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Tag Archives: movies
The Tree of Life [spoilers, duh]
What have you done to my fragile little mind, Mr. Malick?! Life, The Universe, and Everything, in just over two hours of the most beautiful cinema I have ever seen, and all I’m wondering is when I can see it again.
I was nervous for tonight. For all the chatter and buzz I’d heard, I only read through one review [a preview, really] in its entirety, from The Guardian’s David Thomson, and that last paragraph has remained burned in my mind…
What can one say about The Tree of Life? Just that for nearly 40 years it has been apparent that Malick might make a movie that could alter our understanding of what cinema should be. This may be it.
From Albania to Iran. Day 6 of the Sydney Film Festival 2011.
Today was my favourite Sydney Film Festival 2011 day to date, taking me from Northern Albania to Iran, focusing on family, and the consequences and fallout the actions of adults in conjunction with the culture surrounding them can have on their children.
Super 8 [spoilers, duh]
Super 8. A fantastic throwback to those kids movies from the 80s we all loved, with the best ensemble cast of the year.
Maybe I’ve just seen a lot of films lately, but I can’t last remember when I’ve so genuinely cared for a bunch of characters, and all credit to Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, the rest of the ragtag bunch, and J.J. Abrams, for so expertly bringing out the emotion in these kids with his writing and direction. If it’s been a long time since I’ve cared so much for a cast, it’s been even longer since the ensemble cast has largely been kids, and no, I can’t call it unique, but it’s something that has been sorely missing from cinema as of late.
X-Men: First Class [spoilers, duh]
X-Men: First Class. The best comic book to screen origin story I’ve seen, and a more than adequate potion to help erase the farce that was X-Men 3: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
I had my doubts after the last two failures, and taking it back to the 60s, telling the story of a young Magneto and Charles Xavier and intertwining the story with the Cuban Missile Crisis seemed like an extremely ambitious undertaking by Matthew Vaughn, but all in all, he’s made it work, and then some!
Alien vs. Aliens
You know, for more than half of James Cameron’s Aliens, I was left wondering what all the hype was about.
I’d never seen Aliens, or Alien for that matter, before this year. Yes can we skip the whole “But oh my God you’re such a movie buff, how could you not have seen these classics?”. Trust me, you’d be alarmed at how much of anything before the year 2000 I’ve actually not seen. Moving along…
Everything I’d read about the two films made Aliens seem far superior, yet I finally got around to seeing Alien a month or so ago, and was completely floored [heh, Peter Travers would be proud] by Ridley Scott’s visionary, sci-fi horror masterpiece.
What I’m looking forward to at the 2011 Sydney Film Festival
The Sydney Film Festival schedule came out today, and I’m pretty excited! It was last year’s Sydney Film Festival that really got me into the film festival circuit, starting with a memorable screening of Banky’s Exit Through the Gift Shop, and since that time, I was lucky enough to be in Melbourne for MIFF, and then had the time of my life at SXSW Film this year.
So, scheduling conflicts aside, and me actually being in Sydney, and able to attend, these are the films [in no particular order] that caught my eye initially…
Rationalising my digital media purchases, or lack thereof
@juleshughan tweeted an interesting Guardian post titled In the digital era free is easy, so how do you persuade people to pay?, and it got me thinking about why I pay for some forms of digital media, and why I refuse to for others.
The article is a good read, and speaks of motivations, which is something I’ve been very interested in lately, but this list, or whatever the post will turn into, is a lot more, colloquial, I guess.
<time jump> I’ve ranted too much [yes, I’m jumping in time], so I’m going to just list my rationale / motivations—generalised—below, and if you’re still interested, you can read about why it was basically World of Warcraft that got me paying for digital media. </time jump>
Note: The following rationale may likely be highly irrational to some.
The short of it
Games
- Features [the social, multiplayer aspect in 99% of cases] not accessible through pirated copies
- Ease of purchasing and the convenience of digital delivery
- Supporting Indie developers
Music
- Supporting something I’m passionate about
- It’s cheap
- Convenience
Television
Good luck trying to get me to pay for television.
Movies
Can’t justify it, and I’m more than doing my bit to support the movie industry by paying $20+ each week at the cinemas.
<time jump 2> Ok, I’m jumping in time again, but I realised I’d forgotten about mobile, and it feels a little different in my mind.
I would more than happily pay for an app I use regularly, but at this point in time, all my favourite, and most used apps, are free. In saying that, I do feel like, for whatever reason, I would hesitate / consider buying an app a lot more than I should, for the relatively small amount they cost. This Oatmeal comic sums it up </time jump 2>
And now, a wordier version…
Today I learned about motion interpolation
Our tv at home is around 10 years old, maybe older. In general, I don’t watch tv on my tv, and if I ever do, there’s a 99% chance it’ll be sport, hence my visible disgust as I turned on the tv in my hotel room today, excited to watch Kill Bill: Volume 2.
I still remember the first time I came across motion interpolation. I was drunk, at a mate’s place, and Spiderman was on tv. Ten seconds in, I was wondering what the hell was going on, and why the movie was looking so… real or non-cinematic. I put it down to my lack of sobriety. Nope, that wasn’t it at all.
SXSW 2011 in films. Q&As, lines and the 15 I saw, ranked.
SXSW Film is pretty special. Sure, there’s Sundance and Cannes, but SXSW Film really opens up its screenings, and gives the people access to all films that are screening like no other film festival. It was my first SXSW, and I had absolutely no idea to expect. It’s pretty clear now though, that by far, the Film component was my favourite.
Where else would a movie fanboy like me get to sit in on so many world premieres and screenings and interact with the cast, director, writer and producers of films?! The Q&As were a part of film I’d hardly experienced, and I grew deeply in love with them, and the context derived from them, with the movie being so fresh in your mind.
c0up 