BEDA 19: If I Could Be Doing Anything Else

So I was going to talk about Pan's Labyrinth today. But I realized that I left all my pictures on my desktop at home... Soooo that's going to have to wait.

Seeing as I had no idea what to write about, I combed through the internet and came across a .pdf with 365 writing prompts. So without further ado I give you the question for today: April 19th 2014.

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be,
and why? If that seems too easy, try this one: who would you
like to have spend a day as you and what do you hope they’d
learn from the experience?

I think if I could have been anyone else for the day I would have been one of those crazy wild life photographers/videographers who work for Discovery. I've always had a strange fascination with sharks. Maybe I could have been one of those crazy people who go down in the cages to film the marine biologists and television personalities hosting those specials.

As for the second part of the question. If someone else could have been me for the day, I would hope that they were a really driven and productive person. Maybe a really awesome writer who would have sat down and pumped out 7,000 words on my Camp Nanowrimo story. I'm just not sure who I would want to be my writer replacement. Do you guys have any ideas?

BEDA #9: Favourite Directors and Filmography

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this post in the last few days and I've come to a conclusion. I do not have one favourite director... I have multiple.

So here goes nothing:

Honourable Mention: The German Expressionist Movement.

Not a director... but a movement in film history.

I love this stuff. While the US was busily trying to make movie magic make sense and be as close to real life as possible, the crazy German filmmakers decided, you know what. Let's take our crazy fever dreams and put them up on the big silver screen.

German Expressionist film is obsessed with light versus dark and good versus evil.It's characterized by it's wacky sets and overacting. These guys were so dedicated to creating their dark and twisted worlds they went as far as painting objects shadows on the ground because they couldn't manipulate the light to do what they wanted.

German Expressionism went on to influence Hollywood popping up in things like detective movies and influencing current directors like Tim Burton.
 
I RECOMMEND: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr Calligari & Metropolis

Christopher Nolan

I really like Nolan's obsession with gritty city scapes. The first movie I ever saw by Christopher Nolan was Memento. It had been recommended to me by a few people when I first started making noise that I wanted to go into film. It wasn't until my first year at university did I finally sit down and watch it.

Stop and think about movies for a moment. There is a certain language to cinema that we're all fairly accustomed to. As a viewer you know that if the screen is showing a man looking at something and then it cuts to an object that it is telling you: hey, that man is looking at that object. As we've grown up with movies and tv we've been taught this language.

In Memento Nolan throws all of that out the window. The story is told backwards, trust me it makes a lot of sense when you watch it. At the same time it always reminds me of this xkcd comic:

http://xkcd.com/270/

Since the Batman movies, Nolan hasn't really done anything too experimental. The closest he's come to that being Inception, but that was more story than playing with the actual medium of film. I'm interested to see what he comes up with now that he's able to go off and do his own stuff again. Only time will tell.

I RECOMMEND: Inception, Memento

Guillermo del Toro

I love del Toro's style. I don't even know how to put it into words. Pan's Labyrinth got me through my Lord of the Rings withdrawal in high school. I love how he uses symbolism throughout the film. I'm not going to go too much into Pan's Labyrinth now and save that for my next post, look at that all of my posts are starting to connect! 

del Toro is passionate about what he does and his passion shines through in his movies. Look at Pacific Rim. That film new exactly what it was, it was giant robots fighting giant monsters. It was big, it was dumb and it was lots of fun. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend you watch this one on a large screen to get the full experience.

I RECOMMEND: Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy 2 & Pacific Rim

Stanley Kubrick

Kubrick directed my favourite film in the whole wide world: Full Metal Jacket. I don't generally like war movies but my fourth year seminar was in war in fiction and film and because of that I've developed a grudging respect for the genre. I was assigned to give a presentation on combat film with a list of movies I needed to look at. I had watched FMJ before, but it had been years. Over the course of my research I watched the film at least four times. On my final watch through, the night before the presentation I was sitting on my couch almost in a trance from exhaustion and that's when I saw it. I saw the pattern of the shots in the film, the poetry of scene length, and how everything blended together into one perfect whole.

Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist when it came to his films.There are many stories about how he harassed his actors (read anything about the Shining) and how they would spend days only focuses on specific scenes.

It's really cool to spot the influences that 2001 still has on science fiction movies.

2001 A Space Odyssey on the left and Elysium on the right

I RECOMMEND: Full Metal Jacket, 2001 A Space Odyssey & Dr. Stangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dolphin Trainers, Marine Biology and Other Pass Times

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I'm BAAAAAAAAAAACK!

<Insert Jack Nicholson here's Johnny jokes here>

I am happy to announce to everyone that I finished my 3rd Year of University and am ready to not do any serious thinking for the next few weeks. As fellow University students you all know EXACTLY how I feel right?

I have a few blog posts to catch up on, but as for right now I'll just do the most recent topic: What I wanted to be when I grew up.

When I was really little I had one passion: Sea life. The second best day of my childhood-life was when I went to Sea World (the first best day of my childhood-life was Disney World for one specific reason but that's a completely different story). At Sea World there were dolphin shows, whale shows, Shamu, Shark Tunnels to walk through, fake helicopters to ride and ALL THE FISH YOU COULD EVER DREAM OF. It was my own personal heaven. My Mother bought me a stuffed animal penguin and the Sea World Factbook (which I still have to this day) and I spent the rest of my Florida vacation curled up with my penguin looking at the pictures of the dolphins dreaming of the day when I could go swimming with them. In my little mind, the most perfect career that could ever exist was to be a dolphin trainer. I wanted to spend the rest of my life teaching dolphins tricks and swimming with them. It was like a fairy tale.

Now my parents weren't to keen to have their Eldest Child go into Show Business, so one day as I sat there staring dreamily at the photographs and talking endlessly about the tricks I would teach my pet dolphins my parents tried to sway me. As you can guess, this didn't go over that well. Until my Dad said in exasperation. "Why don't you just be a marine biologist?"

"What's a marine biologist?"

"You're a scientist who studies ocean life."

In other words my little mind imploded with possibilities.

Now these were the days before the internet was super big (kinda hard to remember that). So I had to go to the library. My career as a Marine Biologist was off to a strong start. I knew everything about everything. I begged my parents to take me to the Zoo to see the fish. My parents had to tape every single episode on the ocean that ever aired on the Discovery Channel. I was obsessed.

So what happened?

Well it was the Discovery Channel that did me in in the end. I learned the hard way (and a super graphic one at that) that there was a darker side to Marine Biology. I wasn't all driving in boats, swimming with the dolphins and writing a few notes down on a note pad. No, the Discovery Channel taught me.... I'd be cutting dolphins open. As a sensitive little girl, that was way too much for me to comprehend. The marine biology dreams died instantaneously.

I took to something a little bit safer... history. From grades 5-10 I was convinced I was going to be a Historian. That was until I made the mistake of taking a film course and picking up my first camera.

When I look back at all the jobs I wanted as a kid I was pretty all over the map. At one point I was convinced my calling was to be a Pretzel Salesgirl at Carnivals and Fairs, I also wanted to be a Power Ranger and Batman (who doesn't want to be Batman).

It's kind of funny looking back and seeing how much I've changed. But you know. There has been one thing that has stayed constant....

I still love fish.