Author Archives: justinwiemer

Come, Thick Night

Posted on by justinwiemer
1

I just uploaded the latest film I was involved in for my Production II class. This was a group project written and directed by Sean and Laura. I was the DP, editor, colorist, and credit designer. It was filmed on a 7D as well as a T2i for some shots…so watch in HD.

Enjoy!

Craig can’t sleep because he is anxious about a phone call he MUST make.

 

My Thoughts Exactly

Reply

Tim Brayton is the man.

On The Tree of Life:

Here is how I know that The Tree of Life is a masterpiece: it does all of these things, and touches me so much that I can barely stand it, and there is basically not one single element in the film that speaks to me personally. I have no siblings, and cannot begin to speak to the veracity of the brotherly relationships that lend the film its most poignant and magical moments; I’ve didn’t grow up in the kind of neighborhood where you could run around and stumble across wonderful things every which where; I have never had an acrimonious relationship with my father; I find the very idea of spotting Infinite Motherhood to be uncomfortably “othering” of women. And most crucially of all, I’m enough of a doctrinaire atheist that the questions, “Who is God? What is God thinking? How do we become closer to God?” are inherently as useful and compelling as wondering why we can’t taste our own tongue. And despite all of these handicaps, the movie still feels like it’s holding up a mirror: and it presents its intently specific story with such universal artistry and beauty and, yes, grace, that I cannot help but be swept up by it: twice I have seen the movie, and twice the moment that it ended felt like being violently shaken awake. I have now, twice, greeted the end of the movie with deep exhalation of feeling that reaches down into my toes, not sure if I should dance or cry from the unutterable glory of it.

Essay on Bong Joon-ho’s “The Host” and the Monster Movie Genre

Posted on by justinwiemer
Reply

I was extremely happy with how a recent paper of mine turned out. I wrote about Bong Joon-ho’s 2006 The Host, film genre conventions, and how The Host could be modified so that it is no longer recognizable as a Monster Movie. The essay can be viewed below – solely for the purposes of academic discussion.

The [awesome] prompt:

Genre films — like westerns, melodramas, horror films, etc. – draw on implicit conventions specific to genres in order to leave viewers emotionally and/or artistically satisfied while watching the film and when it ends. There are implicit conventions about what sorts of closure is appropriate to a genre, about motivations of the characters, about the kinds of emotions it is appropriate for viewers to feel, etc. Think of a standard western or a standard thriller. There are also visual conventions : think of the noir images or of the realist visual conventions of The Bicycle Thief or Chop Shop.

Although these conventions are important to identifying a film as belonging to a particular genre, they can also be violated for artistic and emotional effect. A good example of the violation of a thriller convention is Psycho. But it seems like they can’t be violated too much or they will no longer belong to the genre and/or be unsatisfying!

Using The Host (monster movie)…as an example, construct a thesis with two parts.

1. What are the important identifying elements of the genre of the film you’ve chosen? Emotions? Visual elements? Auditory elements? Character motivations? The ending? A combination of these elements or something else? Why is this/are these the most important identifying element(s) of the genre?

2. If you had the power to change the film, is there an element that you could change just a little bit that would result in it no longer being identifiable as a film in that genre? Justify this with reference to part 1) of your answer. Does this provide an argument for why the elements you identified in 1) are essential to the genre to which the film belongs?

Think philosophically and creatively!

568KB, .pdf

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

2012 Oscar Results…

Posted on by justinwiemer
Reply

…So I got 19/24 of the nominations correct! Up from 18 last year.

The Tree of Life should have won cinematography. Seriously; who predicted Hugo?

That Harvard freshman must be feeling pretty smug about predicting the Streep win by .7% while using statistics.  I smell another Moneyball in the making…

20 to 12

Posted on by justinwiemer
Reply

I keep a list of the movies I watch. As of December 14, I have seen 126 new-to-me films in 2011. Now that winter break has started, I want to see at least 20 more by 2012.

Here’s a running list:

  1. A History of Violence (14)
  2. Logan’s Run
  3. Rudy (15)
  4. The Muppets
  5. X-Men: First Class
  6. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (17)
  7. Yojimbo (18)
  8. Limitless (20)
  9. Horrible Bosses
  10. Shane (22)
  11. The Descendants (25)
  12. Robin Hood: Men in Tights
  13. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (26)
  14. The Gold Rush (27)
  15. This is Spinal Tap (28)
  16. Kung Fu Panda 2
  17. Creature from the Black Lagoon (29)
  18. The Help
  19. Fast Five (30)
  20. The Adventures of Tintin 3D

Movies I saw again:

  1. Rashomon
  2. Black Dynamite — “dyno-MITE!”