And Winner Of The Acadamy Award For Best Film 2010 Is…….

The Acadamey Award For Best Film 2010 is not too far away now and there are a host of great films which have been nominated to win. On the list is:

Avatar

Blind Side

District 9

An Education

Hurt Locker

Inglorious Basterds

Precious

A Serious Man

Up

Up In The Air

The question is, who will win? Unfortunatley for me, I have only watched 3 of the listed 10 films. So its difficult to predict who will win. However, I have to say that after watching Avatar (eventually) that it was an incredible story, and the 5 years that took it to completion. Stunningly realised locations, fantastic CGI and an intense and emotional story make it my prediction to be the winning film. Not only did the film showcase a unique design but also gained incredible hype throughout the release of the film. Incredibly, Avatar also surpassed records of Titanic in grossing intakes by gaining a huge $1.859 billion in its first six weeks, compared to Titanics $1.843 billion. This is also the reason in which I choose this film to be my choice of film to win the Award. I was ingrosed every minute, almost in tears at points and I didnt feel the 2.5 hours that it was. Fantastic

Career Path – Gained Skills

- Ability to use Final Cut Pro

- Ability to use Soundtrack

- Ability to use Adobe Audition

- Directed/Produced/Edited “The Conversation” (Complete)

- Directed/Produced/Edited “Sony Ericcson “Not Just A Phone” Ad”

- Ability to use DV Camera + Microphone

The plague that is Plagiarism

Plagiarism is when oneself copies the work of another source (i.e. Wikipedia) and uses it as their own work without crediting the original author/creator. It is also a form of plagiarism when quoting a line or paragraph from another source without using quotation marks and referencing. Even finding information from another source and changing the words slightly to make it out to be your own work, but still not crediting the original author is plagiarism.

If oneself uses the act of plagiarism in any form, whether it be because they want a higher grade, because they do not understand the work, or purely because they cannot be bothered to do the work, it is dealt with very seriously. The work will be not marked and the student may end up being expelled from the course. In turn this will make finding another course in the same college extremely difficult, as the college records will show that this students use of plagiarism. It may also make finding another course in a different college or university difficult if a reference was needed from the college.

In order to avoid plagiarism in writing essays, always reference your work by stating the original author and website in which you got the work from. You should also add quotation marks wherever necessary so that it is known that someone else has stated this quote not you. It is also a good idea to, when required, start sentences in such a way that states that the information comes from another source. I.e. According to the Daily Mirror website…….

Against Film Piracy

It is estimated that film piracy costs the box office $3 billion dollars a year. Film piracy (and other piracies) can affect the film industry in many different ways. Not one to watch pirated movies let alone download the films themselves, its easy for me to understand why film piracy should be banished completely.

First and most importantly, the producers will not receive their well earned money. People say that they earn enough but this is beyond the point. Much hard work and effort to make a film for the audience would be unfair to not receive  the right amount of money for. You wouldn’t think it was fair if someone said you earned enough anyway for your job and so you didn’t receive the right amount of pay for your work. The money that is not given to the right people will affect the new generation of upcoming talent and these people that would eventually normally become big film stars may not even get to become the big star they desire to be.

The quality of sound and picture on pirate DVDs tend to be poor. Some can be good but its not the same as going to the cinema or having the proper full quality, just like music quality. There are cases of annoying lines, jumping pictures, people walking through the cinema and fuzzy noise quality in pirated copies.

If you are a person who downloads regularly, you would know that there are thousands of different options to download when doing this.  How do you know what you are downloading isn’t the incorrect film, or even porn? False tag lines and titles are easy to do and easily mistaken for the wrong file. Programmes like Lime wire, WinMX and other sites are notorious for their virus ridden programmes that can ruin your computer. Not only that the files that you are downloading can be named anything and so what you may think you are downloading is genuine may be virus ridden itself.

Film piracy in turn causes higher costs for cinemas and some cinemas can go out of business. So for those who watch pirated films but still go to the cinema, the next time you go to the cinema and say “how much!!??”, take a second to think that this maybe all because of film piracy. This is unfair for those who don’t watch pirated films and genuinely want to pay for what they see.

Films of 2009

Over the last couple of years, particularly this year, I have been watching more and more films and becoming more and more into them. As a fan of cinema and an unlimited member of Cineworld, you can imagine that the number of films begin to rack up and the margins between good, bad and fugly become more evident. So 2009 was a good year for films. I decided to leave it right to the last day to right this, incase there were any late comers. Interestingly I was originally planning to see Avatar this afternoon, (which would be a contender for film of the year surrounding its hype and positive feedback) but I decided not to after realising the running time which didnt fit my plans. So Avatar will be in 2010 film year.

I have decided to give you a “Top 5 of 2009″ feature, giving you heads up on anything you missed, or just seeing a different opinion on a film you have already seen.

5   -   500 Days of Summer

A refreshing format that sets itself aside from the usual rom-com, 500 Days of Summer was a great way to showcase a romantic yet difficult relationship between a man and his girlfriend/co-worker. The idea of the days shown being random yet relevant to the story was done well which made it easy to follow. A good warm story to go see with the other half.

4   -   Marley & Me

Plucked my heart strings this one. Another heart warming story throughout, that builds up the story slowly throughtout the years. Right through to the end I felt close to the family and the dog. I don’t have a dog, but the ending did make me shead a tear as we can all understand the feeling of losing a pet or even someone close to us.

3   -   The Hangover

A hilarious film that tells the story that millions of people can associate with. A stag night in Las Vegas that starts out to be an event of copious amounts of alcohol turns bad when secretive spiking happens. What follows is a series of events that made me cry in laughter.

2   -   District 9

I had no idea what to expect with this film after the trailers showed very little into what would happen. I was blown away though. The first minutes are quiet and slow as the whole story is built up it gets more on the edge. Some incredible scenes and a fantastic original concept made this film brilliant.

1   -   Paranormal Activity

I was s****ing  myself the whole way through. Nuff said.

So theres my “Top 5 films of 2009“.  There were plenty of other impressive films to mention:

Twilight: New Moon

Zombieland

The Invention of Lieing

St Trinians 2: Legend of Frittons Gold

17 Again

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Hurtlocker

A great year for films and I will be looking forward to 2010 to see whats in store.

Its Your Imagination Thats The Scary Part

Moving shadows, dark corners, bathroom cabinet mirrors, creaky old houses. These are all the usual cliches that horror films of the past and most certainly today, use . However, horror films  have come along way since the days of “The Exorsist”. Modern day horrors use far more advanced technology to enhance the realism of whatever it is that is trying to scare us. The thing is though, its not necessarily seeing a very scary poltergeist, demon, or whatever is your hiding behind your hands from. Many horrors play tricks with your mind. They have very cleverly situated camera angles that somehow trigger your brain to think that something is going to happen and that is pretty much how horror works. A great example is the bathroom mirror scene which I have seen so many times its surprising when it doesn’t happen. Man walks into bathroom, looks in mirror, checks out stubble, turns on tap, splashes cold water in face as camera looks into sink, camera comes back up as man looks back in mirror to find a young kid with soaked hair over his face staring back at him from behind him. I know its gonna happen, yet I love to see it and yes I still do get scared!

In terms of my opinions of horror though, I love them. I love them too much probably. Every horror film that is released whether it looks s**t or not, I will go and watch in the hope I will get a similar feeling at the end to a rollercoaster ride. The thrill of horrors is exciting to me. Even if I can guess what will happen or if the acting is bordering on pantomime, its the sights, the scares and the downright chills that make me come back again and again.

There are too many to write about, but in terms of my favourites, I’m always looking for a new horror that will better than the best. “Paranormal Activity” was only last week named my new favourite horror film, being the scariest thing I have ever watched. “One Missed Call” was the leading horror before this new crowning. At first I thought it would be a rubbish ‘hack n slash” but I was mightily impressed with the scares I got and loved it throughout. “The Decent” is another great one to mention. A highly original idea of the film being situated in an underground cave being populated by blind adapted animal/human things. Japanese horrors are also among my favourites for their great sense of imagination of using children who wear old nightgowns, have long black hair over thier faces and crawl on the floor, cracking their bones as they try to come and kill you. Ridiculous, yes, scary if you have a wild imagination, YES!

To Adapt Or Not To Adapt?

Adaptations.  Some love to see there favourite book or game adapted into a film, some cringe at the thought of ruining a classic thats should never have been touched in the first place.

The Good

Most of the time when console games are turned into a hollywood film, they turn out to be rushed, inaccurate and poorly directed films. However, once in a blue moon, a game will be turned into a great film. Let me introduce you to Silent Hill. Silent Hill was first brought out on a console in 1999. Many seuquels have been developed and it is one of the most succesful horror games of the decade. Its easy to see why this was chosen to be turned into a film. The game itself is terrifying, has characters that go beyond simple imagination and has an atmosphere that would easily make someone uncomfortable to play alone in a dark room. The film captures all these moments and so much more in just one feature film. The characters are accurate down to the clothing and the way they run, the atmosphere is fantastic and the monsters (if you want to call them that) are recreated painstakingly down to the finest detail. The film itself is a great watch with plenty of scary moments. Most interesting of all was the way they recreated the zombie nurses. They used a team of specialised girl dancers to move in an inconventional way to make it look like they were zombies and it worked perfectly.

The Bad

Everybody remembers how good Scooby Doo was when we watched it as kids. However, making it into a film was the worst decision ever. Not only do you have to cast the 5 cartoon characters into real actors, you have to turn a harmless yet cheesy format into a feature film. Tbh the casting for this film does feel as though the actors reflect the original  cartoon characters personalities and especially Shaggy’s voice (Matthew Lillard). However, thats where the alright bits stop. Scooby Doo himself is animated in a rather scary way and the film is just full of cheesy and predictable moments. Yes its a kids cartoon, yes kids would probably like the film but please keep the classic cartoon as a cartoon and not a film, it doesn’t work!

The Downright Fugly

Street Fighter : The Movie (1994) is the worst film I have ever seen. As an avid fan of one of the most famous fighting game in history, you can imagine how disappointed I was to see this film fall flat on its face.  Other than Jean Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue (why Kylie?), the rest of the cast was a collection of random actors I had never heard of. Aswell as this, the storyline seemed to be made up as they were making the film and the actors were so inaccurate to their gaming counterparts that it was incredibly hard to see who was actually who until someone mentioned their name. As a group of the most recognisable charcterisations in gaming history, you’ve made the biggest mistake already. Basically the film is full of nasty smelling faeces all over the place. Don’t even get me started on the game that was a game of the film of the game, I mean whos rediculous idea was THAT!!??

Trailers – Misleading or Misinterpreted?

Trailers are the point in which an audience probably see the first scenes that either give them the mouth watering excitement or a raised eyebrow thinking “what the hell was that?”. Beyond this point though, trailers can often be misleading or in fact over-giving in terms of plot or action. “The Day After Tomorrow” is in fact one of these trailers, in which I was given too much information and as I mentioned in my post before, I was disappointed,  sitting in the cinema thinking “seen that, seen that, seen that and that in the trailer”

As for misleading trailers, “Walled In” shows the film to be rather scary, and full of horror moments. After watching the film itself, I was disappointed to see horror moments that were far and few between. The film turned out to be nothing more than a confusing plot line that hardly had any moments of horror. Recent film “Twilight : New Moon” shows a small collection of scenes which show Jacob (Taylor Lautner) revealing his true werewolf form when Bella (Kristen Stewart) runs away after being threatened by one of the vampires. However this scene, I have been told, is inaccurate according to the books which came out before the films. After seeing this on the trailer, I was expecting this scene to happen in the film but in actual fact it is two different scenes glued together. Why? I don’t know, but maybe they were trying to give the audience a sense of epicness, action or they were trying to confuse everyone just so they would go and see it and find out.

Trailers that are misleading though are, to me, how someone interprets the trailer themselves. Some people are expectant of certain scenes in a trailer and vice versa in a film no matter what you see or don’t see first. If the trailer really does show an entirely different genre of film,  just to make it look exciting and it isn’t at all what the trailer says then yes, it is a misleading trailer, but it’s not always the trailer that is the culpret in misleading audiences.

Peer Reviewer in comment box

Its The End Of The World Again And Again And Again

Apocalypse films, disaster movies, end of the world films, what ever you want to call them, they’re isn’t too many months in between one and another. One of my top favourite “genres” of film, everyone has had their go at splashing out millions of pounds/dollars on special effects to make the world look like its ending in a dramatic and epic scaled movie.

^ the moment the meteor hits in “Deep Impact”

There is nothing more satisfying than seeing the world come to an end in the most destructive manner possible. For me, every so often I contemplate what it would feel like to watch the world come to an end and how. Apocalypse films do that for me, without having to die or loose all sense of life on earth. Whether it be a large crater formed in land or a gigantic tidal wave destroying the entire length of a city, I am forever pulled in by the magnet that is end of the world movies.

The most recent to join the list of these films is “2012″. Directed by Roland Emerich the man who also directed “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Independence Day”. I went to watch this with a few friends and what was a great spectacle of special effects and great scenes of earth crust destruction, the film was far to strung out at 2hrs 45mins of predictable edge of seat moments and a rather unrealistic storyline to go along with it.

^ the beginning of the end in 2012

My favourite film of this genre would have to be “Deep Impact” (1998) in which a large meteor is in line to destroy Earth and Robert Duval, Morgan Freeman and a host of other actors try to stop it in its tracks. To be honest, I can’t remember the main plot right now and I don’t think I really remember most of these apocalyptic film plots as its the destruction special effects parts that I go to watch them for. The only film I remember the plot to is “The Day After Tomorrow” but only because there was so much hype behind the film and so many exclusive scenes shown on television before the actual release, I had pretty much seen most of what was going to happen and was dissapointed to find that there wasn’t much else to the film but what I had already seen.

My second all time favourite film is “Cloverfield” (2008) which is based in New York and tells a story of an unknown creature/alien that causes havoc in the city/ This film is based all on one hand held camera to give a reality feel to the idea and doesnt include any music from the start to the end. We hardly see the creature throughout the film until near the end when we get a few seconds of a glimpse but not enough to really know what its all about. Its these particular factors that make this one of my favourite films as I like the idea of the hand held camera and the fact that the creature is unknown made me feel like I was part of the whole story and followed along until we were faced with the creature itself. Now you’r probably wondering why I say “Deep Impact” is one of my favourite and then “Cloverfield” is my second all time favourite. This is because “Deep Impact” involves the world and “Cloverfield” only involves New York City so they are different films in my eyes.

^Cloverfield trailer

However whether its a small scale disaster film like “Dante’s Peak”, “Daylight” and “Volcano“, or its an ‘end of the world and everyone is going to die’ film like “2012″, “Deep Impact” and “Independence Day”, I will always turn up to sleep through the plots and watch the destruction happen!!