24 Frames is the final film of Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian film director. Kiarostami, a film director, artist, and photographer melded cinema and photography into his final ode to cinema. It was worked on and completed in 2016, however, it did not make it to Baltimore, MD, until June 2018. I am not sure if this was because of editing reasons, or abilities to promote or obtain the film. The premise behind this film, was to take 24 of his still frame photographs and animate them. The idea seemed to be something right up my alley of different, and combining of art forms. Each frame was roughly four and a half minutes, focusing on stark or bleak landscapes.
Many of these frames were black and white landscapes. Snow and water seemed to be central themes in the frames, and I am not sure if this was a thematic choice, or more based on the ease of animating these features. Birds were also a regular theme, most commonly ravens or crows, which again, had me thinking if these were allusion to foreboding of death. There were some cow scenes, and the two frames that the cows were used seemed to be pretty similar animated footage.
The concept behind the film is creative and different, and while I can appreciate the stills for what they were, I felt some of the moments before and after what would be the normal stills to almost tamper with the simple beauty that was included in his photography. Some of the frames, the four and a half minutes was enough, others it seemed like an eternity.
There was music included in some of the frames, and when included, I found those frames to be more of the ones that peaked my interest. While the approach was to get the viewer to be more in the moment, some of the inclusions of animation was a bit too jilted, which made it a bit more of a challenge to be able to fully surrender to the scenes.
While I appreciated many of the water and snow frames, how some of them were spaced in the group was seamless. It appeared to have some that transitioned well. My only complaint with some of the use of birds, and animals in some of these scenes were a bit too surrealist for my taste (a cow sleeping on a beach for one, a wolf rolling in snow while others worked a carcass, a pigeon flying by a window after a group of crows passing by the same stark countryside view, a song bird singing for four and a half minutes as tree work comes to the two trees close by). These images and animations at times seemed like an odd Dali painting in a moving photo, which was a bit too much for me to process as a viewer. Some of these frames I think would have been more effective and achieved the same beauty in the moment effect if they were shorter.
The final frame, was the ideal climax pinnacle of the body of work, and tied the collection together well. I'd be curious to know more about his work, and if any these started their journey in a Chelsea Gallery.
Sunday, 24 June 2018
Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom
While one must have some suspended, non science logical approach to view and of the reptilian world movies, the original, Jurassic Park, had much more of a clever, well written script.
Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom, had far less of a promising script. It tried too hard to please the original reptilian world fans. The premise behind this lackluster film, was Isla Nublar, island home to the Jurassic World Park, is under duress. Three years after the demise of the park, the dinosaurs are left to their own devices. They have overtaken the island, but there is a nearby volcano that is on the brink of eruption. Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are summoned to rescue some of the dinosaurs from the extinction level natural disaster. While procured to find Blue, the smartest of Owen's pod of velocraptors, the duo and team of interns uncover a cover up corruption ring.
Jurassic Park, the original one, at least despite being science fiction, had some decent approaches to facts, and while it wasn't completely believable, it had some form of potential, and used a reasonable fact based concepts behind it. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, threw all those out the window. There was mixing of trex and raptor blood. There were weird hybrids that didn't have any typical reptile behavior. While I realize that this type of movie is not PhD biology thesis material, and simply trying to be an entertaining mindless summer movie, it tried to hard to reconnect the original, the most recent, and appease science fiction nerds, and restorted to a failure worse than Dune level of what is this rubbish? I had strong inclinations that this was going to be the driving force, and was going merely for the summer blockbuster effect, and honestly if I didn't have MoviePass, I probably would have passed on this one. I'll save my comments for MoviePass for another blog post, but albeit, I had Sharknado sequel standards going into this: extremely low standards, and this movie didn't even meet those, nor do I really think The Rock would have starred in this which is also, not saying much.
While the graphics and CGI premise on the original dinos from Jurassic World were impressive, and the sound of the roars were regular that I envision bad weather drinking games made to this, I'd put this more in the terrible movie category well below Anaconda: not even worth the redbox rental fee. However, I'm sure back in the day, when I lived in the middle of nowhere Minnesota in the dead of winter, this would have been our classic drinking game movie.
The premise behind the movie was trying to take on the whole potential catastrophe and what it could do to the environment and the need to save animals, which is a point I usually am gung ho about supporting, but not when it's attached to a movie that can't seem to have valid plot points or make my science oriented brain hurt. Animal trafficking, was also touched on, as these bandits truck these dinosaurs into a home to then be marketed in hopes to raise enough money to use dinosaurs as a military weapon is such a far fetched idea, that it makes the real animal trafficking issues to also be a a joke, which is a shame, while I'm sure this wasn't the intention, they wanted to take on so much point wise that it ended up being a fizzle.
As I struggled to watch, all I could think of was the cliched plot lines of every other summer and winter blockbusters I have seen in recent years: King Kong (2006), Godzilla (2014) and Jurassic Park (1993). While recent remakes of King Kong and Godzilla were mediocre and good, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, just couldn't seem to live up to the rest of the field. Peter Jackson's 2006 King Kong was a long winded 3 hours, with pretty island scenes and an overly anthropomorphized animal chasing after a girl. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, took on a similar approach, but altered, destruction of a pretty island, overly anthropomorphized animals that eventually chase after girls. And even then the hybrid dinosaurs that they used were as if the CGI team came up with the notion of what if we create a mutt of a dinosaur as if Alien, Predator, TREX and raptors all went to a raging orgy. Even the suspense that they tried to build fell short of the building suspense of the 2014 Godzilla.
Movie production companies seem to be building more of the empire of remakes, adding on to franchise story lines, and blockbusters. I felt that Solo, the prequel of the Star Wars movies worked more in the interest of new fans of the Star Wars Franchise, as well as the old. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom seemed to want to appease to the original Jurassic Park fans, but instead threw in a weird plot line to tie the Jurassic World Series to the Jurassic Park originals. and failed miserably.
Unfortunately, I was hoping for a reasonable summer blockbuster, and instead was given mush that was trying to pass as diamond worthy.
Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom, had far less of a promising script. It tried too hard to please the original reptilian world fans. The premise behind this lackluster film, was Isla Nublar, island home to the Jurassic World Park, is under duress. Three years after the demise of the park, the dinosaurs are left to their own devices. They have overtaken the island, but there is a nearby volcano that is on the brink of eruption. Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are summoned to rescue some of the dinosaurs from the extinction level natural disaster. While procured to find Blue, the smartest of Owen's pod of velocraptors, the duo and team of interns uncover a cover up corruption ring.
Jurassic Park, the original one, at least despite being science fiction, had some decent approaches to facts, and while it wasn't completely believable, it had some form of potential, and used a reasonable fact based concepts behind it. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, threw all those out the window. There was mixing of trex and raptor blood. There were weird hybrids that didn't have any typical reptile behavior. While I realize that this type of movie is not PhD biology thesis material, and simply trying to be an entertaining mindless summer movie, it tried to hard to reconnect the original, the most recent, and appease science fiction nerds, and restorted to a failure worse than Dune level of what is this rubbish? I had strong inclinations that this was going to be the driving force, and was going merely for the summer blockbuster effect, and honestly if I didn't have MoviePass, I probably would have passed on this one. I'll save my comments for MoviePass for another blog post, but albeit, I had Sharknado sequel standards going into this: extremely low standards, and this movie didn't even meet those, nor do I really think The Rock would have starred in this which is also, not saying much.
While the graphics and CGI premise on the original dinos from Jurassic World were impressive, and the sound of the roars were regular that I envision bad weather drinking games made to this, I'd put this more in the terrible movie category well below Anaconda: not even worth the redbox rental fee. However, I'm sure back in the day, when I lived in the middle of nowhere Minnesota in the dead of winter, this would have been our classic drinking game movie.
The premise behind the movie was trying to take on the whole potential catastrophe and what it could do to the environment and the need to save animals, which is a point I usually am gung ho about supporting, but not when it's attached to a movie that can't seem to have valid plot points or make my science oriented brain hurt. Animal trafficking, was also touched on, as these bandits truck these dinosaurs into a home to then be marketed in hopes to raise enough money to use dinosaurs as a military weapon is such a far fetched idea, that it makes the real animal trafficking issues to also be a a joke, which is a shame, while I'm sure this wasn't the intention, they wanted to take on so much point wise that it ended up being a fizzle.
As I struggled to watch, all I could think of was the cliched plot lines of every other summer and winter blockbusters I have seen in recent years: King Kong (2006), Godzilla (2014) and Jurassic Park (1993). While recent remakes of King Kong and Godzilla were mediocre and good, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, just couldn't seem to live up to the rest of the field. Peter Jackson's 2006 King Kong was a long winded 3 hours, with pretty island scenes and an overly anthropomorphized animal chasing after a girl. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, took on a similar approach, but altered, destruction of a pretty island, overly anthropomorphized animals that eventually chase after girls. And even then the hybrid dinosaurs that they used were as if the CGI team came up with the notion of what if we create a mutt of a dinosaur as if Alien, Predator, TREX and raptors all went to a raging orgy. Even the suspense that they tried to build fell short of the building suspense of the 2014 Godzilla.
Movie production companies seem to be building more of the empire of remakes, adding on to franchise story lines, and blockbusters. I felt that Solo, the prequel of the Star Wars movies worked more in the interest of new fans of the Star Wars Franchise, as well as the old. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom seemed to want to appease to the original Jurassic Park fans, but instead threw in a weird plot line to tie the Jurassic World Series to the Jurassic Park originals. and failed miserably.
Unfortunately, I was hoping for a reasonable summer blockbuster, and instead was given mush that was trying to pass as diamond worthy.
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