Airbender is sure to bend your neck to death

Dear World,

It’s been awhile since my last post, but I wanted to post my review of The Last Airbender somewhere. Since I couldn’t do it on www.scaddistrict.com

Noah Ringer (L) Dev Patel (R)

Photo by Photo Credit: Industrial Light a – © Copyright2010 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. All Rights Reserved

The Last Airbender had redeeming qualities, yet the mistakes out weigh them. M. Night Shamalym had potential to be a great director. With this film we see his failure. People seem to come to his movies based on the reputation of the product or actor. Not for his directing.

Airbender takes you on a journey with Aang played by Noah Ringer, who has to give up his childhood in order to save humanity. He discovers he's the last and only Avatar and he posses power to Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, but in his reincarnated state he hasn't been trained in the elements. His task is to learn enough to defeat the powerful Fire nation. The Fire nation is out to rid the other airbenders and find and kill the Avatar.

Some of the redeeming qualities were the costumes, locations and the cultures of people that were used as extras. This movie truly goes around the world with New Zealand, Vietnam, Iceland and Pennsylvania. Exotic locations are appealing to the eye which is helpful with the bad acting. Each nation had their own distinct type of clothing. Of course the fire nation looked like war heros with vests that were invincible.

The Fire nation seems to be compared to the devils work because they are the evil forces trying to take over the world and rid the nation of all the other forces that are benders. Fire is also associated with Hell. These Fire nation is portrayed that way as well.

With this recent wave of fantasy type movies coming out this picture stole ideas from Lord of the Rings. Just because you shoot in similar locations as Peter Jackson, doesn't mean you get to copy him. Such as, the Northern Iberian Waters Tribe has a solid ice fortress and a huge wall. Replace water for dirt and you got the land of Rivendell. The battle at Helm's Deep also seems to be referenced. Now, that might be just my imagination, or just love of Lord of the Rings, but I definitely saw the connection.

This is the other water nation. See doesn’t it look like Lord of the Rings?

Dev Patel known for his role in Slumdog Millionaire plays the angsty teenager who acts as of one of the villains has a few good moments. Most of the time he's over acting to compensate for bad directing. Fortunately, for him, I know he's a good actor and I'm glad this isn't his debut film. This doesn't show his strengths as an actor, so hopefully if he does make another film with Airbender his skills will improve with this character. Now on the other hand Noah Ringer who plays Aang does a fabulous job of portraying this character. At least I could enjoy the movie whenever he was talking. Being his first film, this was a great one to debut in. Putting all criticism aside from the rest of the film I can sit back and watch him. He portrays an innocent child, until he finds out the truth. Portions of the film, I could tell he lost focus in what he was doing, but if that's my only critique of him. I'm just getting super specific with it. It seems like Shyamalan cared only about his acting, because everyone else including the adults were two dimensional.

Although, I've never seen the animated series, I feel like that fans should just stick this one out. Most adaptations are decent enough to look the other way with what was either cut out or done wrongly. Fans will be disappointed and leave the theater with a bad taste in their mouths.

 

Love,

The disappointed writer

Robin Hood or so it seems

Dearest World,

This film tells the tale of a long exposition into what we know of Robin Hood traditionally. Starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett as leading man and lady. Crowe, portraying Robin Longstride delves into the character, by playing a heroic, and goodhearted man, yet unchanged from his past movies. While Cate Blanchett playing Marion Loxely, a woman who's in charge of the head of Nottingham. Her husband is away at war, so she runs the household with her father, Sir Walter Loxley played by Max von Sydow. Cate has an enduring performance, where she makes hard choices for her father. Max von Sydow brought humor to this battle fighting, drawn out movie. His portrayal of a blind man convinced viewers that he could get away with whatever he wanted, because he couldn't see.

From the villains we see Mark Strong as Godfrey a man who aids France in advancing troops into England and Oscar Isaac as Prince John. Isaac's character wines and acts immaturely as a ruling king. His performance of acting range is shown by drawing the audience in with his plots and plights with being an inexperienced king.

One of the few magical qualities of this film were the locations that were used. Spanning from different cities in Wales to London, England the continuity of the area remained in tact.

The realism of costume design, brought the middle aged world to life. Cate Blanchett always wore a simple brown dress or earthy colors to emphasize the woods and where she lived. While the merry men of Robin Hoods clan stuck to neutral colors as well.

These merry men added a liveliness to the film, with their singing and dancing. Scott Grimes playing Will Scarlett and Kevin Durand as Little John and Mark Addy, as Friar Tuck. They brought out Crowe's curious and adventurous side.

Title design and motion graphics stood out for me. The font looked completely original and inspired by the Book of Kells. Although there were so many places where the film jumped, at least the font was pretty to look at. Thank the Lord it wasn't in papyrus, like in a certain film that has made more money than Bill Gates could produce in ten years.

This film could've been 90 minutes long. I blame this on the director Ridley Scott and editor Pietro Scalia and writer Brian Helgeland on this one. Five other people got story credits, but didn't get deemed the screenwriter. Two and a half hours for a movie that does more explaining then action is problematic and convoluted. I got more confused when the locations kept changing, and new characters would appear and then never be seen again.

Some of the points where it lagged are on the party scenes, too much emphasis was placed on them, and the battles although that's where the action was placed certain scenes should have been completely dropped. On the bright side specific details of shots and coverage as we film people would say was a solid ingredient in keeping my attention. Action shots were finite in the way if someone was shooting an arrow the audience sees three or four different angles before someone shoots it. Now of course this all depends on who's shooting the arrow and for what reasons.

Robin Hood is three out of five stars for me in terms of war movies. Sadly, history got a little messed up in telling this tale, especially when modern type ships appear such as a U-Boat type design arrives on the shore. Beautifully shot, just a little misguided.

Love,

The Reviewing Writer

DON'T BE LAZY. Stay in School

Dear World,
Hello darlings. I hope you are well. It's almost over. The quarter and everything with it. Success won't be far from now. It's pouring outside. Don't you hate it when you have electronical devices that can't get wet and they do. Silly rain, don't you know that I don't always like carrying around a bulky umbrella. Writing has been an ongoing event lately, just not in the way I thought it could go. It's been a documentary I've been writing. Odd combination of words that documentary. Audio on one side and Actions on another. But in a successful note: I've written an early draft of my senior film. This piece, is adventurous and I'm excited to direct it. It deals with a magical made up place, a circus and a winged character that requires animation. I felt encouraged the other day because there's been a battle with whether or not I can keep being at this amazing school. A good friend of mine told me to never give up. And don't be lazy, stay in school! So dear readers if you are still in school keep it up. It's worth it. And you'll thank yourself when you've landed a job on the sole reason you spent four years of your young life in higher education. I apologize for not writing in awhile, it's been busy over here. But! My documentary should be done soon and I'll post a link to the trailer of it soon.

I think this quote really sums up how I'm doing right now:
“When all desires that surge in the heart are renounced, the mortal becomes immortal.” - unknown

Love,

The ever musing writer

New Film script in the works

Dear World,

I’m writing to tell you exciting news! I’ve finished my feature length script for good. No more revising, unless somebody is paying me to do it. It’s called Leaving Home. Anyways, on April 1st I’m starting a new script for this competition called scriptfrenzy. It’s a competition to write 100 pages in a month. That’s it. This film I’m working on is the basis for my senior film. Oddly I came across this film called Kavi. It’s a 19 min grad thesis piece that has won many prestigious awards including gold prize in the student narrative category for the Academy of Film. Anyways it’s about this kid in slavery in India. Slavery still happens everyday here in this world. So, I’ve thought about putting my characters in “slavery” because they are being captured. But instead of staying realistic, they are in a circus on another world. I just found it interesting because, I thought, yeah my characters will be in “slavery” but I didn’t realize the implications it would bring. Now, looking at this film. It makes me want to make this feature even more. With hopes that for a magical location I’d put it in India. My dream of going to India  could one day come true if I make this film a reality.

Talk to you soon dear friends,

The musing writer.

Why do I write?

Dear World,

In this day and age, one must look for other resources for ideas, options and paths. And only with determination plans will succeed. To sell your idea for money, is that creative? Yes, is it giving your idea to someone else to be mutilated. Yes. But you know what sometimes you get lucky and your idea is so pure, that it doesn’t get changed. So, I tell you that I hope you have originality and guts to make it in this cruel world, that is run by the almighty dollar. Because if not, we have lost the game.

Love,

The musing writer.

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The 28th. The Last

Dear World,

What a month. And all this drawing doodles. From this writer. I know it’s strange.. Anyways this has been fun. And I hope to do it again next year!

Love,

The Musing Writer

Day 24

Dear world,

So there is going to be a film crew in my house tomorrow. Fun stuff…. I hope it will be. Here is my doodle of the day. So glad it’s the weekend.

Love,

The tired working writer