T-shirt War!

                                        

When I went to the summer camp that got me interested in filmmaking, there was a week of film camp dedicated to stop motion animation. This was one of the videos that my teacher/mentor showed us kids at the camp that I thought was ingenius and cute and overall entertaining.
     I'm always in awe every time I watch a short film because I'm always impressed how the people who made the video can keep your attention, having no huge mega-crazy plot, and still keep you interested and loving the plot that is there.
    These guys are Rhett and Link. This video was popular enough on Youtube that they did another video for a commercial for Coke and McDonald's with the exact same t-shirt idea. (Which is on Youtube also, if you want to watch it. It's called T-shirt War 2.)
     I especially loved the behind-the-scenes for T-shirt War 2, because it really showed you how much time and energy and creativity was put into these movies, and it made me appriciated the movies even more. (So I reccomend watching that video also!)
     I hope you like it. :)

Castle

Hitting off the start of season 4, which premiered yesterday, Castle's season 3 just came out on DVD today! YES! I haven't seen anything beyond season 2 (I hate to watch out of order, so I rarely watch any show until it comes out on DVD and I KNOW I'm going to watch it in its intended order), and my parents and I are big, big Castle fans! And to think that we became fans by accident, really. I saw Castle in Target one day and was like, "Hey, that looks good. I should watch it."
     Castle has Nathan Fillion as its star. Nathan got his big break as Malcolm Reynolds on Firefly (If you don't love this show, I might have to sick Reavers on you) but Nathan in the role of Richard Castle was how he was introduced into my family.
     Castle is, in a way, a new, updated version of Murder, She Wrote. Richard Castle is a best selling mystery novelist in New York City, and during one of his signing parties, he gets called upon by beautiful, no-nonsense cop Kate Beckett (played by Stana Katic, Beckett is Nathan's co-star), who wants to ask him some questions about a couple of murders. The murderer, in fact, took Castle's murders from his books and made them a reality.
     So the show is finally on its 4th season and the 3rd itself is pretty different from the last 2 seasons so far, in my opinion. The 2nd season left you on this rocky cliffhanger, and in the 3rd the characters have some issues against each other that need to be resolved. I've noticed that usually TV shows tend to be lighthearted (even in murder) in the 1st season. In its 2nd season, the show is at its best, at its height of plot and drama. Then by the 3rd season the show tends to take a toll on being more serious in characterization and sometimes even the colors of the 3rd season seem more serious. Even something simple for color changing could be through a character's costume. Castle season 3 is no exception.
     So this concludes my review on Castle. It's one of the best shows I've ever watched, and I'm hoping that the people working on this project can give me an equally exciting new season that I can watch over and over again.
    

Red Riding Hood

                                                    

I’m a sucker for remakes of fairy tales, and this one grabbed my attention because of the tagline (“Good girls don’t speak to werewolves…”).  I’ve also wanted to see more work of the director, Catherine Hardwicke, who directed Twilight.

     This movie got a lot of bad reviews, so I wasn’t expecting it to be perfect. But after I let all the bad reviews slip away from my mind, I immersed myself into the plot and enjoyed it.

    The sets of the village where the story takes place were amazing. Like, “I totally want to live there” amazing. The set’s browns and monotone colors also made Valerie’s red hooded cape so much more contrasting and beautiful against the village and especially the snow.

     The premise of the story was interesting, where the village was plagued by a werewolf who came every full moon and would devour people if you didn’t leave livestock out for it to eat instead.

     So you can imagine Valerie’s (played by Amanda Seyfried) surprise when she finds her sister murdered by the wolf, then finding out that the wolf can speak to her, and it’s there for her.

     My most favorite parts of the film though are the parts of the original Grimm Brothers’ story still inside this new movie. This is what I love about remakes, because it’s someone else’s take of the fairy tale, but still preserving the tale in its own way.

     A woodcutter ends up becoming a love interest for Valerie, and of course the story wouldn’t be complete without the trademark scene everyone knows…

     “Grandmother, what big eyes you have.”

     “The better to see you with, my dear!”

     “Grandmother, what big ears you have.”

     “The better to hear you with, my dear!”

Priest

This movie grabbed my attention the moment I saw Paul Bettany was the main character. Paul is an actor I've appriciated since his performance as Dustfinger in Inkheart, so I've been very interested to see him in other movies, and I was very glad he got this lead role.
     Priest is a movie that, at first glance, appears to be another vampire movie created to appeal to Twilight's fans (Which it seems that everyone in the media has been doing since Twilight became popular), but it actually was incredibly different.
     And what made it unique was that the church was deeply involved in the plot. In the story, the church actually created the group of Priests, who were warriors trained to kill vampires (who were at war with the humans).
     While the main plot centers on the main character (Paul Bettany), who was simply called Priest, and a young man named Hicks' (played by Cam Gigandet) journey to retrieve Priest's kidnapped niece (Lily Collins), one particular part that I found interesting was how the church behaved.
     The church just was astonishing. Only way I can put it. They were so manipulative, so focused on intimidating you, that even while watching, far, far, faaarrrr away in my living room, I was convinced that I had to do what they said. And it was amazing to me to watch how they did things, in the sense that they were really no better than the vampires in ways of cruelty. Very eye-opening for me, definitely.
     The setting of the story gave a very apocalyptic aura in the world's barrenness, and the colorization was very much like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in that it was very dark and moody. The vampires were also unique. It was kinda obvious that they were a bunch of people in green screen suits, but hey, I'd love to have those guys' job! ^_^ Their appearance in themselves was very different and unusual. No sparking in this movie, folks!
           All in all, I think this movie stands well on its own, and it was enjoyable.

Pictures....

Over the course of my writing career, every once in a while, I would come across something about C.S. Lewis. Of course everyone knows who C.S. Lewis is, but I've grown to really appriciate his opinions on writing this past year.
     C.S. Lewis, to me, understands true writing. He understands the craft and has some very insightful things that he has written or said that has comforted me during my writing obstacles.
     I read his essay, It All Began With A Picture, which is his story on how he came to write the Narnia books. He tells of how Narnia started with pictures, not stories, and the pictures were like writing prompts, but when people ask how he got the picture, he says he cannot say. It just appeared in his head without warning.
     I started thinking about how he said these pictures just come to him, but he doesn't know where they came from. I have that too, where I'll have dreams of characters, and I'll write the dream down and the characters' story will come to me, but where did the dreams come from? Or how did the idea of a character's past come to me--while emptying the dishwasher, no less!? (Agatha Christie strongly suggests writing mysteries while doing the dishes.) Where do these pictures and stories come from that seem to have had no inspriration whatsoever from the outside world?
     I think that if God has called you to writing, He sends you those pictures, and those characters. Writing is a complicated process; it's art. You cannot, under any circumstances, rush your art. You mustn't try to force those ideas to come to your head, for risk of the idea being your own and not the story's. God is there to give you the inspiration you need and you have to trust Him and not freak out when you haven't written in weeks. And if you listen to your characters, and ask them themselves what they want to do, more often than not, they'll whisper in your ear what needs to happen to them.
     I believe that a writer's job is simply to listen, and write the story based on what they're told. Like a reporter, and God and your characters are the ones you're interviewing.

Yo!

Konnichiwa! My name is Oli (pronounced “Ollie”), and I am in fact an early entry high school student hailing from a tiny town from Maryland. Everything art fascinates me, and I want to learn as much of it as I can.

I guess in a way I’ve been a storyteller all my life, telling stories through my toys when I was small up to now through pictures and through words. I also remember wanting to be in the movies when I was little.

In my eyes, though, the mark of the beginning of my serious writing began on Labor Day weekend of 2007 (this past weekend marking my 4-year writing anniversary! :D), where I in fact started plans for a Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys fan fiction with one of my friends. (The story has now evolved into something that is entirely ours and not copyrighted, haha.)

And in fact I’ve always been into movies but never thought of it as a career until the summer of 2010 when I went to a summer camp for in fact making movies. This camp really opened my eyes to remember my childhood dream once forgotten and see that it’s really very possible to make movies immediately with the technology available.

People here are also saying what film inspired them the most, what movie brought them here to desire filmmaking as a career. I’m a different case. Books inspired me to become a filmmaker. What I mean by this is that books inspired me to write. But when I went to that summer camp and started writing my first movie script, I realized that I wasn’t writing books all this time. I had been writing movies. My books always laid out like movies in my head. When I wrote, I never saw words; I saw my characters in motion. That’s what inspired me to make movies.

Movies and TV I love are Firefly, Castle, and manga and anime, and anything fantasy or mystery. I’m actually so fascinated by anime that I’m going so far as to teach myself Japanese. (Konnichiwa, what I said above, means, “Good afternoon!” ) The movies that inspire me the most are the ones with strong characters.

I’m not interested in Hollywood. I don’t want to live in Hollywood; I don’t want to be as famous as Angelina Jolie. (Although rubbing elbows with Johnny Depp does sound extremely appealing….) I’m interested in telling stories, and being able to be a part of that story, and I’m interested simply in the hope that people can enjoy them as much as I do.