It has come to my attention that the public is not educated about the intertube’s latest sensation, FilmRiot, the Revision3 show that shows you how to pull off the techniques you see in the movies without having to sell your soul for an FX budget.

So I present this Public Service Announcement for the betterment of my readers.

Today mom and dad picked up a movie from the video store:  The Tale of Despereaux.  I had previously written this one off as a “kids” movie but watched it anyways.  To summerize it quickly, it was spectacular.

Now, I’m going to start out with my usual disclaimer that I like my flawed heroes more flawed than heroic.  While the “hero” of the work has no discernable flaws (even his foolhardiness is interpreted as going against the grain – watch the movie) the characters who surround him certainly do.  While it did not end with at least some tragic element (I’m a catharsis junkie) it did satisfy that more morbid urge of mine to see characters pass through the shadow of the valley of death.

The story of this animated movie, to quickly sum it up, is about a kingdom called Dor.  In the preamble to the movie we see that a tragedy befell the kingdom robbing it of its most cherished tradition (watch the movie if you’re really that curious) and that this was caused by a certain member of our cast.  Later we meet the hero Despereaux – a small mouse with big ears.  He explores the traditional fairy tale themes of chivalry, honour, bravery, yada yada yada.  On the sidelines are Roscuro (a rat), Princess Pea, and Miggery Sow the servant girl.  Though the story is focused on the hero (as stories usually are) these characters all have their own very clear character arcs.  These are my kind of heroes, if you know what I mean (watch the movie!  Here Not Be Spoilers). Continue reading

I probably should not be pontificating on deep matters at 11:30 at night, but whatever.  My Film exam is rendering.

So if you don’t know (and you don’t, because I haven’t told anyone), my exam film for IB Film Studies II is all about signifigance.  A brief overview of the story:  family sits down to dinner with a friend who is utterly boring, family battle begins behind the scenes, escalates in to war after about 5 minutes.

Now, this short has gone a long way since its inception.  I wanted to have a family of psycics having a friend over for dinner and whilst he’s talking they’re talking between eachother in their minds.  Obviously, this is kitchy.

Now, I filmed this short with that in mind, with a script that, although flimsy, supported it.  Because all of the consequential dialogue would be done with voiceover, I could change the script at will.

It didn’t fly.

But what happened was better.  I decided to take this idea of a family that is different and internalize it.  The almost-finished version of the film creates two distinct stages (the whole thing is one scene at a kitchen table), one in the ‘real’ world where their boring guest is going on quite like I’m probably going on right now (hey, it’s 11:30.  Give me a break) and the one that is more a mirror of their family struggles.  While the boring conversation is constant, the battle between the family members gets more intense as it progresses.

Which brings me to my point on signifigance. Continue reading

So today school in Canada reconvened… A bittersweet moment, seeing as I will be productive but no longer have the time to be so. First day of school was pretty laid back: I wore my wifi-detecting shirt which became the conversation piece of every room I walked in to. Film Studies is basically going to be prep time, Physics won’t even have a unit test, Computer Science is as computer science always has been (though I am now using that time to learn Python. Great language. Easy to learn) and in English we are watching Apocalypse Now (based on the ever-dreaded Heart of Darkness) and then working on our world lit papers due at the end of the week.
Unfortuneately, I’m only half-done my WL One paper, so we’ll see how that works.