It was hard for me to choose a film in the genre I cherish the most because I only had six options. I didn’t feel a connection to either of the six films so I settled for Moving Takahashi. This film is eleven minutes long and is directed and written by Josh Soskin. The film centers around a young woman by the name of Juliana who doesn’t get along with her step mother. As the father and step mother are arranging to the move from one house to the next, Juliana takes a large dose of different medications in the attempt to kill herself. The mover, Craig, who is determined to finish the job he was hired to struggles to move all the belongings from Juliana’s room and she yells to him to allow her 20 minutes and she will soon be dead and he can continue with his job. Craig then contemplates whether leaving her to die or helping her live. He calls a medical friend of his and together they help the struggling young woman to survive this terrible ordeal.
As I am typing this short summary I come to realize that maybe it was kismet that the two young people met. Juliana now has something to live for and look forward to. Craig was at the right place at the right time. It’s like my husband always tells me, everything happens for a reason. At the end of the film they are like Bonnie and Clyde, he tells her that he is running away with the move and stealing everything and she joins him. Almost like riding into the sunset together to live happily ever after. The film has a lot of important points like suicide not being an option and living life with no boundaries. I appreciate this film and all eleven minutes of it.
Kseniya Simonova was a participant of the “Ukraine’s Got Talent” show. This piece can be called a historical drama, but her way of expressing the sorrow of World War 2 is not performed through camera and actors, but through drawing with sand. She tells us a story by merely throwing the sand on a surface and dragging her fingers on top of it thus illustrating first a peaceful time followed by the war and losses. This is very touching and a very unusual type of art, Ive never seen anything like that before. She is very talented, she seems to be a good artist, she can make a picture out of sand much faster and nicer than many painters can do with the help of a brush.
The performance made me think one more time about the the overwhelming war and its consequences. She interchanges happy days of everyday life with the horrors of war and weapons, love and death, youth and maturity. She is very emotional while performing, I felt that the war somehow touched her family as it did to almost every family in Soviet Union.
The movie is unique. First of all because it is a performance. It has its plot and the pictures are arisen one from another, this piece is done by one person without a big crew of filmmakers. My previous post was about historical drama/holocaust movies. This movie is about war, the war when the holocaust took place and it is definitely a historical drama, it reflects the pain the people went through, and the pain is written on the faces of those who were watching this performance. It is very short yet meaningful piece.
School Ghost Stories G or Gakkô no kaidan G is a Japanese anthology movie created by Takashi Shimizu. Shimizu is better known his role as the director of “The Grudge” both 1 and 2. “In the Corner” is Shimizu’s first film production.
“In the Corner” starts off with 2 girls cleaning out the class pet rabbit’s cage. One girl cuts her finger and her friend goes off to get her a bandage. Good samaritans never last long in horror films. She returns to find her friend missing and the cages all broken up. Unfortunately, the cause of all this has stayed for her return as well.
Its been a long time since I saw something that made it hard for me to go to sleep. I guess it didnt help I was searching through shortoftheweek at 3 in the morning. It should be said that I think the grudge girl is probably one, if not THE, most horrific creations ever.
Shimizu captured the best moments of any horror movie in a 3 minute clip. The setup is perfect. He starts off with just an average routine and it quickly picks up from there. No ambient music is played and the quality of the clip isn’t great but it doesnt stop the horror from shining through. The moment of terror where the girl realizes she is not alone is pure GOLD. This is what I believe makes “In a corner” such a good horror piece. Shimizu captures that true breath stopping moment in such a short period. No frills, no beating around the bush, just heart pounding terror!
I was so intrigued by this one clip I even youtube’d Shimizu’s other works which you can find here. Shimizu has certainly gained the right to be named with other top notch horror directors.
If you mixed the emotional elements of Karate Kid with the futuristic technology of Gamer, what you would get is the short film Turbo by Jarret Lee Conaway. In the film, Hugo Park (Justin Chon) tries to follow his handicapped older brother’s footsteps by becoming the best virtual game fighter. In typical Karate Kid fashion, his brother teaches him to fight with the wise words, “If you’re gonna replace me. You gotta learn to fight like me.”
Like with every action film I already felt the anticipation of the good guy’s triumph over the bully. The emotional aspect increases as we see Hugo make his virtual fighter’s face that of his brother. The fact that he seeks to still have that image of the brother that was not in a wheelchair tugs at my heartstrings and reinforces my love for action movies. The short, like every great action film, had all the elements; Romance, action, emotion and most importantly, motivation. Hugo’s motivation was to have the stronger version of his older brother exist, even if it was only in a virtual world. The love that the audience could see between the brothers in a twenty-minute film is nothing short of incredible. Not to mention that the action blew me away with the glowing balls of energy and the bodies flying about. What makes this a great short action film aside from the stunts, is the special effects which were very professional and it made me feel that ninety minutes is not necessary to produce a great movie.
Justin Chon is also one of my favorite Asian actors and the fact that he is Eric from Twilight and I got to see his wicked tattoo across his naked chest, well that’s just the cherry on top of an already very delicious cake.
The movie Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, is a love story like many other, but something special about this film makes it more charming and endearing than the others. The girl is beyond famous, and her would be ‘prince charming’ is certainly anything but. He wins her over with his charm, lack of woo-ing, and I don’t think the fact that even though he knows she’s famous but still treats her normally (for the most part) hurt his case. She falls in love with him because he is everything her Hollywood ex-boyfriend was not; he’s casual, kind, quirky, and cultured. He’s a catch and he didn’t even know it. And then, all of a sudden, they find themselves in love – and of course there is a happy ending because a love story should always, in theory, have a happy ending. The viewer of this movie is truly left in a euphoric state of how magical love can be and for that reason I write my ode to you Notting Hill – the ultimate romantic comedy.
“The Boy in The Striped Pajamas”- youll love it even if you are not into history or war.
What happens when a country finds itself to be ruled by a fanatic, a sick person? Not only its citizens are afraid to say no to follow the orders of the presidents, but a number of people die, a huge number of people die. 3 million Jews died in concentration camps in the time of Holocaust, 3 million people is a lot of people, just imagine, say, Jamaica to be erased from the map (and the population of Jamaica is 2.7 million- even less than 3 million). These are only Jews that were killed, there were millions of people of other nations destroyed.This war set a huge seal in the history of my country (I am Russian), my country still feels the traces of war in its demographics. There were at least one person taken away from an average Russian family by this war.
I love watching movies about World War the second, movies about concentration camps in particular. There were so many books written and films shot, not all of them are good, but some of them, once seen, will stay in your mind forever, and one of them is “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”.
This move is about how Nazis son, going for a walk, comes to the wire of the concentration camp where his daddy burns people works. He meets another boy , same age, who (just like this boy) likes to play and is playing next to the wire. The two boys become friends, and the Jewish kid invites him over to play with him in the camp, gives him the striped pajamas so that he was not noticed, after what the kids are taken to one of the gas rooms and both die with hundreds of other people.
The scary part is that for the boys the pajamas is just some weird type of clothes that you have to wear all the time and the wire shows your territory, when for the grown-ups it is an indication of the fact that a person needs to be slaughtered just for being Jewish or Russian or gypsy (or for not having the Aryan blood) and the wire keeps them in their little cell. The boy could easily run away, he came outside the wire to play with his friend, but he sees his life there as something not dangerous at all, his little mind just does not know yet that people can be so cruel and can kill for nothing. The other boy sees this little Jewish boy as any other person to play with, he does not know what Jew means yet, he does not see the difference between them.
This kind of movies (historical drama, holocaust movie) is the most interesting to me. Watching these movies is just like being immersed into the past, sometimes horrible past thus letting all the events go through yourself and understanding the history a little bit more. Another movie, which is one of my favorites, is “The Pianist”. It tells us about a very talented Jewish pianist hiding in Nazi Germany from being taken to the concentration camp. Another movie which is on the list of the movies I have to watch is “The Schindlers List”.
Why hasn’t this become mainstream fashion yet? Photo Credit: Peter Jackson I New Line Cinema
By Sean Creamer
watching a film is a concept that always something that has eluded me. Why would someone sit and watch the adventures of others, when they could easily get up from the couch ridden with potato chip crumbs and soda stains, don a set of leather armor, take up the sword and create an adventure of their own (disclaimer: the writer does in fact do this from time to time).
While I do not watch movies often, I personally subscribe to a love of fantasy. Although this world that we live in is chock full of unexplored land, I feel that delving into a fantasy film such as The Lord of the Rings or the space cowboy television show Firefly grasp my adventurous spirit and will hold me upon the decrepit couch long enough to enjoy a good story and shovel popcorn into my gullet.
I love the idea of a coming of age and fantasy movies rarely fail to deliver what I want to see when someone comes of age. Sure, a protagonist can get the girl of his dreams after some romantic hijinks or someone can have a breakthrough with a disease, but real life sucks. This is stuff that kinda goes on everyday.
And honestly, who wants to see stuff that you can see by just looking through your kitchen window?
No. I require the slaying of beasts or human devils to prove that a character has indeed earned their stripes and has stepped fully into the darkness of the world created for them, whether for good or ill.
I can relate with the characters who find themselves thinking that they are destined for greatness, but the adventure has not yet presented itself to them. It is kind of how I feel about life, that everyone has an adventure waiting for them.
While not all fantasy characters may experience a beginning this humble, it is one that I am drawn to and find that it is one of the purist forms of character development.
Don’t get me wrong: I love to watch Seth Rogan and James Franco battle crooked cops and toke on the Pot Marijuana in Pineapple Express, it is always a trip, but nothing compares to the enchanting scenes and magical scores of The Fellowship of the Ring.
A viewer is simply whisked away to Hobbiton’s rolling pastures and homes under the hill. The splendid acting and effects of this movie create such a fantastic world that I cannot help but take up my grandfather’s old sword and challenge my brother to intense duels to the first blood of the thigh.
The Caucus Blog is a place where everyone can blog about the political news. Bloggers express their own thoughts about the latest events in politics.
Right after the Democratic National Convention, the wall was filled with a number of blog posts about this event. Bloggers were discussing mostly speeches of the ones who were on stage, the president Obama was discussed more than Romney here simply because it was a Democratic National Convention.
A lot of people get involved into reading (or commenting) the Caucus Blog through Facebook, twitter or Google plus. I think that blogging about political events is a very good idea. You already have pictures, text, and someones opinion, not only just a dry coverage of what happened where and when.
Multimedia features.
It is understandable that New York Times is a professional in presenting multimedia features for their stories. The images they are using are bright, some of them dont even need a description (they speak for themselves), and they are done by professionals. The pictures make the blog more vivid and interesting. The photo slideshow depict the brightest moments of the event, sometimes telling us even more of what happened than if they went together with the text.
Comparing to sci-fi, comedies and action films, my favorite film genres are romantic and independent films. I am a huge viewer of romantic films are from any languages or cultures. I am just competent to connect my soul so deeply with an insightful and meaningful romantic film. Some of my all time favorite romantic films are Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Notebook, Titanic, Notting Hill, A Walk to Remember and many more…All of these movies are close to my heart, especially, A Walk to Remember is a special film to me. This movie is not only about love, romance and physicality also about hope, dignity and stimulation of life.
A Walk to Remember is a film about Landon Carter, a popular face in school, and Jamie Sullivan, a strong, introvert and beautiful girl. While Jamie has high dreams and hopes about life, Landon has no plan for future. He is more involved with making fun and jokes on students. And a prank on a student gets him into punishment, such as, serves in after-school community service and performs in the lead role of a school play. Therefore, Landon meets with Jamie in these activities and became close to her. They have fallen in love and feel the intensity of the relationship. However, it covers by a dark cloud when the secret reveals that Jamie has terminal leukemia and the treatments are not going to be effective anymore. But, Landon and Jamie do not give up their love. They get married before Jamie die, and Landon becomes a better and successful person in life because of Jamie’s love.
Jamie: You know what I figured out today? Landon: What? Jamie: Maybe God has a bigger plan for me than I had for myself. Like this journey never ends. Like you were sent to me because I’m sick. To help me through all this. You’re my angel.
The reason of my fascination about the romantic films is its beautiful and emotional expresses. It is a medium to describe a story or a plot about two passionate people who are willing to go through together all the happiness and sorrows without falling apart. It also inspires viewers to fall in love.
