Posts Tagged ‘art’

What exactly makes the summer movie season so alluring?

People go to the movies at all times during the course of the year, but summertime always seems to be the period when movies are most popular. It’s the time of year when we can usually look forward to a blockbuster or two, whether they be special effects extravaganzas or what have you, which attract massive crowds of patrons young and old to the local cinemas where they eat tubs of popcorn and drink frosty beverages. What is it exactly, though, that attracts, or even compels so many to see summer releases? Is there something special about the films themselves, or the audiences who watch them? The answers to these questions can be found by figuring out what all of these various audience members have in common, and how what that is relates to the movies they’re seeing.

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Short Take: Exceedingly enchanting. Woody Allen at his feel-good best.

Director: Woody Allen

Screenwriter: Woody Allen

Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody

Length: 1h 40m

Synopsis: Gil (Wilson) and his fiancé Inez (McAdams) are vacationing in Paris, France, soaking up the atmosphere and taking in all of the beautiful art that surrounds them. Gil is a Hollywood screenwriter trying to take another crack at writing novels, and his latest work about relishing the past has gotten some much-needed inspiration from the city of love. While Inez spends her time enjoying luxurious spa days and get-togethers with friends Gil wishes to experience all of the charm the city has to offer, and he finds all he can handle when he stumbles upon a way to travel back in time to the 1920s. Every night at midnight he visits iconic artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), and Salvador Dali (Brody), chatting away with them about love, life, and women. And speaking of women, one night Gil can’t help but be enchanted by an art aficionada named Adrianna (Cotillard), who is equally enchanted by him. The stress of the present and magic of the past combine to create an awkward but exciting situation for Gil, one which he will find his way out of only if he follows his heart.

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Is our judgment of a work of art based solely upon whether or not it delights us in some way?

De gustibus non disputandum (There can be no disputing over matters of taste). – Latin dictum

When it comes to art in general people have been trying for thousands of years (basically since the time of Aristotle) to make heads or tails of why people think the way they do. Are there certain innate likes and dislikes that are embedded in every person, and if so then how can we explain the occasional anomaly? If each person’s taste in art, whether it be concerning architecture, sculpture, paintings, or movies, is unique, how can any consensuses be made about anything? Could such consensuses, if they happen, be considered happenstance or indicative of that certain work’s true value? Should we base our likes and dislikes of works of art on whether or not we apply personal value to them? Are there consistencies and/or patterns that can be discovered in the ways each person applies value to various works of art? Read the rest of this entry »

Although video games are the second largest competitor with movies in the entertainment industry, behind only television, movie adaptations of video games haven't been received very well thus far. Why is that?

Disclaimer - We have painted video games with an overly large brush, and trust us that we have done so begrudgingly. However, because perception always takes time to catch up to reality when it comes to public opinion, and perhaps in this case critical and executive opinion as well, we felt it was necessary in order to make things more explicable.

It has been interesting to note how critics have commented on the source material for the recently released Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. As most of you know by now, if you didn’t know before the release, the film is based off of a video game of the same name. And like with most films that are adapted from video games critics have pointed out the various congruencies between the two productions, such as story structure and character construction. In the case of Prince of Persia, these two things along with the aesthetics of the movie’s action sequences have been said to resemble (some say closer than others) their corresponding elements in the source material, but the intriguing thing is that the comments written that illuminate these similarities usually paint them as being faults. Anymore if the reception of a movie can be compared to the manner that video games are received (though there are many inherent differences between the mediums) it is taken to be as a deficiency or imperfection. Why should it be considered an automatic negative that a movie resembles its source material if that source material is a video game? Before we get into any sort of discussion that might explain a possible discrimination against video games, let us first try to discover why it is that so many critics find the storytelling techniques of video games and movies to be so incompatible. Read the rest of this entry »