Tag Archives: The REEL World

Crushing on The Crush

Posted on February 26, 2011 by Lisa

The Crush is a seamless comedic thriller about a sophisticated eight- year- old boy’s first crush.  The film follows young Ardal Travis’ (Oran Creagh) pursuit of his second grade teacher, Ms. Purdy’ s (Olga Wehrly), affection.

The film is nominated for an Oscar this year in the live action short film category, alongside Na Wewe and God of Love.

Oran Creagh’s surprisingly polished delivery of Ardal’s deadpan locution provides The Crush with a strong dose of humor. The film opens with the second grader giving Ms. Purdy a small, plastic ring. “It’s important that you know how I feel about you,”  Ardal says matter of factly.

His hopes are dashed when he and his mother run into Ms. Purdy and her arrogant fiance while shopping.

An avid fan of Westerns, Ardal begins to plot his revenge and challenges the fiance to a duel. The film treats this motif delicately, never shoving the similarities in your face.

The duel is the most intense scene of the film with Ardal bringing a eerily real pistol along with him. Writer and director, Michael Creagh, masterfully injects a shot of pure suspense pairing the exchange between Ardal and Ms. Purdy’s fiance with quick cuts and camera movements.

The film is an homage to the dedication one has to their first crush and is easily relatable.

Last year’s Live Action Short winner, The New Tenants, while also including humor and suspense, is a vastly different film than The Crush, taking a seemingly more serious approach. Whether or not this is any indication of Crush‘s chances of winning the Oscar, the film is memorable in the sense that it combines relatability,  carefully built up suspense, and thoughtful dialogue and humor. Not to mention, Oran Creagh’s impressive acting ability.

Hopefully it will win for best live action short, but even if it doesn’t, it’s still a worthwhile film to watch. It’s also available for purchase on iTunes, for only $2!

Posted in Oscar Shorts | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Oscar Nominated Shorts Big on Detail

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Lisa

I haven’t seen too many short films and I honestly don’t know why.  Every time I’ve seen a short film – yes, every time – I am so blown away by the filmmaker’s ability to squeeze this impactful story into the smallest time frame.

During the screening of the Oscar nominated live action short films at the IFC Center, prior to each film, there’s a screenshot of the title and the length of the film. Each time, I’d say “Psh, fifteen minutes, you can’t show a decent film fifteen minutes!” and each time I was wrong.

I don’t often care about the Oscars because more often than not, I haven’t even  see half of the films nominated. The short film category, though, brings something different to the table.

“Short films are easily overlooked because most people prefer to see feature length films. However, many short films have a lot more meaning than a lot of feature length blockbusters,” said Aaron Figueroa, a film student at Brooklyn College.

Often featuring independent filmmakers, the viewer isn’t distracted by big name actors or gimmicks and can focus on the story and stylistics of the film. Short films really capture my attention and I think that time plays a big factor in that. They don’t waste time; each minute is valuable and carefully thought out- something I think feature film directors and producers should consider more carefully.

They’re about enough to make me want to give up my free movie Tuesdays (thanks, Optimum Rewards!) and trek to IFC to see them. Yeah, they’re that good.

A scene from the Oscar nominated short, God Of Love. Courtesy of Oscar.com

A scene from the Oscar nominated short, God of Love.
Courtesy of Oscar.com.
Posted in Independent Film, Oscar Shorts | Tagged | 2 Comments

Sweet Scoop Found in Long Island

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Ellen

Friday never felt so good: sunshine, warm weather, weekend’s coming, new episode of supernatural, and free gelato!

Gelato display

Recently, I brought a deal off a deal site called buywithme.com. For $5, you get $10 worth of Baci’s gelato and/or drinks. If you haven’t heard about buywithme, well here’s the deal. It offers daily deals to restaurants, spas and salons, gym, almost anything you can name. With deals that are usually more than half off the original price, what’s not to love?

The best part was, I didn’t get mine for $5, I got it for free! 2 weeks ago, Buywithme had a promotion where you sign up and receive a free $10 gift code. It’s gone now.  The gelato coupon doesn’t expire until August 2011 but I’ve decided to use one of my 4 coupons now because I was craving sweets.

After an 11 minutes drive on to the Grand Central Parkway towards long island, I found myself inside Baci Gelato contemplating on what flavor to get. The display was kind of breathe taking, looked almost of a masterpiece. With a wide variety and free samples to try, I had to constantly keep myself from salivating.  They have your original flavors vanilla, chocolate, to all sort of fruity and rich concoction;  lemon, blueberry, coconut, passion fruit, hazel nut, tiramisu, black cherry chocolate, peanut butter chocolate, butterscotch, pistachio. Phew, that was just half of what they had.

chocolate hazelnut and mint chocolate chip

The coupon called for 2 large cups. My friend, Chi, got the mint chocolate but I wanted to try something different. I only sampled 2 flavors, the tiramisu and pistachio because I didn’t want to be greedy. Guess what?  It was AhhhhMAZING. So which did I go for? Drum rolls please——–Ferro Rocher. Although I came so close to ordering the pistachio, my eyes were fixated on the creamy chocolate hazel nut delightfulness.

It came with double scoops of the flavor, jammed packed on top of each other with a small wafer cone to top it off and embedded inside a cute daisy flower cup. MmmmMmm, it tasted exactly like the real thing. In almost every lick, you get a piece of hazelnut now and then and a rich fudge-like hazelnut chocolate swirl hidden under from all the thick chocolate madness. I wasn’t kidding when I said jammed packed double scoops; I gave up 1/3 of the way through and decided to take the rest home. This was enough to satisfy at least 3 people’s sweet tooth or one’s for a max of 2 days. Chi commented on how the gelato was “better than Beyers. Too bad it’s not sold in stores.”

Did I mention they have another location in the city at 47 W 20th Street? I’ll be seeing you soon—-very soon.

Posted in Food, Food Rant / love song | Tagged | 1 Comment