Living in Europe I really don’t follow the elections in the United States in much detail. I will hear about who’s running for each party and occasionally see some background detail or some jokes about a candidate, but that’s about it. Game Change looks into the presidential election of 2008, when Obama was running against McCain. Continue reading
A while ago I really felt like revisiting Schwarzeneggers Last Action Hero. I ordered the DVD and it came with another movie of his, The 6th Day. Having seen it now I’m still not completely sure if I had seen it before, but if I had I had forgotten almost all of it. Continue reading
Schools aim to help their students reach their full potential. In American schools there are a lot of things you can participate in, whether that is sports, debating or music. Students try to excel in whatever they do, but to do that you need to have a great teacher. Conrad O. Johnson was such a teacher at Kashmere High School. He managed to make his Kashmere Stage Band one of the best school bands in the country, who even toured the world because of their skill and show. Continue reading
The Salton Sea in California was created in 1905 when the Colorado River had so much water that it flooded the area. The water stayed and it quickly became a place for tourists to spend a day at the beach. People settled there in the 1950’s forming various towns including Bombay Beach. Since the surrounding area consists of desert it slowly lost its glory and now it’s a shadow of what it used to be. Director Alma Har’el decided to make a documentary about the town. Just like Errol Morris did in Vernon, Florida it paints a picture of a few of the people living there. Continue reading
Despite knowing that this was a movie not a lot of people seemed to like (one look at Rotten Tomatoes makes that clear) I still was curious to see if this would be a movie I’d enjoy. I haven’t seen The Fall yet (but the DVD is waiting on my “to watch” stack and remembering that The Cell (which I saw while on holiday in Florida) was visually striking I wanted to find out if director Tarsem Singh managed to do the same with this movie. Continue reading
Humanity has always wondered if we are alone in the universe. Is life on this tiny grain of sand on the vast beach called the universe unique? With UFO sightings and projects like SETI we are looking for answers, but have still not found an answer. In this movie another earth appears and people want to find out more about it. One of them is Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling), a young student who looks up at the sky when she hears about it and in doing so causes a horrible accident which changes her own life and that of others. Continue reading
Looking at the screenshot above you might not know what to think of this movie. I probably would not have giving this movie a chance if I hadn’t seen it in the IMDB top 250. It made me curious about it, but didn’t get around to ordering it (usually buy my movies online). As I strolled through town I saw it in the window of a small record store and immediately went in to buy it. So is it any good? Continue reading
Most of you have probably heard of the case in which an elderly lady spilled hot coffee on her lap, ended up suing McDonald’s and was awarded 2.1 million dollars. There was a lot of controversy around the case and the case has been used numerous times as an example of frivolous lawsuits. This documentary looks at this case and gets the facts straight, but also others and tries to show that most people don’t know the facts and that this has resulted in changes to the justice system that in the end only benefit the big corporations. Continue reading
As a movielover/blogger I’m a big fan of the possibility of exploration in film. I sometimes feel like Indiana Jones discovering old treasures that amaze me. It’s a great thing to be able to do that because movies are seen as an important medium that should be taken care of. Movies allow you to experience a different time with different values or take you to worlds you’d never be able to imagine. These Amazing Shadows is a documentary which looks into the world of preservation, more specifically the National Film Registry, which is a list of American movies that is expanded each year. Each movie in this list is preserved in the Library of Congress, which allows future generations to experience them. The movies are selected by the United States National Film Preservation Board and it becomes clear that the people selecting them love movies as much as we do. Continue reading
The rise of technology has had a big impact on the world including the world of film. Digital cameras are now of the quality that it is possible to make your own low-budget movie in HD. Even special effects can now be done on you PC at home and this has resulted in some interesting low-budget movies in recent years. Bellflower has been made with a tiny budget of $17000 and shot on a camera that director/editor/producer/writer and actor Evan Glodell made himself. He made the camera because he wanted a unique look he might not get out of “normal” cameras. It’s an interesting approach, but is the end result worth watching? Continue reading