Reel Change: This guy is gonna direct Wolverine? Black Swan Rev...

Reel Change: This guy is gonna direct Wolverine? Black Swan Rev...: "8.5/10, here's why: Black Swan is this winter's highly anticipated Darren Aronofsky film staring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and Vincent ..."

This guy is gonna direct Wolverine? Black Swan Review

8.5/10, here's why:

Black Swan is this winter's highly anticipated Darren Aronofsky film staring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and Vincent Cassel. The story revolves around a young and fragile-minded ballerina played by Portman, who is overcome by the lead role she must play in Swan Lake. Mila Kunis plays a new arrival to the dance company, and Portman's character is paranoid that her lead role will be plucked away from her by the new ballerina. Portman sways in and out of what is real and what is in her mind as she battles to hold it together and attain perfection on the stage. 

This film is very Aronofsky. Things really fall apart and sink to the deepest depths like his other films. If you've seen Requiem for Dream or The Wrestler, all you have to do is watch the trailer for Black Swan and see that Darren made this film. It is very dark, and explores the collapse of the human psyche, a common theme in Aronofsky films. This being said, the film is a gem and a must see. The camera work and acting are top notch in Black Swan and creates tense moments of suspense, disbelief and paranoia. You are entrenched in the dance company's routine and everything that surrounds the production of a ballet. Portman will be in the running for Best Actress in March with her excellent portrayal of a fragile and prude girl trying desperately to be perfect on the stage. Aronofsky's use of mirrors serve as stylistic watermarks in propelling the feeling of a world crumbling in front of Portman's eyes. The blacks and whites in the film serve to contrast the white swan and black swan roles that Portman must come to terms with. 

This is a film that will mark Aronofsky's ascendance as an auteur in not just the film industry but in film history. Many will see similarities between Black Swan and The Wrestler, as they follow singular characters, and indeed Black Swan was meant to be a companion piece with the Wrestler. I am skeptical of Aronofsky's next film which is Wolverine. I can't really come to terms with someone who makes a great work like Black Swan and then making an action hero film. Chris Nolan is in the same realm. These comic book films don't really lend themselves to have a directors style stamped upon them, which makes them like any other huge budget blockbuster film. I am picturing Wolverine having a nervous breakdown after taking pain pills and then hunched over puking in the toilet when I think of Wolverine+Aronofsky. 

Overall, this is one of the best films that I have seen this year, and it will win a hefty amount of awards in acting and directing categories. It's a film that you will come away with appreciation of filmmaking and acting. Go see it. 

  

Complete Control

Today I wanted to talk about the filmmakers who have left their mark on cinema, and some of the trends we see in todays filmmakers.

It takes many people, resources, days, months, years, money and ideas to create any sort of film and brought to the audience. We usually see the fame and fortune given to a select number of people involved in the making of a film and it's usually the lead actors and the director. The role of the actors is more industrial, as it is their faces and personalities that are harnessed to sell and market a film to an audience, whereas the directors actions are singular in his or her purpose in making the film.

The term auteur was placed on the filmmakers who have their hands in every frame, every shot, and every word of the film by Cahiers du Cinema back in the 1950s. Cahiers du Cinema was a film magazine in France and really ignited the French New Wave of filmmakers like Godard, Melville, Trufaut and Varda.

The term auteur should not be given to just any filmmaker. An auteur, like a painter has a certain style and must build a certain pattern in their films that can be referred to from one film to the next. Now, every filmmaker has his or her style filmmaking and builds upon that, but what an auteur filmmaker does is lend their style to the story to his or her filmmaking style. For example, Stanley Kubrick's films his characters are often distanced from societal expectations like Private Pile in Full Metal Jacket or Alex in A Clockwork Orange.

 Auteur films generally lend themselves to certain film genres like dramas, crime, and historical films, because these genres center on interpersonal stories and interactions between people that the audience can relate to in their daily lives. Because of this I question those who dub directors who make comic book movies and high budget Hollywood films as auteurs. So now I will open the floor to discussion and list the ten best auteurs in Cinema history and a list of promising auteurs today.

Today's Best

1. Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich)
2. Gaspar Noé (Irreversible)
3. Wes Anderson (Life Aquatic) 
4. Darren Aronofsky (Requiem For A Dream)
5. Claire Denis (35 Shots of Rum)

All Times

1. Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, Rear Window)
2. Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai, Ran)
3. Stanley Kurbrick (A Clockwork Orange, Doctor Stangelove)
4. Orson Wells (Citizen Kane, A Touch of Evil)
5. Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, The Departed)
6. Jean Renoir (The Rules Of The Game, Grand Illusion)
7. Fredrico Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2)
8. Roman Polanski (Chinatown, The Pianist)
9. Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather II, Apocalypse Now)
10. Milos Forman (Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

Colin T. Landon

Something Tomorrow

I've been putting it off because of school, but tomorrow I will post something on auteurs.

Carlos - Official Trailer [HD]

Hi all, I have been busy with school, however I promise to watch this film and write a review about it as well as make a list of greatest directors as soon as I am done with finals. Cheers.

Reel Change - A blog about Cinema

This is a blog for people who appreciate film and its universal ability to inspire, entertain, and draw upon emotions. I would like to take this time to give some background on myself and give some general information about what this blog will become.

My name is Colin Landon and I am a film major at the University of Arizona. I am from Seattle but was born in Anchorage, Alaska. I began filmmaking in my Junior High days when I was a sponsored snow skater and made films with my friends. I came to Arizona for college in 2007 and was certain that I wanted to be a business major, work in a big downtown building in New York and live the corporate dream. Business is definitely the way the world turns, but it is extremely dry and not exciting at all when you have to learn it in a big lecture hall about bottom lines all the time. So I made the switch to Film Producing and have really found what I love to do. It's a very competitive industry, and I have family who don't quite know what film really leads to. But anything worth working in is hard and takes time. Law school and med school are an additional 4-5 years because the average person can't and shouldn't represent you in court or take your blood pressure while the under qualified lawyer is representing you. Film is the same, the average person cannot make films even with technology becoming more and more accessible. Film is just less institutionalized as other professions, therefore it is looked as more risky, but everyone has to make their own way.

I am mostly into art house, classic films, and foreign films. This blog will focus a lot on these areas but also mainstream and other films.

I want to use this blog as an outlet for films I love and films that I see. I want to express some feelings about films that many might not have seen, as a way of encouraging people to see some lesser known films. I also want to use this blog as a platform to create lists and categorial lists of films in terms of their influence and impact on film history. Finally, I would like there to be expression and debate from readers about films.

Enjoy

Colin T. Landon