Clip B: From Strangers On a Train the scene is shot at a constant medium shot. It is mostly framed at a straight-on-angle, but there is the occasional low angle making one of the two fighting on the merrry-go-round look more powerful. There is a high angle above the guy who goes under the merry-go-round indicating he is vunerable. The kuleshov effect is in massive use as random people, not on the merry-go-round are shown reacting to things on the merry-go-round. The last thing to mention is the sound which goes from diegetic, the merry-go-round noises, to diegetic with the suspenseful music playing,
Clip C: From Silence Of The Lambs we are given an unrestriced narration. The first thing to notice is the cross-cutting of the raid of the empty house and the criminal interacting with his prisoner. The high angle above the prisoner and dog implies vunerability. Low angle up at Buffalo Bill implies dominance. Quite dark cinematography indicating the criminal has something to hide. The cross-cutting also adds suspense to the scene and tension.
Clip D: From Magnolia, again unrestricted narration. The whole scene is in a constant long take and drifts from the back of one person to another. It's pretty much a medium shot the whole time, it has kind of a high angle though. The music is no0ndiegetic and it sort of adds mystery to the situation. We aren't introduced to the character's ever, but we understand small things about them from the long take.
Clip E: From Amadeus, this time it's restricted narration. The first couple things to note are the straight-on angle and middle shot. The music switches from diegetic to non-diegetic to diegetic in a very smooth transition. It's a middle-focal-length lens, I think, because stuff in the background appears quite unclearly with focus on the composer. The cuts are all normal, but there is one exceptionally done regular cut when it switches from the younger form of the composer to his older form. That is an expert version of the kuleshov effect.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Oscar Nominated Rankings
Pre-writing:
-Toy Story 3
1. Nostalgic value
2. Darker then most animated features
3. Happy ending
-True Grit
1. Old fashion revisionist western
2. Excellent writing and script
3. Great acting
-The Social Network
1. Great script
2. Good acting
3. Relevant to a young audience
-Inception
1. Interesting sci-fi premise
2. Okay acting
3. Explosions and cool action
-Winter's Bone
1. Kinda Noir
2. Interesting world
3. Very slow paced
-The King's Speech
1. Very slow in pace
2. Well done cinematography
3. Historically inaccuracies
1. True Grit. While nnowhere near the best Coen brothers film, True Grit is my favorite movie of these six. The feel to it is very old-fashioned, and it captures the essence of that time period. The Coen's tone down their style and still manage to make a well made film. True Gritis not only well acted, but has a brilliant script. All the characters are speaking very proper english adding a great deal of humor to the film.
2. Toy Story 3. While being a lesser to the two previous Toy Story films, Toy Story 3, was still an excellently made movie. It took a dark turn, probably making it one of the darkest animated films made in America. I thought it was itneresting the direction they took the characters and the more adult humor is still there. It does not overcome True Grit as a whole, True Grit is funnier and I'm biased when it comes to animated films, but it is a little bit better than the Social Network.
3. The Social Network. While I despise the premise, at a technical level, The Social Network towers over it's competition. Fincher proves himself as a masterful director and it would be sad nto see him not win Best Director. The screenplay my Aaron Sorkin is excellent as well, the characters interactions are very well written. The premise is really what drags this movie down, it changes some of what really happened to make a more interesting movie, and really hollywoodizes some of it. I really just didn't want to love this movie, because of how un-interesting the source material and it's premise are. I don't really care about zuckerberg's social issues, but it's brilliance at a technical level proves it to be surperior to Winter's Bone.
4. Winter's Bone. I didn't find this movie as interesting as most, but it still definitely held my attention. The acting is excellent, they really get into their southern accents, and the character's brilliantly written. Winter's Bone's plot is where it falters. It's plot never really hooks you intot he story and you just see something unravel that you were never really interested in. By not having an itneresting story, the movie turns into a look at how bad these people have it, and less of a compelling drama. It just fails to muster the care value that it needed to be higher up on this list, however it is good enough to push Inception and King's Speech back.
5. Inception. Inception definitely made you think more than the average action movie, but it wasn't complicated enough to make a great thriller. It fell into a kind of thought-provoking movie with some explosions. It's mediocre performances and badly written characters didn't help very much either. Leonardo Dicaprio is on auto-pilot and I as an audience member find that insulting, since his character isn't much different then say Billy Costigan from The Departed. Inception just didn't represent action as well as it could have, and didn't make us think enough.
6. The King's Speech. In my opinion this is the textbook definition of Oscar Bait. King's Speech is focused on Firth's performance so much that it doesn't take a look at anything else. the plot shifts from Britains problem to the king's problem, which could easily have been solved by someone else stepping in for him to do the spech. Sure he'd have no dignity, but that would solve the issue wouldn't it. Pointing out this plot hole I reveal how unexpertly crafted King's speech is on a technical level. this in my mind makes it the weakest of the oscar contenders, not just of these six. the redeeming qualities to it, are that it's well acted and well shot.
-Toy Story 3
1. Nostalgic value
2. Darker then most animated features
3. Happy ending
-True Grit
1. Old fashion revisionist western
2. Excellent writing and script
3. Great acting
-The Social Network
1. Great script
2. Good acting
3. Relevant to a young audience
-Inception
1. Interesting sci-fi premise
2. Okay acting
3. Explosions and cool action
-Winter's Bone
1. Kinda Noir
2. Interesting world
3. Very slow paced
-The King's Speech
1. Very slow in pace
2. Well done cinematography
3. Historically inaccuracies
1. True Grit. While nnowhere near the best Coen brothers film, True Grit is my favorite movie of these six. The feel to it is very old-fashioned, and it captures the essence of that time period. The Coen's tone down their style and still manage to make a well made film. True Gritis not only well acted, but has a brilliant script. All the characters are speaking very proper english adding a great deal of humor to the film.
2. Toy Story 3. While being a lesser to the two previous Toy Story films, Toy Story 3, was still an excellently made movie. It took a dark turn, probably making it one of the darkest animated films made in America. I thought it was itneresting the direction they took the characters and the more adult humor is still there. It does not overcome True Grit as a whole, True Grit is funnier and I'm biased when it comes to animated films, but it is a little bit better than the Social Network.
3. The Social Network. While I despise the premise, at a technical level, The Social Network towers over it's competition. Fincher proves himself as a masterful director and it would be sad nto see him not win Best Director. The screenplay my Aaron Sorkin is excellent as well, the characters interactions are very well written. The premise is really what drags this movie down, it changes some of what really happened to make a more interesting movie, and really hollywoodizes some of it. I really just didn't want to love this movie, because of how un-interesting the source material and it's premise are. I don't really care about zuckerberg's social issues, but it's brilliance at a technical level proves it to be surperior to Winter's Bone.
4. Winter's Bone. I didn't find this movie as interesting as most, but it still definitely held my attention. The acting is excellent, they really get into their southern accents, and the character's brilliantly written. Winter's Bone's plot is where it falters. It's plot never really hooks you intot he story and you just see something unravel that you were never really interested in. By not having an itneresting story, the movie turns into a look at how bad these people have it, and less of a compelling drama. It just fails to muster the care value that it needed to be higher up on this list, however it is good enough to push Inception and King's Speech back.
5. Inception. Inception definitely made you think more than the average action movie, but it wasn't complicated enough to make a great thriller. It fell into a kind of thought-provoking movie with some explosions. It's mediocre performances and badly written characters didn't help very much either. Leonardo Dicaprio is on auto-pilot and I as an audience member find that insulting, since his character isn't much different then say Billy Costigan from The Departed. Inception just didn't represent action as well as it could have, and didn't make us think enough.
6. The King's Speech. In my opinion this is the textbook definition of Oscar Bait. King's Speech is focused on Firth's performance so much that it doesn't take a look at anything else. the plot shifts from Britains problem to the king's problem, which could easily have been solved by someone else stepping in for him to do the spech. Sure he'd have no dignity, but that would solve the issue wouldn't it. Pointing out this plot hole I reveal how unexpertly crafted King's speech is on a technical level. this in my mind makes it the weakest of the oscar contenders, not just of these six. the redeeming qualities to it, are that it's well acted and well shot.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
My First Movie Review
I recently saw Pitch Black, which came out in 2000.
BRAINSTORMING:
1. The plot is kind of a copy of Alien, although with different location.
2. A few of the character's are cliche, including the protagonist Riddick.
3.The movie is part of the sci-fi/horror genre, and it does a pretty masterful job of conveying that feeling of being trapped somewhere with a monster chasing you.
4. It has very logical characters versus unlogical, or childish.
5. It is a character study to an extent.
6.The aliens, who kill them are conceiled for a good while, making them more scary.
7. We never get a good look at what they are, this is a very interesting film technique, because it gives us a similar feeling to that of the characters. They never really know who never really know what the aliens are.
8. It takes place in the future.
9.The characters aren't all good guys.
10. It has a decently small budget, for a sci-fi movie.
11.The setting is in a dessert, providing restriction on character activity.
12. The script is well written.
13. The camerawork is also excellent.
14. The cinematogrophy goes from very light, to very dark, the transition is handled well.
15. In my opinion it's one of the only good performances Vin Diesel gives.
Review Of Pitch Black:
Pitch Black is takes a quite cliche story, the helpless and trapped in space story, and adds more interesting characters to it and a few twists. For example, the protagonist, Richard B. Riddick, is a notorious criminal, and another character is a bounty hunter, who is after Riddick. This adds tension between those characters, and Riddick is not present among the other characters for the first half of the movie. What's really excellent in Pitch black are the camera angles and the cinematography. They do an awesome job of capturing Riddick's motions as he fights the aliens, during a solar eclipse, hence the title Pitch Black. Also the special effects, for the budget, are excelletn as well. What Pitch Black accomplishes, that lots of movies of this genre fail at, is connecting you to the characters. If the minor characters were stupid or illogical, it would make it hard for us as the audience to want to help them escape that planet, which is ultimately a choice that Riddick has to make. Overall Pitch Black is an interesting take on a quite-worn out story, and is excellent on a technical level.
BRAINSTORMING:
1. The plot is kind of a copy of Alien, although with different location.
2. A few of the character's are cliche, including the protagonist Riddick.
3.The movie is part of the sci-fi/horror genre, and it does a pretty masterful job of conveying that feeling of being trapped somewhere with a monster chasing you.
4. It has very logical characters versus unlogical, or childish.
5. It is a character study to an extent.
6.The aliens, who kill them are conceiled for a good while, making them more scary.
7. We never get a good look at what they are, this is a very interesting film technique, because it gives us a similar feeling to that of the characters. They never really know who never really know what the aliens are.
8. It takes place in the future.
9.The characters aren't all good guys.
10. It has a decently small budget, for a sci-fi movie.
11.The setting is in a dessert, providing restriction on character activity.
12. The script is well written.
13. The camerawork is also excellent.
14. The cinematogrophy goes from very light, to very dark, the transition is handled well.
15. In my opinion it's one of the only good performances Vin Diesel gives.
Review Of Pitch Black:
Pitch Black is takes a quite cliche story, the helpless and trapped in space story, and adds more interesting characters to it and a few twists. For example, the protagonist, Richard B. Riddick, is a notorious criminal, and another character is a bounty hunter, who is after Riddick. This adds tension between those characters, and Riddick is not present among the other characters for the first half of the movie. What's really excellent in Pitch black are the camera angles and the cinematography. They do an awesome job of capturing Riddick's motions as he fights the aliens, during a solar eclipse, hence the title Pitch Black. Also the special effects, for the budget, are excelletn as well. What Pitch Black accomplishes, that lots of movies of this genre fail at, is connecting you to the characters. If the minor characters were stupid or illogical, it would make it hard for us as the audience to want to help them escape that planet, which is ultimately a choice that Riddick has to make. Overall Pitch Black is an interesting take on a quite-worn out story, and is excellent on a technical level.
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