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Showing posts from February, 2022

IV. | Clue (1985)

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Clue is an American black comedy-mystery film released in 1985. It is also one of the first films that come to my mind whenever adaptations are mentioned since it was adapted from one of my favorite board games, Cluedo . Board games are definitely not as popular as books or comics when considered for an adaptation. Due to this, I think Clue is a rarity. What makes me love it even more is how this film does not just adapt the board game but also adds to it. Well, every adaptation does this but not always as successfully as Clue .  By taking the characters and the story,  which is basically a murder mystery,  from the board game, and adding comedy into it, Clue became a great adaptation with a cult following. I also really like the fact that it has various endings, just as how you can get a different ending each time you play the board game, and they initially released the film with different endings on cinemas.  And now they are doing a remake! I am not sure if it is necessary, but it

III. | Better Days (2019)

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After our lecture this week, Better Days immediately came to my mind, which is a 2019 Chinese drama film directed by Derek Tsang. It tells the story of the friendship between a bullied teenage girl and a boy. To be honest, I do not follow Chinese Cinema closely. So, I would probably not come across this film if it did not get nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards . Thanks to this, I had the chance to see it, and I have liked it since then.  I think it is an excellent film in general, but the reason it came to my mind is the close-up scenes this film has. I find them really beautiful and effective. I believe that Better Days is a film in which the audience has to understand the characters thoroughly, and with the use of close-up shots, it does this quite successfully.

II. | Look at Life (1965)

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After the screening of La Jetée (1962) in this week's class, I wanted to   find similar films out of curiosity and for the preparation of Project 1. While searching, I came across Look at Life (1965). It is a one-minute short film by George Lucas which he made for a course while studying in film school.  These two films have similar aspects, but there are also differences. Both of them use still images, but while the images used in  La Jetée were shot for the film itself, Look at Life uses  found images. Therefore, it can be considered as a collage film. Even so, there are many transitions in Look at Life similar to  La Jetée .  For instance, zooming into specific details of the images was used considerably, but my favorite was in the image below. With keeping one of the images 'still,' a transparent version of the same image is used to create an illusion of movement, and I think it is pretty great! In addition,   as someone who is interested in archiving and preservation

I. | Fatboy Slim - Praise You

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Watching the music video of Fatboy Slim's Praise You for the first time was definitely an interesting experience. First of all, I want to say that I liked the song, which was a surprise since I am not a fan of electronic music. However, the highlight was definitely the music video rather than the song itself, at least for me.  I really liked the idea and the execution. To be honest, I am also not a fan of flash mobs,  but the one in the video was actually entertaining to watch rather than being uncomfortable. The style of the video is very fitting to the idea of a flash mob as well. The fact that they used guerrilla-style to shoot the video, whether it was intentional or the consequences of the sources they had, helped the style and the content of the video to complement each other.  As someone who is interested in everything that is vintage, the vintage look of the video also caught my attention. I can imagine myself shooting a video that is similar to this one with my Panasonic