Movie Reviews

O' BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?

Visually, this was a very impressive movie. The story takes place in Mississippi during the depression. All of the frames were color corrected to set the appropriate feel for the movie, most of them being greatly desaturated to remove the green of the landscapes that were recorded and turn them into sepia tones. The story is a surprisingly hopeful one filled with up beat songs you can't help but sing along to. I give the movie an overall 4/5 stars.

This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie. I think it also does a great job showing the masterful work that the cinematographer put into the film.





I AM CUBA

Fantastic film. I'm still in awe of how much work was put into it. I think the director, Mikheil Kalatozishvili, did a fabulous job. The camera work is impressive by any film making standard, in any era, even today. The camera moved in and out, up and down, side to side in ways that you don't commonly see in movies. I'm blown away at how much thought was combined along with the acting. The film really is a flawless experience for the viewer. The only thing I didn't like about the film were russian voices flooding over the spanish and english subtitles attempting to go along with it all. It made it hard to follow at times. Overall though, I give this movie 4/5.

The rooftop scene:




PECKER

Starring Edward Furlong as Pecker, the movie takes place in the small-town Hampden, Baltimore. The world is Pecker's playground and inspiration for all his photographs and to Pecker, every moment is a photo opportunity. He takes photos with his old 35mm camera everywhere he goes, like as if the only way to live life is frame-by-frame.

I like the story line but mostly feel that this film is overrated. I thought it was awkward, corny and completely un-realistic most of the time. Maybe it was intended to be that way... but it just wasn't my type of movie. It gets two stars out of five from me, one for Pecker's little sister snorting peas up her nose at the end of it and the other for it being a fairly good reminder that every moment is a "Kodak" moment.

Movies-extravaganza @ Prairie View!

This week is shoot week once again for myself and my fellow photogs/classmates. Something to note about shoot week: it's not spring break. In photography school... shoot week is the equivalent of "reading week" for university students... except here you actually "read the books" (ie. not a lot of time for sun, sand and flippy floppies!!) We're out with our cameras shooting constantly and when were not shooting were writing, thinking, researching and dreaming photography. Some may argue that we even eat and breathe... but I'll leave that up for debate. Needless to say, there's not a lot of relax time, so the student council organized a few movies for us to watch. The choices for movies were as follows: O' Brother Where Art Thou?, Pecker, One Hour Photo, I Am Cuba, Born Into Brothels and Manufactured Landscapes. We chose three movies each, got our "tickets" (credit aO Ao, thanks lady) and thus we all reunited for those few hours in the dark of the "PV Theaters" with our popcorn, candy, chocolate, chips and pop from the PVT concession stand (Thanks mainly to Alicia for this!! She was definitely the driving force!). We laughed, we cried, we had no idea what was going on at times. If only we had known russian to save us from the latter. All in all, good times were had.

Check back over the next few days, I'll be posting reviews for my movies!

Random Picture Update!!

In effort to keep my blog alive, here are a few highlights from the past few months in school! I promise I'll get into blog writing... it WILL happen, I can feel it.


Graeme. This picture was kind of accidental, it emerged out of a bunch of unusable shots from my first attempts at my contact sheet portrait. I'm really happy it turned out so well. This is the gaze that melts me... :)


My favorite shot from the Xmas break! Took this beaut with my 50mm 1.8 lens, very little post exposure manipulation... I think I might have only made it a touch darker. I love it because it feels so delicate, just like the tiny flowers were in person.


My Coffee Shot (board assignment) For this board assignment, we were asked to "sell" coffee to the viewer. I had a bunch of different ideas but I finally settled on this one... a cozy coffee scene by the fire. I like it, but to be honest there never was that "YES!! that's the shot baby!!!" excitement I always anticipate in my shooting. I'd love to try more product-like shots and get better!


Graeme's brother Jesse, Hide Your Daughters @ the Royal Albert. I like this shot because it's different than most band shots you'd normally see. The expression is great - looks like he just remembered he left the oven on between chords. I took a lot of the saturation out of the image to emphasize that feeling.


and finally.. this is my sister Elena expressing her love for mushrooms.

Back by popular demand...

... and in no way a reflection of how I feel about the holidays...

Creepy fallen over santa!!




Note to anyone concerned: This is not my santa. Also, Santa's not dead. He's just taking a really really long nap in preparation for Christmas Eve ;)

Fun with lighting

I finally took advantage of the studio lights today and took some shots of my friend Alyssa. She asked me last week if we could get together and take a couple head shots for a portfolio she's working on and I pretty much jumped at the opportunity since I had been wanting to try out the studio lights and get a little more comfortable using them. Alyssa will be trying out for a spot on the next season of Canada's Next Top Model (using one of the shots from today!!), something that she's been thinking about for a while and finally going for.

We had a lot of fun with the shoot, minus a couple minor issues with the lighting at one point but we got that figured out (Thanks Craig & Amanda!) and I really got into the feel of portrait photography. I'm really happy I got to help Alyssa out with her portfolio and I can't wait to hear if makes the cut!
My guess is that she will =)

Here's a few faves from the day:


















More from the shoot can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30485291@N03/sets/72157610934027318/

It's been some time now...

...but finally I'm back blogging. I've been busy with school, life and such and I'm sure the rest of the PV students feel the same way! School's been a lot of fun so far even though the assignments keep piling on and every once in a while it's tough to see Christmas break in the distance. I can feel it in the air now, though, and I'm very much looking forward to a little time off relaxing and spending time with family and friends. Also the little Christmas squares Mom makes... they're indescribably amazing.

I really want to post my favorite shots from the past couple months but sadly I can't figure out how to put them after text (I'm probably missing something... should be easy enough!). If you see this Amanda (amanda, amanda!!) then please let me know what I should be doing!

In the meantime, please visit my Flickr page and leave me some feedback! =)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30485291@N03/

Happy Thursday Everyone!

Haven't got a good "texture" picture yet, but...

I kind of liked this one. I have this crazy idea about dolls and wooden clocks running through my head for the texture assignment coming up next week, but I just can't find the right type of clock. So I went with the doll idea. I'm actually not the girlest of girls so it's kind of out of my range of interest I suppose... but it works! I love the ruby red in the necklace and how her blue eyes pop.