Filmed2Death Recommends: The Big Lebowski

First of all if you don't like this movie then: "You're out of your element Donnie." Now if you don't get that what I just wrote was a quote then there is no hope for you. This movie makes me laugh out loud everytime i see it and i for some reason have seen it over 5 times. I know every joke in this movie and i just love it




I found this. I was supposed to finish this but i decided against it. Enjoy!

Anglerbe's Take on Porpoisemonkey's Summer Ambitions

...I don't know, but I'm gonna be watching some Westerns to prepare for a Burnt Banana Sandwich massive production.

Summer Movie Challenge Week 1

Well... Well... Well...
Week 1 Is over... Here we go.

FRIDAY:

END OF WATCH

This movie was really good. I was reluctant to watch it because i had heard it was shot entirely through a camera. Except it wasnt. It was a really good movie filled with great and funny conversations that made the movie worth watching. The movie had a predictable ending but who cares? IT WAS AWESOME!

JARHEAD

It was an extremely explicit movie at points but i believe it is the best movie i saw all week. It had a great cast and weirdly it was also a jake gyllenhaal movie. Jaime Fox was fantastic but all in all it was a pretty depressing movie anyway i enjoyed it.

WORLD TRADE CENTER

Dear Oliver Stone,
I dont like you
Sincerely, Porpoisemonkey

THE THING

What a great and extremely creepy movie. I seriously reccomend this movie to anyone who dares to take a chance on this movie it is a classic that will forever be burned into my heart.

HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET

It was a really bad movie. It wasnt even scary it was mostly just trying to trick me. Well congrats. You did it. I didn't see most of that coming but who cares? IT SUCKED!

SATURDAY:
THE DETAILS

It was an artistic movie with alot of symbolism but it just wasn't a good movie! It needed to have a stronger story. It dissapointed me how bad this movie was. I was very sad.

DARK SKIES

I saw this one at my friend's birthday party so it was hard to take it seriously but it was one of the better movies i saw this week. It kept me interested and that is all that i needed.

SUNDAY
THE INTERNSHIP

This movie is so great and i just loved it. It brang back the duo from the movie wedding crashers but it was better. Movies as funny as this are hard to come by.

SLOW WEEK... It will get better.

Bribery for Porpoisemonkey's Summer Challenge

     As some of you may know (most likely you have no clue who we are, but if you do, hello there; if you don't, I'll say the same thing, but now it will have a creepier connotation to it :) ), Porpoisemonkey challenged himself to achieve an ambitious goal by the end of August. More specifically, he claimed that he could watch 250 (not a typo, there) full movies and offer an insight review for each and everyone of them by the end of August. Given that he's had trouble maintaining any sort of regular posting habit, blog/video segment or any sort of achievement pertaining to  Filmed2Death, Gamed2Death or any of our media outlets, I simply couldn't look upon this proposal with any sort of notable respect (have I ever openly announced any sort of respect for Porpoisemonkey's self-initiated challenges? No? Just making sure), and therefore, decided to throw in a factor of persuasion.
     Basically, I told him that if he could actually do what he said out to do by the given date, in all fairness and honesty, I would pay him 5$. I know it's a bribe; don't care what you think about it, it's already done. So that's what he'll be doing for the next three months. Of course, we'll be distracting him whenever possible with other intriguing offers, whether or not those relate in anyway to either of our blogs or Youtube enterprise, so don't fall under the false impression that I just trashed five dollars. Even if I did, remember, this was for you people, so you could finally have access to satisfactory activity on this blog. The only thing that would surpass the amount of posts Porpoisemonkey's promised to make in the next three months (which, to put into a relative perspective, is a greater number of posts than we attended to producing on Gamed2Death in the entirety of 2011 and 2012 combined ), would be if he finally took the freakin' time to roll of of his couch and give me and Anglerbe admin rights so we could make this place look halfway decent. Well, that's all for now, thanks for your time! Please feel free to comment and subscribe to us on Youtube! Or at least pressure Porpoisemonkey into making me an admin. Thanks! Or not, if you didn't actually read all of this.

Edit: Porpoisemonkey just enlightened me upon the fact that I've actually known his password for about six months now, meaning I could have made myself an admin. Oh well, I already wrote all this, no point in hitting backspace really.

Summer Goal 2013

Hello. It's been awhile since i posted to Filmed2Death but I am happy to announce that every Sunday i will be posting a weekly report on what movies i have watched for that week. I am doing this because i have set an estimate that i will watch 250 movies just this summer alone. and at least 2 seasons of a TV series (the seasons can vary.) I am going to be watching many movies this summer and i believe this is an accomplishable goal. I have roughly 100 days to watch all this and i am sure i can make it. So... Let the games begin.

Anglerbe's Retro Review: Alien

 “Alien” is one of the first “horror” movies I’ve seen in quite a while, and one of the only I’ve ever actually enjoyed. In the horror genre, there are two major sub categories. On one hand are gore movies, which only seem to have somewhat of a plot to tie together bloody scenes and cheap jump scares.  On the other are what you might refer to as thriller or suspense movies, which use atmosphere to develop a genuine sense of fear. I think that it is a testament to its ability to resist age that Alien, with its outdated visual and audio effects, manages to capture such an atmosphere almost perfectly even today.

In my opinion, a great thriller story is one that is mildly believable, if not very likely. For this same reason, I appreciate Survival Horror video games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. With the possible exception of a scene or two, Alien manages to maintain this same sense of potential realism for its entire duration. While plenty of violent scenes are present, none of them seem to just be there for the sake of violence and gore. Another thing I hate about typical gore-horror movies is that very commonly the monster or entity is unbelievably invincible while everyone else is as durable as cotton candy. While the alien in Alien may be guilty of this to some extent, I can at least say that it’s remotely believable. Nobody ever trips and breaks their leg spontaneously, somehow incapable of movement. A fair number of good filming techniques contribute to this believable factor.

Arguably one of the most common and important techniques in establishing atmosphere is lighting, and Alien handles this incredibly well. I don’t believe that it’s necessary for a movie to be pitch-black to be suspenseful, and Alien serves as proof of this, with its mildly dark but contrasting lighting, as well as its purple-bluish hue throughout the majority of the film. The sound effects and soundtrack aren’t quite as good as the lighting, but serve their purposes well nevertheless, helping to establish a believable sense of isolation and suspense.

The acting in this movie is perhaps its greatest strength, with the majority of character interactions (and reactions) being very believable, helping pull the viewer into the movie. Sigourney Weaver plays an excellent role as the protagonist, although it isn’t at first clear who the protagonist is. The one exception is one of the crew members, Lambert, who is more akin to a typical dumb blonde in a gore movie. Regarding the story, I have stated many times already that it maintains a sense of plausibility. The sci-fi, futuristic theme of the movie is quite believable and well executed as well, given once again that some of the movies special effects are dated. Even an out-of-the-blue sci-fi plot twist is not beyond credibility. The movie also carries undertones that the greed of human beings (and potentially other unspecified beings) is ultimately responsible for the events that transpire.

Overall, I enjoyed this film, and certainly don’t regret having seen it. It’s not the greatest I’ve ever seen, but it’s far from the worst, with its quality acting and atmospheric techniques. It was enjoyable enough that I am interested in watching at least one of the sequels when I get the chance. On a one to ten scale, I rank this movie an 8/10. Ultimately, I would recommend this movie, as it represents a quality suspenseful experience far better than any gore movie could ever offer.

Anglerte's Review: Amelie

The contrast between the typically marketed, cliché, money-making, often repulsive and over glorified productions of Hollywood, and the strongly developed, emotionally manipulative and artistically crafted films of French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is fairly strong to say the absolute least. While it’s not to be mistaken that there are plenty of professional American films, as well as many indie films, which have recently increased in popularity on multiple video hosting websites, that strive for artistic beauty and creative depth (and most of these succeed to some degree and in some manner), it seems that the majority of films that have recently received strong support and sponsorship from the media and other powerfully influential yet biased sources. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of reenactments of extremely cheesy dialogue, unrealistic plot progression or outlandish scenarios, and the spamming of special effects which are all strongly present in most big-budget American action films. Sadly, these features seem to feature the qualities of a contagious virus, in that they are now spreading to genres where they do not belong, where intriguing plot and artistic attention should be a strong focus, not neglected inferiors to “action, explosions, death, blood, gore, guns, action, blood, people running, action explosions and more action.”  

Having established a sliver of my distaste for movies founded on such things (for truthfully, even action movies could successfully incorporate value beyond mindless entertainment while still retaining genre essentials), I must say that Amelie did an excellent job of taking seemingly insignificant details and coating them with attractive values so that they ultimately proved more worthy of far more respect than the most “epic” (a nauseatingly abused term)  scene in an American penny-pinching cliché Hollywood action film. Not only was this accomplished in a sense of establishing dynamic tones, but it was also accomplish in a bit more literal sense, more specifically, with the use of color grading. I noticed that most of the scenes were enhanced with a sort of golden overlay that seemed to contained hints of green and red. These warm colors reflected optimistic emotion and comfortable atmosphere, as warmth tends to do when applied properly. Without these colors, the tone of certain scenes which relied more on visual demonstration than verbal interaction would have been less successfully articulated in the way that the director probably wanted.

The story telling of this film was intriguing in that it relied on the presence of a narrator who remained otherwise insignificant to the plot. He explained sub-plot details (as well as extraneous information) in a swift, factual and often quirky manner that highlighted boring occurrences with a sense of value. Often times, there were large cuts in clips as to summarize small details in a fluent manner, and this ultimately added to the film’s quirky nature as well as it provided the notion of plot progression through storytelling, rather than in real time. The balances between time spent at each segment of Amelie’s life were proportionately fair, as they allowed for the explanation of key background information without taking away from key focus points, and the inclusion of specific details from the histories of less significant characters allowed for several areas of connection between said characters and the audience. I appreciated the attention to settle characteristic details that are often foolishly neglected by many story tellers, despite that the forming of (even settle) connections between a story and its audience is almost always vital to the creation of a successfully entertaining work of art.

Based on evidence that this film articulates with beautiful and underused techniques, I believe that the core message of this film is that, regardless of how conflict ridden one’s life and environment may seem, and despite the dullness and misery with which harsh perceptions of reality often clouds our aspirations, the true values of life can easily be revealed through acts of kindness, selflessness, devoted respect and creativity as well as an appreciation for the appalling beauty portrayed by all life that is all too often neglected.

There were countless scenes in the film whose unique structure and creative fluency captured my attention, interest and respect; however, I believe that one, or rather, several of the same nature, particularly deserved considerable attention. The scenes that depicted the brittle artist from the perspective of Amelie’s window allowed viewers to capture the sense of separation and spectatorship that Amelie experienced from her own perspective, while stilling allowing for a clear view of the artist’s environment and actions; nothing was cluttered or confusing throughout the short progression of these scenes, and it was not necessary to force viewers to observe the artist from an unrealistically informed, third person perspective that would have severed the immediate connection between viewers and Amelie for the remaining duration of that scene. Even if such shots as those were ultimately used as well, the inclusion of a first person perspective, specifically one of a furtive witness, certainly benefitted the film’s diverse library of dynamic and often spontaneous cinematic methods in a way that not all films attend to the achieving of. 9/10