Number Five - Number 99 Toy Story....and some filler

I'm so happy that a Pixar film is in the list and of course, it had to be Toy Story. And I got the chance to rewatch it on the big screen and in 3D. Excellent!

What can I say, it's amazing, especially as the first time I watched it, it was on video. I haven't seen it for some years so it was brilliant to see it again. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are perfectly cast alongside other amazing talents, including Pixar regular John Ratzenberger. They all sound amazing and you know it's good casting when the actors make you forget that they are the big star names that they are!

(Sorry if this review is a bit shoddy, I'm a bit ill at the moment, woe is me.)

I do think that if you saw the film when it came out (whether young or old, as it was the first ever CGI animated film so everyone was in awe) and have recently rewatched it, then that magic that happened when you saw that wonder unfold, that feeling is recaptured, at least it was for me. Obviously if you are watching it for the first time (in this year) then comparing the film to all the films that followed it, the details, and textures are not as good and looks a bit simple. However I found all of that irrelevant, as the story is still amazing, the jokes still funny, and as I've said the cast fill their parts brilliantly. I still marvel at the Pizza Planet scene and Hammy and Potato Head, oh, and Rex are still easily the funniest characters, and you really get a good sense of the emotions, from TOYS! It's just genius!

If you haven't seen it, you must do.....NOW!!!

And the filler I promised. It's some film related drawings I have done when I was bored, and no they're not traced. There's Mr Frederickson from Up! and then three of the creature from Where the Wild Things Are. Hope you like my little sketching and I'll get the next film asap, just one of those awkward hard to get films.

Mr Frederickson

KW ...

Judith ...

and Carol from Where the Wild Things Are.

Hope you like and will get the next film and review as soon as I possibly can.

Number Three - Number 100. Ben Hur

I know, I know. I've done it again. It's been a month since I last blogged, but I promise I will write more often now. I'm sorry. Right, on with the blog.

As you may have noticed from the title I have finally kicked off with my task and made a start on the AFI list, starting with number 100 Ben Hur (1959). Now to be honest when I saw that this was the first film I was going to be watching I was a bit wary. As one of my friends said it feels like you need about three days to watch it, well it's more three and a half hours. It's very long. But I made a commitment so I sat down to watch it last night. Probably a bad time as due to the epic nature of the film (in literally every way) I found that when the film finally came to the intermission (yes it's so long it has one of those) I found I could not take any more for that evening, and I resumed the second act the following morning, which I feel was the best way to watch it ( and luckily the second act was an hour shorter thean the first).

As you may or may not know the film is set amongst the same time as the birth and life of Christ, hence why the novel the film is based on is called Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Although this is a bit misleading as the story is not in the bible but made up by American civil war General Wallace, and follows the story of a Roman and Judean boys, or men, and Christ just makes appearances now and then and takes centrestage briefly near the end, though the filmmakers are very careful no to show his face. I was actually a bit suprised by the first scene in which you see Ben Hur (Charlton Heston), meeting old friend, new Roman Messala (Stephen Boyd). I got this reaction because, it may have just been my view, but it seem almost, I'm slightly wary to put this, homo-erotic. This may seem a bit crazy but the way they greeted each other, the hugs, the hand grabbing, the words they used "still close", "you're in my heart" (or something like that), I felt like these guys have a very close emotional connection. And, I have just remembered, in the making of documentary, one of the writers, Gore Vidal, said that he wanted the scene to play out as if they were old lovers. Ha! See, I told you.

Of course, this scene sets up the huge betrayal that is to come for these two. And so begins the journey of Juddah Ben Hur (why his full name is not the title for the film I'm not sure cos they of call him the Prince of Judea etc). In this LONG journey we see him wrongly convicted of attempted murder, become a slave, then rescuer, then adopted son to a Roman counsellor (he looks about 35 but hey it was ancient Rome), then returning hero, chariot race winner, then possibly converted to Christianity and reunited with his family, emphaisi on the vagueness of whether or not he was actually converted by seeing Christ on the cross and his mother and sister healed of their leprosy.

This film for me had some very impressive scenes, one of which was , obviously, the chariot race, in which, according to one of the crew, no one died in or was severly hurt, contrary to my beliefs. I did learn that a few of the accidental crashes are actually in the film sequence and Charlton Heston did have a stunt double, mostly for the wide shots. I also leanrt how good the film's effects were back in 1959, half of the stadium shown in the wide shots were actually matte painting inserted into the film to make the place look larger and doubly occupied, and this effect was used many times for shots of mass filled streets and stadium filled arenas. It still looks convincing today. Even the battle at sea is impressive, even though you can tell, it miniatures. The acting in the film is as you would expect, very melodramatic, with sharp head turns, people emotionally flinging themselves here and there, and great cries of joy and despair. Nowadays it may look over-the-top but as it's an old film it's accepted. Cahrlton Heston is good in his role, holding a certain intensity throughout most of the film, although his eyebrows never seen to move, they look almost heavy, and his mouth often make wide, snarling movements. Stephen Boyd is nicely detestable as the Roman Messala, and I am sure they added a bit to much fake tan to Hugh Giffith who played the Arab Shiekh. The only non-Americans in the cast were the Romans, played by, can you guess, yes correct British actors and the main female role of Esther went to Israeli actress Haya Harareet.

For the most expensive film of the time ($15 million) and with 11 oscars, the film is still impressive with its grand locations, shot in Rome, its hundreds of extras and the mammothness of its production (took over a year to film). The film has  a certain grandeur about it, I couldn't help but be wowed by it. But after two and a half hours of it I started to feel restless, until the chariot race started. I just felt like most fo what had happened in the film was dragged out a lot and could have been cut down, but maybe they wanted to film as much of the novel as they could, I don't know. I do think this is a film you need to film in your lifetime but make sure you are prepared for the length of it and are willing to sit through something that feels a bit longer than it should be.

Overall, impressive but a bit too long.

That is all for now but I will be back again soon to talk about the next film and/or moan about something, hurrah! Until then, insert something cheesy here to make you mildly happy so that it has a good sign off for this post. Bye.

Number Two - The Cobra Strikes Again!

Hello.
It's been a while since my last post. I said I would write again when something significant happened or I had watched Ben Hur, as part of my watching AFI's top 100, but to tell the truth neither of these things has happened.
I'm still on the long and lonely, and seemingly near deserted, path to finding my way into some sort of semblence of a career. I'm having no luck getting any response from any potential employers, but am having much better luck with volunteer work, where I work for free, for no payment, yay! One of my voluntary exploits is to take me down the road of photography, but actual, proper to-be-published photography, so the pictures really have to be of some good quality. And there's release forms and design briefs and everything!! Which is exciting but also scares the crap out of me! Especially as the best camera I have to hand is a six mega pixel which is very fussy and at any moment will decide it doesn't want you to take any more pictures and will retreat it's turtle-like lens head into itself and take a long sleep. So this should be interesting. I also have to have models as well, which should be exciting but challenging, especially as I'm the type of photographer who likes to have things play out naturally and try to "capture the moment" rather than have them posed for me. But every experience helps I suppose.

I'm doing all this volunteer work to build up my CV (which I recommend to other people to do) as the only nibbles I've had recently on my fishing rod in the pool of the job market were, once again, from The Cobra Group...dum dum DUM!!!! Yes, the powers of evil had found me where I lived and struck me down, by ringing my mobile several times and saying they want to interview me, I'm a promising candidate crapcrapcrap..... Do these people have nothing better to do!!! But when this sucker of souls, this wrecker of graduate dreams, this EVIL takes hold, they stop at nothing till they have you and then they take your life!!!
Sounds dramatic but follow this link and you'll se what I mean:
 http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?p=299367#

Anyway, As I am still waiting for Ben (Hur) I shall give you a review of the latest version, reamke, re-imagining of Fame. Or as I'd like to call it (Quite) Lame. Now, you may think, oh no, someone who doesn't like musicals, but I actually friggin' love them. I love listening to them on my iPod, I love watching them on stage and screen and I LOVE being in them. But this film was not for me. I have not seen the original, I do want to, but this film I found, well, boring. For the hour and 40/50 odd minutes it is on it skims through the whole of the four years the kids are at the school, and with sevearl characters as the focus, all with their own stories, I found it hard to get interested in any of them or even care that much. One boy, who we see very breifly, a couple of times in some dance classes only gets a couple of scenes near the very end of the film...and that's his story!! One angry, Black kid from the rougher part of New York basically gets in gets angry at a few people, drops in and out of school, without clear reason, and..well that's it. Why bother having these underdeveloped and unexplored characters at all! Methinks, the filmmakers were just trying to tick all the boxes. And most of the characters had the same old, been-ther-done-that type of recycled stories. The dancing and singing within the film was very good, but these scenes were few and far between, not what you'd expext for this type of film. Most of the musical scenes were very short, and only three scenes in the film really stood out. The end of the film had one of the best sequences but then just seemed to peeter out, which was bizarre. It was nice to see Kelsey Grammer, Bebe Neuwirth and Meagn Mullally in the film, but only Megan actually showing her talent and abilities, in a short and slightly drunken song. The other teachers, seemingly in the film for their big star names and personalities, seemed appropriately cast but underused. Overall the film was disappointing and failed to amaze.

Well, with that I shall bid adieu, and hope to write again soon, keeping my fingers crossed that it will be a more positive post and that 007 and the MI5 will have brought down the evil Cobra Group. T.T.F.N.

Number One - The First One

I've been struggling for ages with how I should start my first blog but as you can see this is how it has ended up. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to be blogging about but with life throwing all it has at me at the moment, venting, in some form, seemed like a good idea. So here we are.

So....I'm a recent graduate, woohoo. And like all other recent graduates I'm struggling to even get my foot into the doorway that is the big wide professional world. And like some other graduates was very nearly taken into a "too good to be true " job that was actually too good to be true and turned out to be a pyramid scheme that preys on desperate graduates, trapping them into a 60 hour a week job that they hate but can't escape because they need the money. Not that I'm going to go into too much detail...but stay away from jobs advertised by SRM Marketing and known affiliates of The Cobra Group. They really do sound evil, don't they? Like an evil corporation out of a Bond film.

Anyway. (Like I said first blog, and bitter about recent job blow so this first entry is not going to be great.) I'm gonna get of the subject of job hunting because as 2.5million of us Blighties are now unemployed I don't wanna go on about it anymore and get you and I even more depressed...OH GOD!.....Sorry, all vented now.

I think I shall turn now to the lighter subject of film. Ah film, good old enjoyable escapism. Being a film student, or rather former film student I have decided to keep my film criticism and analysis in constant exercise. (I hope I spelt exercise right, it's one of those tricky words, like pseudonym, if that's right?) Being a film fanatic I have decided to work my way through a 100 greatest films list. And I use the term a because there are loads of these lists. I've wittled it down to two though and these are the BFI and AFI. Question is I don't know which one to go with.......

...Ok I think I have decided to start with the AFI. I know there will be some film fans out there groaning because I've typically gone with the Americans who "make better films" (which may or may not be true) but I'm intrigued more by the American version at the moment, I'm sorry. I am giving in to temptation. Anyway there should be some damn good films on the list, as they are the top 100. And I will most probably be perusing over the BFi list once I've done with the AFi one. Obviously I will be starting up with number 100 on the list which is Ben Hur...oooh! I may have seen the film before but I have decided to play fair and rewatch any films that may be on the list. So if anything I have will have something to say that people can follow on with and have opinions on, as there is not much else going on at the moment...that's also assuming anyone reads this blog.

Yikes, I've just noticed I've yapped, or typed on for quite a while and should probably stop now, so, that'll be it till something else happens in my life or I've watched Ben Hur. Until then have fun.