August: Osage County

Based on the multiple Tony Award winning play written by Tracy Letts, this new film adaptation has been bringing in a lot of Oscar buzz even well before its debut in the Toronto Film Festival.  It is a dark film with a lot a large range of dramatic and devastating characters which have been noted to only be reserved for the best actors for they are unlike you any characters you have typically seen before. Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, and Benedict Cumberbatch are just a few of the world renown actors participating in this film.

Plot

The story begins with Beverly Weston, a former poet whose wife, Violet (Meryl Streep), has grown weak with cancer. When Beverly disappears, the couple's three daughters and their extended family come to Oklahoma. The couple's eldest daughter, Barbara (Julia Roberts), is having her own marital issues. Middle sister Ivy ( Julianne Nicholson ) has a secret that would divide the family, while the youngest, Karen ( Juliette Lewis ), has a fiancé ( Dermot Mulroney ) who dies.

The film comes out on Christmas Day. 

Cant wait to see it!

Once

The film 'Once' received an Academy Award for Best Original Song and other awards including the Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film. Later a musical was created based on this film and has been highly successful on Broadway winning eight Tony awards out of eleven nominations. Despite this acclaim, however, when my friends and I were watching this film over the summer, we were very disappointed. Even my non-television/film major friends shared my beliefs that this was a very poorly made movie and that it was hard to watch. I distinctly remember that the first five minutes of the movie was a single wide shot on the male lead playing guitar that was held for way too long and had a slow, shaky, zoom in that was NOT done on a dolly. I also noticed some continuity issues and poor location planning when I could see Spring '06 collection on all of the shop windows behind the guitarist. This was a poor decision because you can tell that they shot in 2006 yet the film takes place in an earlier time judging from the props, which include exceptionally old phones and Walkman CD players. Granted they shot on a € 160,000 budget, but I was expecting more from a movie that received so much praise.

'Once' had a fantastic story about a guy and a girl who find each other through music by writing, performing, and recording songs together that show their blossoming love, however, I was cringing at how the film was made. First off, the lighting was awful. It was incredibly grainy and it looked as if no professional lighting equipment was used and that they only utilized practical lighting. However, at one point I could tell they were flashing the lead actress with a cheap LED light when the actress was not directly under a streetlight while walking down the street, and this did not look good. All except maybe one or two of the shots in the entire film were handheld, which was a nice stylistic choice, but they were incredibly shaky and it was distracting. Some single shots would also last for 2-3 minutes and this production also completely disregarded the 180* rule. Despite the poor visual, at least the story and the music were entertaining. I would recommend only seeing 'Once' once.