Life of Pi

In my opinion this is one of the best book to film adaptations I've seen.  I read and loved the original book and was worried about the movie mutilating the story, oh me of little faith.  I was very impressed.

What did they do right?  They took their time.

 *Spoilers ahead*  The most thrilling part of the story, from a film perspective, would be the shipwreck followed by Pi's fight to survive with a shipwrecked tiger.  But the filmmakers didn't start with that, and they didn't rush to get there.  I was pleasantly surprised by how long an introduction we get to the character and his family.  And it wasn't just the bare bones either, we were given fun details, the little quirks and stories of a person's life that makes them who they are.  A lot of it could have been deemed unnecessary, we are introduced to a love interest whose plot line doesn't  play past the first act, the story of how he got his name and the teasing he endured for it has no specific importance later on.  Yet what this all does is give the story meat and heart.  And by the time we get this character stranded in the open ocean with almost nothing to interact with we feel like we know him.


Before I saw the movie I was wondering how they were going to choose to tell the story.  When we are introduced to Pi as a grown man from the start I figured, oh he'll narrate the story, it makes sense that they'd do that, it's easier that way.  I was a little disappointed, I felt like narration was a bit of a cop-out.  But then to my surprise as soon as the shipwreck came and Pi was lost at sea, the narration from grown Pi stopped.  From there until the very tail end of the story, the visuals told the story, with the occasional help from young Pi's in-the-moment narration.  Is it weird to say I was proud of the movie makers?  Well I was.  They chose the slightly more difficult story telling method, but it made the film so much more impactful.  The isolation of the open sea felt that much more real by not having an outside voice telling us what was happening.

Speaking of isolation, this movie did a great job of making the audience feel like they were adrift.  Again, the story takes it time.  The audience isn't rushed form one event to another, we get to languish on little tragedies.  We see things played out long enough that we feel like we are out on that boat with Pi.  And we are never taken out of the moment with flashbacks, we are stuck out on that ocean, just like Pi.  that's another storytelling choice I'm glad was used.

Lastly a shout out to the actor, the CG tiger, and the visuals.  I heard that the actor for Pi had never acted before and it showed, in a good way.  I felt like there was more realism from his performance because nothing felt too staged or too over thought, his performance felt very natural.  The CG tiger was fantastic!  The amount of detail put into that animation blew my mind.  I'll restrain myself from ranting for several more pages and just say "well done!".  Lastly, the visuals.  Wow.  Beautiful and at times surreal, it really set the mood for this type of story.

I can't explain why but watching the movie felt the same as reading the book.  I wasn't being told a story, I was experiencing the story.

Life of Pi

Still not sure how I feel about this movie.  I read the book and loved it, and I'm always worried about movie versions of books I like. 
What unnerves me in the trailer is the CG tiger.  Yes, I understand that training a real tiger for this movie would have been ridiculous, but it's distracting and kills my suspension of disbelief.  It's great CG, but not "real."  Granted, the rest of the surroundings look hyper-real (super lush CG).  So maybe the tiger will fit well into this world.  As long as they're consistent with the look of the film I might buy it.   

Les Mis

I've never read Les Mis, I didn't grow up on the music, and I've only ever seen a high school performance of the musical...but this trailer has made me quite excited for the movie.

Hook

I watched Hook with my roommates the other night and I have to say as a kid I never realized how much this movie was about fatherhood.  It's very interesting considering the original Peter Pan story is all about having fun and never growing up.  It never touches on the subject of fatherhood.  Truly a unique take on a classic story.

It's even more interesting when you take into account that in various stage adaptations (and a few movies), the father and Captain Hook were played by the same actor.  This was mostly done for practical reasons (Captain Hook and the father are never onstage at the same time and thus can be easily played by one actor), but it makes for an interesting interpretation.  Do the children see their strict father as Captain Hook?  The movie Hook veers away from this interpretation, choosing to parallel the father figure with the energetic Peter Pan, giving him the chance to be the hero instead of the villain in his kids eyes.

The Fall snippet: color

In the Fall  there are two main locales: the hospital, where our main characters Alexandria and Roy are patients, and the world of Alexandria's imagination.

The hospital is very limited in it's color scheme, mostly white, brown, and pale green. This gives it the feel of a very clean, orderly, and frankly unexciting place.  But these colors also serve to make the hospital the perfect backdrop for more vivid visuals.  It's given the feel of an empty canvas onto which anything can be painted.  Thus we see the imagined world of Alexandria's is fresh and loud, with highly saturated primary colors.  Completely opposite from her hospital surroundings.  Even in the darkest moments of the story the imagined world is still bright and colorful.

The Fall

Let's start with what is currently my favorite movie, because that makes it easy for me.  The Fall directed by the visionary Singh Tarsem.  Why should you see this movie?  The short answer: visuals.  The long answer: it just gets everything right (I'll expound on that in later posts)

The story follows a girl in the hospital with a broken arm who befriends a former stunt actor paralyzed from the waist down.  The man tells her stories to win her trust (not for entirely selfless reasons) and we see the stories unfold in the highly imaginative visuals of a young girl's mind, a girl who has never seen a movie before.  The fact that she's never seen a movie is key.  Her imagination is not limited by the need for continuity or period accuracy.  She imagines characters in extravagant costumes, she imagines the most lush and monumental settings, and she inserts people she knows from her own life as the key players of the story.

I'll admit the costumes are one of my favorite things about this movie. Where else would anyone ever think of putting Charles Darwin in a vibrant red fur coat?

A remarkable thing about this movie is that no sets were built.  Everything was filmed on location (The perceptive art history student will recognize places like Hagia Sophia, Capitoline Hill, and Hadrian's Villa).  And man, what locations they are.  Without a doubt some of the most stunning and unearthly looking places, all of which exist in real life.  

Another thing about this film that makes my heart flutter is the care given to cinematography.  You could pause nearly any frame of this movie and hang it up on your wall.

The visuals are fit for an epic, yet they exist to back up a much simpler story, that of a hopeful little girl and a broken man.  That contrast makes the visuals more intimate and the story more powerful, and overall makes for an amazingly beautiful movie.

Welcome

I'm a college girl, a mormon, an animation student, and an avid lover of films.  Movies have always been a big part of my life and this is a place for me to record and share my own insights.  Be it a short recommendation, a long review, or an in-depth analysis on color alone, I hope I can share a little something for everyone.

Shhh, the movie's starting