Farewell address

Alas, this assignment has come to a close.

What have I learned, you ask?

1. My future does not lie in the realm of blogging. I consider the creation of these thirteen posts among the greatest challenges of my life.

2. I should probably not become a movie critic, at least not without some heavy medication. I agonize over every single phrase. By my calculations, it takes me roughly 2 days to produce 250 words.

3. Mr. Williams = best teacher ever. He is a beacon of wisdom and intelligence, a guiding light, forever inspiring the journalist in all of us.

Coming soon

Two of the summer movies I am most excited for:

Name colon object comma place based on semicolon period.

Invasion of the Big, Scary, Long Film Titles- New York Times

I find coming up with titles extremely difficult (for examples, see this blog).

I had noticed the recent onslaught of long titles, particularly for sequels, that forgo the number system (i.e. Ironman 2) and instead include a title, followed by a colon, followed by a plot description. Evidently, Brooks Barnes read my mind- this article takes a look at the rising trend.

Great Expectations

Sects and the City- New York Times

A clever and interesting article from an often unseen perspective. Still, it's hard to imagine he could have expected anything different. Sex and the City is made for glamour, not realism.

Live fish

Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank follows 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis), a product of British housing projects and a torrent of fury and confusion (within the first few minutes of the film she gets in roughly five fights, both verbal and physical). The main plot thread involves a dangerous relationship with her trashy mom's (Kierston Wareing) new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender).

The premise might seem like one that has been explored to death--how many times have we seen angsty, impoverished youth struggle to find themselves? But Arnold's knack for gritty realism makes her film stand out.

Jarvis' performance is nothing short of incredible, and beyond impressive given that she is not a professional actor. Discovered in a subway station having a screaming fight with her boyfriend, her Mia is messy and uncalculated. Her lack of acting experience seems, in this case, to be her greatest strength, for she conveys all of Mia's twisting emotions with the veracity of living it.

The fact that none of the actors are well-known (the most recognizable being Fassbender, after his role in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds) makes Fish Tank all the more credible. The same movie with famous faces would have been ridiculous; instead, their relative anonymity helps solidify its authenticity.

To top it all off, Arnold gave the script to her actors in pieces, so that, while filming, none of them would know what was in store for their characters. Though not a common practice, this seems an obvious recipe for success in this genre. A bunch of people who don't know what's coming next... sounds a whole lot like real life, doesn't it?

Mother and Child

“Motherhood should be… something simpler than that,” says a mother of her daughter’s complicated adoption negotiations in Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child. The heart of the film, in fact, lies in motherhood’s complexity, adoptive or otherwise. Garcia delivers a highly emotional and resonant story without ever crossing the line to melodramatics.

Set in Los Angeles, the film unfolds in three intertwining strands. Karen (Annette Bening) is bitterly unhappy and haunted by the daughter she gave up for adoption after giving birth to her at age 14. That child has evidently grown into 37-year-old Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), a cold, ambitious lawyer who confines herself to a life of isolation. Lucy (Kerry Washington) is trying to adopt a baby and facing the difficulties that come along with what she describes as a horribly unnatural path to motherhood.

Though the plotline of interconnected lives may be all too familiar, the remarkable depth and complexity of the characters gives Mother and Child a unique, and heart wrenching, edge. Garcia, whose past work includes Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her and Nine Lives, has an aptitude for portrayals of genuine and multi-layered female protagonists. He makes the audience truly care about these women and their fates. Their disappointment is yours, too.

Bening delivers the standout performance in a role that spans a tremendous range of emotions. Her character is constantly evolving, and she hits every note from humor to despair.

In the end, Mother and Child proves to be as profound as the bond its title suggests.

Someone didn't hear the secret

TONY Review: The Secret In Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos)

Earth-shattering? Not entirely. But Juan José Campanella's The Secret In Their Eyes is far from worthy of kiddie pool comparisons.

The movie, most often labeled as a thriller/romance achieves success not only in those genres, but also weaves comedic dialogue with mystery, drama, and a little bit of politics. Contrasting elements of romanticism and reality blend and collaborate beautifully.

Campanella's talents as a writer-director are evident from his script and striking cinematography, both of which merit award show accolades.

Keith Uhlich is most off-base his description of the characters as shallow. Far from it. Every one is imparted with complexity and credibility. Moving performances from Ricardo Darin and Soledad Villamil are a driving force.

The film's greatest strength is that it, much like the murder haunting its protagonists, is bound to remain on people's minds long after it's over.

My Cinematical Mind

I don't always have the firmest grip on reality.

Once, walking into a friend's empty kitchen to find the sink faucet on, I concluded that it was in fact the work of demons (i.e. the opening scene of The Ring- you know something bad is coming when appliances start to act of their own accord) and ran from the room screaming/laughing, until someone went in and turned it off.

I watch a lot of movies and, on occasion, they distort my life a little bit.

I tend to worry that men will come into my house and shoot me while I sleep (Capote), or that all of my friends will meet untimely and gruesome deaths because of my thirst for knowledge and unwillingness to accept the natural circle of life (Frankenstein).

My sense of logic is not entirely unhinged, for there is some small part of me that always knows these situations are a tad unrealistic. Even so, I sometimes find myself in a hybrid world of fact and fiction. I take in my surroundings and let my imagination do what it will (don't worry though, no singing cartoon penguins here. I'm not that far gone just yet).

But for the sake of preserving my status as a functioning member of society, it's probably a good thing that people can't hear my thoughts.

Attack of the clones: there's an end in sight

Hollywood to Actors - No Surgery Please - NY Times

Here's some good news: Hollywood seems to (finally!) be tiring of plastic people. At least a little bit.

America's body image issue definitely has its cultural base. As a friend of mine pointed out, our up-tight attitudes about nudity (a result, I think, of our Puritan roots) prevent us throughout childhood and adolescence from seeing bodies other than our own and those in the media. And since media bodies are often fake and airbrushed, our perception of beauty is distorted. In Turkey, she said, women, young and old, sit around naked in bathhouses together, so girls see what real bodies look like and thus have greater confidence in themselves.

I think Botox is poison for actors. How can someone with a job so heavily reliant on facial expressions want to plasticize their skin? They obviously feel pressure to do so, but still, for the sake of the craft, should abstain.

As 30 Rock's Liz Lemon said to panicking actress Jenna, "You can be like Madonna and cling to youth with your Gollum arms, or you can be like Meryl Streep and embrace your age with elegance." Aptly put.

Excuse me, have I seen you before?

I love this video- so much so that the number of times I've watched it in the last four weeks is embarrassing. A brilliant parody.

See, it's funny, 'cause it's true.

Let's do the time warp again

Cell phones ruin everything. No longer does the dashing young man promise to meet his beautiful love interest at a certain place at a certain time, only to be detained by a series of unfortunate complications resulting in a tragic misunderstanding and fate's cruel destruction of what could have been. Now he can just text her and say "sry babe, runnin late."

Screenwriters nowadays face the challenge of tastefully incorporating the inescapable presence of everyday technology into plot.

Some embrace it. In He's Just Not That Into You (2009), Drew Barrymore's character frets about rejection by means of text, e-mail, and MySpace. Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer features brilliant usage of a GPS system to help unravel a mystery.

The reaction I particularly enjoy seems popular among independent filmmakers--setting movies in non-descript or recent time periods. The Coen brothers have long favored writing movies set in the recent past: Fargo (1996) takes place in 1987, The Big Lebowski (1998) in 1991, and No Country For Old Men (2007) in 1980. Jason Reitman's Juno and Drew Barrymore's Whip It both take place in unidentified years, but don't involve frequent (if any) use of cell phones and computers. Personally, I find it refreshing to see people use pay-phones and spend an hour and a half with no mention of Facebook or Twitter.

Going back to simpler times allows those good old-fashioned elements like plot and character to develop, without any of the distractions that so often keep us from our homework.

Read all about it

Polanski article from the Financial Times

Tobias Grey's feature on Roman Polanski is an intriguing exploration of the director's personal history and the story behind his latest film, The Ghost Writer, released in the wake of his stint in Swiss prison and sentencing to house arrest for a sex crime he committed in 1978.

I saw, and loved, The Ghost Writer. There may be some parallels to Polanski's present predicament, but screenwriter Robert Harris says they are purely coincidental. Nevertheless, critics and audiences alike will be making these assessments in the weeks to come.

The article demonstrates how certain events in Polanski's life have contributed to his work. The same is true of any artist. But it seems that when the event is a crime or social taboo, the correlations become newsworthy and subject to criticism.

Should we allow a filmmaker's personal life to so thoroughly infiltrate our perception of his work? I don't think so.

I have a friend who refuses to watch Woody Allen movies because she objects to his relationship with his former partner Mia Farrow's adopted daughter. Has Allen's work changed since the news of the affair came out in 1992? If it has, I certainly don't see it. It's not like he's been churning out material to procure public acceptance of his father-stepdaughter situation.

Watching The Ghost Writer, I noticed that the characters' foulest words had been dubbed over with tamer expletives. This, I suppose, was done to obtain a PG-13 rating (PG-13's are permitted only one F-bomb--any more than that and it's rated R). There are only to explanations I can think of: it was either an attempt to draw in the under-17 crowd, or, more likely, a message to American audiences, saying "Don't worry, there's no rape in this film!"

The censorship doesn't do much to diminish the quality of the film, except for taking some reality out of it. If you were accused of war crimes in a reputation-shattering international scandal, would you really be shouting freaking this and bloody that instead of the grown-up version of the word?

With all art, the viewer's interpretation is far more important than the artist's intent. If this is true, personal scandals should matter even less. Movies should be judged for what they are, not for the lives of the people who made them. Leave the tabloids out of it.

(no subject)

Making up titles is clearly not my strong suit.

This blog will cover the only subject I feel remotely qualified blogging about--movies. So I guess I'll be writing reviews, sharing opinions, and whatever else comes up. And if you're lucky, maybe an in-depth analysis of The Graduate, because there was definitely something you missed.