MYST #3: The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums is a comedy-drama about a family of three gifted children who excel early in life, only to experience disappointment and failure later in life when their father leaves them. Chas, Margot, and Richie are the three children. Chas is a math and business genius at a very young age, Margot is a great writer and is awarded a grant for a play she wrote in ninth grade and Richie is a tennis prodigy. The mother and father, Royal and Etheline, separate and it really affects the children. Twenty-two years later, Royal is kicked out of the hotel he is living in because he is out of money and he proposes a plan to get the family back together. Richie is following the world on a cruise ship following a breakdown; he is in love with his step-sister Margot. Chas becomes extremely overprotective of his two sons, Ari and Uzi, following the death of his wife Rachael. Margot is married to a neurologist named Raleigh St. Clair, whom she hides her smoking habit from. Etheline's accountant, Henry Sherman, proposes to her and in order to win back Etheline and the love of his kids, Royal devises a plan. Royal tells Etheline that he has stomach cancer and moves in with her, all of the kids come back as well. He does not really have stomach cancer he just fakes it and takes tic-tacs as his "medicine," After his lie is exposed, Royal realizes that he just wants Etheline to be happy so they get a divorce and all of the kids move on with their lives and become rather successful. Royal dies at the end from a heart attack.

The film is portrayed as if it were a book and it goes through chapters with narration. Make up and costume design play a large role in this film and both are used to describe and complete the characters. For example, Margot wears a lot of dark eye makeup and it shows that she is a dark and complex character.
The cinematography reveals the worlds that Anderson has imagined and carefully forms a foundation for characters and subtexts to be exposed and present meaning to the audience. Anamorphic widescreen framing, sweeping and smooth crane shots, and the seldom use of handheld camera is on display in this film.
Character development is one of the main focuses in this film as each character has his or her own backstory and specific life, personality, etc. You can see how each character changes from childhood to adulthood and how the separation of the parents affects the lives of each person.
This movie is both a comedy and a drama and even in some of the more darker scenes, there are still some comedic elements that can make you laugh. I thought Wes Anderson did a great job combining drama and comedy to create a very entertaining film.
I liked this movie and I would give it a 7.5/10. There were some really funny scenes, some sad scenes, and some weird scenes, but the movie stayed interesting and entertaining throughout.

MYST #2: Good Will Hunting

I watched Good Will Hunting in my AP Psych class last week. This movie is about Will Hunting, an orphan who works at MIT as a janitor. Will spends the majority of his time hanging out with his friends, getting into fights, and he does not really spend his time wisely. Will has a gift for math and he has an incredible memory. He can remember exact pages from books and his ability to do math is unbelievable. Professor Lambeau notices Will's mathematical genius and offers to get him out of jail as long as he sees a therapist and studies math with him. Will agrees, but does not take any of the therapists seriously and the therapy is unsuccessful. Sean Maguire, played by Robin Williams, is the next therapist to attempt to help Will. Unlike the other therapists, Sean pushes back at Will and gets over his defense mechanisms, and Will begins to open up. Sean and Will ultimately come very close to each other and they both help each other out. Sean helps Will realize what is important in life and Will helps Sean cope with the death of his wife. 

This movie was very successful and received great reviews. At the 70th Academy Awards, Robin Williams won the award for Best Supporting Actor, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay.) 

The cinematography in this movie is very good, and at the beginning you realize that Will lives in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Boston, because his yard is kind of trashed and the look of the neighborhood surrounding his house looks gray and dull. One of the main settings is a local bar which has the look of a neighborhood bar with Christmas type lights strung and normal looking people filling the place. Another setting is a Harvard classroom and a community college classroom. In the Harvard classroom the students appear to be attentive, clean cut, well dressed, and enthusiastic, while the students in the community classroom are barely awake, not dressed too well, and aren't paying attention to what the professor is saying. The camera angles in this movie are very effective. When Will is trying to solve a formula he writes his work on his mirror with a dry erase marker. The camera blurs out Will and focuses on the formula and also does the opposite. While writing the formula out, the shots fade to the same shot but at a different angle creating a feeling that some time is passing by. Also, to support this feeling each time the formula is showed there is more added to it than one can write in the brief moment that it took to come back to it with the camera. Additionally, the benefit of having the scene of him writing on the mirror lets the viewer see him concentrating on the formula and lets the viewer see the formula being written out which shows the viewer how intelligent Will must be, since the formula probably made little to the viewer. Another effect was a fight scene captured in slow motion. After the fight scene the cops showed up and many flashes of the scene from different camera angles appeared creating a feeling of confusion and made it seem faster without it being filmed in fast motion. There were also several close ups of people in which the only thing that was in color was the person's eyes. 

My favorite scene from the movie is when an MIT student is trying to look intelligent in front of a couple of girls at a Bar by talking about history and then Will, because of his photographic memory, says something along the lines of "do you just memorize pages from textbooks so you can recite them and look all smart in front of others?" because he remembered word for word that what the student was saying was directly out of a certain history textbook. The student then becomes embarrassed and walks out.

Overall I really liked this movie and it was entertaining and had a good message as well. The storyline was exciting and funny at times, but also touching and sweet. I would give this movie a 9/10 and I would recommend it to anyone. This was definitely one of the best movies I have ever watched in school. 

1975 Film: Incubus

For our 1975 film, we created Incubus. This film begins with a family traveling through the woods in northern California and they get a flat tire. The family dog then proceeds to jump out of the car and wander into the woods, with the family following close behind. The dog leads them to a cult, which the family had been warned to stay away from because of the cult's crazy and satanical practices. With no where else to go for help, the family approaches the cult. The cult members are very nice to the family and offer them food and a place to sleep for the night. The family graciously accepts the offer and spends the night. This cult is an all male cult and the father and son in the family are treated well by the cult members. The women, however, not so much. The family spends more time in the cult then they were expecting and the women get ultimately raped and killed. The father and son get trapped in the cult and are forced to join.
We chose to do a horror movie for our 1975 film because horror was a very popular and successful genre during this time, for example The Exorcist. Movies during this decade were also known for "pushing the envelope," which we think this movie certainly does.
Our cast consists of Dustin Hoffman as a cult member, Clint Eastwood as the leader of the cult, Richard Dreyfuss as the Dad, Julie Christie as the Mom, Melissa Sue Anderson playing the 12 year old daughter, and Jason Bateman playing the 6 year old son. Dustin Hoffman was a prominent actor during this time and was known for playing the roles of anti-heroes and vulnerable characters. Clint Eastwood was a very famous actor at this time and played many serious roles (Dirty Harry films), and I think he would be perfect for the leader of the cult. Richard Dreyfuss and Julie Christie were two very successful and established actors/actresses during the 70's and had leading roles in movies such as American Graffiti, Jaws, and Don't Look Now. Jason Bateman began his career at a very young age playing an orphaned boy in the show "Little House on the Prairie," and he was 6 years old in 1975. Melissa Sue Anderson also starred in Little House on the Prairie at the age of 11 and was a child star. She was 13 years old in 1975.
For our studio we chose Laurel Group Inc. who produced several horror films including one of the most famous horror films of all time, Night of the Living Dead. We thought this studio with their horror film-making experience would be the best for us. It is also an independent and pretty low-budget film studio. For our distributing company we chose Bryanston Pictures due to their great horror film experience with movies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the Devil's Rain.