o noooo the world has come to an end

so this is what the end feels like...so full of sorrow and nostalgia.
the art of film was an amazing and extremely refreshing class. i feel so enlightened. it taught me a lot of things about film that i never knew before, and how to see things through different perspectives. i now watch films with new respect.

i had so much fun in art of film and now that it's over, i'm going to be depressed for the rest of my life. just kidding.
it should be a full year course since it's totally enriching and insightful. i miss it already. *sniffles*

mr. D deserves a round of applause for his hard work, ingenuity, and funny jokes!

* APPLAUSE *

ooooh my god.

"cinema paradiso" is soooo freakin awwwwwesomely brilliant. it's definitely one of the better ones we saw in class, if not the best. this film is the reason why i find foreign films so intriguing. it shows us a different view of the world that's full of imagination and beauty and how wonderful life can be (but often taken for granted). the story of this film is very heartwarming, and the bond between toto and his friend alfredo (philippe noiret) is very sweet.

"cinema paradiso" is a film about film. it starts with the old toto looking back on his childhood upon hearing the death of his beloved friend alfredo, and it takes us through young toto's (salvatore cascio) journey into adulthood and his love for film and a girl named elena (agnese nano). both characters, young toto and alfredo are very likable. toto is a curious and clever kid, and alfredo is kind and sort of a child himself. the chemistry between them is amazing.

even though the film is over two hours long and has a few long dialogues, i wasn't bored at all. it had the opposite effect on me. the film is so magical, yet unbelievably real. i didn't want it to end. it's truly a piece of art.

poor buffaloes...

"the searchers" is my second western film. umm....i didn't like it that much, even though i always try to see the best elements in a film. the main character ethan (john wayne) is supposed to be the hero of the film, but he's racist and likes his sister in law. i didn't find the character charming or extremely intelligent, and also he was cranky throughout the film so i was feeling a bit cranky too from watching him being cranky.

there's also a lot of unnecessary violence. i like films with a lot of action, but in this one, the violence was stupid and not epic. why didn't the searchers and the indians negotiate? they were acting like savages, it was hilarious. in a sad way. ethan and his people were randomly killing the indians and taking out their anger on buffaloes. i would be pretty pissed if i were an innocent buffalo who's just chillin' and hanging out when suddenly out of nowhere get shot in the face. talk about disrespect for your fellow earth inhabitants...

the part that kept me from completely disliking the film is what ethan did at the end. he finally came to his senses and decided not to kill his niece debbie (natalie wood), who he originally intended to save but later decided to kill because he feared she might've been changed into an indian.
ethan did the right thing. i'm proud of him, but i still don't like him.

the landscape in the film was beautiful though.

hand me the treasure map or i'll shoot yo ass in the head!

treasure hunting movies are awesome. they're full of puzzles and danger, and of course, gold. "national treasure: book of secrets" is a pretty good film. not mind blowing, but solid. some action scenes were so intense they made me bite my nails even though i'm not a nail biter.

this one is certainly better than the first one even though the plots are similar: ben gates (nicolas cage) and his friend justin do some illegal things in order to find the city of gold and clear ben's great grandfather's name. then they find clues that lead to more clues which lead to the treasure (in another underground/cave of some sort), but they encounter some kind of catastrophe relating to the treasure, and finally, they narrowly escape.

compared to the first one, book of secrets has more humor and action. also, the villain in the film is humanized at the end. he actually wasn't trying to kill everyone. instead, he did something very noble. to me, that's the most heart warming part of the film.

lola should be a marathon runner

"run lola run" is a very creative and artistic german film. it combines animation and realism, which makes the film more unique . whoever came up with the idea should get a sticker.
i liked the film a lot because it's very fast paced (partially because of the electronic/techno music), and it has many unexpected twists and turns.

when the main character lola (franka potente) first got shot by a policeman, i thought she was going to die. instead, the film shows us a flashback, and what would've happened if she made a different decision on how to find money to save her boyfriend manni (moritz bleibtreu). even though we saw lola's quest to find money three times, each was different and more interesting than the last. this just shows that every choice we make matters, and every small thing we do affect other people, even strangers.

baldies have an advantage in combat because shiny heads hurt people's eyes

my best friend and i were just talking about a movie he recently saw called "hitman". it's about "an assasin known only as agent 47 hired by a group known only as 'the agency' is ensnared in a political conspiracy, which finds him pursued by both interpol and the russian military as he treks across eastern europe."
after viewing the trailer, i found out that agent 47 (timothy olyphant) is bald and has a bar code on the back of his head. sounds familiar doesn't it? the bar code thing reminds me of "dark angel" and the maximum ride novels.

anyway, d now worships agent 47, who's a real badass, and wants to be like him. i hope he was kidding.
we were wondering why the main character's name/number is 47, so d did some research, and came upon some interesting stuff that might explain why the agent was named 47. here's what he found:

1. the bubonic plague began the black death epidemic in europe and asia in 1347. it has a 74% mortality rate and killed 47% of europe's population
2. it kills in 4-7 days. although only 47% of europe was left dead, this included 74% of england's population
3. it vanished from europe for 11 years (4+7) before returning
4. the twa plane accident in 1996, the plane model was the 747
5. 147,000 hungarians were killed in action in world war 2
6. western samoa gained independence from new zealand after 47 years of colonial rule
7. 47 screws were missing from a boeing 737's horizontal stabilizer rudder which crashed in the phillipines

so 47 is connected to a lot of disastrous events. my theory on why the hitman was named 47 is he is deadly and sinful and feared by most people, like the bubonic plague.
i'm not sure about the last four results and their accuracy. they're kinda random.

i didn't see "hitman", but i probably will once it comes out on dvd. it's a bit mysterious and i'm tempted to find out more about the dangerous baldy.

be still, my heart

we saw a hong kong film in class this time! it's called "chungking express", and it's definitely not how i expected a romance movie to be like. this one's more abstract. the blurred colors and flashing lights and unsettling tune on the accordion at the beginning of the film create an atmosphere that feels dangerous, yet exhilarating.

the film is divided into two parts, the first about cop 223 (played by the handsome takeshi kaneshiro), a sensitive, thoughtful, but naive young man who just had his heart broken. although he was unwilling to move on, he was very philosophical. i thought he was a likable character. his monologues in mandarin were poetic and romantic and i felt his pain, but the english translations made them sound totally cheesy.

anyway, one night, he meets a mysterious female drug dealer in a blond wig (brigitte lin), and seems to be enchanted by her. then she falls asleep and he kindly takes care of her. the next morning, after he goes out for a run, he receives a message from her wishing him a happy birthday. he then felt deeply touched that she actually remembered his birthday, and thought that perhaps someone cared about him.
then the first story ends....
it felt a bit incomplete. we were not rewarded with what happens between the two characters in the future. i can't see them becoming lovers , but maybe they'll be friends (kinda ironic, considering their jobs).

while the first half of the film lacks closure, the second half is more polished and developed. it's also funnier and less muted. the story happens within close proximity of the first story. it's also about a cop , 633 (tony leung), who is going through a difficult breakup. he then meets a girl named faye (faye wong) who works at the food counter he frequently goes to. faye's character is different from the blond woman's. faye is more innocent, open, carefree, and a little nutty. signs of her strangeness start to show when she falls for cop 633 and gets hold of his apartment key and starts rearranging his furnitures and other things without him knowing, to make his life happier. if it wasn't creepy, it would've been sweet. faye wong did a great job on portraying a crazy person. tony leung too.
the ending of this story is less ambiguous and faye and cop 633's relationship shows promise to blossom into something stronger.

i kinda enjoyed the film, because a big chunk of it is the characters' dialogs and thoughts. they're deep and peculiar, with a bit of sadness on the side. the words spoken and exchanged manage to maintain the film's subtle romantic streak without needing to add scenes of physical passion.

i would watch the film again just to hear the poetic lines and be artistically confused once more. it's a wondrous kind of confusion.

Donnie Darko

(this review contains juicy spoilers)

it was on one fateful day in october of 1988 that an antisocial teenager named donnie darko (jake gyllenhaal) narrowly escaped from a plane engine which landed in his bedroom and he received a rather peculiar visitor - a demented looking bunny-man with insanitary teeth named frank (james duval), who told donnie that the world was going to end in 28 days. never in donnie's wildest dreams did he know that he and the lives of others would be forever changed.

donnie was a troubled teenager who was sarcastic and gloomy and was living with a dysfunctional family. although he was plagued by imperfections, he was a thoughtful and curious person. after frank's visit, donnie started to question the existence of time travel and to run frank's strange errands, such as flooding the school and burning down the house of the child porn owner named jim cunningham (patrick swayze). donnie's many often irrational actions alter the lives of others in small, yet significant ways, whether beneficial or harmful, which further shows that everyone is tied together by a string.

at the end of the film, after donnie's girlfriend gretchen (jena malone) died because of him, he decided to sacrifice himself in order to bring gretchen back to life and return the universe to its natural state of being. because of that, donnie was a tragic hero.

"donnie darko" is a spectacular sci-fi film because not only does it explore the supernatural world, it also appeals to the viewers' emotions. the film effectively applies distressing and sinister music where needed, and slow motion in scenes that are significant. although the film is very open ended and the events in the film all seem to flow in a circle, it does leave the viewers room for more imaginative speculation.