An Escape from Reality

There is nothing better than sitting down and reading a good book or watching an awesome movie. The environment slips away and no longer are you in your bed room or at a movie theatre, instead you are at Hogwarts with Harry and the gang or on Pandora with Jake Sully and the Navi. Movies provide (in my opinion) the strongest out of body experience you can have without the help of illegal drugs or a near death experience. Books give you a similar out of body experience but it isn’t as strong. I use the phrase out of body because while your body may be reading a book or sitting in a theatre, your mind is off in an adventure; providing an escape from the harshness of reality. You simply drive down to the local cinema, pay your ticket fee, and for the next two hours all your problems are forgotten as you watch whatever ‘cinematic adventure’ (to quote Dane Cook) you've chosen.

Review: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Directed By: Michael Bay

Produced By: Don Murphy, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura

Written By: Ehren Kruger

Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey

Edited By: Roger Barton, William Goldenberg, Joel Negron

Music By: Steve Jablonsky

Distributed By: Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures

Runtime: 153 minutes

Budget: $195 million

Transformers: Dark of the Moon falls into the controversial summer movie category, with films like The Hangover: Part II and X-Men: First Class. It's a highly profitable franchise riddled with criticism, especially over Revenge of the Fallen, meaning Michael Bay and company were expected to deliver a product completely different and better. We have two different reviews of the same screening: Hunter B, very critical of the first two, and Hunter F, a fan of the series. Read on to see how they compared!

2011: Sequels Galore!

(©SequelBuzz: Because One is Never Enough!)

I came across an interesting article back in January about all the movies slated to release this year, and as this jam-packed summer starts up I thought it relevant to talk about as a jumping off point from my previous discussions of originality to all future discussions we'll have throughout the summer in reviews. 2011 has the most movie sequel/prequel/whatevers of any year previous, with a grand total of 27. Definitely check out the article, but for a quick rundown there are: nine #2, five #3, five #4, five #5, two #7, and one #8 in the form of Deathly Hallows Part 2. To compare, 2003 was the previous record with 23 while 2010 had 19, so definitely a leap.

Intentionally Original

In follow up to my pilot post over the originality of ideas, I wanted to further elaborate on what requirements fulfill the desire for the idea of a creation project to be intentionally original, so far as what that word means. In the original post I stated that any idea that comes from your mind is inherently original because, to put it crudely, there's no such thing as mind reading. For an idea to come from your subconscious it is influenced by all of your experiences and memories and opinions until it is molded into something wholly you. It is understandable, however, to mistakingly take this as meaning all ideas are original, and it would likewise be foolish of me to try to claim that all ideas are original. The difference, then, lies in the intention.

Independent Filmmaking

                                           (500) Days of Summer--Dir. Marc Webb--
                                                                                      Dist. by Fox Searchlight Pictures


What does it mean to be an independent filmmaker? Does it mean that I have little to no budget, or that I work with no name actors, or that I have no chance of making money? Not really, as many independent films these days have budgets in the millions, work with actors such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt and George Clooney, and have at times made large amounts of money. So, moving past the superficial aspects of the independent system, we can now look into what it means, at least to me.