...the state of movie making these days, has anyone seen the trailer for the movie 300?

First of all, I'd just like to say that this movie looks like the most epic thing imaginable. The main badass Spartan character is one of the most intimidating people I've ever seen.

But that's beside the point. The point is that the behind the scenes footage of this film looks like a tutorial video for green screening. In fact, it looks like, at no point in the filming of this movie did they ever step foot outside of a studio. Literally everything was green. This is what I was originally going to do my thesis on.

On March 30th of next year, the film industry in this country hits a major crossroads. On that day, which will be either a particularly happy one, or a devastatingly sad one for me personally, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hits theaters. It is on that day, that America will decide once and for all if technology is a benefit to the film industry.

In this new installment of the Teenage Mutant Ninja saga, the movie is entirely digitally animated. I'm sure it's going to look OK, but the characters themselves are almost like superheroes in the way they move. Just judging from the trailer, they are jumping impossible distances, leaping from rooftop to rooftop and jumping from a building to the the street. I just think that the TMNT live action movies were unbeatable.

Well, I saw a movie last night, and I've got a few moments to spare, so I'd like to share my thoughts with all of you, my loyal minions.

The movie was Stranger Than Fiction. The actual story was very original. Actually, in a way, the story was not that original. It was along the lines of American Beauty or any story where a boring man miraculously changes his life, to give it more "meaning." The main character, a boringly predictable tax auditor was played by Will Ferrell in a role that most people would not recognize him in. Although, Will Ferrell does much more dramatic acting than people think, still when you see him in a role where he doesn't yell, not even once, it's surprising.

I am currently in this weird documentary stage of my Netflix, why I have no idea. My recent documentary, The Future of Food worried me a bit. Sure, I've heard all the 'eat organic foods' speeches and yeah, I shop at Trader Joe's sometimes, but I feel that the film should have scared me much more. I wanted an expose on all the crap the dining halls are feeding us. All it really did was make me feel as though I was watching the film in a high school biology or ecology class or something.

First of all, I guess I was expecting to see something like Fast Food Nation (which is now I film, that I haven't seen but I've read the book). What I got was a lesson in genetics and how big companies, such as MONASTO - the makers of Round-up, make genetically altered seeds and then put patents on them so that farmers can't use their seeds. While it is all a bit complicated, basically the big companies sue any farmers whose seeds have any genetic make-up related to their genetically altered seeds. Due to seeds easily spreading (through wind, animals, what have you), cross-polination occurs rapidly and basically all plants become altered with some part of these genetically-engineered seeds.

Last night I went to see the film BABEL with some friends and first of all, I would recommend it to anyone with a spare $10 and a couple of hours of free time. The film is beautiful, with magnificent scenes from various continents and it is visually magnificent. The music is wonderful and the cast is great (I've never really been a Brad Pitt fan before, but his short amount of screen time in this film is actually really good). I love Gael Garcia Bernal and was pleased with his performance, but saddened by his small amount of screen time. The cast as a whole is great, even the kids.

Anyway, I wanted to discuss this type of movie. I'll try to not spoil it for those of you who want to see it. The film is constructed like Crash. The film has storylines that connect at the end, despite all the major characters being on different continents and living very different lives. I find this very interesting in terms of the narrative. Jumping between all the plots leaves the audience in suspense about one plot, then creates suspense for them in the next one. I love this style of filmmaking. Films that have a straight-forward, linear narrative often have scenes that are slow, or not as enticing and I often lose interest. This choppy, non-linear style keeps drawing the audience back into the film and with this film, the variety of characters and scenes is amazing. Offering this wide range is beneficial, as it gives a wide variety of scenes, a wonderful ensemble cast (much like Crash), and different aspects for audience members to relate to. I find it very interesting that this type of film has gained such popularity and prestige.

Instead of doing my homework this afternoon I decided to go and see the new James Bond movie Casino Royale. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading this blog right now and go. I promise you a full 2 hours of entertainment.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I couldn’t help but notice the blatant use of product placement as is typical of so many movies made these days. But there was one instance in particular that had me a little upset. One scene features James Bond driving a new Ford coupe while on a mission in the Bahamas. James Bond driving a Ford? Come on! Thankfully, it is just a rental car until he has the time to get his hands on a far more Bond-appropriate car, a vintage Aston Martin. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder how much Ford had to pay to get Daniel Craig behind the wheel. So I did a little research…

Personally, I think you should all go out and rent Who Killed the Electric Car? (or put it in your Netflix queue). I was bummed when we had class and it was showing at Scripps, but it just released on DVD yesterday and I watched it this afternoon instead of writing a Spanish essay and I could not be more pleased with my decision. It is an extremely well-put together documentary that kept my attention and gave me a massive amount of information about something that I had little or no knowledge about before.
Just a bit about authorship before my verdict in the murder case and other rantings. The film brought me back to issues that we discussed about Authorship and Film. This film was written and directed by the same guy, who clearly has a passion for the topic, but he use of other materials (clips from movies, television broadcasts, etc) add a lot to the film and make it much better, so there is a blurring of authorship, like there is with many documentaries. Also, I expected the narrator to be the voice of the director/writer and was a bit surprised when the credits rolled around to see that the voice was actually that of.... Martin Sheen. Interesting. It is also quite clear that it took a lot of people to make this film work and the authorship was a collaborative effort, rather than just the director.

For my Representing the Metropolis class with Prof. Koss at Scripps, we went on a field trip last Saturday. I'm normally not too fond of waking up at 8 am on weekends to venture into Los Angeles, but this particular trip turned out to be really interesting. We visited a bunch of old movie theaters on Broadway in L.A. (like the Orpheum, the Palace, the State, and so on). Some of them are abandoned...some of them have been converted into churches...and others now look like regular stores from the front, but once you go back into their storerooms you see the remains of an old movie theater. It's pretty incredible.

Having realized just how little downtime I'd been giving myself and the fact that I'd been neglecting my girlfriend horribly, I decided to do something I hadn't done in a long time, watch a movie.

We got Imagine Me & You through Netflix, and I was skeptical. The Netflix description said:

In this delightful romantic comedy that gives new meaning to the term cold feet , bride-to-be Rachel (Piper Perabo) is love-struck ... but not with her groom. Instead, as she's marching down the aisle with her longtime sweetheart, Heck (Matthew Goode), Rachel is immediately bewitched by a beautiful guest (Lena Headey). Now, the newlywed must choose between the safety of a familiar relationship and her heart's true desire.

Not a lot in the description and I wasn't sure if it was going to be bad or really bad, but the girlfriend had put it on the queue so I figured we'd watch it.

It turned out to be pretty good, considering it was a romantic comedy (a genre I do not have the highest esteem for). It managed to avoid most, if not all, of the major pitfalls of any movie focused around a lesbian relationship. (warning spoilers below, if you actually think you'll ever watch the movie and don't want me to spoil the ending, stop reading now!)

So tonight I went to see Borat (which I will probably make a whole separate post about) and I saw an interesting preview before the feature presentation. The trailer was for Mel Gibson’s new movie “Apocalypto,” which comes out in December. After being confused by the trailer I went online when I got home to see what the movie was all about. So basically, it’s about the decline of the Maya civilization. The trailer starts with a quote that’s something like “A civilization can’t destroyed from without until it’s weakened from within”. I thought that was a little odd, and seemed to be downplaying the effects of colonialism.