‘Missing Pages’

07May08

a FOTOPLAY by CHAGE & JEROME OLIVIER

Sure took a long time to write just another blog entry now -looking back at the last dated entry. The job I was in surely did took a lot of time from me. And how a job can be really sickening when it took more than the course of time it requires. I’m gonna drop that for now until later dates to remember. And.. going back to blogging wouldn’t be easy; actually, the writing won’t be easy. So I’ll start again with something simple. Used this video as a reference for a project I’m working on, but just got the chance to watch it now -after a month of having it with me in my iTunes.

part 1 :

part 2 :

part 3 :

Perhaps every photographers have thought of making this kind of fotoplay or correctly say people have been making this kind of stories through their pictures and slides. But probably ‘Missing Pages’ has the most recognition as a award-winning short and thorough planning in allocating their images in the story. Smooth transition and good blending of layered pictures. Though we realized the concept technic of the short in the very beginning of the short, I don’t seem to be bothered with any bad arrangements of angles, templates, and blending that goes on until the end of the short.

Story wise.. ehmm.. its simple and quiet expected like most Japanese manga or animations. Futuristic, simple and fantastical. I was more excited in looking at each frames of the shorts than the story. Not being biased to the short, it may just not happen to be my kind of story. Being said that.. makes me question whether the technics effect the story telling or not? or if they could put more of stop-motions in some of the action helps?

But great work in editing. Very well cut and to see what they’re dealing with (moving still pictures) -surely needed great visualization to achieve this kind of end-result. Hey, that reminds me.. I still got a lot of stuff to edit for my project  

Filed under: cinema   |  1 Comment

‘The Kite Runner’

24Feb08

Met my good Afghan friend long ago in my early year of college. Never knew the friendship would go on by working in an Indian Catering Service in New York, and finally working together to making his first feature film. [A] was always full of stories, talkative and could talk from a topic to z topic in one conversation. Amazing, I noticed he never managed to cross back to point a going backward from z LOL. But it was fun nevertheless.

After I watch this film, no wait… as I was watching this film for a not long period of time, I could already enjoy imagining my friend about his Pashtun descend, the glory days of Afghanistan, the civil-war and the downfall of his motherland. And I would smile occasionally. Smile to the coincidences of similar stories in the film with those [A] have told his.

We were making an Afghan story film too that time. And I’m quite happy that the big $industry$ make a bigger version of film about this country. Accuracy of a non-fiction drama setting, time and place, is as important as a continuity of a character entering one place from a heavy rained street to me. Why? I think I’m gonna go personal with this. A film instructor in NYFA once told me that ‘you can’t act GOD’ in making your films. Being biased or misinforming in a non-fiction film is pretty wrong I think; not to mention weird.  However, I’ve experienced bad non-western films made by westerners mainly because of its accuracy. I have to say my thanks though to the filmmakers for bringing this one into a such a modest and close to accurate presentation, despite given the fact that it was also an adaptation to a novel.

The kite runner is a beautiful story of two childhood friends in once peaceful time in Afghanistan. Separated by the invasion and civil-war, one fled and the other remained in the country. The film reflects many aspect and ways of the living in the 3rd world muslim country (as where I am residing myself now) in such a subtle way. The social class gap, the rules of one’s society, the hypocrisy, the lies, all mixed and witnessed by the purity of these two boys.

Having said all this, I’m quite curious with [A]’s opinion about this film. I have a feeling that he has watched this film already… and would probably write me some quiet long comment on this (expecting!). In the end, I recommend this to those people who enjoy good childhood stories and would want to open their eyes to a different world that co-exist with us. Enjoy!

Filed under: cinema   |  2 Comments

‘Into the Wild’

24Feb08

After deciding to post film reviews (*personal opinion) as a purpose to my blogging, it never occur to me then that it would be such a challenging thing to write about. And so happen that night, the night I opened this weblog account that I’m going to watch Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” and certainly the film was quite a wild ride to me. 
Not exactly in a rebellious technical sense. Before going further with the details, i have to say it was all well executed. Was it? Unfortunately I wasn’t one of those audience who had the chance to read the book first. But as the first audience to this story called ‘Into the Wild’, I was very pleased how this two and half (2.5) hour length film was able to carry me to each chapter of the story and felt like it was a packed thirty (30) minutes film. Nothing fancy to the technicality instead it was more focus on each seconds of its audience emotions and curiosity. I suppose that would be a good approach to script-write this real life book story. 
I certainly can’t ruined the beauty of this film before you all watch it yourselves, but I got to say that its a good film and have to watch it once. As said earlier about its technical approach; but to his credits,  Sean Penn certainly make it look different and can’t just be categorized as something as a simple and usual film making. A big props to the man. 
Another credit to Sean Penn’s guiding this story is the dramatic and good timing of the climax or the ending. There were some redundancy to the mentioning of our protagonist ambitions and hatred from the very beginning. However, before you’re about to think its much too enough, Penn will drive you to another beautiful adventure before you noticed. He stirs you from one drama to the other painlessly until finally the beautiful ending (which I didn’t expect the ending will be like that since I didn’t read the book: so it was another plus for me). 
In the end, everything was acceptable; the redundant ambitions, hatred, fact-of-life, society, love of nature and wilderness, confusions, emotions and the message. All packaged in a beautiful ending that keeps you wondering. As to me, I was wondering of how the hell can I write all those beautifully packed film in a blog? …I can’t!  -you just got to experience this film!

Filed under: cinema   |  3 Comments

Hello world!

21Feb08

After long consideration of whether to start blogging again after past failures, i decided to be “just another weblog”. Trashing the virtual world since the reality world can be such a boring and sad place. Well, I guess I just mentioned the purpose of this blog… more or less. I guess there are times where we’re unable to express our emotions to the people we want or whether it would be inappropriate to raise certain opinions bla bla bla… So hell, they didn’t invent internet for nothing. Not to mention how cheap data storing has become. It certainly won’t kill to have some of my sayings. So hello world, here I am

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