Music Movie

I had an idea earlier this year for a new style of movie or at least a style of movie I haven’t seen before.  I call it the music movie, it is essentially a really long music video with multiple songs, possibly by multiple artists.

             The idea is to film a silent movie and play songs over it to convey the mood and the story to the audience.  There would be no dialogue, spoken or otherwise.  It would not be like an opera where the dialogue itself would be a song, it would be a song basically describing what was happening in the scene.  It would be a group of montages that all are set to different songs and come together to create a story.  The montages would all be part of one continuous movie but the songs would not be continuous.

            I have not see this type of thing done before and I believe that it would be really cool.  It would be original, I’m pretty sure, and it would be fun to watch.  It wouldn’t be a blockbuster thing because I don’t believe that people would want to sit through a two hour movie with no dialogue whatsoever.  Maybe the music alone would be enough to draw them in, but I don’t really care if it made money I would just be interested in seeing how this would play out.  I’m going to try to make a short in this style during J-Term, so look for it.

The Last of Us

One of the most popular games as of late is the game The Last of Us.  This is a game made by the game developer Naughtydog exclusively for the Play Station 3.  The game is just downright incredible.  From its gameplay to it’s story this game is a masterpiece.

            The game is about an outbreak of a fungal spore that takes over the victims brain and makes them incredibly violent.  The Infected are like zombies in gameplay but they don’t eat people the virus inside of them wants to spread so they seek to do this by biting uninfected.  The story goes like this, two smugglers are hired to transport a little girl to the Massachusetts state house, a journey that should take only a couple of hours of the smugglers time, but due to complications they need to take the girl all the way across the country to a militia group known as the Fireflys.  The story in this game is expertly told and it is very cinematic.  Watching this game is almost as enjoyable as playing it.

            The gameplay is revolutionary.  It consists mostly of sneaking through enemies and strategizing how best to handle them.  Of course things don’t always go according to plan.  What makes this gameplay so great is that your enemies have human senses instead of the super senses that most video game bad guys have.  Enemies react realistically to noises and distractions and will even change their battle tactics accordingly.

            The game is awesome and well worth the sticker price.

It's a Wonderful Life

It’s Christmas time which it means it’s time for Christmas movies and my favorite Christmas movie is “It’s a Wonderful Life”. “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a movie about a man named George Bailey.  George does many good things, things he forgets about because he considers them small things, or things of little importance.  He later gets depressed, because of money problems, and considers suicide.  A guardian angel named Clarence comes down from heaven.  He grants George’s wish when George says “I wish I’d never been born!”  As George walked around his home town of Bedford Falls he sees how different it is without him.  Bedford Falls is in much worse shape than when he lived in it.  George realized that those little things that he had done were actually very important in how the town of Bedford Falls prospered.  His friends were much worse off without his input, and his brother, whose life he had saved earlier in the movie, had died because George wasn’t there to save him.  George found out that he had really had a wonderful life.

            Not only is this one of my favorite Christmas movies it is one of my favorite movies of all time.  The acting is great and the writing even better, and it has one of the greatest stories in movie history.  I haven’t watched it yet this year but res assured I definitely will

Star Wars Battlefront

One of my favorite video games from childhood is Star Wars Battlefront.  I recently started playing the second of these games when my friend Stephen Gute brought his Play Station 2 and a copy of Star Wars Battlefront 2.  These games are one of a kind even thought there are three of them.  In these games you are part of the armies of Star Wars.  Your character doesn’t have a name,  you are just a disposable soldier.  You use your soldier to shoot opposing soldiers and if your soldier dies you just play as a new soldier. There are two Battlefront games that were made for console and everyone loved them, and I mean literally everyone.  I’ve never met anyone who has played the games and doesn’t like them.  Even people who hate Star Wars, like my brother, enjoy playing these games.  Then there was the one that no one played because it was on the PSP.  There was a third game in development but due to a bankruptcy in the company making them it never saw the light of day.  But here is some good news for all of you Battlefront fans out there.  There is a Battlefront reboot currently in production, it is being made by the gaming company DICE and is slated to be released in 2015, so get ready.

A Place for Bad Movies

We’ve all seen them, bad movies, there are literally hundreds and when I say bad movies I don’t mean movies like Spiderman 3 I mean movies like Manos: Hands of Fate and The Room.  I’ve heard people say that these movies are an insult to the profession and that they hate them.  But I love the fact that these movies exist, and the reason why is a little gem called Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or MST3k for short. 

            This show makes bad movies sometimes more enjoyable to watch than good movies.  Here is how it works,  MST3k takes a bad movie and makes jokes and wisecracks about the movie, making the movie hilarious. Here is a clip of some of their work to show what I am talking about.

            They took this horribly awful short film about springs, of all things, and made it into something one can enjoy watching.  They did this with movies and shorts for years, but sadly the show no longer exists, or doesn’t it.

            May I introduce to you Rifftrax.  Rifftrax are audio files doing the same thing to movies that MST3k did, only they do them for all kinds of movies, good, bad, and mediocre.  It's still the same people doing the jokes and it's still hilarious, check it out.