Though it’s not like there won’t be any more 007s, Daniel Craig’s James Bond will still be dearly missed.
Showing What Happens “in between big events.”
Original text by guest writer Jonas Serpa Souza.
Last month, Gabriela and I shot a short film called in between big events. It’s about those little moments while you’re waiting for your life to change. You can watch it bellow and, afterwards, read a short analysis of the idea behind it.
It’s new to no one that the year 2020 was tough. The pandemic hit the world as nothing else had done for centuries and, summing that to humankind’s will to prove to everyone that we are worse than can be imagined, it seemed like we were heading towards the apocalypse. But putting the everyday ending of the world aside, 2020 was also my last year in High School and, with it, possibly my last 365 days in Brazil for a long time. That, of course, didn’t happen. 2021 came along and I was here, stuck between School and College, Brazil and Chicago, the past and the rest of my life. From that emotion, in between big events was born.
After having found the story I wanted to tell, the film style chose itself. As a filmmaker, I’m hugely inspired by the work of people like Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig, Sean Baker, and Yorgos Lanthimos, who share a certain kind of rawness in the way their films are shot and written. Even though people tend to attribute the word indie to films by these artists when talking about style, I’ve always liked to see them as a spiritual continuation of the French New Wave. If history repeats itself, why wouldn’t film movements? Their reality-driven storytelling – other than being the one I’m the most used to – was perfect for what I wanted to convey with my short. That’s why it contains characteristics also found in movies from Godard and Truffaut – like the long take, the wandering scenes, the raw and really imperfect sound, and, most importantly, the concept of Alienation.
Now that I’ve explained the origin of the film you’ve just watched (or are about to watch), I can go ahead and explain a bit more – but still not enough – about the concept of Alienation. To Bertolt Brecht, and, because of him, also to a lot of important auteurs of the New Wave movement, Alienation happens when a piece of art – in this case, a film (often a film about film, like Godard’s Le Mépris) – intentionally creates a separation between the world of the audience and the fictional one depicted in the big screen. Actors are now merely this, actors; the camera is always present (even if invisible), and the illusion is brought to light.
As Brecht himself mentions, this theory of Alienation comes from the Chinese theatre and its actors’ ability to convey emotion even when distant from the people being portrayed, something that was almost unprecedented in the Western world at the time:
[The Chinese performer] limits himself from the start to simply quoting the character played. But with what art he does this! He only needs a minimum of illusion. What he has to show is worth seeing even for a man in his right mind. What Western actor (apart from one or two comedians) could demonstrate the elements of his art like the Chinese actor Mei Lan-fang? […] It would be like the magician at a fair giving away his tricks so that nobody ever wanted to see the act again.
Brecht on Theatre: 1933-1947, page 94
But why would I – and the French – use this? Why would a filmmaker try to eliminate the magic from their movies? Why would the fair magician tell his secrets? Well, maybe because, as is shown by magicians Penn & Teller, it is when you show your trick and are still able to amuse, that the crowd cheers the loudest. If a director (or a screenwriter) manages to get the audience involved in a world that he keeps remembering is fake, it’s due to the power of his work, not to the illusions and fooling of the medium.
The Alienation effect can also serve as commentary to the act of making a movie. As John Carvalho puts it in a chapter about Le Mépris in his book Thinking with Images:
Godard does not make movies to lull us into complacency or simply to entertain us. Godard wants his movies to make you notice how they have been made. What you notice if you pay attention to the film in its making is not just the formal elements but the sheer artifice. “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world,” Godard once said.
Thinking with Images, page 112
In conclusion, in between big events is a short film about my life that, at the same time, talks about a part of everyone else’s – those meaningless moments between important scenes that the editors would surely take out of the final version. By choosing to follow the French New Wave style of filmmaking, I managed to show the realness of those few minutes of questioning while also making use of the Alienation effect – which, by taking the audience away from the reality of the world I built, paradoxically brings them closer to the message and emotions I wanted to convey. At the end of the day, I guess life isn’t about big moments, it’s about enjoying the relaxing pauses in between.
This short film was made for a PHL 240 class at DePaul University in Chicago.
History of Film – First Cinema
What if I told you film now only exists because of a mere accident?
In 1872 Leland Stanford, industrialist, former Governor of California and horse enthusiast, wanted to prove a point: He was convinced that, in mid gallop, a horse lifted all four hooves off the ground. To do so, he comissioned a nature photographer named Eadweard Muybridge to photograph the exact moment this happened.
Only six years later Muybridge succeeded in doing so by setting up 12 cameras along a track field and triggering them sequentially as the horse passed by. The result was a series of images which, besides proving Leland right, also set in motion the early development of what now is one of our main sources of entertainment: the moving pictures.
Of course we can’t actually name this event as the mark of the beginning of filmmaking since the concept of animation was already being studied, and the magic lantern was around. Not even if we consider only the live action aspect, because the Camera Obscura had also been around for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. What this actually marks is a turnpoint in which the development of techniques sped up considerably, with the film strips (which substituted the glass Muybridge had to use) appearing soon after, both allowing for a single camera to take multiple pictures more easily at a time, and for these same pictures to be projected at a high speed – which created the illusion of movement.
The Kinetograph, an invention by Thomas Edison, showed up 10 years later imprinting 40 feet of film at 40fps, but he wasn’t the only pioneer – many inventors througout the world had been trying to solve the problem for creating motion pictures at the time, and several europeans applied for patents on various cameras and projectors even before Edison did. What he had that they didn’t: his name.
Soon after the creation of the Kinetograph, he launched the Kinetoscope: A kind of “peep to watch” machine that allowed a single viewer to watch a continuous 47-feet-long film loop through a tiny hole. The machine started selling in 1894, with it’s price varying from 250 to 300 dollars (which was a HELLALOT of money). Edison established the first ever “film studio” at the same time, nicknamed by his employees as “The Black Maria”. Only 16 years after Muybridge released The Moving Horse pictures, Edison was producing films.
By 1895, both Woodville Latham and the Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis, had perfected the techniques for film projections, allowing for audiences to experience films together (with Latham’s slightly predating the Luimières), thus creating the cinemas as we know today. These early years were marked by great technological advances, with Luimière Brother’s Workers Leaving a Factory (46 seconds) becoming extra popular at the time. The films, despite being very simple and uninventional, became great hits because the general public had never seen anything like them before, not because they were narativelly interesting, though this didn’t take long to change.
An usually unmentioned name is that of Alice Guy-Blaché who, as she was working as a secretary at a photography company, got in contact with the Lumières invention and decided to make what was to become the very first fictional film, “The Cabbage Fairy” (1896), which she wrote, directed and edited.
During that same time, Georges Méliès (who was working as an illusionist at the time) fell in love with the idea of creating illusions through film, and therefore experimented and led many technical and narrative developments in the area. He was the one to discover and exploit all the basic camera tricks, like stop motion, slow motion, dissolve, fades, double exposure and so on.
From 1895 (when he opened his own film studio) until 1912, Méliès made over 400 films using illusion, burlesque and pantomime to create stories of fantasy in a playful and experimental way, the most famous of which being Le Voyage Dans la Lune (1902, A Trip to the Moon). Others worth mentioning are Cléopâtre (1899; Cleopatra’s Tomb), Le Christ marchant sur les eaux (1899; Christ Walking on Water), Le Voyage à travers l’impossible (1904; The Voyage Across the Impossible), and Hamlet (1908). The only camera exploration he never thought of doing was to move it for close ups or long shots – He always kept the camera still, as if it were an expectator sitting in the audience of a theater.
Unfortunatelly the growth of the industry forced him out of business in 1913, and he died in poverty. Though his ending wasn’t very much glamurous, he is studied until this day and considered one of the fathers of modern cinema.
By the start of the 20th century, the films were already a global phenomenom, the film industry was being stablished and films started to develop an artistic status – which they didn’t have thus far, and Méliès’ works were some of which took the films, in the entire world, either direct or indirectly, to this new level.
Sources:
- Sharman, Russell. “A Brief History of Cinema.” Pressbooks – Moving Pictures, Pressbooks and University of Arkansas, 18 May 2020, uark.pressbooks.pub/movingpictures/chapter/a-brief-history-of-cinema/.
- Costa, Flavia Cesarino. “Primeiro Cinema.” História Do Cinema Mundial, by Fernando Mascarello, 7ª ed., Papirus Editora, 2012, pp. 17–52.
- “A Very Short History of Cinema.” The National Science and Media Museum, UK’s National Science and Media Museum, 18 June 2020, http://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/very-short-history-of-cinema.
How I Revise Animation Portfolios at Belli Studio
Belli is a studio in the south of Brazil where I’ve been working as a line producer for a couple of years now. Since the place is small and intimate, the entire production team takes part in choosing new animators to hire, myself included. Having been through at least three big selections now, I’ve now learned what has become the “Belli way” of revising portfolios, which I’ll now share with you with the intention to help young and upcoming animators prepare better materials and get better jobs. Let’s dive in:
Keep it short!
First of all, we need to cover the basics. Animation studios are as cool as they are scarce around the world. Yes, there are places like Vancouver that house a lot of them, but the industry is still very small although the animation community is not, which basically means that studios receive a lot of demo reels everytime a selection opens, and they have very little time to review them. So to make sure that the hiring team will be able to see everything you want them to, you need to keep it short.
The last time we had a selection at Belli, for example, we only had about two minutes to consider a candidate, so we’d quickly read through the email he or she had sent, watch about 45 secs of the demo reel and vote while watching it. If the team was ever divided, we’d finish watching the reel and maybe replay the first few secs just one more time to decide before moving on to the next.
Always start with the best material!
It feels unnatural to open any video with the best shot, but it’s always your best bet when it comes to demo reels, trust me. Since the hiring team will be trying to review everything quickly, opening with your best shot means that we’ll be impressed right away and that if they cannot decide by watching the reel the first time, they’ll be seeing what best you have to offer to make a decision again, not the worst.
Don’t mistake a cute design for good animation!
I see this happening a lot. People keep adding cute characters to their demo reels thinking they’ll make a better video, when that’s not the case. Good animation means acting, first of all – conveying emotion, a realistic feel to a movement, a subtle drawing change,… and none of that has anything to do with design. Remember: You’re not applying for an illustration or character design role, you’re applying for animation – so show your best moves and leave the design out of it, because that’s the last thing we’ll be looking for.
Famous shows mean nothing!
If I’m looking at an animation demo reel, the last thing I look for is a big animation project. I don’t care if you just left school or if you’ve been in the industry for many many years – I just want to know how well you can read and replicate movement. I want to know that you’re comfortable drawing hands, that you can handle cloth and runs. I want to see you add follow through, good arches and timing – doesn’t matter if you show me this through a shot you made for your final film, just for fun or for Rick and Morty.
Mention your style!
One of the most important thing to add to your demo reel, in the title or in the lower third of the screen somewhere, is the software you used to make the shots that are in it and in which style they were made – hand drawn on paper, ToonBoom cutout animation, Mojo, Photoshop, After Effects… This is something we need to know to make our decision as well.
I think that pretty much sums up everything, hopefully it’ll be helpful.
Belli Studio will be accepting applications for cutout animation roles until this Friday, the 19th of March 2021. If you’re used to working on ToonBoom and are interested in applying, please send a demo reel and a short presentation to the email gabriela@bellistudio.com.br with the subject “Animation Selection 2021”. Good luck everyone!
We Need to Talk About Kevin’s Mother
Ok, what the hell you guys! I have just rewatched the amazing “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and it is as good if not better than I remembered it.
Based on the homonymous book by Lionel Shriver, the film, directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Ezra Miller and Tilda Swinton, tells the horrible tale of a boy (Miller) who’s responsible for a school shooting, all through the eyes of his mother (Swinton). The story isn’t told linearly neither in the book nor in the movie, making it sometimes a little hard to understand, but nothing major – I never had any contact with the book and I still love the film, so you shouldn’t worry too much about this if you haven’t seen it yet.
In my humble oppinion, the grandness of the story isn’t in what happens or how, but in the way it’s told: Swinton’s character is a mother who never wanted children. She grew up to be a traveler, to know the world, explore it and be free, but she falls in love with and marries a man (John C. Reilly) who really wants children and a quiet live. This shines a major light on forced pregnancy and how it can happen with pretty much any woman even today – You need not be raped, or forced into marriage, or live in a third world country to experience it, unlike most people think.
SPOILERS!
Still on the forced pregnancy matter – they even mention in the film that during labour she was trying to keep the baby inside of her, working against him, not wanting to let him out. It is a very powerful scene that messed with me.
In the film, all the scenes with Kevin (Miller), from when he’s a baby that won’t stop crying around her to when he has dinner by himself before going out to dinner with his mother, it always seems like he’s doing everything on purpose to try and make his mom crazy. At a certain point, when he’s still a todler, we learn that even though he knows how to use the toilet – and is already pretty grown – he refuses to do so, just to make her clean him up.
I’ve spent many hours thinking about Eva (Swinton). The way she behaves around him, the fear she has, and about the lack of motherly love Kevin received as a child for being an unwanted pregnancy. But then I see something else: her trying to connect to him, worried when he gets sick even though she’s constantly tortured and provoked. So I can’t reach a conclusion. After all, did she, or did she not have a fault in what happened in that school shooting? Eva certainly thinks she has. She’s basically screaming to us “yes, I deserve it, bring it on.”
Here’s a part of the story that gave me all the feels: As the movie begins we learn that someone threw red paint in Eva’s front porch – it reached the front window, the front door, and the floor which looks like a giant mess. So she spends most of the movie cleaning everything (I couldn’t help but imagine myself in her shoes, and honestly, I don’t think I’d clean it. I’d be so depressed I’d just leave it all there). As the movie comes to a close, we learn that Kevin’s already been in jail for a few years and is finally being released, so she was getting the house ready to welcome him back.
After watching the movie twice I’m not so sure I believe everything I was seing on screen. It may be that since Eva never wanted him in the first place, she interprets Kevin’s bad attitudes as being purposefully done, and, since we’re watching the story play out through her eyes, that’s what we see as well. We’ll never know for sure how biased is the imagery.
Solid movie, 4/5 stars – just took one out because some things aren’t really clear for me in the movie. Have fun watching!
What makes a great movie?
I have had this conversation either with myself or with friends over and over again. The common answer usually is “the screenplay, of course!” and for many many years that was also my opinion, but lately something happened that made me change the way I think about storytelling overall – the quarantine.
Allow me to explain: I have been stuck at home for four months already, and with no bright lights ahead, my near future is still looking pretty damn dark and sad, with more months to spend indoors, rewatching the same movies over and over… except not. Recently, because I was tired of rewatching everything on Brazilian Netflix, I decided to go back into YouTube to explore a bit further, and what I found was a crazy maze of endless content made by people, who just like me, have nothing to do with their time.
I’ve watched vlogs (yes, vlogs) of people who can’t go out but still find ways of making life interesting and sketches, reactions, opinion videos, tutorials and house tours and I loved it.
There’s actually a channel that I just discovered by this guy named Maicon. He makes a little bit of everything, except for vlogs apparently. He’s a great actor! He has all these different characters that he plays, but except for those, nothing in his channel is very thought through – but still it’s so very entertaining! He made fall on the floor from laughing, and that’s a hard thing to do. He makes me laugh with no script in mind.
After realizing that, other arguments against the “script answer” started popping onto my head, like what about those very honest documentaries? I’ve watched a few that I consider as some of the best movies I’ve ever seen. When the quarantine began I watched a piece done by a big news show about the effects of social distancing on children that made me cry – I’ll probably remember it forever! Can’t that be good storytelling?
My brain went deeper. If the script is not the thing that makes or breaks a movie, then it has to be editing. But again, no. That would not explain the one shot videos, like a play which has been recorded, or the really really old movies which became classics. Try telling the Lumière brothers that their train moving towards the screen is worthless, I’d like to see that.
I tried arguing different things in my head, cinematography doesn’t explain low budget movies, I won’t even mention the design aspects like costume, makeup, sets and everything because c’mon. I had reached a wall that I only broke when I watched Jojo Rabbit.
Jojo Rabbit is a movie about a nazi kid named Jojo who lives in Germany with his mom, the year is 1945, just before the end of the war. It is very light as everything we experience is through this boy’s eyes, but make no mistakes as it is still a pretty dark movie, at least in my opinion. I laughed like an idiot throughout it though, I have to admit, but the crazy thing is – just as the final song started playing and the credits rolled in I started crying! A lot! Everything I had just saw sank in at once and I finally felt all the sadness of what I had just witnessed, and honest to God it was an amazing experience. So that was it.
Maicon from youtube makes me laugh; Jojo Rabbit made me laugh too, but then it made me cry, like the piece on the newscast. Mother made me angry and excited, I couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks after the movie had ended; Inglorious Basterds made me excited too, just like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Sing Street made me think, re-evaluate my priorities, want to go after my dreams. Dream Girls made me want to sing and also made me angry as hell. And these are just the things on the top of my mind… and speaking of minds: MINDBLOWING! Mindblowing movies are my favorites! Talk about Trainspotting, Mr Nobody, Fight Club, Blade Runner…
These aren’t loved (by me, specifically here) because of their screenplays or their good editing, but because they made me feel something deeply, each a different thing but always intensely. So, experiences make great movies, great art in general.
I have one example of this in action that I think perfectly illustrates what I mean: Aquaman is the type of movie I don’t usually enjoy. It is confusing, exaggerated in a nonpleasent way, it’s a DC hero movie… Overall just not my thing. When it premiered, I went to the movies with a couple of friends who convinced me of watching it because they really wanted to see it. I went in thinking it was going to be horrible, and I left as the happiest woman alive – they were so incredibly disappointed by the movie in every way that them both (and me too, after a while) started laughing at everything that happened on screen. We made comments such as “this fight looks like starwars met jurassic park, but underwater!” and even though it sounds dumb as I’m telling the story, I have rewatched Aquaman several times over and I always find it pleasant, because I always remember the stupid jokes and the great times I had watching it for the first time. One of these friends actually passed away this year also, so this movie reminds me of him as well. It has nothing but a giant budget and still it’s one of my favorite movies ever, only because of the experience it allowed me to have.
What do you think? You agree with me on this one or do you have another theory?
“Us” – A Not So Sciency Sci-fi
Jordan Peele’s latest movie “Us” is as confusing as it is presumptuous. His first movie “Get Out” came out two years prior to amazing reviews and even a few Oscar nominations, which I also disagreed with – my final statement on the review was that despite the idea of making a racial based thriller being absolutely amazing, the movie didn’t really scare me because the comedic relief happened way too often.
Now I am faced with a different movie, a different cast and crew and even higher expectations, but as I finished watching it, I felt even worse than when I watched “Get Out”. Peele’s made a thriller about privillege in a time of rebellion against the system, and that’s absolutelly great, but I wish it had a better script.
Brace yourselves children, here come the spoilers!
The movie is about a woman who, as a child, briefly got lost from her parents. After being found, she’s acting weird and traumatized, doesn’t want to talk to anyone. We then cut to her, already married and a mother of two, on a trip with the family to that same place, where she still felt uncomfortable. Up to this moment, the movie is doing amazing. But then we learn that as a child she met a girl who looked exactly like her inside a mirror maze, and then as the movie goes on, we meet everybody else’s doppleganger,… and the movie starts to flop.
We find out that everyone has a double and all the doubles are on a hunt for their originals because they are forced to do the exact same actions as their free originals, as if they were constantly controlled by them from afar, without them even knowing about it. We never find out how they managed to fnally take control of their own bodies.
At some point, we learn that the dopplegangers were created by the government as a way to try and control people through them (who were suppose to have no soul), but the program failed and was abandoned – Supposedly leaving the subjects in the lab on their own to die. However, they survived by eating the lab rabbits for years and years. But, what did the rabbits eat to stay alive all this time? Who fed them? How did they keep them healthy if they couldn’t clean the cages? How did they access the rabbits to kill and cook them if they had no free will and couldn’t just walk to them and do what was needed to survive? That makes absolutely no sense.
What made me even more confused was the Metacritic’s website, which has displayed all these amazing reviews from every relevant periodic in the US. Even IndieWire, which is my go to website for movie reviews, gave it a 91 metascore.
I get that the subject matter of the movie is relevant and that Peele wanted to make a point with it, which he was successful at, but still: A critic cannot simply ignore all the script resolutions that scatter through the story. A little more time developing this amazing idea would’ve been enough to fix every weird and somehow “unrealistic” aspect that made it so bad in my eyes.
I will admit though that the message isn’t the only part of Us which I liked: All the performances were great, even by the kids, who can be tricky to direct. Also, there are some really nice shots in there.
Well, that is it. I shall give this movie a solid 4/10. If you do see this as well, please let me know your thoughts. Cheers!
A Brazilian War Against Culture
Yesterday evening it happened in São Paulo the largest awards ceremony of the country, the Great Brazilian Cinema Awards, which brought to the city an incredible amount of celebrities and members of the industry to celebrate all productions that the brazilian academy of motion pictures judged worthy of what they call a Grande Otelo Trophy.
This year, besides the now traditional awards, the academy decided, in face of the new and evergrowing amount of independent productions being released nationally, to create four new categories: Best Iberoamerican Movie Released in Brazil, Best Documentary Series, Best Fiction Series and Best Animation Series. “Benzinho”, a beautiful portrait of a mother who watches her son going away from home for the first time (directed by Gustavo Pizzi) was the great highlight of the evening, winning in 6 categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Fiction Film Editing.
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It was a night of celebration, music, but also to talk politics. It is no secret that brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is openly against investments in anything related to culture, which has been harming the audiovisual community since the beginning of his mandate. What the president seems to ignore, unfortunately, is that in a country like Brazil, which is home to so many creative, capable, and culturaly rich peoples, harming the culture and harming the people is basically the same.
São Paulo lives and breathes culture. The city is home to both the largest gay parade of south america and the largest march for Jesus on the same week, and also the largest “cultural turnaround” of the country (a day when many cities spend 24h offering free music concerts, theatrical plays and museum passes to the general public), and that is why is was the perfect stage for this event. As the mayor of Sao Paulo, Bruno Covas, brilliantly said: “While part of the political class wants to dictate what fits or does not fit in a movie, São Paulo reaffirms its commitment to free culture, without filters, because filters in culture have name, and it is censorship”. Later on, many artists, producers and other members of the industry joined him on stage to make their own polite protests as the night went on.
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Besides the politicality, we also watched a beautiful stage and many homages to important musicians and classical brazilian movies. There were only a few things that made me get out of the awesome state that this ceremony put me in from the start: The many mistakes that happened on stage (like a lack of research about the honoured artists); everything about Rodrigo Pandolfo (one of the hosts who clearly was not taking the ceremony seriously and did not rehearse as much as he needed to); and a very loud and unpolite man that kept screaming from the audience during the opening speech from the President-Director of the Brazilian Academy of Motion Pictures, Jorge Peregrino. Unfortunately, not everything can be perfect, right?
I said goodbye to the event feeling a great sense of importance from the industry. All issues aside, this is a great community that deserves to have room to keep growing. Many of the nominated movies have an international quality to them and have already been receiving a great amount of recognition from around the world. “Jorel’s Brother” for example, the animated series that one the award for the newly created category of “Best Animation Series” is already a fever in Brazil and fastly spreading to other countries as well. Another series nominated in the same category, “Boris and Rufus”, is only on it’s first season and already signed for season two with Disney Latin America, being one of the most watched cartoons on other countries from latam, and more: the so called “creative economy” is one of the largest in the country, bigger than tourism, and provides a population that suffers with unemployement since 2016 with over 850 thousand jobs. It would be a great shame, not only for brazilians, but for cinephiles everywhere if politics impacted badly their national audiovisual productions. We all hope this situation is changed quickly, and will wait anxiously for the next productions to come, as well as next year’s awards ceremony.
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” – A Mourning Mother’s Drama
Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh, this Oscar nominated movie is definitely one that should enter your must watch list.
The story is about Mildred (Frances McDormand), whose young daughter gets raped and murdered in Ebbing, Missouri. Because the case is getting cold before any arests are made, she decides to rent three gigantic billbords just on the outskirts of town to raise awareness and bother the chief of police. But of course, there’s a lot more to it.
Hold on to your horses people – I’m about to go full spoiler from here on out.
The entire story of the movie happens after she decides to rent those three billboards, but it isn’t all about the worried mourning mother – it kind of revolves around everyone who’s even slightly involved in the investigtion – like the police, her other son and even the guy who rents her the billboards.
Every character has a backstory that makes you care for them. By the end of the movie, I had already cried three times and that’s without ever knowing who actually committed the crime.
The story is actually a drama about a mourning mother who’s starting to get impatient, not about the investigation. It discusses how far even the best people can go when they want answers and revenge, and how an entire town can be affected by that.
Not gonna lie, not knowing for sure who was guilty kind of bugged me a little, but it’s fine because after digesting the entire thing for a couple of days, I just realized how much I loved it. This movie made me really care.
A good movie is one that can extend the experience past the movie time, it fuels a bunch of conversations after the credits have finished rolling, and this one certainly did that.
I highly recomend you watching it, and proudly give it a rating of 4 out of 5.
Have a great end to your Sundays people!
See you soon.
2D Is Not Dead
A couple of years ago I made a post talking about traditional animation, and addressing this pessimistic view about it. Why is 2D animation dying, if it’s still one of the most amazing art forms? In my head, that made no sense. I spent most of my life studying it despite the fact that it was being abandoned by the big companies gradually, until even Disney animation, the mother of traditionally animated features, caved into 3D permanently.
In that first post, I mentioned that the real issue with traditional animation was that the big masters weren’t able to work with it anymore. Most of the big companies decided to invest in the new technologies and left little to no money to the oldschool. That had to have an impact on quality of storytelling… Of course people wanted to see less of it, there wasn’t enough passion put into the later movies. Add that to the fact that 3D was ridiculously new and exciting, and had all the money from the studios and well, here we are.
But there has been a visible change in the market in the past few years, and that is what I want to talk about now. Could it be that traditional animation is finally making it’s comeback? Well, I like to think the answer to this is “yes, absolutely!” even though we are still to see Disney officially reopen it’s 2D feature animation division.
You see, it is undeniable that some of the most popular animated series and movies of the past few years were 2D, some of them (most of the series) were traditionally animated. Take Gravity Falls for example, one of the most beloved series of the present day. Steven Universe, another groundbreaking big hit, is also classically animated, alongside Adventure Time, and that is just to name a few.
All the 20 best animated tv shows of the 21st century, as listed by IndieWire, were 2D. If nothing, at least that shows that people are still interested in watching 2D, someway or another.
In addition to that, we must also remember that still a good number of animated features to become Oscars nominees are still 2D, like Ghibli’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya (nominated in 2014, lost to Big Hero 6) and Alê Abreu’s The Boy and The World (nominated in 2015, lost to Inside Out). So yeah, there’s still hope, specially when we consider that one of the nominees this year is “Loving Vincent”, the first ever animated film to be made using oil on glass, taking the expression “evey frame a painting” to a whole new level.
The movie, that premiered last year to pretty good reviews (84% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes, 7,9 average on Imdb and 62 points on Metascore), has a fairly good chance of winning the Oscar, mostly for the art and theme, but still! This is exciting, isn’t it? Besides, we’re still waiting patiently and full of hope for the upcoming Klaus movie, by the Spa! studios in Canada and Spain, that’ll hopefully shake things up even more with it’s amazing look.
In conclusion I must say simply: Don’t lose hope! Even if movie goers are still closed in that unrealistic world where only the best graphics and technologically advanced movies are good enough to watch, we still have a fighting chance. 2D isn’t dead yet, and if we can keep it up, it will still be around forevermore.
5 Romances You Can Actually Watch
Most people either absolutely love or despise romantic movies because they tend to be too cute or unrealistic, sometimes (most times) both. In my case, I tend to hate them. Already tried everything, from “A Walk To Remember” to “Moulin Rouge” and still it didn’t work. I was almost giving up on the genre when I finally stumbled upon the first romance to actually catch my attention: The Phantom Of The Opera.
Based on the worldly famous homonimous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Gaston Leroux’s novel, it tells the story of a lonely man known only as the Phantom of the Opera who lives in the shadows of an Opera house and falls deeply in love with an orphan ballerina named Christine who performs there. He finds a way of a giving her singing lessons without her ever seeing him, and follows her around the place like a shadow. The only problem is (besides the fact that she’s unaware of his very existance) – she’s in love with someone else: A nobleman named Raol who she met as a child.
The movie is simply mesmerizing to it’s very core and the music, which I hadn’t heard anywhere before, is also absolutely beautiful. It was the first time I actually got caried away by a romance that didn’t end to leave me with an empty stomach after barfing all the rainbows I had left. No, this was different, and it opened my eyes to a world of romance that one can actually watch. So today, I want to send your way a list of other similar pieces of the seventh art:
1- Blue Valentine (2010):
Directed by Derel Cianfrance and starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, the movie shows the development and falling of the romantic relationship between Dean and Cindy, going back to when they first started dating and forward towards the end of their marriage, a few years later.
It is a very melancholic movie, but I wouldn’t say sad: It’s just a realistic portrail of a relationship, with all it’s ups and downs, problems and what not. The photography and general editing of the movie makes you feel like an intruder, following the couple around and learning about their intimacy. It is very interesting and definitely worth the watch.
2- Her (2014):
Directed by Spike Jonze and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson and Rooney Mara, the movie tells the story of a lonely writer named Theodore who develops a romantic relationship with an AI named Samantha. Set in a distant alternative future, their romance doesn’t feel too weird and is actually something he does not hide from people at all.
The looks of the movie, with it’s stunning photography and overall design were the first thing to catch my attention, but as it develops the viewer can’t help but completely forget about them and dive completely into this different and contemplative story. It says a lot about depression, lonelyness and life as a whole. It is just one of those things everyone must watch at least once in their lives.
3 – Mr Nobody (2009):
Directed by Jaco Van Dormael and starring Jared Leto, the movie follows Nemo Nobody throughout his life in a very weird way: It shows us all the possible ways it could happen, based on the different outcomes of a major choice he has to make. Was that too confusing? Yeah, it’s supposed to.
The entire movie is a mess of impossible universes, futuristic scenarios, different romances with different girls he meets in his childhood, different career choices and different cities. It’s crazy, but what’s even crazier is how he dicides which possibility to turn into a reality. Despite being a complicated movie it is also very understandable if you allow yourself to pay attention.
Also, I know this doesn’t quite sound like a romance, but it is. And it’s magical, and stunning, but also informative and interesting. It’s one of those masterpieces that leaves you breathless once it finally ends. That is definitely a movie worth watching.
4-Anomalisa (2015):
Ready for that big fat dose of melancholia? Then this is the movie to watch. Written and co-directed by Charlie Kaufman, and starring David Thelis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan, the stop motion movie follows Michael Stone, a motivational speaker who’s just arrived to Cincinatti to work for the next days.
When his plans for the first night in the city don’t really work out as he planned, he turns to the hotel bar where he meets a lady named Lisa, whom he falls in love with. He realises she’s different from everybody else, her voice sounds unique, she has a soul, and it’s that authenticity that drives the entire story.
It is a genius movie… The very first time I saw a puppet prop become part of the story in this way. I don’t want to give away too much, so just know that it is brilliant. The design, the animation, even the weird things fit in so well it is incredible. I highly recommend you all watch this movie – just make sure you do it when you’re feeling pretty great about life, because it portrays depression and loneliness. But don’t worry, it’s not really a tragedy, I promise.
5- O Cheiro Do Ralo / Drained (2006):
Ok, now this is a crazy movie. The ones of you who really like alternative stories and different styles will probably fall in love with this as much as I did.
Directed by Heitor Dhalia and starring Selton Mello, this brazilian movie tells the story of a pawnshop proprietor named Lourenço who takes advantage in unfair negotiations of desperate locals who go to his shop when they’re in financial difficulties. He feels nothing whatsoever, and sees all people as merely the things they have to offer, and just like those things, he believes they’re also for sale, and preferably for a very low price.
When Lourenço has a problem with the bathroom drain (that won’t stop smelling) and meets the owner of the best ass in all São Paulo, he’s obliged to reassess his vision of the world and looses all the control he worked so hard to get over everyone around him.
It is a very symbolic film, very hard to understand at first, but still very different and beautiful. Selton Mello does an amazing job at impersonating the character and recreating the story based on the homonimous novel by Lourenço Mutarelli. It is not a light movie for kids, so be careful of when and where you watch this.
So, that does it! My list of 5 Romantic Movies You Can Actually Watch! I hope you enjoyed it and that you give a chance for those, that are some of my favorite movies of all time.
l.OTT.i Content 