Fly to the World of Films...

1:52 PM / Posted by The Narrator / comments (1)

I so do not regret taking this elective course.

Yes, that's pretty much all I have to say about my experience in the Art of Film.
I just wish this course had been for the entire year and we had more time together to experience more things about the film. At first when I saw this course in the schedule sheet last year when I was choosing my classes, the first thought that came to my mind was "Oh yea. I am So most definitely taking this". I was always interested in films and the techniques behind the scenes. I loooove making short clips and short videos. I even considered (and kind of still am...) in working in that realm. This course has been such a good opportunity to experience a broader range of movies/films that I wouldn't have had a chance to on my own.
Thank you Mr. D!! :]

A little late...but here's something.

2:34 PM / Posted by The Narrator / comments (0)

A couple of months ago, when we were still experiencing the thrill and tension of the presidential election between the two presidential candidates--Barack Obama and John McCain--I had an assignment for my U.S. Gov't & Politics class to make a one-minute ad for either one of them. My group chose Senator--now the President--Obama and here's what we came up with. I did the making&editing with one of my friends from the group and the entire group contributed the ideas and the format of the ad as well as the pictures in this ad.

As we have President Obama as our first African American president in the U.S. history, I thought it would be a good time to upload this here and share.

Version 1: my friend and I both worked on this together and finished it. This was the final version of our project. I did the first half (up to John Mayer's song "waiting on the world to change") and the ending part for both versions.

Version 2: I did the final edition for this one; this one had all our names in it, but at last minute we thought it was unnecessary to put our names in so we got rid of it.

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The ChubbChubbs are here! o_o

11:26 AM / Posted by The Narrator / comments (0)

The ChubbChubbs! (2002)
Director: Eric Armstrong with Bradford Simonsen & Jeff Wolverton
Actors: The janitor (dragon looking creature), Aliens, the ChubbChubbs, monsters(?)
wh-Y-rate: **** So cute!

This is such a cute animation!! xD I have seen this short film in my English class with Mrs. Lukoff last year and yea, I loved this cute short film. Especially the part where these cute little yellow creatures get angry and eat up all the giant monsters...haha. just awesome. The director(s) did a real nice job in creating a reversal film(?), making people think one way but turning it over to something unexpected. I think that technique adds much fun and excitement to a movie or a drama. If I had a chance to create a short film one day (hopefully soon--i'm planning on making something), I'd def try encorporating that technique!

http://www.blogger.com/www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO3tscCAVJ8 (click on this link to view the film!)

http://www.blogger.com/www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6m_IM4ctNo&feature=related (another cute version of the ChubbChubbs! -- "The ChubbChubbs save Xmas!")

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M for "murderer"?

11:24 AM / Posted by The Narrator / comments (0)

M (1931)
Director: Fritz Lang
Actors: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut
wh-Y-rate: ***

This movie was quite...scary and creepy. I didn't really like this movie. This movie is one of the films that was created in German Expressionism (20's-30's). German Expressionism's theme was "reality is distorted with hope of finding inner truth" and was oppositie of realism and/or naturalism.

This film starts out with children chanting while playing jumprope or something in front of their apartment and the chant says, "Just you wait, it won't be long. the man in black will soon be here," foreshadowing the plot of the movie. Soon "the man in black"--black because he himself isn't shown first but his shadow is shown first and his shadow is black--appears in front of a little girl, buys her a balloon, and leads her to a place where no one is visible...
When the murder's face is first shown, the first thought that came to my mind was, "he looks like a little kid". It seemed like he had no index finger on his left hand, too. He didn't show his face, which kind of meant like he was "hiding" in metaphorical sense. There is always the piercing sound of whistle when the murderer appears, and builds up suspense. I just looked at one of my sheets, and found that I wrote "the suspense is killing me". hahaha. But true, the suspense in this movie was so intense...
This movie was interesting...it was a kind of films that I wouldn't have had a chance of seeing on my own.

The Good, the Bad, and the Weird

9:17 PM / Posted by The Narrator / comments (0)

Joeunnom Nabbeunnom Yisanghannom (The Good, the Bad, the Weird) (2008)

Director: Ji Woon Kim
Actors: Kang Ho Song, Byung Hun Lee, Woosung Jung
Genre: Action, Comedy, Western
wh"Y"-Rate: ****
This movie came out last summer when I was in Korea. After I saw the trailer, I really wanted to see the entire movie. But because it was so popular and too many people wanted to see it, the tickets were all sold out even after my flight day. So I returned home in NY, U.S., a country about 21 flight hours away from Korea, sad because I couldn't stay longer, sad because I didn't want to leave my family, relatives and friends, and sad because I couldn't see this movie. BUT. recently as I was going through my dad's laptop looking for my files, I found this movie downloaded on his laptop. Next thing you know, I was blissfully running up the staircase to my room to get my usb and transfer it to my laptop and watch it.
As I expected, although I didn't know much about it, the movie was awesome. The plot was not so conventional (because I don't usually watch western, cowboy, traditional movies xP), but it was still very funny and thorough. One thing I realized, however, is that when I watch Korean movies, I don't think about the film techniques and other features as much as I do when I watch American or other European style movies.

The plot of this movie was somewhat ridiculously imaginative or traditional you could say. There were these three guys looking for a treasure map, and the three guys all knew each other somehow. One of them was called "the bad" guy because he shows no mercy whatsoever when he is mad and kills anyone who gets on his nerves. The other is called "the good" guy because he pursues after the goodness of this world and tries to get rid of the people who cuase chaos or bad things (so after all he isn't really "good" good because he also kills people...). The last one is "the weird" guy for he looks weird, thinks weird and...he's just weird in general. This guy was the funniest. He says things that were so unexpected and says it at such unexpected, random moments, and it's just hilarious. So these three guys, whether they were asked to do it as a favor, paid to do it or were just yearning for money, collide with each other and later meet the dead end--all three face each other right at the spot where the treasure is supposed to be.

In the end, they have a shooting contest, a very weird shooting contest suggested by the weird one. They stand in a triangular shape and shoot each other until only one survives. yeah very...weird. So the weird one survies but he ends up getting caught by the people and finds no treasure and the movie ends.

At one point of the movie, the good and the weird get closer to each other and they become friends in search for the bad and the treasure map. When they were sleeping outside the camp the good asks what the weird wants with his life, and the weird gives an answer that sort of makes him seem like Lennie Small from Of Mice and Men: he says, "I just wanna go away and live in a farm with pigs, cows, rabbits and all the other animals." This could portray the weird as somewhat nice and good, but later it is revealed that the weird cut the bad's fingers with knife and yeah. He's not so good.

So this movie, although titled "the good, the bad, and the weird", only had characters who were evil and bad. It was still hilarious though! :P