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