A Princess Story

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This was my fourth year project for film school. I wrote the script in September and finished production in late April. This was a blast to do and I had a great cast and crew. I wrote a blog entry on the 'making of', which you can find here.

Final Project for Directing Actors class

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This is my final project for my Directing Actors class. Two scenes from Sex, Lies and Videotape. Directed by myself and Adam Williams and starring Lee Hanson and Sharon Warren. We had a lot of fun doing it.

Juno

Since I was done all my finals and projects and FINALLY had some time to breathe, I decided to catch a matinee at my favourite cheap theater. I thought I would check out this Juno that I've been hearing so much about.

I'm sure you've heard and read all the hype as well, Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress (Ellen Page), Best Director and a win for Best Original Screenplay, yada, yada, yada. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman. Juno is about a 16 year old girl named...Juno (Page) who gets pregnant by her friend who wants to be more, Bleeker (the dorkalicious Michael Cera). She has to tell her dad (J.K. Simmons) and stepmother (the awesome Alison Janney) and then decide what to do about the situation.


Deciding against an abortion, she considers giving it up for adoption and even meets with a wealthy, much too perfect couple who would like to adopt a child, Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark (Jason Bateman) Loring. Juno is also supported through it all by her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby).


I have to say that at first, I thought the movie was trying to hard to be hip. The same way that I wrote that you could see how hard Walk Hard was trying to be funny at times, I felt aware that Juno was trying too hard to be indie and cool, especially with the dialogue. However, I found myself forgetting about it halfway in and got sucked into the film. All of the actors were very well cast and awesome in their performances, especially Ellen Page. I thought it was well written with great characters and it was hard to predict where things were going at times and it also avoided some of the traps that I expected in a movie like this (can't say too much about it without giving away some plot twists). Very enjoyable and different, however Best Picture is overshooting it. I picked the quote from after Juno meets with Mark and Vanessa about a possible adoption. She's just starting her second trimester (4th month).....

Vanessa: So you think you're really going to do this?
Juno: Yea, if I could just have the thing and give it to you now, I totally would. But I'm guessing it looks probably like a sea monkey right now and we should let it get a little cuter.

More ramblings to come........

My Fellini Class

I am finally done! I finished my last day of finals, papers due and assignments due on Monday and now I finally have my degree! Convocation to happen in June. I took a directed studies class on the work of Federico Fellini. I wanted to see more Fellini films and asked one of my professors if I could do a class on his work and she said sure. She handed me a stack of DVDs to watch and a three hundred page book to read and said "I wish that I HAD to watch Fellini films". I was really looking forward to it. I will categorize them as I saw them.

Loved it...

La Dolce Vita (1960)
La Strada (1954)
I Vitellone (1953)
Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Amarcord (1973)

Liked it...

8 1/2 (1963)
The White Sheik (1952)
Ginger and Fred (1986)
And the Ship Sails On (1983)

Wasn't so crazy about...

Il Bidone (1955)
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
Roma (1972)
Orchestral Rehearsal (1978)
City of Women (1980)


I suppose I should add that I warmed up to Juliet of the Spirits and 8 1/2 after watching it a few more times. I think I prefer his earlier work like I Vitelloni and Nights of Cabiria, but I also LOVE Amarcord. I love the imagery in Fellini's work. I love seeing his stories about provincial Italy. My prof thinks that he's a fatalist. We disagree about Nights of Cabiria. She thinks Cabiria will stay a victim forever and I think that the fact that she feels she deserves better is a good transformation.

My final paper was on Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque and chronotope, and the grotesque characters in Fellini's films and how he uses them to parody himself and his hometown. For this thesis I looked at La Strada, 8 1/2, Amarcord and Ginger and Fred. I won't bore you with all ten pages. I'm happy I took the class and I'll post again on some of his films more in depth, but for now, I'm burned out on school and thinking and look forward to being able to go to the theaters again. I will write more in the next couple days.

More ramblings to come......