D is for Dreaming

this post is dedicated to movies (and a book).

tangled
oh gosh, how i love disney. and mandy moore. and zachary levi. this is SUCH a good film! its like quite different to the normal disney princess theme since i guess rapunzel isnt really a helpless damsel in distress and flynn isnt realli a knight in shining armour or a prince charming.

i really loved it since it had elements of humour that are relatable not just to little girly 6 year olds but even to adults and males. and there is quite a bit of focus on flynn, so its not like the whole thing is just a princess movie.

honestly, it is SUCH a good film. i'd maybe give it a 9/10.

i ABSOLUTELY LOVE the songs "i see the light" and the healing incantation. love mandy moore (ever since i saw her in 'because i told you so') and who knew zachary levi could sing so well!! so awesome.


the mist
okay this story is based on stephen king's book about a group of local community people who are trapped in a supermarket due to this mysterious mist that brings on blood-thirsty supernatural creatures.

this film is quite good: very intense and i guess i got quite into it. it's a really interesting movie because you can see how people's true personalities come out when something life-threatening occurs. and it's really interesting to note and think: what would i do in that situation?

i think what makes it so memorable is the ending. i can't say anything but yeh... stephen king's original ending was left open ended, but the directors wrote the films ending and stephen king described it as "the ending he wished he would have thought of". i think thats pretty cool. go watch it. i rate it maybe a 8.5/10


the prestige
another christopher nolan movie, with christian bale, hugh jackman, michael caine, scarlett johansson GOSH DOESNT IT SOUND AMAZING ALREADY!?

so if you need more convincing (than the cast and the director) to watching the film, its about two magicians who rival each other as they try to perform the ultimate trick. of course with this determination comes sabatoge, secrets and alot of troublesome business, with which each magician gets too deep into knowing the other's secrets.

i think this film is such a christopher nolan film, bringing the whole epic plotline, genius directing and of course the intense ending that comes with his previous movies, such as memento, batman begins, the dark knight, and of course: inception.

of course, its got that weird directing that christopher nolan does, jumping from scene to scene...so you might be like wait wat? but dw...all is explained (like always)

honestly, this film is so good...its one of those films that you need to rewatch shortly after first seeing it. and i love those sort of films.

the only thing wrong with it is...(maybe it was the version that i saw) it was really hard to listen to everyone say stuff. christian bales accent was thick, sluggish and really weird. michael caines accent is (as usual) painfully english and hugh jackman is sort of deep. maybe it was the version since i never really had problems with them before (except for christian bales deepened batman voice)

id probably give it like a 8.5 or 9/10


the making of: inception
so i recently saw the making of inception...and gosh i have so much more respect for christopher nolan now. all along i thought everything in the movie was CGI or really cool graphics (the hotel scene, gravity shifts at the bar, fortress exploding, the freight train, exploding paris, etc) but noooo christopher nolan was like "i want this to be as real as possible so we are going to make everything happen"

that meant that for the hotel scene: 3 of the hallways was built. one horizontal during normal gravity scenes, one vertical for zero-g simulation (they would drop arthur down by a harness and he had to fully stiffen up so it looked like he was fully relaxed) and one in this massive rotating cylinder with a camera attached to the floor so that even though the room was rotating, it didn't look like it was since the camera was rotating with it. get my gist?

and then in the gravity shifts at the bar: the room was actually built on this massive sort of see saw thing. yes they actually MADE THE ROOM TILT. so to do this they had to get all the extras to audition, and like a third of them couldnt physically do this because even though the room was tilted they had to act as if nothing was going on and keep their balance right. i found this absolutely amazing! like people were like "cant we just put up a green screen and do it in post-production or sumthing" and then they were like "but then obviously christopher nolan said no. he wanted the real thing."

they actually exploded the fortress itself, which isnt shocking seeing as they actually exploded gotham hospital in the dark knight. and then they built a smaller version of the fortress (which was still pretty big) and blew that up twice.

the freight train wasn't photoshopped, it was just this truck that they extended the length, added stuff to the sides and front, painted it and then ran it through the street, they only photoshopped the destruction of the road in (since they didnt want to destroy the actual road obviously)

the scene where paris explodes because ariadne realises she is dreaming was real! the put these huge pressurised air cans behind the stalls and everything and made them explode. CGI just enhanced it, did all the smaller explosions and the explosions of the road and the buildings.

i think mainly everything was quite real except limbo, where they went to a place with the buildings and had to create waves of their own to end halfway through the suburban area, but the crumbling buildings were painstakingly CGI.


we need to talk about kevin
i'll make this a quickie. once again, the storyline: Eva Katchadourian is writing letters to her separated husband about their son Kevin, who killed seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and his English teacher. Eva tells her husband about all the things he was unable to see or realise about his son: his cruelty, cunningness and the loving act he would put on for his dad, and how he always sided Kevin rather than Eva, who would always be able to see right through Kevin's acts.

as i said before, this book is relli hard to get into. the beginning is quite...REALLY boring with how educated Eva writes and all the big words she uses. Yet once it started to talk about Kevin and everything that went on in his childhood, it became super interesting.

and the ending is just...quite shocking and terrifying. i got so into it i actually didnt want to believe the ending of the second last letter in the book. i just was in pure shock...

i highly recommend reading this book. while you go in and out of excitement and boredom, the end result is quite...intriguing and very very deep.


well, this has been an insanely long post but yes. very interesting stuff i have seen/read and i highly recommend you to see/read them too!