White Lie, Ray Footage

Busy Busy Busy

I've neglected posting for the longest time. It's something I'd like to get back to, but I'm busier than hell with my failing job and my promising schooling. I'm enjoying my Masters program in film immensely, and I'll be shooting a script I finished last quarter March 5th. It's exciting and different and challenging, all rolled into one joyous ball. I'm happy that I'm not losing interest or getting any negativity. It seems like I have a knack for it so far which is comforting and leaves hope for numerous possibilities in the future. It's alway nice to hope. Anyway, I'm sure when I'm done with the film it's find it's way onto the internet in some way (unless of course it sucks!)

I'll keep all informed.

Ken

Music Time

Ok, now movies are my main thing. As many of you know who read this, I'm actually attending film school and I start today. Yeah! I'm anxious as hell, but I really think I can do some great things. Time will tell. But I love music, and any time I think of a certain scene that would require music, some tune pops into my head.

Music has been my second most important outlet and was my first true love. I bought my first guitar during my sophomore year of high school, established that I was mediocre at best, put it down, picked it up here and there, but mainly let the real musicians do the work.

My friend Mike is doing his Top 100 albums on his blog. I don't think I know 100 albums so more power to him, but I have been kicking around a rating system for CD's in my head for a couple months and I think I've come up with something satisfactory. I have always been good at numbers, and I wanted to see if my numerical rating for a CD lined up with my overall view of it.

But anyway, here is the rating system.

Zero - Skip it

2 - Moves the CD along

4 - Great song

6 - Classic

An extra category popped into my head which really completed my system, and it's called "Cohesion." And this number can very between a 0-6.

For an album like Radiohead's Kid A. I would give it a 6. So even though few songs are 6's in my opinion, the CD gets a huge boost not from one given song, but from the album as a complete work.

Now an album like Doolittle from The Pixies has several 6's in my mind it but gets maybe only a 1 or 2, in Cohesion, because they throw in two Zero's and one 2 in a row which really kills the rhythm of the CD.

You can be as stringent with this system as you like. Some may love music so much that 6's pop up everywhere. Now for me, a great CD usually usually has 2-4 6's on it. But rate the songs however you like. Just be consistent.

You can exclude any tracks from the CD which include talking, or tones, or just a quick jam. Just stick to the songs. But all that little stuff added in does factor into your Cohesion. The Fugees "The Score" had a hilarious skit on it about some ghetto guys trying to order take-out at a Chinese restaurant. Shit hits the fan, ass stomping begins. That skit alone would add a couple points to Cohesion. I'll never forget it. "Like Burger King, have it your way."

So anyway, I'll be rating CD's here and there (if I have anytime with school). I'll mention the 6's and give an overall Cohesion score which should lead to a summary of the CD. Just to give some sort of guideline to show where my overall scores range from, I'll pick a couple of my favorite CD's and just give the numerical values in my next blog.

But obviously the overall score is your total tally of points for every song plus the Cohesion score divided by the total tracks rated.

CD Score = (Track Points + Cohesion) / Total Tracks

I just think it's a cool way to see where CD's rank. Give it a shot.....(and Mike, try the system with your top 10 and see if the order holds true. I'm just curious).

Thanks all!!!

Inglorious Basterds

Ok, so Tarantino is at it again. Let me get this straight out of the gate: it's stellar. It's interesting, absurd, gross, and I had an unbelievable time. The premise is simple. A rogue group of about 8 Jewish-American soldiers drop in to Germany occupied France with one objective in mind: killing NA-zis. You'll get the awkward spelling once you see the movie.

Brad Pitt does an unbelievable job, playing a great role that suits him well. He's hillbilly Lt. Aldo Raine. A hard nosed, often hilarious, luietenant in charge of the group. Several of the rogue soldiers have memorable names, and memorable moments/scenes. Tarantino always does a great job of developing unforgettable characters, and this show has several.

The only thing that holds this movie back from a 100 is the fact that Tarantino loves himself. That's not really a bad thing necessarily. He's terribly unique and is allowed to think so, but his dialogue scenes can wind just a tiny bit too long. The point could be made slightly quicker, but he likes his dialogue and likes to just "let go."

That's really all I can pick out of the movie as any type of criticism. As usual, you have no idea how it's going to end. And I didn't have super high expectations for this movie. It looked like it coolhave been a terrible mess. But once the movie came to a close 2 1/2 hours in, I wish it actually wouldn't stop.

Ken's Score: 95
Metacritic: 69

District 9

Sorry for becoming side tracked from writing reviews through this blog. I've actually become relatively addicted to posting quick reviews on Netflix. It's neat because it shows how many people have rated your movies and you have on overall reviewer rank. Currently I'm rated 1,100,042. So all I can go is up (I hope anyway).

But I saw District 9 a little over a week ago, and I had the highest of expectations for it, considering the initial and even final reviews were stellar. It seemed like it could be an extremely thought provoking sci-fi classic.

When you go in with such high expectations, a lot of the times they are tough to be met. And I went in knowing this, so I tried to slow my heart rate, take a couple deep breaths, and lower the adrenaline a bit, and just "experience" the movie.

The first 1:15 minutes sucked me in, and exceeded my expectations, even my unrealistic ones. The documentary style, the quarantined alien slum, watching the aliens treated subhuman (I guess that shouldn't be a stretch), and the tension amongst the unit sent in to relocate the alien race. It was gripping, and I expected this movie to rank amongst the greats with me.

Not that the movie really fell apart, but it went in a direction that I hoped it wouldn't. It fell back on action. Not a bad thing. But from the previews and the way it was set-up. I didn't expect the standard blowing up of human after human, cars rolling, bad guy, good guy ending. The alien race wasn't really explored, which I thought it could have been, had a little more thought gone into it.

It was a really good movie. "Fun" is what I'd like to call it. I just thought I'd have my mind challenged a bit more while having a little action mixed in. It turned out that I didn't have to think much about it at all, and I ended up with an action movie with an interesting premise.

Extremely well done, but not what I was looking for.

Ken's Score: 75
Metacritic: 81

Valkyrie

Ok, so the ending is predictable, if you have any concept on history whatsoever. So renting Valkyrie was an afterthought. I Netflixed it mainly because it was in Blu-Ray. I saw average reviews and watching a failed assassination of Hitler didn't seem intriguing.

I was extremely surprised by how well the movie was done. There was nothing amazing about it, but it had great amounts of tension and an unrelenting pace to it which I found quite enjoyable. You know the attempt will not succeed, but the way the attempts are shot, and not really knowing what will happen to Colonel Stauffenburg (Tom Cruise) still kept me guessing.

Cruise played his role well, but the character was a bit too limited to really pull me in. Cruise is appalled by Hitler and his antics and wants to do something about it.

He is the main handler of the briefcase bomb which was supposed to end Hitler's regime. Cruise was good, but it was like he was constantly moving forward, always had the objective in mind, never wavering. It just came across like he was a robot. But that might have been how the actual character was, but at points I was thinking, "are you really that dense." And I saw a picture of him and his wife on the poster I downloaded which didn't make tons of sense because their relationship was developed so minimally.

I like to be surprised, but the ending is already known. So it loses it's steam from the get go. But the ride was enjoyable enough, that it's definitely worth a watch.

My Score: 70
Metacritic: 56