Pure Poetry.

This blog is about the film Ada got me for secret santa, I know not so secret but I had to blog about it. The film is Natural Born Killers. I have just finished watching it and I want to talk about while it is still buzzing around in my head. This is without a doubt the most violent film I have ever watched, it was grouse and hard to watch at some bits. Like when a daughter burned her mum alive. So why did I like this film so much.


I think it was because the way it was portrayed. The basic story is of a couple as they go on a killing spree but it is intercut with flashes from inside their head. This is cool and arty but also the normal scenes are all at odd angles. I think this is to show how crazy they are in their head. They also light the scenes in interesting ways. Sometimes they will make a scene green when the main guy is thinking to show how sick he is in the head. They also use a lot of black and white and other effects during normal shots. This film is very fast and keeps you involved. This could be because their are almost 3,000 cuts in the film. Normally a film has about 600 to 700 cuts.


The acting in the film was incredible with a cast including Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr. and Tommy Lee Jones is was bound to be good. I have never seen Tommy Lee Jones like he is in this film. 
Also the way the characters speak is great. They speak with such poetry. The words seam to fly out of their mouths and don't bring you out of the film for one moment.  


"I see angels, Mickey. They're comin' down for us from heaven. And I see you ridin' a big red horse, and you're driving them horses, whippin' 'em, and the're spitting and frothing all 'long the mouth, and the're coming right at us. And I see the future, and there's no death, 'cause you and I, we're angels."


When I was listening to her say this I was engrossed by her words but I did not fully understand them. I think that a lot of themes and underlying messages went right over my head. I think that some of the images that you see which are meant to be inside their head represent something or mean something more than just random good looking images. However I was still able to enjoy this film follow the story line. 


I very much recommend you watch this film. If you liked Requiem for a Dream then I think you will like this film. Here is the opening scene to give you a flavour of the style of the film. Enjoy. 

N 64

My friend left his N 64 at my house last week and I have been playing it almost everyday. I has brought back so many memories and happy times. I am also quite proud that I can still beat my brother and remember all the buttons. For those of you who do not know what an N 64 is and what it means it is a games console. But not just any games console. This was the first console I ever bought and i can still remember going to the shop with my mum and brother and handing over £70 for it. This was a lot of money for a primary 2. Me and my friends played games like Goldeneye and Pokomon for hours on end. I continued to  play these games even when my friends started to get Playstation one's. I was a true Nintendo kid. I have become glued to my TV and will be sad to give it back. I would have played my one but my dad gave it to the charity shop alone with all the games for it. I will still be bringing that up in years to come. But like anything I imagine I will get bored of it in time and be happy to shove it to the side. But right now the horrible graphics and clunky controller seam like the best thing since sliced bread.

Here is a video to show you what it means to the right person.

Eine Symphonie Des Grauens

This has been my favorite silent movie so far. This was because out of all the ones we have seen this has had the best narrative. You could easily follow the story without your mind drifting. I felt like I was in the movie more than any of the others. I also loved the way it was made. The using of his shadow was brilliant and the vampire Count Orlok was superb. So was the guy that brought Hutter up the path to the castle. He and Orlok where so much more scary the Dr Caligari's Somnambulist. It was their faces that made them so scary. The had the look of evil and if I had seen them in a film today I would totally accept them as the bady. Overall I was impressed with this film. I enjoyed it throughout and thought it was even quite clever at some points.

Elvis, Orks, Wizards and Ents.

After playing Lord of The Rings risk I really wanted to watch the films again. It had been ages since I had seen them and my extended edition box sets had been starting at me for some time now. So today I picked up the Two Towers and put it on. I forgot how beautiful this film was in some bits. It is not just people running around waving swords it is filled with wonderful cinematography. Although most of it is helicopter shots of New Zealand you are able to forget that and believe that it is a far away land. I found myself totally lost in this film and spent a good three hours watching it on my sofa. One of the great things about this film is that if you start to get bored of a story line it changes and you start to follow a different group of people. Then there is the spectacular battle scenes. I could watch Helms Deep be attacked all day and now I have to look forward to the battle at the Black Gate and Minas Tirith.  I am going to save The Return of the King for the next day we have off.

Lighting Class.

We started off doing lighting last week with Ray. I have enjoyed his lighting classes more than I did the camera classes. That is not because the other one is dull I just am quite interested in lights. At first I thought I knew quite a bit about lights but as it turned out that was not the case. I had never seen a kino light before. It’s a bit odd to say but now I think that that is my favourite light. It gave a nice soft look and was very easy to set up. It also does not get hot and is very light to carry around. I will hopefully get to play with it this weekend but I think I handed in my booking form too late. Maybe next week :). Also I learned a lot of terminology that I did not learn at Cardonald. Like the ARI 150's are called peppers. It is stuff like that which will be very useful if I am on a set as a runner. I also learned about Jumper leads which are 16amp to 13amp cables. We had none of that at Cardonald. Everything we played with had a plug. This looks much more professional and will be what the industry will be using. The most important thing I have learned is to not go into a situation and think you know everything. There is always something you can learn from any situation. I have learned a lot from Ray and I look forward to learning a lot more from him. I like his teaching style now all I have to do is put what he has taught us into a practical scenario. 

Thanks for reading. 

Inspiration.

I have not seen the whole of this film. My dad was watching it and called me in so he could show me a couple of scenes from it. I was so glad he did. These two moments in this film where incredible from an artistic point of view but also a technical. The first one which is my favourite is a man sanding in front of a mirror shaving. Then the camera moves in front of him so that it is facing the mirror and we can see his reflection.

What I think they must have done is cut a whole out from the wall and put the actor behind it. So the man we see at first is a body double as we only see his back. This is cleaver but just to be able to come up with that I think is amazing. To take a perfectly normal scene then to make it something just a little bit more special. It only lasts for 30 seconds and the time and energy that must have gone into it would have been huge.

The other one starts of with a guy playing with decks in his room. The camera then films him from out side the window and pans down to the street. So you are thinking ok it must just be some sort of jib. But then it moves off across a court yard and gets even higher. So maybe it was a helicopter but then is passes very close to a building.

The cool camera scene starts about one minute in.


I have no idea how this did this one. Maybe it was a helicopter. I just wanted to share these moments with you. Maybe it will inspire you to think outside of the box when you come to shooting a scene. I certainly will.

Thanks for reading.

Up In The Air. Whats the fuss?

So Up in the Air. Oh how I wanted that to be brillint and oh how it wasn't. It was nice but not great. I was hoping to see another Lost in Translation but if I had wanted that I should have just watched it becuase I was not going to get it by watching Mr Clooney. Don't get me wrong I did like this film it just did not deserve the praise it is getting from the media. Overall it is funning in places, the acting is good and there are some nice scenes. But it is depresssing.

SPOLIERS. At the end of the film you do not feel satisfied. You are left feeling depressed which I do not think is a good thing. Shindlers List left you sad but in away kind of uplifted. This just makes you think well whats the point. He started off happy then realised he was wasting his life. The one girl he liked did not work out. So you are expecting some sort of arc but it does not come. He contiunes being miserable and un happy with his life. He was far better off at the start of the film.

Now the good bits. Well like I said there where some funny points to this film and some of them where very funny. I found my self laughing outloud at quite a few bits. Even though you feel a bit cheated at the end I think that that is kind of good. It is fresh. A film without a happy ending is not the end of the world. It makes it more true and you feel very sorry for George Clooney. This is very good I found myself really connecting with him at the end of the film. I could feel what he was thinking and he did not have to say a word.

I recommend you go see this film. Everyone is talking about it and you could go see alot worse. Just don't build your hopes up too much like I did and you won't be disappointed.

FML

So yesterday I left my house to get in for 9:30. I drove my car to Partick train station. I was about to get onto a tube and I realised I had left my phone at home. I know the worst had happened. Like Andy said we don't carry a phone we wear it. I felt naked but knew that I could not be late for Rays class. I would just have to turn up naked. Then I finished all my classes at about 1:30 and was meeting Jessica at 5:00. The original plan was to get birth of a nation from the libary and watch it in the libary then go meet her. But now I had to go home to get my phone. I had no idea how to function without it. So off I went on a bus to go home. It worked out quite well I watched two eppisodes of Glee to see what the fuss was all about. I was not that moved my annoying people singing at me but I was cosy on my sofa. Then back in to town I went and met Jessica. ( I had also left richards book in R1 which had the spacing dimensions I needed to write my script which was due in the next day. Just another wee problem to add to the list.) The rest of my night was good, I watched half of birth of a nation then headed in to town for Andys class for 9:30 the next day.

So I was walking out of class and I didn't have my keys. I thought I had left them at Jessica's flat and she was in exams all day. This meant that I could not go pick up my car or get into my house. So I got a train to Hyndland  where I went to my old school to track down my brother and steal his keys. I then got a bus and walked a bit to my house. As I was putting Elliots keys in the lock my dad opened the door. I did not even think to phone home to see if he was in. This was anoying but what was even more anoying was that when I went to hang Elliots keys up I saw mine. I had come home yesterday to pick up my phone but left my keys. ggggrrr how irritating and what a waste of time and money.

All of this would have not happend if I had just picked up my phone yesterday morning. I would have saved my self three bus rides and a train ride and I would not have had to try and convice a school I was not a paedo and make them give me a pupils keys to their house. 

"Enjoy your dinner."

A line that sends shivers up my spine every time I hear it.  “But you are Blanche, you are in that chair!” is a line from the film What Ever happened to Baby Jane. WEHTBJ is an old thriller form 1962. It is about two sisters who used to be famous. One of them is now keeping the other sister hostage in their house. Blanche is in a wheel chair so can not escape. Jane thinks that it is Blanches fault that she is not still a star and blames Blanche for her not having any friends. This film makes you think how horrible it would be to be in Blanches situation. Imagine being imprisoned in your own home and being fed dead rats. At one point in the film Blanche tries to get down stairs and call for help. The tension builds and builds as Jane is on her way home and Blanche is still down stairs. This is a great peace of cinema and I strongly recommend it. Not only is a scary but the acting in it is superb. Bette Davis plays Jane in such a way that you feel sorry for her but also hate her. This film is filled with powerfully acted scenes between the two sisters. Here is one of my favourite scenes from WEHTBJ.

Enjoy

I can't hear you.

I was never drawn to silent movies before I came to the Academy. I always thought that they would just be silly. I thought that Charlie Chaplin was just a man who fell over a lot. And I still think that he is silly but now I can understand and appreciate the importance of what he was doing. I now know more about the silent era of film which makes me enjoy them more. I find the information behind the movies interesting but the movie its self not so much. For example the kid I was told was going to make me cry and it didn't. Now maybe that was because it was built up to much I am not sure. One of the other reasons why I did not like that film was because I found my self getting annoyed at Chaplin. I grew bored very quickly of his falling over and silly faces. The thing about him that I do like is what he did. He was able to bring happiness to millions of people and that it pretty cool. He help shaped cinema as we know it today so for that I do like him. I think that that era was right for the market at the time but I can not get the same enjoyment out of it now. I enjoyed the film Chaplin more that any of his films I have watched.

Then there was Buster Keaton. One of the reasons I prefer Keaton is that he does not pull any stupid faces. The other is thing I liked about him was his stunts. He fell over in style. His special effects were outstanding in his films for when they where made. It was when I was watching his film that I thought to my self that I should not pre judge things. Like the Chaplin movies I thought that they would be silly but they were but they had something so much more to give. 

It is the same story with The Battleship Potyomkin. I did not enjoy it but thought it was cool to watch because it was what started so much. It was really interesting to see where editing first came about and when I talk about silent movies I will now be able to mention that TBP was a stepping stone to what we watch on our screens today. In the film was the famous scene which has been used so many times. The Untouchables, The Witches, Crunchy Nut, Alvin and Chipmunks and the Simpsons are but to name a few. It is cool to be able to say yeh I saw the first one of that. 

Here is a video of the start of naked gun which has four pram's and a lawnmwer falling down some stairs. You might want to skip to one minute.

Then there was Caligari. German impressionism. Like Andy said you can see how this film influenced films like Batman and Edward Scissor hands. My feelings are the same with this film I did not enjoy it but I was glad to see and find out about where these film making practices came about from. 

I have not finished watching The Birth of a Nation as it is over three hours long but what I have seen so far as been interesting. There are huge battle scenes which I can see audiences shouting and screaming at back in 1915. There are also white people playing black people which just about sums up the tone of this film. What was really interesting about this film is its lenth. The films was have seen in class around 1902ish have been three minutes then there was Chaplin who Film the kid was 68 min in 1961. So what was a 190 min film doing in 1915? 

So what I have been trying to say in my rambling is basically I will not judge a book by its cover. I should watch things even if they look rubbish because I will always be able to take something from it. From silent movies I have taken an appreciation for the film makers who shaped our cinema and did wonders with the equipment they had to use. Also I was able to learn what the people wanted from there films in the early days and how their attitude changed quite quickly.

What I watched over the Holiday

 I have not really blogged over the holiday because I did not think that I had seen anything worth blogging about. However knowing that I had to do I blog I started to think and I have actually seen quite a few very good films both old and new. For instence I cought Whatever Happened to Baby Jane on Sky Movies the other night and I stayed up till 3 in the morning watching it. This is with out a doubt a fantastic film and truly deserves a blog dedicated to it so I will not say that much about it now other than I watched it in my holiday break and was blown away by it.


 I also went to see Nowhere Boy which was brilliant. It was very believable. What I mean by that is I suppose is that the acting in it was good along with the script. I could believe the words each character was saying and they way they said it. It was a sad film that pulled on many of my emotions so I would recommend  that you catch this beauty before it leaves our cinema. 



I also whatched On the Waterfront again which has one of my fravoutice cinema moments in it. It was great to hear those famous words again. 


"You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley. "

Most people have heard that saying even if they have not seen the film. This film is filled with beautiful little moments that make me want to make films. One thing that this film does is show how important your actors are to making your film come alive. If this film did not have an actor as good as Marlin Brando then it would have been nowhere as good as what it was.

Then there was also David Tennant leaving Doctor Who. I won't be able to talk about that in as much detail as Filk but I can say that I thought it was moving. I have watched all of his episodes and was sad to see him go. I thought that they did it well and it was nice to see that Russell T Davies was able to say goodbye to all of his characters that might not make an appearance again under Moffat's rule. 

And then there was the Harry Potter marathon. Nothing can really make me happier than letting my mind go numb and watching Harry and the gang. Oh what I would give to be in Harry Potter! That would be the film I would like to be transported into. I could see my self fighting off dark wizards with Hermione by my side. Also disappearing would be so cool. 

So all in all a good run of catching up on films and TV. Although here I have mentioned the ones I enjoyed. I did watch a lot of Road Wars and and other rubbish day time TV. 


Thanks for reading :-)