Blog 14 (Toy Story)

I recently watched a movie I used to love that I haven't seen in a long time: Toy Story! I got the urge to watch it because while we were on our week break from classes, I started playing video games. My collection of PlayStation video games was quite dated (as was the system itself) so I played a Toy Story game. After seeing all the familiar characters like Slinky, Mr. Potatohead, Rex, and Hamm, I kinda wanted to see the movie. While digging through all my old movies, I found another one that I wanted to watch: Jumanji. Watching these two older movies made me want to write a blog about them.

Toy Story's producers at Disney teamed up with Pixar and revolutionized animated films, pioneering the way for movies like A Bug's Life, Antz, and of course the sequel to Toy Story. It was the first animated film made entirely on a computer and made to look three-dimensional. The only hand drawings were for the storyboard. It said that at the end of the film. To see a list of all movies made this way, click on this link; you'll see some familiar ones. Just think, all those great movies, like Finding Nemo, were because of the revolutionary work of the producers of Toy Story.

For all you Toy Story fans, I have great news. Toy Story 3 is expected to be released in June 2010. I'm pretty excited for it myself. This film will be about all the toys being at a day-care center after Andy goes off to college. Remember Andy? He's in college already! :)

Watching older movies is sometimes fun. It's also kind of weird to go back and see how much of the movie you can remember. What are some of your favorite movies from the past? Do you still watch them today?

Blog 13 (Nonlinear Plots)

Since we're allowed to write about any kind of medium now, I've decided to make one last movie blog. Just the other day I watched a movie called 21 Grams, which was a movie that interweaves several different plots in a nonlinear arrangement. There are plenty of movies I've seen that interweave different plots, but never have I seen one jump from the present to the future to the past several times within each plot in no particular order. It was confusing!! In the end, after I figured everything out, I ended up understanding it, though. It was a good movie, but also very sad in some points.

I actually prefer to watch these kind of movies. One of the reasons I like them so much is because it makes me think and pay attention more. I never get bored or feel like dozing off becaues they require constant attention to really be able to understand the plots.

A couple other great movies that interweaves plots are: Vantage Point, 11:14, Pulp Fiction, and Crash.

I really enjoyed all of those movies, but my two ultimate favorites were Vantage Point and 11:14. Vantage Point actually shows the same story six different times, each from a different viewpoint of a different character. It was very well-written. 11:14 also shows several interconnected stories that all converge at 11:14. Each story directly affects the other stories; this was also very well-written. I would highly recommend them both.

Movies written to follow multiple storylines and characters are called Hyperlink Cinema. Flashbacks and flashfowards along with plot twists are all common characteristics of hyperlink cinema. Janet Grischy explains hyperlink cinema like this: "The idea is to reproduce on film the mess, confusion, and richness of modern life. The overriding theme of hyperlink cinema is connection." I think of it like this: My blogs are full of hyperlinks. You can read my blog and click on my hyperlinks, plus check your email and Facebook page all at the same time. Hyperlink cinema offeres the ability to follow many different storylines all at the same time.

What are your thoughts on hyperlink cinema? Do you enjoy them or not so much?

Blog 12 (Learning More About Movies)

Do you ever want to read about a movie before seeing it? Do you care to know the ratings of the movie? If so, you should check out Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes isn't as gross as it may sound. It's actually a movie review website. It has what's called a Tomatometer, which measures the percentage of positive reviews. The movie I was curious to see the ratings from was The Haunting in Connecticut. Apparently, it wasn't that good--it was a rotten tomato. If you click on the link, Rotten Tomatoes tells you why. This movie review site isn't going to stop me from seeing it, though, because I thought it looked really good.

I actually never read movie reviews. The only reason I did now was because I was trying to think of an interesting blog topic and I thought of this. I know some people who base their wanting to see a movie or not solely on movie reviews. I've actually heard a lot of bad things said about some of the best movies I've seen. I don't think I'm too critical to movies, though. I like to see them all at least once.

While looking through this list, I found several movies I've never even heard of before that sounded interesting to watch. In fact, I might just have to add some of them to my Netflix queue, even if they were rotten tomatoes. I tried not to look at the reviews until after I view the movie, so the review doesn't affect my opinion of the film.

Another great site to check out if you want to know more about the movies you'll see/have seen is the Internet Movie Database. This site gives information about the cast, director, producer, writers, release date, and even a plot summary. It even shows photographs from the movie. Although I never use Rotten Tomatoes, I think it may become useful to me if I am ever skeptical to see a certain movie. And the Internet Movie Database has definitely been useful to me in the past and will continue to be in the future.

Do movie reviews affect your opinion on the movie? Do you still see movies even if they got bad reviews?