Me and You and Everyone We Know by Miranda July

Miranda July is one of the most intriguing directors I know of. 

She was born is Barre, Vermont in 1974. Both of her parents were writers. She began writing at an early age and continued to write when her family moved to Berkeley, California. There, she began writing short plays and staging them at a local all-ages theater.

She grew up to attend UC Santa Cruz, but dropped out in her sophomore year. She then moved to Portland, Oregon and took up performance art. She was very successful and began to dabble in all kinds of media, including film and music.

Her first feature-length film was called Me and You and Everyone We Know. It is a complicated film to explain, since it has so many subplots and seemingly meaningless moments. I suppose I can start by saying that it is about a strange and lonely performance artist named Christine. It is also about a recently-separated shoe salesman and his two sons, Peter and Robby. These are the circulating characters that lead the story onwards. However there are also two teenage girls wandering the streets, doing each other's make-up and waiting for something exciting to happen, a watchful younger girl who collects household appliances and stores them in her "Hope Chest", hoping to one day give these items to her future husband and children as her dowry.

The film is set in a sort of generic city neighborhood. The neighborhood is a confined world, including a strip mall, an apartment complex, and some houses, so it feels very intimate and helps to make the coincidences and collisions of characters in the story more believable.

It is a very sensitive film, filled with reality mixed with magic, and that I what I love about it. Especially this scene: 

The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson

 The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson's newest creation, is one of the most visually stimulating experiences I've ever had. I've already seen it twice, and each time I've noticed completely different details and parts of the story.

The story is very fast-paced. In Wes Anderson's classic style, the characters all have different stories colliding and separating in a mess that all makes sense in the end. The quirkiness of the characters (Zero's lopsided and pencilled-in mustache, Agatha's Mexico-shaped birthmark, Monsieur Gustave's love of poetry recitation, etc.) is always one of my favorite aspects of any Wes Anderson movie. To me, his characters always seem like just that: characters. They feel a little bit unreal, almost too bizarre to be real. But they also have very human moments. They make mistakes and have emotions. They are dramatic, quiet, unpredictable, and could viably be real people in many ways. If you were in the types of situations that Wes Anderson and his writers dream up, how would you react?
The order that his movies always convey (the centered shots, the deadpan stares, the motivated camera-movement) puts me at ease, since the stories are always so jumbled and complicated and intricately detailed. I've noticed that after watching a Wes Anderson film, I always feel very centered and purposeful. I do not fidget in my chair, I walk in straight lines, I notice the details around me, I am not afraid to look into people's eyes. I realize that everyone has stories, and that all of our stories maybe intertwine into a bigger, more sensible one.
Wes Anderson is somewhat of a surrealist in my eyes. I never forget that I am watching a movie when I am watching his movies, but the theatrics of his movies always overlap into the emotion and eccentricity of life in the real world. To me, that distortion of reality, one which can maybe even change the way you perceive reality after you walk out of the theater, is a really inspiring and fantastic feat of creation. Thanks, Mr. Anderson.

oscars (2014)

Hosted by the lovely Ellen DeGeneres, sparkling eyes and all, the Oscars were an event to be remembered. My personal favorite moment of the show was when 12 Years A Slave's Lupita Nyong'O gave one of the most beautiful speeches I've ever witnessed. Her poise and wisdom shine through always, in her personality and in her performances.

<iframe frameborder="0" width="480" height="270" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x1eb2x7" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1eb2x7_lupita-nyong-o-acceptance-speech-oscars-2014_people" target="_blank">Lupita Nyong&#039;o Acceptance Speech - Oscars 2014</a> <i>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/IdolxMuzic" target="_blank">IdolxMuzic</a></i>

Isn't she spectacular?

self portrait treatment

When thinking about what I'd like to do for my self-portrait, I began with images that are close to the core of my being. These images are:

1. full and heavy clouds
2. assortments of glass
3. light
4. centered roads
5. twilight skies

I would like to flash these images in a sort of disorganized manner. I also would like to flash keywords from some of my journals to evoke the inner dialogue that is going on in me.

This video should give off the same feeling as an approaching storm.

Prince Avalanche by David Gordon Green

Prince Avalanche is a film about two men on a journey. They are repainting the traffic lines on the roads of a Texas landscape in the aftermath of a wildfire. Alvin, played by Paul Rudd, is a man who enjoys the solitude and aloneness of the wilderness and chooses to send the money he makes working on the roads to his serious girlfriend, who lives alone in an unspecified city with her son. Lance, played by Emile Hirsch, is Alvin's girlfriend's younger brother. He is a bit dopey, and provides the comedic relief in the majority of the movie. Rather than enjoying the solitude of the wilderness like Alvin, Lance feels lonely and goes into town every chance he gets. They dislike each other in the beginning, but soon begin to learn more about themselves as they spend more time in the incredible landscape. 

The soundtrack to the movie, by Explosions in the Sky, is unbelievably beautiful. Here it is in its entirety. I suggest listening to it while doing something you enjoy.

The music, along with the cinematography, was what made the movie really special, in my opinion. The color palette was very specific and very contained, and I really liked that. There were bright yellows and oranges of the traffic lines and their equipment, greens and browns of the forest, blues of their coverall-uniforms, and greys and blacks of the asphalt road.

I really really enjoyed this movie, and I would suggest it to anyone looking for something enjoyable and evocative to watch. Go watch it!

                                     

Twixt by Francis Ford Coppola

Twixt is a spooky movie!

Set in the small and bizarre town of Swann Valley, it follows the story of a profitless mystery writer named Hall Baltimore. He is on a tour across America for his latest series of witch novels, which are not selling. The sheriff of the town approaches him with an idea for a new novel. There is a girl's body in the morgue with a wooden stake stabbed through her. So ensues a whirlwind of vampiric myths, murder, intrigue, ghosts, dreams, and time-travel.

This is probably the only scary movie that I have ever truly enjoyed. The stories, and the confusing nature of the plot (you never know what is a dream and what is real) make the movie so entertaining. The way the film is shot is also very interesting. The colors and the cinematography was obviously slaved over, and it was all totally worth it!

My favorite character was a young girl named Virginia who likes being called V. She is very spunky and sassy. She also has a very interesting story, one that may or may not be made up...

Louis Vuitton ft. David Bowie by Romain Gavras

This commercial for Louis Vuitton's Venice ad campaign, makes me so excited and inspired.
I saw it in a theater. I was entranced by the images from the beginning, and David Bowie's appearance was just such a happy surprise. I felt the corners of my mouth turning up, and I was reminded of days when I was younger and my imagination and wonder were much more active. I was sitting next to my grandmother, and when the commercial was over, she leaned close and whispered in my ear, "Aren't the movies just so dazzling? It's amazing that someone made that movie to take you to any faraway place you could ever want to go". I remember my grandmother something similar only a couple of times previously in my life: once when we were watching a Walt Disney movie, and another time when we were listening to classical music. I couldn't help but smile at the happy nostalgia and memories that bubbled up inside me! I felt like a little six-year-old again, staring up at a huge television screen, snuggled up in my grandmother's white, fluffy bed.
I later realized that the nostalgia I felt when I watched this commercial was also based on another connection. The masquerade party scene from my absolute favorite movie to watch when I was little - a Jim Henson film called "The Labyrinth"- and the Louis Vuitton commercial share similar themes, styles, and, of course, glamour. (the part I am talking about begins at 2:07)