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.
Showing posts with label my favorite directors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my favorite directors. Show all posts
May 15, 2012
March 3, 2012
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.
Pretentious? Yes, but Lubezki's cinematography is breathtaking.
And there you have it. Ten Films in Ten Words. Your turn!
January 21, 2012
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.
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.
December 14, 2011
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)