Green Zone Review

This was a movie that I thought had a lot of promise featuring Matt Damon and the director of the Bourne movies. Unfortunately, it isn't nearly as good as any of the Bourne movies. It's about the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now here's a shocker, they don't find any. This movie was actually a lot like watching the news way back in 2003. Which is to say that it was old news.

On top of that the cinematography was a little annoying. They tried to tie the movie together with annoying camera movements, quick zooms and having weird fast focusing(and a lot of random blurriness). I didn't like this at all and I'm sure they thought it might make it seem more exciting but it really didn't work for me.

In short this movie is a rental. I give it a C overall.

Where the Wild Things Are Review

I finally saw Where The Wild Things Are last night by Spike Jonze and I really enjoyed it. I know that a lot of people complained about this movie being a little too wild for kids and it is. This isn't a full fledged kids movie by any stretch of the imagination. However, some kids may still enjoy the movie but I highly doubt many of them will really grasp or appreciate the subtext that runs throughout. This may also be hard for some parents to watch as they may not want to face (or be reminded of) the idea of a ten year old (their ten year old) going through this type of situation.

This movie (as I see it) is essentially about a child who's forced into some sort of premature loss of innocence due to the fact that his parents are getting a divorce. For instance no ten year old should be taught that everything, even the sun, will one day die. For those of us that have long ditched our innocence this is not such a big problem and rather entertaining.

The kid then tries to cope with this loss by escaping to some far off fantasy world where everything in life actually turns out like it should have and how he wanted it to be. The problem is that his sad reality starts to seep into his fantasy and eventually ruins the whole thing.

As for the execution, it was largely fantastic. Visually wonderful, cool soundtrack, and a descent story. You may end up drifting when the story lags here or there but it's not really a big deal and doesn't happen often. For the most part it was a really good time. This movie also made me have a lot of throw backs to being a stupid kid. Especially the play mud fight that always ended in a real fight. Always!

I give this movie A.

Paley Fest: Dexter

So I went up to see Dexter night at this years Paley Fest. For those of you who don't know the Paley is LA's museum for television and every year they put together a panel with the cast and crew of various TV shows. This year they featured such shows as Lost, NCIS, and of course Dexter(my favorite TV show).

They hold this at the Saban theater which is in Beverly Hills. A wonderful place to go see something like this but a little on the large side. If you ask me a little more intimacy would have improved the evening but then they'd be turning away people who wanted to go and check it out. Some of these like the Lost night have sold out completely.

The night started off with an episode of Dexter. I've never seen a TV show on a big screen before and it was a rather unique experience. It made it even more unique seeing the show with a large crowd cheering on the characters. The episode we watched was “Hungry Man” from the fourth season. A great episode if you haven't seen it.

Then the entire cast comes out and sits on the stage right in front of you (John Lithgow wasn't present). They also had several of the executive producers of the show on stage and the writers were also on hand but out in the audience. The panel had something of a moderator that asked them questions. A lot of the questions were about the choices they made concerning the character Rita at the end of the fourth season. Then there were a lot of questions about the future of the show. However, they couldn't say much about it because they wouldn't want to ruin any surprises. After that the audience was aloud to ask anything they wanted.

I had a fun night overall and would highly recommend it to anybody that's a fan of TV and lives in the LA area. For more info go to http://www.paleycenter.org/paleyfest2010/ They still have upcoming events through March like Breaking Bad, Glee and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The 90's: A Decade in Movies

It's hard to sum up the 90's. It was sort of all over the place from SNL alum comedies, action and special effects blockbusters, hard hitting indie and drama films... you name it, the 90's probably had it.

So I said in my post about the 2000's that I liked the 1990's better and here's why! There was just no way to limit it to ten.



1. Natural Born Killers – Don't listen to the critics this is a crazy good time from Oliver Stone.
2. Grosse Point Blank – They need to make more dark comedies.
3. True Romance – A lesser known gem.
4. Goodfellas – My favorite Scosese movie... well maybe not as good as Taxi Driver.
5. White Men Can't Jump – Best sports drama ever!
6. American Beauty – Yeah, the 'burbs suck.
7. The Devil's Advocate – Guilt's like a bag of bricks... all you have to do is put it down.
8. Fight Club – What was the first rule again? I didn't catch it the first twenty times.
9. Terminator 2 : Judgment Day – Way better than Avatar despite what the box office says.
10. Tommy Boy – RIP Chris.
11. The Matrix – Whoa...
12. Happy Gilmore – Billy Madison was great as well.
13. Forest Gump – So many lines I repeated way too many times.
14. The Crow – Style, style, style.
15. Trainspotting – Okay, kinda depressing.
16. Wayne's World – Psycho hose beast! LOL.
17. Dumb and Dumber – Back when Jim Carrey was on the top of his game.
18. Point Break – Don't pretend like you haven't watched this twenty times.
19. Scream - Best take on the slasher genre in years.
20. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me – And mini-me was born.
21. Days of Thunder – Tog Gun all over again.
22. Seven – I miss David Fincher and Brad Pitt making movies that had a pair.
23. Groundhog Day – Bill Murray is the king.
24. Scent of a Woman – Amazing acting Pacino!
25. The Thin Red Line – Artsy fartsy but awesome.



Honorable mentions would include Office Space, Kids, American Pie, There's Something About Mary, The Big Lebowski, American History X, King Pin, Pulp Fiction, Silence of the Lambs, Hook, Pump up the Volume, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead and a whole lot more.

Shutter Island Review

This was a February movie. It certainly wouldn't have held up during the Christmas rush that's for sure. It wasn't the worst movie ever or anything like that it was just really disappointing for a Scorsese film and quite frankly I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a Scorsese movie. At least not that I can remember. So it goes.

For starters the movie was just slow. The pacing was almost painfully slow at some points. I guess you could blame the script because there really wasn't that much going on during a lot of segments in the movie. To make matters worse it was freakin' long. It was easily over two hours and it really didn't need to be that long. You can't create suspense just by killing the pacing and adding a weird score.

Shutter Island did manage to have some interesting shots. I especially liked some of the surreal dream sequences in the movie. Some of these managed to be fairly interesting to look at even though some clichéd devices were used to make them look visually exciting. Okay, paper or feathers or something else flying around in the air does look cool but we've all seen it before.

Having never read the book I was a little bummed out with how the movie ended. There's a big twist at the end and I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but I would have been happier if the movie continued with the path it was on. It would have left me liking the main character more and I knew the movie was going to end the way it did. You can predict the twist, I just found myself hoping it wouldn't go there as we got closer to the end. Also, that same type (or similar type) of twist has been done in other films which I wont name. I give it a C+.

Movies By Season

Okay, it's February and you may have noticed that I haven't done a lot of movie reviewing lately. That's because most movies that I'd like to see don't come out in February. This is the time of year that Hollywood usually puts out all it's mediocre films that wouldn't have had a chance during the holiday season. That means that February is usually a sad month for the movie going public.

So like I said the month of December is usually reserved for blockbuster type movies. For instance Avatar came out on December 18. This is because most people have time off of work or school and Hollywood knows they're going to be looking for something to do. So release the best and rake in the most cash possible.

This is the same logic with the summer blockbuster run. Kids are all home from school, ship 'em all off to see a movie. That's actually the premier season for Hollywood and their big money makers. This is why you'll see a lot of big action and special effects extravaganzas come out during the summer months.

Fall is typically reserved for movies that the studios think have a chance of doing well at the Oscars and other awards shows. They have to release the films before the start of the new year so they 're still included in the upcoming season. Then they wait to near the end of the year so the movies will all still be at the top of the mind of Oscar judges come late February or early March.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you know what month it is and you've read what I've just written then you'll have a better shot at knowing what to expect when you head out to the theater. But, always remember there can be exceptions to every rule! Have fun.

Resolution

Today's topic is going to be on camera resolution. As some of you may know everything is pretty much going to HD. That's 1920 x 1080. That would mean a total of 2073600 pixels or a little less than 2.1 megapixels (just multiply 1920 x 1080 to get total number of pixels). That's as high def as your TV's gonna get (until it's obsolete) so why would anyone need a higher resolution than that?



The first and a huge reason would be that you hope to have your film screened in a theater. It's a lot like blowing up a picture in photoshop. The lower the resolution the smaller it remains unless you're okay with the fuzziness. 35mm film for instance has resolution that's much higher than 1920 x 1080 so it can be shown on the big screen. This changes with film stock, lenses etc. It's hard to say the equivalent in terms of pixels because film doesn't work the same way. Some estimate it at 20 megapixels or above, possibly even way above and IMAX would be even greater than that.

Another reason why you might want a higher resolution camera is for color correction. People say that even though you're just going to whittle it down to regular high def it still helps to have the higher resolution in post. There's just more pixels to play with. Even though you do eventually compress the file down to standard high def the end result still looks better.

Some digital cameras do record at more than regular old (old, that's funny) high definition. The Oakley Red One camera is one such camera. The 4K(4000 horizontal pixels) resolution would be a lot greater than high definition. It's also important to remember that in order to edit the higher resolution you're gonna need a blazing fast computer.



For the time being I'd keep shooting on 1920 x 1080 (unless Red Scarlet isn't too expensive) just because the odds of you getting a theatrical release is somewhat slim. Also, you can always transfer to film then color correct later if someone really thinks the movie is that amazing. This is most likely what they did with the film Paranormal Activity. They shot it on regular high def then Spielberg or whoever bought it transferred it to film and probably spent a couple hundred grand messing with it. Either way, keep shooting!