thing and brought him along and Amy got nicer as the episode progressed. So maybe the fish things were a bit lame, but I must admit I liked the fact that the vampires weren't really vampires. It was a nice twist and it made me forget about the usually bad graphics that Doctor Who is known for ... oh, except for the when the sky starting boiling, or whatever. That was a very sad-looking effect. In fact, that whole scene was a bit sad. Was the rain actually boiling hot, or something? The regular citizens seemed to think so, but the Doctor and his companions weren't very bothered ... I was a bit confused. 


For me this episode was marginally above what my original expectation of a Doctor Who episode would be, so I was still interested to see more. 


Current Doctor Who Status: I am uncharacteristically eager for more Doctor Who.




Episode 7: Amy's Choice


 I was really angry at this episode when it first started because it appeared to have skipped five years in the characters' lives for no apparent reason - that is, until it was revealed that it was possibly a dream. Then it became awesome instead of stupid.


This was probably one of the more exciting episodes because there was the suspense factor of not knowing which 'world' was the real one. Although that dream guy and the fake ice on everyone's faces were a bit lame. I'm also unsure on my feelings towards Amy's character, because on one hand I kind of like her sarcasm because it adds humor, and on another she can be a bit annoying. She and Rory are also a bit cute, though. 


And if you're going to add interesting plot devices such as the TARDIS (Tardis?) floating towards a cold star, can you at least explain a little more about this? Because it turned out that the cold star WAS in the real world and yet that's what had made them think maybe it was the dream world, and so then the star was real but then was it real? And why was it cold? Yeah. Confusing.


Current Doctor Who Status: Confused. Why am I finding so many little things to pick apart and yet I still want to keep watching?? 




Episode 8: The Hungry Earth


This episode was honestly a bit boring. I mean, I didn't really care about any of the other characters except the Doctor and his companions, and we'll all know they'll be fine... right?

I took note of the engagement ring foreshadowing at the start of this episode, because no TV show spends precious minutes on that sort of thing if it's not important, so I knew it would mean something.

So, the ground attack some miners really wasn't that exciting. It got a little better when we found out there were actual bad guys, but the episode's minor (note the difference in spelling) characters were all a bit annoying and boring. Especially the wife. Urgh.

Current Doctor Who Status: Oh, poo. It's a double episode. Guess I haven't got a choice but to keep going. 



Episode 9: Cold Blood 

So the Doctor goes down into the earth and finds some weirdo reptilian civilization who claims to have owned the world before humans. Big whoop. I got a bit more interested when Amy nearly got dissected, though. That's the kind of suspense I like! And to top it off, once the lizard-man got distracted she took his unlocking remote thing. Now we're getting somewhere.

It was terribly predictable that Mrs. I Just Want My Family was going to kill the captured lizard-woman on the surface, so can't say I was freaking out there. Just looking at the screen going, 'You're an idiot.' And then turning to Justin and going, 'She's an idiot.' And then looking back at the screen saying, 'This is stupid.'

And then RORY DIED. And then I was sad because that was the reason for the engagement ring foreshadowing. And then Amy forgot him. And then the Doctor couldn't tell her. And then he realised that the piece he pulled out of the crack WAS PART OF THE TARDIS. Ohmygoshaspoasleblasyahilkbelbeasojlkenrl.


Current Doctor Who Status: I have a confession to make. When we were at Engage (so Kristy, Oliver and Dan, I'm talking to you) and you guys said that Doctor Who was on the next night, I texted Justin and told him to tape it so we could watch some of the recent episodes when we're up to them. So you know what this means. I like Matt Smith and Doctor Who. But not David Tennant. I'm sorry I'm weird. And I didn't tell anyone because my decision on the show wasn't finalised. But I guess I just have to say it... I ... like ... Doctor Who. The end! 


So there you have it. You're probably just as shocked as I am. When I can get my hands on the next few episodes I will probably write another post. For now, I leave you with some hair eye-candy.

Admit it. You're staring.