Documentary Review

I watched Rattle and Hum, a documentary about U2's American tour in 1987.

This documentary centers around the members of the band, Bono (vocals), The Edge (guitar), Larry Mullen Jr. (drums), and Adam Clayton (bass). It also includes the legendary B.B. King, one of the greatest blues guitarists alive today. It is an obserbvational documentary because the filmmaker has no prescence and is simply filming the band. There is also very little persuasion involved.
Because it is documenting a tour, the film is dominated by concert footage. It begins with a cover of the Beatles song Helter Skelter and continues to include many songs which the band played at stops during the tour as well as a few recorded in studios along the way.
The songs are, of course, punctuated by interviews, some b-roll, and backstage footage of the band interacting. The script very consciously has some faults, most notably when the band is asked a question near the beginning and no one answers. Instead they just look at each other and quietly laugh. This is a device that does not seem very necessary, but it is forgivable as the interviews are not the most important part of the documentary, taking the back seat to other a-roll such as concert footage and also one scene where the band rehearses with a church choir.
The dramatic aspects of the film are very minimal , but they are captured in footage of the band rehearsing a song with B.B. King as well as a few more interspersed scenes in which show the band interacting offstage. As one would expect Bono is a very powerful prescence, being the lead singer, but B.B. King is the one who really dominates these scenes by telling jokes and describing his experience being in music for over four decades.
The documentary is very interesting cinematographically. The lighting of the concerts is captured very beautifully on film with angles that use backlight to outline band members as they play or sing. The lighting is mainly low-key especially during concert scenes. This projects the excitment from the actual concert onto the screen. The film is shot almost entirely in black and white, presumably for artistic reasons, but it means that when it transitions into color briefly the audience is taken by surprise. The first color shot is an empty stage with a bright red background projected on a screen behind the set. This creates a very desert-like feel that is appropriate for this film and certain songs such as "In God's Country" and "Red Hill Mining Town.
There is no narrator, and the sound is almost all diegetic. This means that the documentary is free-standing and is without any explanation, this lets the music and the atmosphere of the concerts speak for itself.


  B.B. King performing "When Love Comes to Town"

Two Unrelated Topics

I really like what I've read of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the stream of consciousness style is really interesting and it keeps me paying attention to what Oskar is talking about. I don't know if Safran-Foer is accurately representing the mind of an autistic kid seeing as neither he nor I have been diagnosed with the disorder, but it certainly seems pretty realistic and gives me a really new viewpoint on the topic. Sometimes I get the feeling that Safran-Foer is being a little pretentious in his attempt to be profound and that he's exploring his own thoughts and not necessarily the character's thoughts, but that's not often and his ideas in the book are pretty cool anyway.

Recently there has been a lot relating to Egypt in the news. This is because they are beginning the process of drafting a Constitution, the first in the coutry's history. This is very exciting because it means that ideas which began back in 2011 during the Arab Spring are being acted on. There is less sensationalism surrounding these recent events, but I think they will turn out to be more important because this is really what will finalize democracy in Egypt.

Sexism in the Movies

Recently I read an article in the New York Times Magazine (being the elitist that I am) about the extreme age differences in onscreen couples. This was especially prevalent in the forties and fifties, most notably Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the movie To Have and Have Not, Bogart was forty-four and Bacall was nineteen, and a year after filming the movie, the two married. Of course, To Have and Have Not is a wonderful movie and I recommend it to anyone who is okay with watching movies in black and white, but it is a love story, and the age difference only serves to reinforce sexism in the movies regardless of whether the two were in love in real life. In The Graduate, a movie that might seem free of this kind of thing, Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson) and Dustin Hoffman (Benjamin Braddock) were only six years apart. This is a good example of how a woman's age can heavily and unjustly affect people's perception of beauty while for men, age is a very minor factor, and even if they do really look old in the eyes of others words like "distinguished" are used to cover up the fact that they are at an age when a woman's beauty would most likely be dismissed regardless of whether it is present. This is monstrously unfair, but I also see no clear end to this objectifying practice as it is an major facet of the ingrained sexism that still survives in America today.

All respect to Meryl Streep for managing to repeatedly defeat this stereotype well into her sixties. 

Capture the Fall

                          

This is my capture the fall project. I shot it with a point and shoot camera. Special thanks to my sister Rosie and my cat Milo.

I would have liked to shoot this with a better camera because the quality is on the low side and some of the trees could have looked really cool with a better camera. Also, it's very shaky so that is something I'll need to work on for the next individual assignment.

Good TV

Some TV shows are really bad, probably most that exist today. But, there are some that are very good. The series Homeland took away a lot of awards for it's first season that aired last year. I've been watching the beginning of it on disc, and from what I've seen, it's a good show. It's very tense, and the plot is a little unorthodox focusing on two characters who rarely encounter eachother, but the dialogue and the cinematography are very cool. It's about a CIA operative and a recently released prisoner of war from Iraq, and it focuses on the former's constant paranoia and the latter's struggle to live a normal life. The other show that I've been watching old episodes from is called Justified. It's much less popular and as far as I know, hasn't won any awards, but I think it's the best TV show out there. The main reason for this is that it's based on a book by Elmore Leonard, one of the greatest crime writers still alive. It's about a federal marshal who's sent back to his hometown in Kentucky for shooting a drug dealer in Miami. It's basically a cop show, but the criminals are all simpathetic in a twisted way, and the dialogue and acting are excellent and sometimes wryly hilarious. I would recommend both of these shows to just about anyone.

The Elusive Undecided Voters

Today I went to Fredericksburg, Virginia to knock on doors for the Obama camapign. This relates a little to  NSL because at this point the campaign has ruled out everyone in the area who strongly supports either side, so most of it was just making sure people who lean towards Obama knew where to vote and had a specific plan as to when. Basically, the campaign has abandoned persuasion and is only looking to reinforce its position with certain voters and to increase turnout. Nevertheless, I did encounter a couple undecided voters who were very interesting. First of all, the undecideds are always the ones who want to talk. Most people will just answer the questions as fast as possible, but the people who plan on voting but don't know who to support were very friendly and talkative. I met an auto mechanic who was out of work. His opinions were generally liberal, but he doesn't support the President because he hasn't seen any economic improvement and doesn't expect any in a second term. Meanwhile, he doesn't support Romney either because he beleives that Romney won't look out for working people. Although I support Obama and believe that he has taken important steps toward economic recovery, I sympathize with this person's viewpoint. He represents a whole lot of folks who find themselves utterly buried by the recession and who don't think that either candidate is really looking out for them, and that may be true. Obama and Romney both talk a whole lot about the middle class, but there are still lots of states where things are getting worse rather than better for those people. It's just been a really frustrating election year.

Have a good two days off, everyone!

To Kill A Mockingbird and The Help

Last year in English we all read The Help, and some of us, not me, read To Kill a Mockingbird. I got around to reading Harper Lee's classic for the first time this summer, and I also recently watched the 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. When I read the book I was surprised to find that it shares a few shocking similarities with The Help. They both depict small southern towns and focus on the white gentry while also making a point about the situation of black people in the South. Besides that, there is a short scebe in To Kill a Mockingbird in which Scout is coerced into joining her aunt Alexandra's social gathering. Lee depicts this as a really disgusting experience for Scout, who doesn't idnetify with any of the ladies at all, and is also surprised by their harshly racist conversation. It seems to me that Kathryn Stockett, the author of The Help, decided to explore this aspect of To Kill A Mockingbird in great detail in her book. But in this respect, The Help is flawed because instead of showing the repulsiveness of a gathering of rich prejudiced white women to play bridge, Stockett focuses on characters, some of who fit the situation, while others are made to be the heroes of the book just because they know they are living in an inherently unjust society. In this way, I think To Kill a Mocking bird far surpasses The Help as both a narrative and a commentary on the nature of societal problems in the South during Jim Crow.

The Debates

In the aftermath of the Obama-Romney debate it seems that the polls have shifted to favor Romney. This is probably because the media has reached a general consensus that Romney won. In my opinion, nobody won the debate in question, the two candidates took turns steamrolling the moderator and answering his questions in any way they saw fit. Furthermore, while it has been pointed out that Obama was much too passive that night, Romney's hyperactivity has not come under question. While I was watching their debate it seemed to me that while Obama was calm and collected, if sedentary, while Romney resembled a man who had been experimenting with cocaine.

Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes Romney won. This put all the more weight on the vice presidential debate aired last night. I watched the first hour and then turned the TV off because I found the debate unbearable. Both candidates made good points at times, but in between his speeches, Biden would smile ridiculously at the camera for minutes. This added to the fact that he appeared very confused and kept misstating numbers and facts gave the impression that he would lose. Meanwhile, Ryan kept himself from acting like a fool and so I found no real flaws with his performance except that I strongly disagree with every point he made. Because of this, I was surprised to find today that Thursday's debate was labeled as a draw if not a Biden victory. I have come to the conclusion that these debates are staged acts from start to finish, and the results are manipulated by the media to make for a more interesting race. 

5x5 Project

This is my 5x5, it is me making scrambled eggs.

Shots:
1. Washing hands
2. Cracking eggs
3. Butter meltimg in the pan
4. Eggs in the pan
5. Eggs on the table

For this project I used a Canon point and shoot and the Youtube editior. It worked pretty well because it's simple, but it was a little slow.I think with the constraints of this project I am pleased with what I made because I managed to shoot it how I envisioned it, but with more freedom as  to editing there would be more things I might have wanted to do to the film. For our next independent project I think we should have to make a music video about 2 to 3 minutes long.

Dystopian Trailer

Blade Runner Ridley Scott, R, 1982
Set in Los Angeles, 2019, Blade Runner is about four robots, or replicants, escaped from interplanetary colonies. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a retired police officer, is enlisted to capture and "retire" these replicants.

This is an exemplary dystopian trailer because it depicts a generally realistic future and subtlely displays dystiopian characteristics. The trailer shows a huge city, with a ground level very similar to something one might see today, but above there are soaring pyramids, flying cars, and constant cloud cover that spits rain day and night. This shows a banished natural world replaced by sprawling and impoverished urban areas. The premise is then revealed when Deckard is on the trail of the replicants and goes to see the head of the Tyrell company which produces them. From the short clip it is revealed that this corporation is controling society, and one can infer that the general poverty displayed in other parts of the trailer are due to underemployment because of the replicants. The final, and most disturbing aspect of this dystopia is that when the replicants appear, they look exactly like humans, and one wonders whether there is any difference between those born and those manufactured. This shows that in a way, freedom is restricted because these replicants are prohibited from living on earth and live in a state of slavery.

For my groups dystopian trailer, we intend to show some of the aspects of the dystopia through events in the trailer, similar to Blade Runner, rather than text or voice overs. We also want to show a very bleak setting, in Blade Runner this was the rainy, dark city, but in our trailer we will use a whitewashed correction facility where everyone is dressed in the same color and must hide their faces.

Online Learning

I read the second article linked on Mr. Mayo's blog entitled "A World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others." It opened with an example of a middle school girl who has a blog about her community service projects with readers from around the world. It goes on to discuss how tool s like blogs, and wikis could change the ways kids learn for the better. The author discusses how teachers in schools could become the middlemen and women between kids and experts online, instead of teachers serving as the primary experts for their students. Of course, the author also shares anxiety about online predators among other drawbacks to online learning.

According to the author, Will Richardson, "Experts are at our fingertips, through our keyboards or cell phones, if we know how to find and connect to them." This summarizes Richardson's main point, that that legions of knowledgeable people can be found through the internet. Maybe so, but for every one true expert there must be uncounted numbers of people who put things out on blogs or wikis without knowing what they are talking about, or even worse, whop will fake credentials to seem credible. I think this is very pertinent to our filmmaking class, because this kind of learning is exactly what Mr. Mayo is encouraging us to do, however, his version of this is relatively enclosed. It's pretty clear that the only people reading these blogs are other CAP students, so we benefit from interdependence by using these blogs, but we are not going out into the unknown of the worldwide web as the article suggests would be the new path for learning. I am interested in learning more about how government works and how it pertains today.

On an unrelated topic, there's a relatively new band out of Montgomery, Alabama called The Alabama Shakes. You might've heard the single "Hold On" on the radio, that's them, and they're quite good and play roots rock type music. You should listen to them if you like Creedence Clearwater Revival or some of the Blakc Keys early music.

Isaiah's Song Lyric: "It's better to burn out than to fade away." -Neil Young "My My, Hey Hey"

From his album Rust Never Sleeps which is essential Neil Young. The above line might be an advisable course for punk rockers, but not for regular people (if you know who the song is about you probably got that).

Summer Theatrics

I have not seen Beasts of the Southern Wild, but by all accounts it is a marvelous movie. It also happens to be the subject of the movie review I have chose to annotate for Mr. Mayo, to view it click here http://diigo.com/0su9j.

This review, written by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone and entitled simply "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is not very long, it weighs in at just under 400 words, but it is direct and to the point. It focuses less on the plot of the film, but on the general idea and setting as well as the poetics of the script and the cinematography. It also devotes a paragraph to the director, Benh Zeitlin, and one to the lead actress, six year old Quvenzhane Wallis. Lastly, it points out a very important fact: this film was done on a miniscule budget, and shot on location (the Louisiana Bayou) with locals in most of the roles. The reviewer, unsurprisingly, has nothing bad to say and reccomends this movie with a passion.

As to the quarterly movie reviews, I think there should be general perameters as to the movies chosen, such as a particular genre or decade. On the other hand, doing one review where each person watches the same movie could be interesting because the reviews would be comparable.

Recently I watched Moonrise Kingdom. Besides being a truly excellent movie about coming of age and about love, from my viewpoint, having seen trailers and read reviews of Beasts of the Southern Wild, the two movies seem similar in some ways. They both star inexperienced, young actors who are captivating in their roles, and they both seem to be magical in nature, almost two fairy tales. This is an interesting trend as these two movies seem to be the only outstanding specimens of the summer.

Isaiah's movie quote: "As the leader of all illegal activities in Casablanca, I am an influential and respected man."
-Ferrari played by Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca.

Too many love Casablanca for the romance, although that is a very important part of it. Just as important are the witty quips made by Ferrari, Renault, and Rick. Those lines are why I love the movie.

I Have Returned

Like most TV shows, the pilot of my blog was quite bland. That, frankly, was because it was an assignment and I was not in the mood for creativity within the boundaries. Mr. Mayo, benevolent overlord, has mandated the changing of this blog's name as Isaiah's Blog is much too generic. So, as you may have noticed, this blog is now called Isaiah Speaks. It sounds ultra-serious, but really it's a dumb biblical joke (sort of). In other news, I am reading 1984 for the second time. This time, being so much more learned and worldly, I understand that although Orwell was interested and invested in his broad dystopian world, the far more important and interesting aspect of the novel is Winston's personal struggles and reflections. Both his uncertainty about the world surrounding him and his early interactions with people who are essentially automatons are what truly makes this novel a horrifying vision. More to come on 1984.

Isaiah's Word: Pungent- Sharply affecting the senses, biting or stinging.
Personally, I love this word. Just the way it sounds makes me think of moss and mushrooms. Of course the meaning is rather unpleasant.
    

Pilot- About Me and Filmmaking

Hi, my name is Isaiah, thus this blog is called Isaiah's Blog. I come from Maryland. My interest in film revolves mostly around the watching aspect, but because I enjoy being an audience, I assume producing film could be just as interesting. I am most intrigued by storytelling and scriptwriting because it seems to be one of the more creative and least technical aspects of filmmaking. I am also interested in cinematography. I think these CAP filmmaking blogs could be used to brainstorm and get feedback on script ideas, as well as sharing interesting and appropriate work from outside of school. They could also be used to chronicle progress in each group's change project, the upshot of this would be that struggling groups could get advice from peers.

 

Photo Credit: Qisur