Blow Dry, Nobel Son, and Something the Lord Made

So the other night was a mini-Alan Rickman movie night. The movies on the menu were (as the subject line suggests) Blow Dry, Nobel Son, and Something the Lord Made. All rather good films.

(In lieu of the poster art, I chose this picture, as it features Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson, and Rachel Griffiths R->L)

This 2001 movie, Blow Dry, stars Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson (amazing actress), Rachel Griffiths, Rachel Leigh Cook and Josh Hartnett. It also has Bill Nighy in it, so that's always fun. The movie, on the basic level, is about a hair competition that comes to town and what this means for all the characters. Alan Rickman and Natasha Richardson play veteran hair competitors as well as ex-husband and wife. While this movie probably isn't for everyone for one reason or another, I find this film to be a nice film. Not the best, but not the worst. It deals with some a handful of very serious issues, but deals with everything with enough care. The artistic element is really cool to see during the hair competition... it gets pretty intense.


Nobel Son (2008). Once again, all star cast with some very good new comers. Nobel Son is a roughly a story about a professor (Alan Rickman) who wins the Nobel Peace Prize and then has his son (Bryan Greenburg) kidnapped with a ransom (the amount given from the peace prize award). His wife is played by Mary Steenburgen and Bill Pullman plays the detective... with Danny DeVito as the neighbor. That plot really doesn't do this movie justice though- this is a mystery/suspense with moments of comedy throughout. I've seen those thrillers... you know the one's where you can figure out what's going to happen half-way through... yeah, this isn't one of them. Throughout the whole film it throws you for loops, and then it ends with a Bam finish of completely un-expectedness. The entire cast is excellent in their roles. Alan Rickman is once again a devlishly horrible man and Mary Steenburgen is a mom you don't mess with.





Alan Rickman and Mos Def was a combination I may never have given two thoughts on, until of course this movie made it plainly obvious that it was the most logical decision and why hadn't any one done this before? Running on HBO, Something the Lord Made (2004) made it's way to DVD and I'm sincerely glad it did, else I may never have seen it. This is the story of Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas- two men who were heart surgery pioneers and cured the "blue baby syndrome" by creating bypass heart surgery. While I am not familiar with these two men's stories outside of what this bio-pic has taught me, I still feel like this movie did the even justice. It is wonderfully crafted, everything from the fashions to the landscapes transport you back to the 1930s and later. Kyra Sedgwick and Gabrielle Union play the wives of Rickman and Def, respectively.

**I would like to note in reference to class assignments, the Avatar picture was taken from the web, and all the pictures from this blog were uploaded from my computer.

Avatar

To start us off, we're going to talk about the new film Avatar. Yes, everyone and their brother has dissected this film- and maybe this time, there's a good reason. I finally fell under the intrigue of the fame and recognition this film was getting, so my friend and I trucked out one night to go see it- AMC 3D Imax. We were ready. And they were sold out. Great.

One week later, we decided to try again... earlier this time. Wandering over to our seats, we were ready once again. Let's start by saying that the previews were pretty intense, and somewhat interesting. The nice Imax sound was pretty awesome.

Then came the movie. It's pretty safe to say, I'm at a loss of words to describe the awesome-ness of this film. James Cameron, you've done it again. That sentence seems to sum it up perfectly. The graphics were out of this world. The amount of detail and ingenuity of each piece created, down to the individual leaves was astounding. I looked like a little kid in a toy store when the night scenes came on. You could tell while watching this movie that every creation was painstakingly thought out. Even the animals- they somewhat resembled real-life creatures, but were different enough that you could tell the similarities were there probably only to help the audience whether consciously or sub-consciously accept the animals and not lose focus on the rest of the environment that was being showcased.

Another highlight for me... there was a scene in which Sigourney Weaver is in her Avatar form, and you could have sworn that it was really just her in blue paint, and nothing CGI-related.

I am curious however, as to how this film will transfer over to the small screen. This was a movie that was made for Imax and movie theaters. Although I think it will still be a very powerful film, see this in theaters if you get the chance. You really don't have a choice- this is one everyone should see. At least once. At least.

The following is a link to the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeh2KILn7O4

Welcome

Hello all!

So I'm not entirely sure what exactly I'd like my topic to be for this digital media project- but for now, it's going to be about the movie industry (aka, we're going to be talking about films!)


So, why am I interested in this? Well, I've always been interested in movies... everything from the 1940s to today's current releases.

This blog may be able to contribute to the film community in that it will be talking about things from movie reviews to different actor's itineraries.

A site that will come in handy I'm sure, is www.imdb.com.

Ciao