Why Terrence Malick is the Greatest Living Director
Film is one of the most complicated mediums of art that have ever come into existence. While certainly novels, music, paintings, or photos are most definitely art forms, film is unique in that it is a combination of all of these. Story is inherent in most films, whether it be obvious or not. Music and sound, in general, or even lack thereof in the case of films like No Country For Old Men, are used in films to do any number of tasks such as create a mood or help explain a facet of the story. Photography perhaps is the most obvious art form used in film, but is often not thought about within the confines of artistic photography as opposed to simply pointing a camera in a certain direction and pressing the record button. A good film tends to do at least one of these things well.
Top Films of 2011
This is the list of my favorite films that came out this past year that I had the pleasure of watching. Please feel free to disagree and/or comment. Fighting is one of the reasons these lists are made aren’t they?
Top Albums of 2011
So I am fully aware that this list does not differ much from my mid-year list, and a lot of that is due to the fact that my schedule kept me from enjoying many of the albums that came out the second part of 2011. Nonetheless, here are the albums that defined my year. At the bottom is a list of the albums that will probably change my list once I have more time to enjoy them.
Big Bend Photography Trip
A few of my friends who are excellent photographers let me tag along with them recently down to Big Bend National Park. The purpose of the trip was to take some pictures, which we did. The hiking was minimal, just enough to get to the several good locations. I was able to learn a lot from these guys and I was very appreciative of their knowledge and willingness to help me learn.
Two Awesome Albums Streaming on NPR
Hey everyone, just wanted to point you guys in the direction of these two albums. NPR takes care of the public in that we get to sample albums in their “First Listen” series prior to buying them so we know what we can expect. It can also save us the investment if we buy a subpar album. Two albums that are well worth buying as well as streaming are available for a full album stream on NPR right now.
Attack The Block
Grade: A- If you were to simply read the synopsis of this film, it sounds like a terrible B-movie worthy of the MST3K treatment. After you watch the trailer, you may think to yourself, “I don’t want to admit it to anyone, but this movie looks pretty cool. Still ridiculous, but maybe, just maybe, it’s not too bad.” After you watch this film, you will want to see it time and time again. Simply put, Attack The Block is an incredibly fun, action-packed, sci-fi thriller comedy that evokes the feeling of unabashed adventure and innocence much like The Goonies but in a way that also portrays and expresses the harsh life in the inner city.
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2
Grade: C+ Harry Potter has ruled the box office for the past decade and has easily become a franchise that has been engrained into the current generation. The last installment of the film series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, ends the saga that began in 2001. The films in my opinion were really boring when they first began. They were obviously made for a much younger crowd and were void of anything interesting or enjoyable. This trend continued until Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This was the first film that Chris Columbus did not direct and marked a noticeable shift in the overall feel of the film from a little kids lighthearted story to a much darker and serious film. I actually enjoyed the next several films all of which kept the darker vibe.
Exploring The Criterion Collection – Seven Samurai
I have never really understood why people avoid foreign films so often. I suppose and have heard people who said that they do not want to read when watching a film. I personally believe to ignore foreign films would be to ignore at the very least %50 of all of the great films being made around the world. This confusion with the anti-readers goes even further in the case of the films of Akira Kurosawa. His is a name thrown around often, like in that terrible 90′s jam, but not many people are aware of the sheer impact of this incredible storyteller. Almost every one of his films have been remade into American films and received accolade here in the states, especially in the western genre. To name a few of these films, Star Wars, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, and The Magnificent Seven were all either spot on remakes of Kurosawa films or at least heavily influenced by him.
The Tree of Life
Grade A+ With The Tree of Life the standards for what is regarded as great filmmaking have been raised. I have to begin this review by saying that attempting to write something about this film feels a bit like asking Justin Bieber to review Mozart’s Requiem. As unqualified as I may be, I feel the need to comment on this film if only to help myself understand why I am so in love with it. The Tree of Life is a film void of many characteristics of plot and story that most people are used to. It is much closer to a mosaic of images, stunningly beautiful images, offering the viewer a handful of jumbled up puzzle pieces and then asking for them to be arranged and assembled. The movie, in my mind, occupies two different spaces.
Exploring The Criterion Collection – La Grande Illusion
Being my first article of a series that will most likely never fully conclude, I wanted to start with a film that I think embodies everything that I love about the Criterion Collection. It is merely circumstantial that it happened to be the very first DVD that the Criterion Collection ever released, a fact I did not know until after setting out to write this article. La Grande Illusion is a film set during World War I. It was directed by one of the masters of French film, Jean Renoir, and was a monumental movie when it was released in 1937.
