When I first saw Se7en, I was blown away by how dark the ominous the story had become. By the end, the plot and characters were so intense that it was truly captivating. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman pull off their best performances in this mystery thriller.
The story centers around Detectives Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman) as they investigate a trail of murders. The crime scenes are always very strange and seem to resemble one of the seven deadly sins. With these clues, the detectives track down the real killer but he gets away in a gripping chase. Throughout the sequences, Mills and Somerset build on the relationship between one another and there are some heart warming moments to balance out the horrifying ones. Eventually, the killer reveals himself to the police covered in blood. Can the two detectives survive the killer's final trap? I won't spoil the ending but it is definitely worth watching and is considered a classic in shocking endings.
Kevin Spacey plays the murder and, in my opinion, it was his greatest role in a long time. He was calm, cool, and collected which made him absolutely terrifying whenever he had something to say. You'll really learn to hate this guy quickly, and Spacey does such a good job of achieving it. The twist was good upon itself, but Kevin Spacey definitely made in ten times better.
I always end up watching this movie a few times a year to refresh myself in a deep and compelling narrative. However, I definitely won't recommend it to anyone with a weak stomach.
Leonardo DiCaprio is considered one of the best-known actors of not only
our generation but of all time. He started on the screen as a child actor over twenty
years ago on the television show Growing Pains and still continues to wow audiences to present day. But even though Leonardo DiCaprio is arguably at the utmost highest
caliber of actors he still does not possess an Oscar. The Oscar is considered
the universally standard recognition of top quality performance in the American
cinema industry, especially for acting, and yet it still has evaded DiCaprio’s
grasp. Though he has been nominated five times already for an Oscar, once as a
producer, once as best supporting actor, and three times for the best actor category
he just never ends up on top.
It is true that Leonardo Dicaprio’s movies are brilliantly written but
most times it is his enlightened acting that shines as the most prominent
strength of the film. It is DiCaprio’s acting that for the large part makes the
film memorable, which is why directors haven chosen him in their films. Some of DiCaprio's greatest films are:
Titanic(1997)
Inception (2010)
Shutter Island (2010)
The Departed (2006)
Aviator (2004)
Gangs of New York (2002)
A highly debated argument on why Leonardo DiCaprio has not won an Oscar
is he is not that “type” of actor, as in contemporary rather than traditional. There are certain actors who are considered “cool” actors, ones who
are successful and talented but they aren’t traditional actors or method actors. Actors similar to DiCaprio such as Samuel L. Jackson, Brad Pitt or Jonny Depp, who
play thoroughly entertaining characters more centered toward teens and mid-20s
audiences.
The unofficial standard for
this coolness is the Pitt-Hanks spectrum, this predicts the likelihood of
an actor to win an Oscar, the closer to “cool” Pitt the less likely to win. Actors
who play characters who are perceived as weaker, or closer to a relatable
person are the ones more likely to win. There are many issues with this
ideology of cool actors not winning; it severely hinders actors experimenting
with roles that don’t qualify as “Oscar worthy.” Although it is set that a
certain character will win should indicate that actors should strive toward
those characters is pretty intuitive, that should not be the basis of the win. But regardless of
academy award status and not being officially recognized by the academy itself,
DiCaprio realizes thats not what it means to be a good actor and has been
extremely positive about it all.
Ive always been iffy about my feelings towards breaking the 4th wall. Breaking the 4th wall is when a character in a film talks directly to, or acknowledges the audience watching the film. I'm indecisive about this technique, because it throws you out of the film for a moment, which means if the movie is not engaging enough to begun with, it may be hard to fall back into the world of the film. however when it is done correctly it can make for an amazing viewing experience.
One of my favorite examples of breaking the 4ht wall is in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Annie Hall is about a comedian in New York City named Alvy Singer and his relationships and love interests throughout his life. Through out this movie Allen’s character, Alvy, breaks the 4th wall and talks directly to the audience. Allen later said he chose to use this Technique “because I felt many of the people in the audience had the same feelings and the same problems. I wanted to talk to them directly and confront them.”
Another excellent example of breaking the 4th wall is in the Netflix series House of Cars staring Kevin Spacey. This show is based on a BBC mini series which was based off a Michael Dobbs novel. The show centers around a power hungry, Congressman, and his equally heartless wife and their rise through the government. The creators of the show says that they use “Shakespeare’s direct address from Richard III, where the Main Character speaks directly to the audience.” the goes on to say “i think it is a really rich and effective way to bring an audience even close to the material.”
Fight Club also famously breaks the 4th wall, arguably the most seamlessly. Fight Club revolves around an insomniac and a strange soap salesman he meets on a plain. The two become unlikely fiends and start a fight club, that become more and more popular and spreads to many cities. The first time you see this film you might not even realize the 4th wall was being broke, however Ed Norton and Brad Pits characters, or character, do it relatively frequently.
When
I was young my parents introduced me to the world of Disney. I remember the
first video I ever watched was Mickey's Steam Boat. In the video Mickey is
whistling the most catchy tune that I can still hum to this day. When I got a
little older I became fascinated on how the music, and the sound was created.
My uncle (who worked as a Production Designer for Disney) saw me watching loops
of old Disney clips and later sent me a book titled "Demystifying Disney.
This book basically revealed everything behind the scenes in Disney animation.
The chapter that fascinated me the most was about this guy Doc Kane who works
with Mixing all the sounds for animation. His name is Doc Kane but most just call
him Doc. With over 300 projects under his belt and a slew of awards and
nominations, including four Academy Award nominations, Doc has one of the
longest and most impressive resumes in the sound business. Re-recording for
over 35 years, Doc has worked with hundreds of talented actors including Tom
Cruise, Ellen DeGeneres, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Robin Williams to name a
few. He is also the trusted ADR mixer for dozens of legendary filmmakers such
as: Tim Burton, James Cameron, Clint Eastwood and Taylor Hackford. Never one to
toot his own horn, Doc is known as one of the best in the industry, his name
alone drumming up praise and admiration from his colleagues and clients alike. Doc talked about
automated dialogue replacement or ADR which basically means you take what is
being said by these actors and transform it into what the character says in the
film. Doc talked about when he was younger he used to take a boom mic and a
Nagra recording device and record different ambiance's. And this fascinated me
that you could literally record anything and through sound make people believe
that your actually there. I guess this made me realize how lucky I am to be in a place where I can play around with all different types of audio equipment. And for that I am extremely grateful for what I have, and what I want to be
When the credits began to roll at the end of 12 Years a Slave, nobody in the theatre made any sort of move to leave. There was no popcorn crunching, no soda slurping, just dead silence. In part, this was because it was a fantastic movie - probably the best of the year - but it was also because, as an almost exclusively white audience, nobody was quite sure how they should feel.
12 Years a Slave, which is only the third film by director Steve McQueen, is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in New York who was captured in 1841 and sold into slavery. The film follows Solomon (the incredible Chiwetel Ejiofor, who will almost certainly be nominated for best actor this year) as he gets moved around from slave owner to slave owner, trying to stay alive and somehow return home to his wife and children. As I mentioned, it’s a spectacular movie - the acting, the directing, and the cinematography are some of the best I’ve ever seen - and yet I can’t think of film in recent memory that has had so much Oscar buzz while simultaneously being something that people are almost afraid to talk about.
So, to clear the air, I’d like to talk about 12 Years a Slave.
Racism is an incredibly daunting thing for me to write about, and the more I look up at the title that I’ve given this piece, the more I have to wonder if it’s something I have any right talking about at all. As a middle class white guy from Vermont, I have almost no first hand experience with the topic apart from what I’ve obtained over the years through different kinds of media. My parents are not racist in the slightest, and I was raised to constantly be disgusted that people could judge others based solely on the color of their skin. Just because I’ve read Invisible Man and The Autobiography of Malcolm X doesn’t mean that I claim to have any real connection to or knowledge of black culture. Who am I to judge a brutally honest film about slavery?
I’ve done a little bit of research ever since I watched 12 Years a Slave, and I’ve found lots of articles that both praise and criticize the film; many, understandably, written by black critics. Some, like Orville Lloyd Douglas’s, make fine points about why Hollywood should make more “black” movies that focus on more than just the topic of race and that don’t try to make white people feel guilty. I understand where he’s coming from; with 12 Years and The Butler hitting theaters around the same time, it feels like someone’s really trying to make a point. However, other people, such as Wesley Morris, argue not only for the artistic merits of the piece as a film, but for how McQueen pulls no punches in the portrayal of white people; this is a film about slavery where the slaves stand alone; there are no white men pushed into the foreground, no Lincolns or Christoph Waltzes, to save the day for them. I agree with this aspect as well.
But I still believe many people are missing the point. When I’m asked how the movie was, I typically respond “it was incredible, but there was an unbelievable amount of white guilt in that movie theatre.” Someone on YouTube even took the time to create a series of parody videos on that very topic. But this shouldn’t be anybody’s response. I’m fully aware that race is still a very prominent issue in our country in 2013, but there is no reason any person - white, black, hispanic, asian, or anywhere in between - should feel guilty when watching this film. By all means, we can be disgusted at how Solomon is treated by white people throughout the course of the movie; we should be. But taking that guilt - the guilt that slaveowners should have felt over 160 years ago - and applying that to ourselves today is wrong.
I’m convinced that 12 Years a Slave defies all boundaries of a normal Hollywood film in a few different ways. There’s no real target audience: while the art house crowd might eat it up, no matter who you are, this film is for you. It’s a film that spends a painfully long time lingering on the botched hanging of Solomon, with the man, front and center, desperately trying to gain some traction with his toes in the mud pile beneath him. It’s a film that takes its time, utilizing really long takes and interspersing certain segments with shots of nature. It’s certainly not your standard Oscar-bait film. It is not a “black” film, and it’s not a “white” film. It’s not even a wholly American film (both McQueen and Ejiofor are British). More than anything, it’s a human film.
Perhaps that’s what some people are missing, and what gives me the right to talk about racism and 12 Years. It is truly impossible for any white person to know what it’s like to be black and vice versa, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that this is a powerful film that affects each individual that sees it. Disagree with me if you want, tell me that the filmmakers are playing to my innate sense of white guilt and I’m not qualified to talk about this, but you’d be wrong. When you see Solomon come home after 12 years to find that his family is barely recognizable, and you see that no amount of happiness can fix the years of hell that he was forced to endure, you don’t have to have any necessary qualifications, apart from one. You just have to be human.
I recently watched the trailer for World War Z, coming out in June of 2013, and was pretty impressed. While I wish the trailer concentrated more on zombies rather than Brad Pitt's hair, from what I saw this still looks like a solid zombie movie.
At first I thought they would make this book into a television series, as the book goes through the history of the zombie apocalypse. So at first I was disappointed because this is nothing like the book, but then I became happy again because it deals with zombies. I'm looking forward to seeing how this movie turns out, and hopefully Brad Pitt doesn't screw up too much.
So far this year, I have been using this blog to motivate myself to see all the movies I have wanted to see, but never had the chance. This week has been no exception.
This week I sat down and watched a movie many people I know rave about, Fight Club.
Up until a couple minutes ago I had no idea who was in the film, what it was about, or any comprehension of the film at all. Im assuming everyone who has seen this movie was equally as blown away as I was. To anyone who has not seen the movie I highly recommend it but feel free to keep reading, I will not spoil it.
The movie stars Ed Norton who is only referred to as "the narrator" in the credits, and Brad Pitt who plays Tyler Durden. Ed Norton's plays a character plagued by insomnia. He tries many methods to alleviate it, and many succeed but leave him feeling empty and without a purpose. He then meets Tyler Durden. Tyler Durdens take on life captivates Ed Norton's character and the two of them come together and start Fight Club. As the first rule of Fight Club goes, no talking about fight club, that will conclude the synopsis so I don't ruin even a little bit for those of you who have not seen it.
The film was directed by David Fincher. The movie is made to mimic the lives of its main characters. All scenes are filmed at night, in a broken down house, a gloomy office, and create overall dismal scenes. The scenes with Brad Pitt however, seem to have a certain flair to them. Whether it is his flamboyant outfits, pink soap, or maybe even a stay light illuminating him in a dark basement, he carries a certain aura with him through the movie.
All I can really say about it is watch it. Even if you already saw it do it again. Its an excellent display of filmmaking, acting, and it gives you a mental sweat on top of it.
A film that has been getting a lot of press lately is "Moneyball" starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The Film, based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis, is about the sabermetric statistics revolution the devoured baseball in the late '90's and early 2000's. The movie centers around Billy Beane, Pitt's character, the much maligned general manager of the Oakland Athletics. The cash-strapped franchise was looking for ways to stay competitive without the financial resources of high-market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox. In turn, Beane and his staff revolutionized the way baseball statistics came to be interpreted. The film is an absolute must-see for any sports fan and will hopefully live up to the hype it has generated since the movie began pre-production more than two years ago.
for my adr project I'm using clips from spongebob and the movie Se7en. It's coming together pretty well actually. I am hopefully recording voices tonight. All is going good.
p.s.- what is a transcript.. I know its like an academic record that you send out to other schools and colleges. but I was confused when that word was used in class today. didn't really make any sense to me. can someone clear that up?
