Here's to the ones who dream

La La Land (2016)

8.9/10 on IMDb
93% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: A must-see; Watch it in cinemas; I'm buying the DVD
Watch it if you: Want a touching and emotional romance that so happens to be a musical;
Want to get some of the best songs ever stuck in your head for the next year;
Are a fan of either Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, or both
A jazz pianist dreaming to open a jazz club, falls in love with an aspiring actress against the backdrop of the beautiful land of LA.

First of all, I love both Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

For anyone who hasn't yet, you will be doing a great disservice if you do not check out Emma Stone's great lip sync battle on The Tonight Show.

As for Ryan Gosling, I completely forgot how sexy this guy was. When was the last time he was in a romance? I can't remember, but it's been too damn long. This guy exudes charisma, just look at him.

Also, while this movie is a musical, there are apparently people who hate musicals and still loved this film. I guess because the film is more a romance drama focusing on the leading couple.

But the music is great in this, I was super impressed with the directing, acting, performance, and general set pieces.

The opening scene took my breath away; it's a musical done in a traffic jam on a highway, and it's done all in one take. I thought, "WOW! What an opening!" Little did I realise that the entire movie was just chockfull of crazy long takes that are seamless. SEAMLESS, I tell you!

While Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are not the best singers, I thought it was still really endearing and more realistic to watch. And anyway, cast for acting first, singing second. These two certainly were able to portray their emotions through their performances even if their performances themselves weren't perfect. If they had gotten broadway actors, it just would not have been the same. After all, as I said, the story isn't JUST a musical.

There is even one scene where nothing is happening except Emma Stone singing for three minutes. There is not a single camera cut; it's just a close up of Emma Stone's face the entire time. And you know what? I cried! That's how powerful the song, and her performance, was.

Then there's the fact that Ryan Gosling practiced the piano for 2-4 hours every day for 6 days a week so that the long takes could show him playing the piano! That is dedication, and I was really impressed during that take, and even wondered whether another person's hands were edited in. I was so glad to find out that was actually Gosling's hands in there!

I seriously hope these two win their respective Oscar categories (because we know for sure they will be nominated).

There is a bit of a lull in musical numbers in the middle, and that's to reflect the progression of the storyline, and thats when you start to really love the story itself, and not just the music. The story is really emotional, I was blubbering by the end of the film. But apart from that, it's also a great piece of artwork. All the scenes looked beautiful; the cinematography here was amazing.

It's also very nostalgic of old school musicals. It even felt to me like I was watching a stage musical, but on screen. Particularly because of the one-shot takes and the style of the dances and songs. It also felt like the time setting kept changing because it was a great vintage love story, but in a modern setting.

Overall, I really loved this film. It's in my top two at the moment, and I'm not sure which position it's in (the other movie is Arrival, and it's just hard to compare movies of completely different genres).

It's a musical, but I don't think you need to like musicals to appreciate it. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are great in their third appearance together; the movie looks, sounds, and feels amazing. It's a very thoughtful movie, with a lot of heart in it, and I would highly recommend it.

(Also, John Legend's in it!)

My first oil painting!

I just did my first oil painting!

I was inspired by Leonid Afremov’s vibrant night landscapes, and I thought I would try my hand at doing something similarly dark and vivid.

I have canvases that my mum bought me some time ago (we are talking over 10 years ago) with outlines on them, and I wanted to do a bright painting on another one of them, but figured I would just use this café one as target practice so I don’t mess up the other one.

Here’s what the reference picture looked like. Since it’s a day scene I had to change it to a night one in my mind:

(Sorry it's blurry but the photo is pretty tiny)
I figured this painting would be better to do in oil, as they are more vibrant, slower to dry, easier to blend, and would just be a good change (I have only ever used acrylic and poster paint and whatnot).

My last painting was done just over five years ago, and seriously I now remember why I stopped painting after that, despite every intention to do so.

Painting is actually really tiring!

This painting took me approximately 8 – 8.5 hours, split into four sessions.

Blank canvas with outlines.

Session #1 – 2 hours
Colour blocking with yellow and adding brown for a bit of base shading.
I didn’t realise the café had so many windows, and then I thought of the streetlamps as well as reflections off the building, and the result is a lot of yellow.
This was also the day that I realised that no, you cannot wash oil paints with soap and water. You need turpentine. Which smells like death.

Session #2 – 2 hours
Realised it needed more red, not brown, to make it brighter. Added dark green for bushes and dark brown for upper storey.
I should have just put dark green everywhere but for some reason I was thinking of putting bright fluro green in parts where the dark green wasn’t.

Session #3 – 2.5 hours
Blue time. Added dark blue to the bushes, as well as light blue spots (for ‘flowers’, lol). Added blue to the door, signs and tarp cover thing on the right. Put yellow over the lights again because I did not like the red I added the last session.

Session #4 – 2 hours
Did not like the first storey so I decided to use a fine brush to do some outlining. With the black, I also added in the lamp and sign detailing. Added colour to the bushes and ground reflections. Added yellow light reflections to the bushes and painted in some door handles. Darkened the upper storey again.
So there it is, my first oil painting!

How did I fare?

Well here are my goals for this painting, and my thoughts on them:

Successfully do an oil painting: I guess it was successful. I made it in the end.

Make it as bright and vibrant as possible: Lol, this could definitely be a lot more vibrant

Let go of reality (I tend to be a perfectionist and try and make things as accurate as possible; now I'm trying to rid myself of that and be a bit more surreal like Afremov): This was really hard to do. I wanted to do like big blocks of colour for the greenery like in Afremov's paintings, but it was so hard because I kept thinking, "No one is going to realise that is meant to be a plant." I will just have to keep aiming for this on my next painting (if I do one, lol).

Minimal mixing; use original colours and if it needs mixing, do it on the canvas: The thing I found to love with oil painting is that it is great with mixing; it is so easy to blend colours together while looking natural. In my last painting, I struggled to do the treek trunks because I would have to constantly mix, then add super fine lines, to try and blend it and shade it correctly. Here, you can just put one dark colour on one side, one light colour on the other side, then paint alternatively and they will sort of end up blending into each other naturally.

Looking forward to my next oil painting, I just need time to recover.

I am one with the Force; the Force is with me.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

8.3/10 on IMDb
84% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe’s thoughts: It’s alright; Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe (I put both of these because it’s somewhere in the middle of the two statements)
Watch it if you: Are a fan of Star Wars (obviously); Want to see some cool CGI and action scenes

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....

Basically, this film is centred around the events of the opening crawl of Episode IV: A New Hope, so that's not a spoiler, and if you think it's a spoiler then what are you even doing here, go watch the original movies!

I for some reason was not that excited about this film. I think it was just a mixture of the first trailer (think back to the terrible ongoing siren, together with the "I rebel" line), and the news about 40% of the movie being reshot, that just made me feel really uneasy about the whole thing.

And while there certainly are a lot of flaws in this film, it turned out to be pretty good!

Some standouts of the film were that it was fun, enjoyable, had great action sequences, cinematography, and CGI, and actually had a different feel to other Star Wars films (and not just because they did things differently with the opening crawl and the soundtrack).

But unfortunately, I didn't feel satisfied with the movie until quite late into the film.

In fact, the whole first part of the film is pretty bad. It's really messy, with scenes shoved in randomly, the movie making us feel like we were just hopping from planet to planet for weird expositionary scenes, and it felt like they were trying to put in all this information they thought was necessary, when in actual fact it was really redundant.

I mean, seriously, in the first half an hour we probably hear of a defected Imperial pilot carrying a message about five times, and it's like... We get it; can we move on now? That probably would have been better if they could have changed it and made it into some part of an opening crawl to make a tighter, shorter, and more cohesive film.

But instead, what we got was a badly written, and quite frankly a bit boring, first half with a lot of unnecessary scenes (telepathic tentacles, really?).

Thank heavens this was only the first part of the film though! Perhaps this is why they ended up rewriting 40% of the movie; they just realised how terrible it was!

The film gets better towards the middle, and once it gets over the hump it really picks up in the last act. So much so that you actually kind of forget how messy the first part was.

Later in the film, we get introduced to the planet Scarif, and I loved the concept of it; it looked really cool, with all its beaches and everything. But it also provided a really great war zone.

The action and fight sequences in this film really did look really gritty and combat-like, and it was just so different to other Star Wars films I thought it did a great job at that.

It also felt like a different Star Wars movie because of some of the portrayals of the Rebel fighters. It's not like a cookie-cutter bad-guys-are-bad-good-guys-are-good film; you get into some real sketchy morales here, and there is one scene near the beginning where you're just kind of left there like, Oh... that guy's a dickhead! And it was interesting to see glimpses of that in this film.

Which brings us to the characters and actors.

I liked the acting here; it was interesting seeing Felicity Jones in an action role since she looks so sweet and like she wouldn't hurt a fly.

I also found it amazing that they were able to cast a child actor that resembled her. That is so hard to do, and although she looked more like Felicity Jones in the trailer than in the actual movie, I thought that was a solid effort (although I'm not sure if they used a bit of CGI to make her look like her likeness).

Donnie Yen as Chirrut was great in this, but his character seemed a bit... unbelievable. I see the necessity in some of his characterisations, though, to explain bits about the Force and show the power of it all and how it has this sort of religious feel to it, but some of it seemed really ridiculous.

One last character I wanted to talk about was Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera. I have mixed feelings about this, because I'm glad he didn't really act like how he normally does, but what was up with his voice? I felt like clearing my throat every time he said something; it was really weird.

Apart from those minor issues, though, I found the acting to be pretty good, and the characters quite enjoyable to follow.

Another thing that I really liked about this film was that it addresses and shuts up one major flaw in the original series. There is one thing in A New Hope that is so ridiculous, yet this film centres around a really smart and reasonable excuse to explain that flaw away. Although, it doesn't make the same flaw in The Force Awakens go away...

So it wasn't a fantastic Star Wars film, but it was really enjoyable, if you can get past the mess that is the first act. The action sequences, cinematography, set pieces, acting, and CGI were great. The soundtrack wasn't the best (my heart would leap, and then just break, every time we heard something that sounded like a familiar theme, only for it to change and feel a bit weird at the end), but apparently they only had about a month to do it.

It's also really interesting and exciting to see how they blended it into Episode IV; this was probably the rewrite they had to do, since it was reported that it was the ending they had to change. And even without this ending, they had great continuity, with characters showing up from previous films, and even having some motion capture done for characters so that we could see familiar faces (even though the actor/s may already be dead by now). They did a really good job with this motion capture business, but it was still heading towards uncanny valley territory, although I think it wouldn't have been as bad if it weren't for my mum constantly whispering into my ear that it was CGI.

One last thing: Darth Vadar isn't in this film much. He doesn't do much here, and is a bit of a let down. He looks super short in this film, and not as authoritative as a result, but you know what? He more than makes up for it at the end of the film.

A few side notes:

Baze looks like he's carrying a Dyson on his back, it's hilarious.

K-2SO reminded me of TARS set to 90% sarcasm

"Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director."

"Are you kidding me? I'm blind!"

How sad was it when that Organa guy was all like, "I'm going to Alderaan to warn them!" (paraphrased)

How do they come up with such cool character names?

That scene where they all come out of hyperspace like MY GOODNESS that was amazing!

Delicious blue milk makes an appearance

Wherever you are in the world, I will come see you.

Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) (2016)

8.8/10 on IMDb
97% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: A must-see; Watch it in cinemas; I'm buying the DVD
Watch it if you: Want a great fantasy story mixed in with some romance, mystery, and drama; Want to see a beautiful animation; Don't want to miss out on one of the best movies of the year

Mitsuha and Taki are two high schoolers who have never met. Yet one day, they begin to dream that they are waking up in each other's bodies.

I heard about this at first after I saw Kubo and the Two Strings, and people were discussing which animated films would be nominated for the Oscars. A lot of people seemed to think that Your Name would not only be nominated, but also should nab the Oscar ahead of other animations this year, such as Zootopia, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Finding Dory. I remember searching this film up, but upon seeing that it was a Japanese animated film that wasn't out in Australia yet, I proceeded to forget about it.

Then, recently, through word of mouth, I heard that this was a really great film and decided to check it out.

Since it's a foreign and unknown film, there's only limited screenings of this movie, currently with two sessions everyday at Macquarie and George Street (and maybe at other cinemas, but it's definitely not showing at Castle Towers or Parramatta).

There's also an English dubbed version, but since I despise dubs with a passion, I went with the Japanese version with English subtitles, and I would recommend this because I don't see how some of the Japanese lines and expressions would translate very well with an English-speaking person (some lines probably got cut in the dubbed version), and I also saw the English dubbed version of the trailer and the voices sounded so cringeworthy.

Also I thought it was pretty easy to follow along with the subtitles. They appear for long enough for you to be able to read it and also watch the movie, and there was never a moment where I missed out on something because the subtitles disappeared too quickly.

So now, onto the movie.

I didn't know much about the movie going in, but I was so surprised at this!

It started off as a cute little romance comedy, and then it turned into a great fantasy story with a little bit of drama and thriller elements thrown into it.

The plot was really fascinating, and I don't really want to talk too much about it because I don't want to spoil anything, but it was seriously a very emotional ride. By the end of the film, I was wailing like a baby, and we had agreed that the one word to describe the film was: heartwrenching.

The animation is also amazing; at some points I was like, "Woah, that looks so realistic!" and at one stage of the film, there is this beautiful shot of scenery, and I kept thinking, "Wow, that is beautiful, I want to go there even though this is just an animated film!"

Overall, this was a brilliant film. It was definitely not what I was expecting, but in the best sense. The story is heartwrenching, and you get so emotionally invested in the characters and you just want the best for them. And that's a credit to the director, who's done a solid job at incorporating all these different elements into a cohesive story.

I seriously recommend this; I will root for this to win an Oscar, I will buy the DVD, I will rewatch it and cry again until my eyes run dry, and then I'll move on to all the director's other works.