Comment for May

 

Commented on Intro Film Block C Julie Han’s Blog

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Finally, Harry Potter and the Half-blood prince, one of the anticipated movies of the year is coming out this July 6^th! Harry Potter series has become immensely popular with critical acclaim and commercial success world-wide that is also gaining success in the films.

Harry Potter has been passed through the hands of four directors- Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Newell, and David Yates, each of whom brought their own distinctive style to the movie. As the year passed, with new series of Harry Potter movie coming out, the stories have become darker and more thematically complex with all the young actors maturing along with their characters. Also the technologies that help create the beautiful fantasy-action illusion to the film have developed, showing more and more advanced computer-generated characters, props, and magic.

The First two films directed by Chris Columbus portrayed more of a kiddie-comedy. But in the third film, the setting has somehow changed by the tone and color, with dark, flat lighting that gave away a somber dangerous feel, like a horror film using colors of black, grey, dark green, and blue. With improving technology, shots, and computer generated advancement, the 6^th Harry Potter film will surely be a great intense movie with darker, mature themes that will have more action and peril that is sure to grab millions of Harry Potter fans and movie viewers all around the world.   

Does film reviews impact a film’s box office success?

While I was searching on the web, I read an interesting article that questioned me if film reviews impact a film’s box office success. Yet, according to a study released by Copernicus, a global marketing strategy and research firm, the answer was no.

 

Even though sometimes movie critics are right about the success of movies such as “Toy Story 2” and “American Beauty” which engrossed more than $100 million at the box office, bad reviews are still successful in surpassing $100 million at the box office such as “Big Daddy” “The Mummy”. Also, movies that were praised by critics did poorly at the box office such as the movie “Election” and “Boys Don’t Cry”

 

There was a study that was conducted by Copernicus by analyzing 100 most noteworthy films of 1999, gathering reviews on each movie from 15 nationally notable movie critics. Each reviewer rated films on a five point scale and they looked at the variety of statistical tools to examine the relationship between the movie reviews and the box office sales performance. Correlation coefficients were calculated and scaled from -1.0 indicating a perfect negative relationship to 1.0 indicating a perfect positive relationship. By doing this to all of the films by all of the reviewers, it was discovered that there was a weak negative relationship between the critics’ recommendations and box office performance, showing that the relationship is the opposition direction of what might have been predicted.

Top Grossing Movies vs. Critics’ Ratings
1999 Movie	Box Office Sales (millions)	Box Office Rank Order	Critics’ Average Rating	Critics’ Rank Order (1-100)
Star Wars: Episode I	431	1	2.57	79
Sixth Sense	287	2	3.80	21
Toy Story 2	241	3	4.62	3
Austin Powers	206	4	2.87	62
Matrix	172	5	3.67	25
Tarzan	171	6	3.90	23
Big Daddy	163	7	2.08	91
Mummy	155	8	1.23	88
Runaway Bride	152	9	2.36	85
Blair Witch Project	141	10	2.87	63

Even though there is no significant relationship between what critics think of a film and domestic box office sales, it clearly proved that what critics think about a film appears to have no impact on box office success. Sometimes, movies negatively reviewed by critics were somewhat more likely to be strong box office performers than weak ones.

Source: Copernicus

Secret*

This movie gives you such a strong impression that cannot be easily forgotten.

This movie is about Jay (Jay Chou), who transfers to a famous performing arts school where he wants to deepen his piano studies. On his first day while looking around school, he hears a beautiful melody in the old piano room where he meets a pretty girl named Rain (Guey Lun-Mei). Instantly, they spend time together and slowly fall in love. But Jay wants to know more about Rain but Rain is always full of secrets…

The plot itself is actually a typical, innocent, and sweet romantic tale with flirting, a perfect love at first sight cliché, and fairy-tale dialogues between the main characters. But the special thing about this movie is time travelling: falling in love with a past-present person. This movie shows something that cannot happen in real life, making the viewers attracted to know if this kind of love really works…

 

 

Even though, there were some committed mistakes, all are forgiven with the exquisitely portrayed scenes/shots and the enchanting music played throughout this movie. This movie shows the many green parks and the interior rooms with wonderful architecture and great furnishing that will grab the viewer’s attention. In this movie, we can say that music is the movie’s background, story, and the main characters. Chopin, Rachmaninoff, is some of the known classic numbers that are played during the movie.  Jay Chou learned the piano for sixteen years, and throughout this movie, he showed-off his skills and his love towards playing the piano. This movie also got to prove Jay Chou as a skillful person being a director, lead actor, talented music performer and showed his performance, originality, and imagination.

 People like me, who do not know classic very well, can still enjoy hearing the fascinating and great pieces and even the piano battle scene.   The movie is really strong with the twist in the end, unconditional love and truth, and beauty through the screen that exquisitely connects with the music and the charms of each of the characters, all in all produced a great romantic film.

 

Watching Slumdog Millionaire

Finally! After all the anticipation and awards the movie has won, I decided to watch this movie! This movie was surely not a disappointment.  This movie had one of the most colorful, unique, beautiful scenes and cinematography with fantastic, thrilling soundtracks that grabbed my attention.  The colorful scenes portrayed the beautiful locations of India and gave an impression of the beauty and horrors of living in Bombay.  This movie had such a heart-wrenching story: of love, joy, sadness, thrill, greed using flashbacks to show a journey in time and culture using three different actors for three different ages. Also, the kids who acted younger sets of the characters did fantastic acts for the movie.   This was one of the best movies I have watched in 2009 or the past few years and now I understand why this movie had won so many awards and gained attention. Not only did I love this film, but this film gave me hope, inspiration, and encouragement.

The Luggage: New Project in FILM

In our film class we decided to start on a new project to film. We got to choose any genre of movies but had to have a similar title for the project. I was so excited to start on a new project with my filmmates again. I hope we improve and do a better job than “Life through Plastic Lens” because we have learned many film techniques by doing the film. So I hope we make a better film from the things we have learned. Our new project is going to be exciting and fun. It is a humorous mockumentary about IASAS culcon and about a Singaporean guy who experiences a different culture from living with a Filipino family for a couple of days.  We have already finished writing the script and making the storyboard and schedule. I cant wait to start filming ! 

Awards & Slumdog Millionaire

Film Awards Important?

Awards or no awards

In this world there probably may be hundreds of films that are filmed, shown, criticized, and praised. But how can all these creative and appraising films all get acknowledged and awarded? The awards that are given to once a year could be called “prestigious”, “grand” films that may be exceedingly praised and noticed by the media and listed as a important accomplishment, yet there are also other films that are also successful, creative, inspirational that has been greatly praised and favored but not awarded. Even though many may agree with the awards given, awards should not determine how good a film is because everyone may have different opinions and thoughts about a movie. All exceeding films should deserve an award for the effort put into the production. There are not enough awards for all these inspiring films.  

 

 Will “Slumdog Millionaire” success affect the Indian Cinema?

The “Slumdog Millionaire” casts are celebrating, the whole Mumbai, India is celebrating, and even the President of India is congratulating. The “Slumdog Millionaire” has not only been successful but it also swept eight Oscars! Many people loved seeing the beautifully shot feel-good story of “Slumdog Millionaire,” however, Indian cultural films will not be rising and being recognized as fast to Hollywood but this may slowly find its way into people’s awareness because of the cultural differences. Yet thanks to “Slumdog Millionaire” famous recognition, this may be the chance for film makers in India to create better, creative films that will be as successful as “Slumdog Millionaire.” Nowadays, many people are not only interested in Hollywood films but have taken interest in other cultural films. I hope that film makers and film viewers will pay more attention to not only Indian films but worldwide films.  

Useful Resources

I rarely seen any suitable and enjoyable film-related sites, but I was so surprised to see so many different kinds of film sites in our film blog. One of the site I chose was “Beyond Hollywood” When I entered the site I got the opportunity to read witty reviews about movies, not only from the United States, but also various kinds of movies created from all over the world such as Asian movies and European movies. Not only did the site contain reviews, but it also has recent updated news and headlines, anything related to film. This can help me become updated with many kinds of movies and news about film which will help me become closer to the surroundings of film.

 

 

The 66th Golden Globe Awards

On January 11 2009, The 66th Golden Globe Awards was held in Beverly Hills, California. Previous years, I would have been unconcerned about the movies, awards, winners, and losers. But this year, the Golden Globe Awards attracted me to see the winners and see the results of the best movies, actors, actresses, and TV shows. At first, I was disappointed that I have seen only a couple of movies that was in the nominated list of movies. After I saw that “Slumdog Millionaire” swept 4 awards including Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score. I really look forward to get the chance to watch this movie. I was also glad that Heath Ledger received what he should have received, the Best Performance by Actor in Supporting Role and also Kate Winslet for receiving 2 awards for her excellent role in “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader.”   Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.

The Best of Movies Seen in 2008

 My Personal Favorites ♥

The Best of Movies Seen in 2008

 1.       The Good, the Bad, the Weird

Being the most expensive South Korean movie to date, “The Good, the Bad, the Weird” is really astounding. The breath-taking colorful desert scenery is beautifully shot at every angle and shots with magnificent colors and lighting, the superb cinematography with lots of action scenes and camera movements of fast cuts and flying shots gets a thumbs up with great costume design worn by various characters played by the most talented actors of Korea, and the fun and exciting mix of western and modern soundtrack helped create a mind-blowing, non-stop action film with humor, excitement, thrill.

 

 

2.    Once

“Once” is a beautiful touching musical film with almost alike-documentary that shows realism and modern day music of the humorous and passionate musical bond collaboration of the two characters and their growing love. This film is simple yet shows lots of specialty surrounding music. It is romantic with a great feeling to listen to music. 

 

 

 

 

 

3.  Juno 

“Juno” is a sweet yet hilarious movie about a teenager becoming pregnant and how this situation is dealt in a light comedy. The witty script and dialogue spices up the humor of the characters to gain the audience’s attention and praise. This movie is smart and heartwarming. Even though it is a serious subject, this movie portrays it in a natural mature way and gives a light comedy and touching scenes in the end.