Great Directors – Alfonso Cuaron

This post is for Jordan G.

An interesting article about Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron. Here’s a little:

After Y tu mama también and Harry Potter, Cuarón was able to “return” to more human themes and directed a series of films that can easily form a trilogy, where mankind faces hope as an almost unreachable state. This trilogy (Children of Men, The Possibility of Hope and The Shock Doctrine) gives Cuarón the opportunity to prove that he’s a consumed director by authoring himself the screenplays. In other words, his style is emerging: the use of single long-shots sequences in order to transmit suspense or continuity, depending on the context of the scene; exploring dark themes and the nature human beings in desperate situations.

Read more here.

60 years after Orwell wrote 1984 and was destroyed by the book, a chilling reminder that his sinister vision is almost reality

Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in London on Wednesday, June 8, 1949, and in New York five days later. The world was eager for it.

Within 12 months, it had sold around 50,000 hardbacks in the UK; in the U.S. sales were more than one-third of a million. It became a phenomenon.

Sixty years later, no one can say how many millions of copies are in print, both in legitimate editions and samizdat versions. It has been adapted for radio, stage, television and cinema, has been studied, copied and parodied and, above all, ransacked for its ideas and images.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1192484/60-years-Orwell-wrote-1984-destroyed-book-chilling-reminder-sinister-vision-reality.html#ixzz0sE3JrBWq

Bean Brothers

Stand by Me – A coming of age story

A coming of age is a young person’s transition from childhood to adulthood. The term coming of age is also used in reference to different media such as stories, songs, movies, etc. that have a young character or characters who, by the end of the story, have developed in some way, through the undertaking of responsibility, or by learning a lesson. A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks a person’s progress from one status to another.

Stand by Me is based on Stephen King’s novella The Body. The film is set in a small Oregon town during the last weekend of summer in 1959. The main characters are all twelve years old and they will begin high school after the long weekend. The boys head out on an adventure that helps them leave their boyhood days behind forever. They want to find the body of a young man that has been hit by a train after they overhear some older boys discussing where the body is. The boys want to find the body so that they can become heroes. Unfortunately, the town bully Ace and his gang are also determined to find the body, setting up the film’s climactic conclusion.

The story is told flashback style by narrator Richard Dreyfus who plays the adult, Gordie LaChance. Stand by Me is a beautifully told story of  friendship, but it is also a coming of age story. The film is about the loss of innocence and each of the boys must confront and deal with a personal issues as part of their journey.

In keeping with other rite of passage stories, the journey is used as a metaphor to show how one event or sequence of events can change perceptions and lead someone down a different path than the one that they thought that they would go down. Stand By Me examines who we are and how we got to be that way, and who was a part of  the journey.

1984 resources

This post is for Year 12 students studying 1984. Check out my scholarship@kkc blog for resources on the novel. Try this link to get to them.

The advantages of being colour-blind

The Truman Show – a review

I found an interesting review of the film here and I think you will find it a useful read. I have added a little below:

…The film’s story is essentially simple – Truman discovers the maze and struggles to solve it and take his place in the real world. Will he ultimately find freedom, or be crushed in an environment where every element – even the weather – conspires to contain him? Weir uses many striking visuals to dramatise the concept. The population of Seahaven wait motionless early in the morning, awaiting Truman’s entry like the robots from “Westworld”. The townspeople, discovering that Truman is missing, link arms and sweep the entire town to flush him out and continue the show (a truly creepy and terrific sequence).

The figurehead of Truman’s stolen boat, a golden eagle, thrusts out above the water as he pilots it out into the unknown. Christof tenderly stroking a huge video image of Truman as he lies asleep. The latter image brings another dimension to the creator/creation conflict. We are clearly encourged to think of humanity and God in conflict (as a last resort, “Christ”-of broadcasts to Truman directly, his voice booming down from a dawn-lit sky), yet on another level, we can see creator/creation in less philosophical terms as a parent-child conflict, with the central theme as maturity, forming one’s own perspective through a partial rejection of the imparted parental world. Christof can be seen as the ultimate overprotective parent, literally creating for his surrogate son an entire world safe from the (ironically) lies and pain of the real world…

Read the rest here.

Great gif

Peter Biziou – Cinematographer

Peter Biziou is The Truman Show’s cinematographer and here is a little about his work on the film.

Peter Biziou has quietly built a solid reputation as one of the finest cinematographers of his generation that Britain has produced. Of Welsh extraction, he began his career building models, graduated to lighting commercials, and began his career behind the camera with his friend and long time collaborator, director Alan Parker. His journeyman years spent making commercials have heavily influenced his style without inhibiting his creativity: in making Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998) he relied on that “unreal” look to create an insular world lit by too-brilliant sunlight: as Weir put it, “I was taken with the way Peter uses light, his choice of lenses and his overall look. I loved his work with directors Alan Parker and Jim Sheridan. He takes chances, yet one always sees what one needs to see. I also knew that Peter is selective and only takes on films to which he feels he can offer something unique.” The Truman Show itself is a showcase for the cinematographer’s art: when the director Christof (Ed Harris) says abruptly, “Cue the sun” and a fireball shoots up in response (a stunning effect requiring Biziou’s strategy and elaborate digital enhancement) or the vignettes that alert the viewer to the presence of the many spying cameras recording Truman Burbank’s life. To give “a more obvious, menacing feel,” Biziou used gobos placed in front of the lens and explored the use of wide angle lenses often used in commercials, as well as all the ingenious “Truman-cams.” His ability to translate Weir’s wish for a hyper-real, light-soaked Norman Rockwell world is in keeping with his reputation as an inventive, intuitive artisan who compliments and completes a director’s vision.

Read more: Peter Biziou – Writer – Films as Cinematographer:, Publications http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Ba-Bo/Biziou-Peter.html#ixzz0rquLoFM9

Good luck to the All Whites!