CINEMANN A FILM AND TELEVISION MAGAZINE
FEAUTRING TWO INTERVIEWS WITH FILMMAKERS IN THE INDUSTRY
PREVIEWS OF FILMS COMING OUT IN DECEMEBR
REVIEWS OF THIS YEAR’S BEST MOVIES
11-12 Mad Max
STAFF
by Joshua Benson
04 Trend of 3D Movies
24 Spectre
by Maggie Brill
by Zarina Iman
05 Young Adult Dystopia
25 The Good Dinosaur
by Emma Jones
by Sophia Schein
06 The Degradation of Film
25 Mockingjay Part 2
byRebecca Siegel
by Charlotte Pinney
08 Conspiracies about The Shining
WINTER MOVIE PREVIEWS + CALENDAR
Editor-in-Chief Kenneth Shinozuka
by Sophia Schein
10 Interview with Justin Schein
27 Star Wars
by Sophia Schein
by James Arcieri
DVD REVIEWS
27 Sisters
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
Managing Editor Jasmine Katz Senior Content Editors Lorenzo BrogiSkoskiewicz Maddie Bender Junior Content Editors Dahlia Krutkovich Gabe Broshy
by Madeline Bender
Chief Design Editor Benjamin Ades
13 Paper Towns by Charlotte Pinney
28 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
14 Crimson Peak
by Sophia Schein
by Jasper Cox
15 Spy
Junior Design Editors Kyra Hill Zarina Iman Anne Rosenblatt
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29 Joy
Wes Craven Tribute
by Charlotte Pinney
by Emma Jones
by Gavin Delanty
29 Concussion 16 The Martian
Faculty Advisor Dr. Deborah Kassel
by Samuel Heller
by Kyra Hill and William He
31 Point break 17 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
by Kyra Mo
by Eve Kazarian
31 Anomalisa 19 Straight Outta Compton
by Zarina Iman
30
by Lisa Shi
TELIVISON
Hateful Eight Preview
20 Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation by Armand Dang
by Jasper Cox
32-33 Fear The Walking Dead by Noah Berman
21-23 Soul of the Elephant by Kyra Mo
34 Arrow Preview by Philip Shen
18 Southpaw
35 Quantico
07
by Zarina Iman
Idris Elba by Emily Spector
by Maggie Brill
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
OUT NOW
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NEWS AND ESSAYS
3
INSIDE
5
by Emma Jones
3D films have had a rollercoaster history due to the expense and vigilance required of filmmakers and theaters as well as technology lagging behind viewer demand. In recent years, the industry has boomed, as new technology allows for a more impressive visual experience. 3D projection was first developed by William Friese-Greene in the late 1890’s. The effect was achieved by projecting a film onto two separate screens while viewers watched using a stereoscope, a device that allows two images to be viewed together as one three-dimensional image. The first commercial 3D film was The Power of Love (1922), for which viewers used anaglyph glasses, in which each eye’s lens is filtered through opposite colors (commonly red and cyan). The development of 3D technology was stunted during the Great Depression for lack of funding, but began to pick up speed in the 50’s as films became more dynamic. The first color and feature-length 3D film was Bwana Devil (1952). It used polarized sheets to create the effect, a new approach invented by Edwin H. Land. This film was the first of many to be released in the 50’s as a result of the postwar economy. Although the majority of 3D films at the time were horror films, such as The Creature From the Black Lagoon, Disney also entered the industry during this time. However, 3D films began to lose their popularity due to the diligence required to maintain the two reels and display them in perfect synchronization. Failure to do so resulted in eye strains and headaches. The emergence of IMAX 3D in the mid-80’s allowed for larger screens and higher quality. Furthermore, the use of polarized lenses rather than anaglyph glasses allowed more people to watch a given 3D movie and improved the quality of the color within the film. Each lens is polarized differently, so the image perceived by each eye is slightly varied and the two images are perceived by the brain as three-dimensional. This effect was true from varying angles rather than with the anaglyph glasses, which limited where the viewer had to sit to receive the full effect. The Polar Express (2004) marked a turning point for the industry. It was released in regular theaters and a small number of IMAX 3D theaters. However, IMAX accounted for 1/4 of the movie’s box office tickets, proving to studios the economic potential of modern 3D technology. During the next decade, the 3D industry
continued to grow. Some filmmakers even began converting 2D films into 3D films during post-production, because of the high demand and wide profit margins. A filmmaker’s desire to explore 3D technology seems like an obvious attempt to enhance the audience’s immersion in the film, thereby edging the art form closer to reality. Avatar is the highest-grossing film of all time, partly because of its use of 3D technology. 3D technology is very compelling to audiences, because it creates a more stimulating and engaging viewing experience. For example, if something is about to hit a character in a film, the illusion can make you fear that you too will be hit by the object. Not only does this allow you to empathize with the character, but it also evokes real emotion and makes the viewer part of the film. However, some viewers still complain about the shortcomings of this modern technology. Some claim that 3D film results in a duller image, because of the use of polarization. In addition, 3D-glasses limit the viewers’ peripheral vision, forcing them to focus on the center of the screen. Whether or not you personally like watching 3D films, they have made enormous contributions to the film industry. 3D films create a reason for audiences to see movies in theaters rather than at home, boosting ticket sales. In fact, 12 out of the 13 highest-grossing films of 2014 were 3D films. What once was a rarity, even a luxury, has become almost the norm for modern films. Does the overuse of 3D effects reflect the greed of movie studios? It seems like almost every current blockbuster is released in 3D, especially in the case of superhero, action, and science fiction films. In my opinion, the overuse of these effects takes away from the artistic potential of film and often seems meaningless. Using this effect without a good reason, like to scare or grab the attention of the audience suddenly, can be distracting to other aspects of the film, like the cinematography or the acting. When the audience begins to expect a 3D effect every couple minutes, it also takes away the shock factor and the uniqueness of the illusion. However, when used properly, 3D effects can be incredibly powerful in captivating an audience and drawing them into the movie. This 3D technology is so popular that it is being transferred into the home market through 3D-capable TV’s, which were first introduced in 2010. Despite the fluctuations of the industry’s past, the 3D trend seems to have a bright future ahead of it.
With the release of The Hunger Games in 2012, the industry of teen-oriented films changed forever. The trend of (YA) dystopia novels had been spreading for a while, but they had not yet hit the big screen. When The Hunger Games hit, it hit hard. There was not as big of a response to a book-to-movie adaptation since the Harry Potter series. Young adult dystopia went from being a niche genre to one of the biggest new genre of films for young adults, arguably surpassing paranormal romance, which seemed to be taking the lead before the Hunger Games craze. Of course, there were other films that addressed themes of young adult dystopia before The Hunger Games. There have been a great many fan wars over Kenta Fukasaku’s Battle Royale, a young adult-oriented dystopia movie that came out in 2000 with essentially the same concept as the Hunger Games and is also based on a book series. Dystopia is not a new thing by any stretch. It has been around in fiction for practically as long as fiction has existed in examples such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Stephen King’s The Long Walk. So why is it suddenly becoming so popular in film, and why with millennial teenagers of all people? Although dystopia has definitely been done before, the trend started by The Hunger Games has it being done in a new way that is almost formulaic. The basic premise that The Hunger Games set into motion is a young person rebelling against an oppressive government after they’re thrust into a violent situation that opens their eyes to the evils of the system, and that rebellion ultimately changes the world they live in. Something interesting to think about is that not a lot of the dystopia novels and films that were precursors to The Hunger Games dealt with revolution. The underlying theme
of all these YA dystopia films and novels is that the ‘system’ in place in the fictional society is a morally corrupt thing and is hiding this using brainwashing propaganda. The other new element is that there’s also usually some romantic plot within the film, often used as a means of rebellion. The two biggest YA dystopia movies that use the Hunger Games model out right now are The Maze Runner, and Divergent. Divergent deals with a society where individuality is repressed by dividing humanity up into factions based on their most prominent mental trait determined by a test, and the protagonist’s result on the test is that she fits into none of the factions and is thus a danger to the society she lives in. The Maze Runner is a more science fiction based story about a post-apocalyptic world, wherein a group of boys live in a somewhat primitive society next to a mysterious maze and all have had their memory wiped of how they got there and what their lives were like before, and know nothing other than that ‘WICKED (a mysterious corporation that sends them food and supplies) is good.’ Divergent deals with the fear of losing ourselves and our unique traits in a society that values conformity, and The Maze Runner deals with the fear of being blind to the corruption in the world around us. Dystopia gives American teenagers a fictional context to deal with the very real problems in our society. We live in a world where, more than ever, previous generations’ problems are culminating on our horizons. Global warming and government and law enforcement corruption are more prominent now than they ever have been. Additionally, new fears and new prejudices are rising arising with the internet. And the millennial generation has many of these problems resting on their shoulders. When you
take that into consideration, it’s really not surprising that dystopian literature is as big as it is. Fiction, and especially fiction depicted in movies, is a way of opening dialogues about our generation’s problems by giving us visions of the future that serve as cautionary tales. These dystopian scenarios entreat us to take better care of our Earth and to fight the corruption in our society. This genre can also cause us as American teenagers to open our eyes to the plight of people in countries like North Korea that we often don’t think to empathize with. Yes, YA dystopia can be tiresome. Yes, one could argue that the reason there are so many books and films that fall under this genre is because authors and directors know it’s a surefire way to make money. And neither of those arguments would be wrong. But there’s something to be said about the way dystopia can make us think. These are movies for teenagers that are promoting understanding and awareness and that aren’t talking down to us while still telling interesting and engaging stories.
NEWS AND ESSAYS
NEWS AND ESSAYS
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
by Maggie Brill
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
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THE TREND OF 3D MOVIES
WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH YOUNG ADULT DYSTOPIA?
by Emily Spector need inside of us that makes us watch these productions, there faux realities. The viewer needs to know how everything turns out. They need to tune in to know if everything is going to be okay. There used to be a time in Hollywood when there were many parts for actors of all different ages. Looking at the old stars in the black and white, sound-less movies. Stars like Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, and Max Linder. Movies are now conceived specifically with ratings in mind. Films are now less artistic, less exciting. Producers didn’t used to care as much about the ratings, their main focus was the money. It was coming in because people had nowhere else to go. People took the time to go to the theater; it was made into an event. Now you have the option to just turn on Netflix or log onto a website and access them for practically free. The movies had to reflect that, they had to fine tune them to the entire population. Making them for the money, the money is what drives the productions of movies now, not vision. The movies were the conception of the director. Producers now have the control over what goes into theaters. The quality of film and the roles that go into it have started to slowly evaporate into the background. Age dictates what to watch, who to watch, and why we watch. We can take a deep look into the thoughts and opinions of the millennials by just a quick glance at the screen. Producers now prefer the ratings over the quality; the viewers over themselves. They decide that if the majority wants it, they get it. Even the people watching insist that they don’t want change. They continue to tune in to their TVs and IPhones and watch episode after episode of what society finds pleasing. They go to the movie theaters for loud boisterous rants or overly-sentimental and over-the-hill syrup. Age has become the tell-all of Hollywood, showing the true colors of the people behind the scenes. The money is the motivator of Hollywood, like so many other trades.
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
Age plays a key role in casting a film; there are specific guidelines of age written for every character. A 40 year-old cannot play a teenager and same goes vice versa. The guidelines are there to stimulate the watcher and also to prevent confusion. There is a glut of middle aged actors and actresses and too few roles for them to fill. While an abundance of roles for both the young and the old dominates the market. A question arises. How can a middle-aged actor stay afloat over this sea of youths and seniors? Actors like Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie are so well-known and famous that they have become household names, they represent the cream of the middle-aged crop. Sipping a glass of cool cucumber water, these famous past-their-peak stars sit and wait for something new and exciting to come along. They do a few more movies sparsely, but in reality they are just passing time until they can reach those great roles that they are so used to. Even the most recognized names. Most of these actors continue to reach for the key roles, constantly pursuing the well-known parts. The ones that could gain them even more fame and recognition; but they are turned down, rejected. They spend their years getting used to their exclusion, a betrayal of all of the connections they made in their earlier years. After a point, they begin to understand. They decide to just settle into their place. Stewing until they can get their next big break, like lions hunting for prey. There just aren’t any roles for the middle-aged, not even for the most notable actors. The roles are divided into places for the young and old. Mainly because screenwriters want to entice the viewers, make them relate. The middle-aged don’t matter to them. Too much of their lives are spent encased, in employment. They don’t usually have time for the luxury of television. The other ages however, are the ones with time to spend. Middle aged people are too busy working, trying to support themselves and their families than to actually watch the programs in the theater or on the TV themselves. So Hollywood screenwriters don’t include them. They write the programs including them, but not about them. Nobody wants to watch something that substitutes a hot guy with a six-pack with a middle-aged man with a beer gut. This causes a problem for the middle-aged actors. Actors of acclimated prestige have to wait until they hit their older, more graceful prime. In most shows, semi-real things are placed in semi-real places with semi-real people, until they can really draw the viewer in. They make them relate. Create scenarios that coincide with everyday life. They formulate an addictive
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by Rebecca Siegel
IDRIS ELBA: THE LOOMING SPECTRE OF RACISM
In an interview with the Daily Mail this summer, novelist Anthony Horowitz said Idris Elba is “too street” to play James Bond in future films. Horowitz, who just published the latest Bond installment, Trigger Mortis, on Sept. 8, has since faced anger from Elba fans and social justice activists alike. Rumors that Elba was being considered for the iconic started circulating in 2013 after Skyfall’s Daniel Craig and Naomie Harris brought the matter to light. “About four years ago, [Craig] said [I] would be a great Bond, and then it started to creep.” Elba said in April 2015. Harris, who played Eve Monneypenny in Skyfall and Spectre, reported that while working on a film with Elba, he reported having met with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli. According to Harris, “it does seem like there is a possibility in the future that there could very well be a black James Bond.” However, she said nothing of the purpose of the meeting, leaving people to only speculate on its significance. As time went on, an increasing number of people began to favor the idea of Elba as James Bond. After Horowitz made his criticism in late August 2015, social media platforms blew up with the displeased reactions of hundreds. “For me, Idris Elba is a bit too rough to play the part. It’s not a color issue. I think he is probably a bit too ‘street’ for Bond. Is it a question of being suave? Yeah,” Horowitz said. Incredulous fans responded in praise of Elba’s “sauveness,” sarcastically remarking that they must be missing out on a whole new level of suave Elba isn’t considered so according to popular standard.Others attributed his comments to racism, though in the same interview Horowitz suggested a different black actor, Adrian Lester, to fill the role. Horowitz quickly took to social media to apologize for his statement. “I’m a writer, not a casting director, so what do I know?” he tweeted. “Clumsily, I chose the word ‘street’ as Elba’s gritty portrayal of DCI John Luther was in my mind but I admit it was a poor choice of word. I am mortified to have caused offence.” Elba himself responded soon after, posting a picture to Instagram with the caption, “Always Keep Smiling! It takes no energy and never hurts! Learned that from the Street!” However, Elba has said he is unlikely to be offered or accept the role of James Bond. “It’s all rumor-ville,” he said in an interview with Variety a week before Horowitz’s controversial statement came out. “I’m not speaking to the James Bond people. They are not speaking to me. So if it was to happen, there you go — the will of the nation,” he said. Additionally, he said he did not want to be known as “the black James Bond” for the rest of his career. On the topic of a black Bond in general, there are a range of opinions. Some people believe that the race of Bond is irrelevant, supporting the diversification of the pool of actors who can call the role their own. Conversely, others believe Bond should only be portrayed by white, male actors. Veteran Bond actor Pierce Brosnan doubts that the next Bond will be anyone but a white male, though he acknowledges the fact that there would be nothing wrong with a non-white Bond. However, he thinks Bond must undoubtedly be male. “A female James Bond, no. I think it has to be male. James Bond is a guy; he’s all male. His name is James; his name is James Bond,” Brosnan said, upsetting many people who received his comment as sexist. Regardless of speculation about the next Bond, there will likely be no decision until approximately 2018 or later, as Craig is under contract for at least one more Bond film after Spectre. “All I care about is that if I stop doing these things we’ve left it in a good place and people pick it up and make it better. Make it better, that’s all,” Craig said.
NEWS AND ESSAYS
NEWS AND ESSAYS
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
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THE DEGRADATION OF FILM
WES CRAVEN TRIBUTE
8 CINEMANN / Fall Issue
NEWS AND ESSAYS
final shot of the film. The way he poses mirrors a commonly depicted pose of satan. Another theory is that the film as a whole is a metaphor for the Holocaust. While Room 237 does not give an explanation for why Kubrick would have added this deeper meaning, it offers evidence such as German typewriter used in the iconic “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” scene. The repetition on the phrase mirrors the uniform nature of destruction in the Holocaust After noticing this detail, the theorist from Room 237 claims to have seen repeated references to the number forty-two, the same year the Germans finalized the plan to eradicate the Jews. Many pieces of evidence used to support these conspiracy theories are perhaps simply continuity errors, but they might symbolize something deeper. Kubrick was known for his intense attention to tiny details in his films that leads many to believe that there is meaning in these subtle details of the film. However, shortly after Room 237 was released, the costume designer and one of Kubrick’s aides from the Shining disproved several of of these theories. Room 237 investigates many more theories and there are additional ones not explored like the possible figure in the scene where the blood rushes out of the elevator. Room 237 is available on Netflix for those wishing to learn more about the theorists and evidence that backs their ideas.
Wes Craven
is so unsettling because instead of Craven using an immediate scare that jumps up in your face, he creates an atmospheric, subtle slide into a scare that starts out with the feeling in the atmosphere that something isn’t quite right and slowly builds tension until it culminates in a scare that not only terrifies you but satisfies you. Wes Craven understood human fear. The scariest moments of his films are truly scary but also induce a rush of satisfaction in the audience because of the anticipation building up to the meat of the movie, similar to the feeling you might get riding down a rollercoaster after climbing it. The Nightmare on Elm Street series works so well because you know that the characters will eventually have to go to sleep, and cannot evade the threat of Freddy Krueger forever. The film leaves clues of what will happen if they succumb to their human need to sleep in the ripped pyjamas and bloody wounds the characters wake up with, making you anxious for the big drop of the film’s rollercoaster, which you know will be something truly terrifying. This anticipation not only makes the climax more rewarding but also makes the audience more invested in the film as a whole. There is no good time to get up and use the bathroom during a Wes Craven film. He made movies that the viewers would become completely glued to. The audience is both too invested in the film’s story and too terrified to look away.
Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger
Wes Craven’s characters and storytelling techniques defined a genre. He was a pioneer of horror movies and slasher films. A lot of people say that horror films are cheap and less intelligent than other movie genres because they rely too much on scare tactics and not enough on character development or cinematography. Wes Craven didn’t try to make ‘intellectual’ horror movies or shape the genre into something it wasn’t. He showed people horror movies as they’re supposed to be shown: scary, satisfying, and most of all, fun. Rest in peace, Wes Craven.
NEWS AND ESSAYS
Stanley Kubrick’s famous 1980 film, The Shining, follows a man and his family as their lives deteriorate in an isolated hotel during a harsh winter. The movie, adopted from Steven King’s book, instantly became a cult classic. Over the past decades, fans of the film have analyzed minuscule details in scenes to reveal some quite far-fetched theories about the underlying meaning of this iconic horror movie. In 2012, Rodney Ascher created a documentary that interviewed enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists of The Shining. It analyzes several theories and the credibility of the evidence behind them. One theory he explored is that the film is an apology for Kubrick’s faking of the moon landing. The fake moon landing is a very well known conspiracy theory and these theorists use details in The Shining as proof. The film includes numerous subtle references to space travel and the moon. If you watch carefully, you can see the young boy’s Apollo 11 sweater, cans of powdered space food, and a vaguely rocket-shaped pattern in several carpets. One of the most commonly referenced pieces of evidence for the moon theory is the number of the room, 237. In the book that The Shining is based on, the room number is 217, yet for some reason, Kubrick changed the room number to 237. While it may simply be a coincidence, the moon happens to be 237,000 miles from Earth. One of the more credible theories about The Shining that Room 237 follows is the heavily backed up idea that the hotel itself is hell. In this theory, Jack, the main character, is the devil. The plot itself would make sense with the idea that he is becoming the devil as he lives in the hotel. It explains his descent into evil after he signs the contract to watch over the hotel for the winter. This theory is supported by the the main character’s pose in the
What makes a good scary movie? Different people will give different answers. But the number one criteria for every scary movie is that, well, it has to scare you. And accomplishing that is the elusive art that horror directors spend their entire careers striving for. Nobody was able to accomplish this better than Ohio-born filmmaker Wes Craven, who passed away on August 30, 2015. At first you might be saying “Wes Craven? Who?” But chances are that whether you like horror movies or not, you’ve heard of Wes Craven’s films. The Nightmare on Elm Street series. The Scream series. Craven created some of the most well-known horror films of this generation. What made Wes Craven’s movies so genius and so definitive was his use of vivid iconography that stuck in viewers’ minds, like the Edvard Munch-inspired mask Ghostface wears in the Scream series or Freddy Krueger’s burned face and knife fingers. His movies scared people because the imagery they used was so totally unforgettable. There were plenty of gore and jump scare moments when there needed to be, but that wasn’t really what scared people most about Craven films. The characters he created and imagery he used were not only scary but also artistically unique, so they stood out in the minds of people watching his movies. So much of horror movie storytelling is iconography, and his movies were perfect examples of how far a good character design can go. His writing, too, was not without nuance. Wes Craven was able to tell stories that were fantastic and suspenseful, but suspenseful in a very subtle and clever way. In the opening scene of his 1996 film Scream, the mostly innocent first five minutes of the movie begin to take a dark turn when the mysterious caller to whom Drew Barrymore’s character is talking says, “I want to know who I’m looking at,” in response to her asking why he wants to know her name. The mysterious caller quickly backpedals and claims she misheard him. Drew Barrymore’s character firmly but politely hangs up the phone only to be called again a minute later with the mystery caller violent and threatening because she hung up. Then he calls her “blondie” in reference to her hair color, implying that he’s watching her. From there on, it’s only downhill. The opening scene of Scream
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by Emma Jones
by Sophia Schein
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
CONSPIRACIES ABOUT THE SHINING
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
by Sophia Schein Justin Schein (’86) is a director, producer, and cinematographer of documentary films. After studying film at the London International Film School, he obtained his masters from Stanford Film School. His latest film, Left On Purpose, follows a leading member of the Anti-War movement, Mayer Vishner, until his recent suicide. The film begins with Schein planning to tell the story of Vishner’s activism, and later develops into a story of friendship and the dilemmas faced by the filmmaker when his subject reveals that he intends to commit suicide. It premiered last month at the Woodstock Film Festival and will be coming to New York on November 13th and 16th.
How did you get interested in film making?
Did you have the opportunity to do anything with film during your time at Horace Mann? I made some films for fun while at Horace Mann with some friends, and for a senior project, we made a film. It was not a documentary; it was a fiction film. We had been taking a class on Crime and Punishment, and then we made a parody of it called Pong and Punishment. I was forced to act in it and even one of our teachers was in it. Did you do more filmmaking in college? I did some film making during the summers, but I decided not to major in film as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins. I did study some film theory, but I didn’t do productions during the school year. I took the basic 16 mm film making class, Sight and Sound, and some photography courses at NYU over the summer. My freshman year I took an amazing ethnographic film class where I saw a lot of inspirational films that helped me to get more interested. What did you do with film following college? After I graduated from college I spent nine months working as an assistant editor on a documentary film in New York, which was a great way to learn about documentary. That experience got me interested in finding a grad school to study film. I hadn’t taken the GRE (Film School Admission Test) yet, so I went to the London International Film School for a year. I lived in London, and I studied film making. While I was there I made a documentary, I took the GRE, and I got into Stanford.
What inspired you to make your latest film, Left on Purpose? Documentaries often start as one thing and you have to go where the subjects and time takes you. When it began, I want-
What was the most rewarding part of this film? I find it a great privilege to enter people’s lives and to tell their stories. I became very close with him and quite a few other people in the story. That’s always gratifying, but I think I might still be trying to figure that out. What was the hardest part? The hardest part was certainly figuring out how to deal with something so ethically challenging, somebody’s life and death and figuring out how to tell the story without crossing the line and becoming responsible for somebody’s death. I found myself in a position where his doctors and friends were telling me that the making of the film was keeping him alive, and I didn’t want to be making this film forever. Where is it being shown? I just recently premiered it. In the first festival, it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary, which was fantastic. It will screen at DOC NYC, the largest documentary festival in the country, on November 13th and 16th. It will be showing only a block from Mayer’s house, which seems appropriate. This is a film that needs to be seen in a group, and it often generates interesting conversations about film ethics like whether or not to help someone who is in such crisis. I’m really excited to show it to people and have these discussions, even if they’re difficult.
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by Joshua Benson
Mad Max Fury Road is the fourth installment of George Miller’s hyper violent post-apocalyptic masterpiece. There are two are two warriors among the group of heroes, both battle hardened fighters, and extreme driver who has a complex and violent past, and there is also a character named Max, the title character. The movie concentrates on Max and his interactions with others. Max’s backstory was that he used to be a cop until his family was murdered by a biker gang and he went seeking justice. This fourth movie has no confirmed place in the timeline, the best way to describe these movies is that, the first one is first, and the other three movies are just roughly around the same time, or that since Max is just a myth, George Miller has not been magnanimous with a timeline or time setting. The plot of this movie in its most simplified version is not overly complicated with betrayal and complex character motivations, this is not a Citizen Kane, plot-wise. What the movie lacks in a complex plot, it makes up for with a plethora of memorable characters, stunningly directed chase sequences, and a psychopath wearing his dead mother face standing on a truck with twelve feet of speakers playing a double necked guitar that has a giant blade a the head, shoots fire. The movie starts off with Max’s car being destroyed by a gang of War Boys. They take Max to the Citadel, where he tries to escape, but he fails and remains captured. The audience then sees the ruler of the skull-shaped rock fortress and ruler of the War Boys: Immortan Joe. Max tries to escape but fails, and is visibly haunted by the ghost of a child that, the audience knows is his daughter. Joe makes an announcement and gives the people who live there a miniscule amount of water that he has stored, but then turns it off. He makes an announcement that Furiosa will make a trip to trade water for gasoline and bullets. When it is discovered she is veering off course and that she has taken Immortan Joe’s breeders. Joe immediately gives chase with his minions. One of these minions, named Nux is using Max as a blood donor to help with his lymphoma decides to go with Joe, and takes Max with
go with Joe, and takes Max with him. The focus then switches back to Furiosa and her caravan. She is ambushed by raiders who have spikes on their cars, and have no explanation why, and it is awesome. The audience is then introduced to the sheer insanity of the warboys, who spray a silver spray in their mouths and then go berserk. After being shot with a crossbow, the warboy who was shot sprays his mouth with a metallic spray and jumps onto an enemy car and blows it up. After the ambushers are dispatched, the caravan of Joe refocuses on Furiosa. The chase meets a sandstorm, with tornadoes, and lightning, which creates a scene of beautiful unadulterated chaos. Max tries to free himself from the car he is bound to, after Nux tries to use the car as a bomb do disable Furiosa truck, but the sandstorm destroys the car and knocks them both unconscious. Upon waking up and finding a double barrel shotgun, and tracking Nux, who he is tied to and the car door that is in between them, Max finds the breeders bathing, and Furiosa guarding. After getting the chain cut, winning a fist-fight against Furiosa, and trying to hijack the war rig, he agrees to go with Furiosa. We also see Nux board the back of the war rig is it begin driving. Furiosa takes them to a valley where she made an agreement with the motorcycle gang that holds that valley to give her safe passage, but the deal goes south and they have to run. In an awesome motorcycle stunt scene, the gang is defeated by the combined effort of Max and Furiosa, but one of the breeders, who is pregnant falls out and is captured by Joe. The valley is blocked when a large tank of gasoline is detached from the back of the truck and blows up. Nux volunteers and is selected to be in the vanguard, he is honored, and is promised by Joe that he will ride shiny and chrome and be greeted at the gates of valhalla, but upon boarding the war rig, he trips on his chain and falls, disgracing himself in front of Joe. Nux then befriends one of the breeders, and reveals his lymphoma. The gang then enters a wetland area, filled with fog and mud. The truck gets stuck in the mud, so Nux begins driving the war rig and tries to help them get it out. He reveals a tree on some high ground ahead, something that they can use to get out of the mud. When the ruler of bullet town comes in his tank-like car, covered in bullets and guns, Max tries to take him out, but then decides
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NEWS AND ESSAYS
I think it began with an interest in documentary photography and independent films while I was still in high school. My friends and I used to make some films in high school. Also while I was in high school, my high school girlfriend’s parents were photo journalists. They talked to me about how the world of photojournalism was getting smaller and smaller and how making a life out of photo journalism was difficult. So, I looked to documentary as a more vibrant option.
ed to make a film about my friend who had been an antiwar activist in his youth and was a lifelong peace activist. I had met him while making an earlier film, No Impact Man, and we got to be friends. I wanted to make a short film about him, and slowly as I started to make that film, he revealed to me that he was considering taking his own life. It became something different, it became more about our friendship and relationship and less about his past.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
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INTERVIEW WITH JUSTIN SCHEIN
Overall, this movie is a fun, visually-stunning joyride. It allows you to attach to characters because of their sheer insanity and uniqueness. It has Furiosa, who is one of the greatest female action movie stars of all time since Ellen Ripley. All in all, it is an outrageously fun movie that only gets better every time you watch it, but bellow the surface it speaks to many of todays pressing issues.
Cara Delevingne’s Eyebrows Couldn’t Save her this Time
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PAPER TOWNS: by Charlotte Pinney
One of my favorite things to do is read a book, then point out all things the movie adaptation got wrong. I’m still upset over the fact that in the Hunger Games, after Prim gets reaped and Katniss volunteers, Effie Trinket says “I bet my buttons that was your sister,” in the book but “I bet my hat that was your sister” in the movie. That was entirely unnecessary, and I could probably write an entire five paragraph essay on just that one line, but it’s really unlikely you would want to read that. But back to the actual point of this article; I was really excited when Paper Towns finally came out. But as I watched the movie, they made more cuts than I could count. And maybe some people went into this movie thinking that they wanted a movie that had the same basic plot line as Paper Towns the book, and they didn’t care what order the major events were in. I am not one of those people. Now, I know that screenwriters have to cut most of the book to fit it into a normal amount of time, and I was totally prepared for that, because Paper Towns does have a lot of ramblings in it. But sometimes, like in the tragedy that was Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, they entirely rearrange the plot. At first it was small things, but then it felt like they just chopped up the book with a machete and threw the remains onto a script and decided to keep whatever stuck. The first thing I noticed that was different was that in the book, on their night of adventure the last thing they do is break into Sea World. They decided not to add that into the movie because of the controversy surrounding Black Fish and the way Sea World treats it’s animals. To me that made sense, John Green is an activist and I was happy to forgive it. But the thing that bothered me was that in the book Quentin and Margo find a dead body of a man who committed suicide in a park when they were ten. Margo wants to find out more about it so she finds out where the man lived, and goes down to his apartment to ask his neighbors about what could have happened. In the movie she goes to Sea World where he supposedly works. Now that just makes no sense. If you don’t want to affiliate yourself with Sea World then don’t add a detail about Sea World into your movie, now that’s just unnecessary. A couple other small details were that, number one, when Margo and Quentin were getting revenge on Margo’s friends, and they prank Lacy Pemberton. In the book, they put a fish under her back seat then slam the seat down on top of it; in the movie they just wrap her car entirely in cling wrap. I’m sure that there were many more inconsistencies that I didn’t catch but then again, there always are.
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On the surface this movie appears to be a thoughtless action movie that is only about explosions, but there are undertones of the movie. The movie illustrates the horrors of extremism and how it is a fasacade. How desprate times breed extremism and devotion, in this case Joe’s acess to water leads the warboys to follow him blindly, but it is revealed to all be a spectacle, Joe holds no real power, he is weak and sick. His power over the people lies only in spectacle, of which there is excess. It also exerts a strong message of female empowerment. The movie does not make Furiosa exy or overly feminine in any way, she dresses the way she does out of nessecity rather than wanting to please a male audience. In many parts of the movie, Furiosa is portayed as an equal and sometimes better fighter than Max. The fact that she is a woman is not addressed in the movie is signifigant, they make no large display of how she is a woman, she is just another person trying to survive the wasteland. Furiosa presents a good role model to women, stressing skill over sex appeal.
The thing I think most people were excited about about this movie was that it was Cara Delevingne’s acting debut. When I first heard everybody talking about Cara I didn’t know her name, but if somebody needed to mention her, they would say, “The chick with the eyebrows.” And that’s probably what happened to you too. I honestly really like Cara, so when I heard she was going to star in the movie I got really excited. But after walking out of the theater I was really not excited. First off, she’s British, and the character is not. So the whole time she was putting on an American accent, and no matter how hard they try, it just never sounds the same. Secondly, she’s a model, and she’s a really good model, but I didn’t like her as an actress. I’m not going to make an official opinion on her yet because I’ve only seen her in one thing, and you can’t accurately form an opinion on someone’s acting abilities if you’ve only seen them in one thing. But when it comes down to it I think she was just miscast. I’m hoping it was just the movie, and the next thing we see her in she’s everything we want her to be. If you were to take Paper Towns and just look at it like a movie, you probably wouldn’t be disappointed. Average nerdy guy falls in love with teenage girl, they have an epic adventure together, the next day she disappears, dun dun dun. Will he find her? I mean, yeah, probably. Nat Wolff was no less than fantastic and, the rest of the characters were played wonderfully. All in all, the movie was good, but the adaptation sucked, and Cara Delevingne can, hopefully, do better.
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to act as a stand for Furiosa when she takes the shot, destroying the spotlight on the truck, and blinding the ruler of bullet town. The ruler of bullet town then screams, “I am the doctor of the choir of death.” and begins to aimlessly shoot MP5’s into the air. Max and Furiosa try to chain the front of the truck to a tree in hopes of getting it out of the mud. Max then goes towards the enemy convoy, and minutes later comes back covered in blood, the blood of others. After night turns to day, they reach a rusted tower with a naked woman in it. (Don’t worry, nothing inappropriate is shown). Furiosa announces that she was born into the clan but taken away. The lookout gives out a specialized sound signal to summon the other woman and make sure that it is their Furiosa. They come down and verify her as one of their own. When Furiosa asks where the green land is, the old women reveal that she has passed it and that it has been corrupted and is infertile now. The women and the breeders decide to make a hundred and sixty day travel across the “salt rock”, or as we know it, the dried-up ocean. After a few minutes Max follow them. Max proposes that they either drive one hundred and sixty days to god knows what, or they can go back to the citadel, or the giant skull rock fortress and take it. So the gang decides to rush back in hopes of reaching it before Joe’s convoy. Joe sees them and again gives chase, and attacks them with men at the end of long shafts that are seesawed up and down onto Max’s truck. Max then hops onto another car, and kills the crew. He is then attacked by Immortan Joe, but uses a still living crewmember as a shield. Then the breeders hop onto Joe’s truck and kill him and take the car. There is also a super awesome fight with the fire guitar dude, and they incorporate the guitar into the fight scene. Nux offers to still drive the war rig, and is killed by the giant son of Joe. The rig crashes and the way is blocked, and we all hope Nux will go to Valhalla and live out his glory. Furiosa is severely injured but Max gives her a super safe blood transfusion. They make it back to the citadel, with Furiosa alive, the caravan destroyed, and Joe dead. The water and the people are liberated, and Max drifts back into legend. George Miller’s style of filming is amazing. The visual style of this movie is distinct, and so chaotically beautiful that it feels surreal. In the chase scene in the begining, George Miller will take out a few frames and do quick cuts, to give the audience a sense of anxiety and a feeling of imminent danger. These intense feelings as well as an involving a beautiful visual style makes it feel alive and that every frame is exploding with colour and action. Miller’s use of practical visual effects are amazing. In addition to his creating an expansive universe and a slew of cool characters, he and the design crew made an armada of beefed up weaponized cars. And for the explosions, of which their are many, he blew upon actual cars in the middle of the desert so it would look as visually stunning as it does.
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word that Chastain says stays with the viewer, with each syllable sending shivers up my spine. Her body language of composed, yet on-edge adds to the package of a character with multiple layers and a few screws loose. Hiddleston and Wasikowska also turn in good work as characters with good intentions who realize that they are in over their heads. Hunnam also is okay, but I felt that his character was somewhat one-dimensional, and I didn’t have much of an attachment. He comes off as somewhat spoiled and difficult to sympathize with. While this is a very good movie, there were some noticeable flaws. For a film that is advertised as a horror movie, there weren’t too many scares. Considering that the film did such a good job of building up the terror and making the viewer suspect something, it was disappointing that it seemed like it was all building up to nothing. I wish that del Toro gave the audience one or two moments when the film was sure to leave an impact. Also, the plot was fairly predictable. This might be because I am familiar with horror films, but I found that I had correctly guessed one very significant plot point very early on into the movie. Del Toro is a fantastic writer, so I expected some type of twist that would completely catch me off guard, but it never came together. This movie will probably not go down as del Toro’s best work, mostly due to predictability and a lack of scares, but the beautiful visuals, strong performances, and assured hand of the director make this gothic romance flick a better-than-average Halloween treat
Melissa McCarthy, along with Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, and Jude Law, star in the recent action/ comedy film, Spy. Focusing on Susan Cooper (McCarthy), a desk-bound CIA analyst, and Bradley Fine (Law), her partner in the field, Spy utilizes stealth and suspense in a comedic way to hold the viewer’s attention right from the beginning. The CIA is ultimately trying to halt the black market sale of a suitcase nuclear bomb. The CIA entrusts Fine with the responsibility of retrieving the nuclear bomb, but when tragedy befalls the mission, Cooper finds herself thrust into the field. After having been prepared to embark on her mission, though not without the disapproval of more experienced field agents, including Rick Ford (Statham), Cooper travels to Paris to spy on an acquaintance of the seductively nefarious Rayna Boyanov, who currently possesses the nuclear bomb. Cooper continues to follow leads and pick up more information as she travels to Rome and Budapest, until she meets an old friend and must get out of trouble once more. Paul Feig, the director of Spy, mixed action and comedy extremely well to produce a hilarious and suspenseful storyline. The casting of the movie fit perfectly into the plot as well. Melissa McCarthy brought her fun and comedic personality into life or death situations to provide comedic relief for the audience, while Rose Byrne showed her witty, yet calm, collected, and serious self. Jason Statham provided a new humorous version of himself, along with his usual action and energy, and Jude Law gave the audience more laughs and some great stunts. Though, Melissa McCarthy’s loud humor gets old at some points along the way, her co-stars are there to reinforce the hilarity of the moment. Spy made a total of $236.4 million worldwide, almost quadrupling their budget to make the movie. It is exactly two hours long, neither too long nor too short. Critics love the combination of director Paul Feig and actress Melissa McCarthy, for they truly bring out the best in one another. Overall, Melissa McCarthy has nailed it again in a great laugh-out-loud, action-packed movie.
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by Gavin Delanty
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Crimson Peak is the latest film from “Master of Horror” Guillermo Del Toro, starring Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, and Charlie Hunnam. The gothic romance film stars Wasikowska as one Edith Cushing, an aspiring writer from Buffalo, NY who tragically lost her mother at the age of 10 to a plague. However, on the night of her mother’s funeral, Edith is visited by her mother’s black, skeletal ghost and is told, “Beware of Crimson Peak…” 14 years after this encounter, Edith meets Sir Thomas Sharpe, played by Hiddleston, who is looking for people to invest in his clay mining invention. The two quickly fall in love, and Edith is introduced to Thomas’s mysterious sister Lucille, played by Jessica Chastain. Edith’s father disapproves of their relationship, but Edith ends up moving to London with the two anyway. However, strange occurrences start becoming the norm in the house, and Edith, with nowhere to run, is left with no choice but to uncover the secrets of the Sharpes. One of the positives of this film is Guillermo del Toro’s masterful direction, including gorgeous yet unsettling visuals throughout the film, which includes the clay oozing up from the basement of the Sharpe manor, and the giant whole in the manor’s ceiling. Del Toro is able to create a haunting atmosphere that makes the viewer feel like there’s something around the corner, just waiting to scare our unsuspecting heroine. Even when nothing was happening, I was kept on the edge of my seat the entire time. Another big pro for this film is the performances from the cast, specifically Jessica Chastain’s work as Lucille. Every
SPY CINEMANN / Fall Issue
by Jasper Cox
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CRIMSON PEAK:
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WILLIAM Although many books have been adapted into movies, most of the time, the book has been better. There have been movies that try to follow science as accurately as possible, like Interstellar. For the most part, however, there have been relatively few scientifically-accurate books that are made into scientifically-accurate movies, mostly because we don’t want a movie about a textbook. Now, based on the mostly scientifically accurate book by Andy Weir, The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott, gives a mostly scientifically-accurate movie with a realistic depiction of both the possible future and the contents of the novel of Mark Watney, an American astronaut/biologist/mechanical engineer who has to make the most out of his resources when he is abandoned on Mars for over a year. The Martian takes place in the future, a very prosperous American future where NASA is able to complete at least five longterm Mars missions that are called the Ares missions. Each mission to Mars is sent over the course of three years, starting with supply and habitat shipments, truck sized rechargeable rovers, and human ascent rockets to the landing site and ending with the arrival of the Ares crew, who then have to begin their month long stay. Two such missions have already taken place, and Ares III takes place in the movie, located on the Acidalia Planitia region of Mars. The only major scientifically-inaccurate part of the film occurs early on; a storm strong enough to almost tip the Martian ascent rocket, causing the six-man crew of Mark Watney (Matt Damon), Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and Rick Martinez (Michael Peña) to evacuate. However, the storm rips off the communications array from the Martian Habitat (the Hab) and strikes Watney in the abdomen, damaging his suits vitals monitoring system, which causes the crew to think he is dead, abandoning him on Mars. When Watney comes to, he realizes that he now has to find a way to survive on Mars with only six months’ supply of food, figure out how to grow food on a planet where nothing grows, produce enough water, and contact NASA without a communications array, while the NASA administration of Teddy Sanders, head of NASA (Jeff Daniels), NASA spokesperson Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig), NASA Mission Directors Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean, who doesn’t die) and Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Bruce Eng, director of JPL (Benedict Wong), and Rich Purnell, a NASA flight trajectory calculator (Donald Glover) try to find the best plan to get Watney back home alive.
The book includes large sections of scientific processes, experiments, and observations recorded by Watney. These details can bore a reader who finds science particularly uninteresting, which is why director Ridley Scott was faced with a challenge: to present to the public a very scientific movie and make it captivating. The book is complex, with chapters weaving in long descriptions and complex scientific analyses between dialogues at NASA headquarters and Watney’s home on Mars. In the movie, Ridley Scott was able to successfully retain all the characteristics of science, including the internal details of the Hab and scientifically accurate interpretations of temporary life on Mars, all while adding the beauty of humor, visual effects, and a superb cast. One might argue that the movie rarely went into full detail on specific scientific aspects, like when Watney must create water out of two gases, but for any movie, viewers don’t want to be bored. Ridley Scott was able to show viewers some sides of the science, while keeping the audience’s full attention. The real showstopper was Matt Damon, whose character Mark Watney has a personality somewhat similar to that of Damon’s in real life. Watney is portrayed as clever, funny, and likeable, characteristics we see in Damon as well. Damon’s portrayal of the astronaut provided the much-needed humor that the audience was desperate to see, as no one wants to watch a depressed and lonesome astronaut stuck on Mars with no decency to crack a joke. Damon was able to fluidly connect with his character, making the movie come to life. Other aspects that defined the movie were the portrayals of new technology and visual effects. Whilst watching the movie, it is easy to imagine yourself right next to Damon, due to the stunning visuals of landscapes and the inside rooms of the Hab, NASA’s ‘headquarters’ on Mars, and the Hermes, the crew’s spaceship. Audience members were also able to take a peek in the not-so-distant future with the movie’s portrayals of futuristic technology, captivating even the most scientifically uninterested. Despite the almost perfection of the movie, there were some flaws. The romantic fling between astronauts Johanssen and Beck was somewhat spotlighted in some parts of the book, something we saw extremely briefly in the film, which could be confusing for some as it gets no development whatsoever. The film also rarely focused on some of the other crew members, additions that could have also person-
by Eve Kazarian Our cinematic world today has been shaped by decades of films that evolved after the original invention of moving pictures in 1878. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) is one of these classic films that leaves a lasting - and somewhat chilling - impression in the viewer’s minds. The film, directed by Miloš Forman, is based off of the book by Ken Kesey of the same name. It is the second movie to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Actor in a Lead Role, Actress in a Lead Role, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. The movie stars Jack Nicholson, with an amazing supporting cast of Louise Fletcher, Will Sampson, and Danny DeVito. The film tells the story of Randle Patrick “Mac” McMurphy’s stay in a mental hospital. McMurphy feigns mental illness in order to avoid prison time. As a sane man in a crazy world, McMurphy sees everything that occurs in the hospital from a different perspective. He tries to convince the patients he befriends to not believe they are insane. This leads to various escape attempts and surprise fishing trips that take the patients out of the confines of the hospital and expose them to a new world. McMurphy also finds fault with the methods of the nurses, especially that of menacing head nurse Mildred Ratched. As viewers, we are astonished to see what occurs in this hospital. We know that McMurphy is not mentally ill; however, he is consistently treated as the opposite. Although he is a criminal, he feels that in some way he can bring sanity to the patients. Great movies have an emotional impact on the viewer. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest makes the viewer experience a range of feelings, such as sympathy, frustration, sadness, and anger. The cast’s spectacular performance coupled with a gripping plot-line, forces us to question our own morality and leaves the viewer speechless by the end of the film. The film emphasizes the infantilization of patients and the wrath of the oppressive nurses.
The actions of these grown men are monitored: they are not allowed to win too many cigarettes when playing cards and cannot watch TV. At one point, Ratched threatens to tell a patient’s mother what he has done, leaving the patient deeply upset. These punishments and restrictions seem bizarre to the viewer and McMurphy and create a moral conflict. The concept of mental institutions is questioned as a whole. Although some aspects of the film were exaggerated, such as when McMurphy undergoes electro-convulsive therapy (it is not as painful in reality due to anesthetics), the environment of the institution is very disturbing. Some of the film’s extras were actual patients at the mental institution, making the movie all the more believable. During filming, actors stayed in mental wards, which helped them get into character. Some actors even began to feel mentally ill. Danny DeVito even went so far as to create an imaginary friend whom he could talk to during the course of his stay. These drastic measures proved to be beneficial and resulted in amazing performances from the actors. Even after three decades, the movie continues to remain one of the most recognized films of all time. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is what a movie should be. A work of art.
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by William He and Kyra Hill
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST:
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THE MARTIAN
daughter watching him box, for the first time, from the locker room. The plot line, however, has its flaws. The characters are cliché and the storyline could have ben more developed. Hope, who grew up poor, struggled to manage his finances as an adult and becomes bankrupt. His transition from a champion boxer with riches and a happy family is almost too drastic as he is forced to mop floors of a gym after his wife dies and his daughter is taken away. The best character dynamics are between Hope and his wife and daughter. His love for his wife is very apparent in the short amount of time we see them together, making her death even more painful and allowing the audience to empathize with Hope. Hope is shown as a gentle father in contrast to his violent career, humanizing him after a brutal boxing match in the opening scene. Although I think the relationship with his trainer and rival should have been more developed and could have been made more dynamic if the characters had more history. Although the plot line has genre clichés and certain aspects seem under-developed, the acting is incredibly powerful. Gyllenhaal delivers a dedicated performance that makes him nearly unrecognizable. He is able to shed his leading man charm to portray a complex character that struggles between being a violent boxer and a gentle father. He successfully transforms into a boxing champion both mentally and physically, shaving his head and bulking up significantly. He is brilliantly able to convince you of his love for his daughter, making it even more painful for the viewer to watch his daughter turn on him for all his flaws. In my opinion, the acting in this movie more than make up for the plot line’s shortcomings and is definitely worth watching, even for those who tend to shy away from sports movies.
Straight Outta Compton, a biopic directed by Felix Gary Gray, depicts the struggles and success of a group considered the pioneers of gangsta rap, NWA. A hip-hop group from Compton, California, the ensemble consists of Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, MC Ren, and Ice Cube, played by Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. respectively. Compton addresses many issues in its two and a half hours: police brutality, racism, and violence being a few. Although this collection of heavy topics may become overwhelming, Compton follows a riveting, driven plot that remains grounded and realistic. I actually did not originally want to see this movie. I don’t really listen to hip-hop and the synopsis on the AMC website wasn’t too attractive, so overall, despite its good reviews, the idea of the movie was fairly unappealing to me. I walked in the movie not expecting any of the emotions that I did. I laughed out loud, felt anger, indignation, and sympathy at times, and I left the theater teary-eyed. First and foremost, the acting was brilliant. Each actor portrayed his or her respective characters flawlessly, and each character was very well developed. Jackson had the responsibility of playing his father, Ice Cube, and he employed a perfect combination of ferocity and humor. An example of this can be seen when Ice Cube decides to leaves NWA. He writes “No Vaseline” to retaliate against Jerry Heller, the manager of the group, and the members who remain. He spits the words in the rap with such raw force and fury. Dynamic scenes like these cause the film to excel. Compton is not an average biopic telling the story of the rise of hip-hop. It is also a powerful rhetoric commenting on the struggles of the oppressed from their perspective. A major issue throughout the film was police brutality, currently a very relevant topic in light of recent events. It’s way too easy to lose track of the number of times a black male was slammed against the hood of a car or otherwise mistreated by white police officers. Before NWA officially formed, the members still performed together. After one such show, Dr. Dre finds his brother engaged in a fight. Although he has good intentions and attempts to break it apart, the police soon pull up, yell at everyone, even those clearly not involved, and arrest Dre. The fun atmosphere is immediately shut down. This happens several times throughout the movie, and the reactions of those around show that it sadly happens more often than we see. In just moments, innocent people can be arrested and detained by police who have no proof of possession of drugs or violent actions. Even after NWA splits, clips are shown of each member watching Rodney King’s trial, who had been ruthlessly beaten by police after a high-speed car chase. The outrage felt when the officers were acquitted was universal. This event echoes those of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland, to name a small fraction of the many persecuted. How is it that events occurring around 30 years ago are still pertinent to our lives today? A crucial turning point in the improvement of the situation regarding the corrupt police involves one of NWA’s performances and takes place just when their fame begins to snowball. Before the show, the group is clearly instructed by
armed policemen to refrain from performing “F--- tha police,” a song concerning the group’s experiences with police oppression. These instructions are accompanied with the threat of cancelling the show and arrest. The warnings go unheeded, and the group layers the song with more rage and passion than ever. In this potent scene, rebellion is clear, and it’s electrifying. They’re tired of the fact that – to quote the song – “the police [think] they have the authority to kill a minority.” This moment was urgent, angry and alive. Shots were fired, no one is harmed, and the scene ends with NWA’s arrest, along with the audience’s disgust with the police’s actions. Each member’s face shows sly grins as they congratulate each other on the successful display of their defiance. This victory by the underdog is to be celebrated, and this message is universal; perhaps this is why this scene is one of the strongest in the film. Ultimately, Compton is a rag-to-riches story of teenage boys who lived in an exceedingly dangerous area of California, only to become some of the most influential people in the music business today. They overcame all the hardships, including racial barriers and were one of the first of their kind in the music industry, but it’s different from other typical underdog movies. Raw passion and indignation, sorrow, grief, and pain, fantastic portrayals on the part of the actors and overall production are what make Compton so distinguishable.
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By Maggie Brill
Southpaw, a drama about boxing, directed by Antoine Fuqua, came out swinging in late July. The film, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, and Rachel McAdams, tells a story of redemption and persevering through loss with a backdrop of high-intensity boxing. Ever since Rocky Balboa stepped into the ring on the big screen, Hollywood has been pumping out boxing films for years. Unlike Rocky, however, Bobby Hope was not an underdog, but a champion fighter heading into retirement. He was at the top of the world until it all came crashing down. A rivalry with an upcoming boxer, Miguel, causes Hope’s wife to be shot and killed at a charity event, leaving Hope to care for his young daughter, Leila. We watch his world collapse around him as he struggles to stay strong after the loss of his wife, who has been by his side since they were children. Hope gets involved in drugs and alcohol until his depression spirals out of control and child protective services take his daughter away. At the same time, Hope becomes bankrupt and his house is seized. The pivotal point for Hope is when his own daughter refuses to see him during a supervised visit. He ends up begging for a job at a local gym where he has to start from the bottom as a janitor. After some convincing, the gym owner and renowned boxing trainer, Titus Willis, brilliantly played by Forest Whitaker, agrees to train Hope. Willis reinvents Hope’s boxing style and reminds him what he is fighting for while keeping his attitude in check. This is not only a physical training but a moral rehabilitation. Hope’s former manager sets up a match against Miguel to bring him back into the spotlight. Tensions are definitely high when Miguel taunts Hope about his dead wife. The boxing match puts viewers on the edge of their seats as the camera cuts between the intense cinematography of the fight and Hope’s
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by Lisa Shi
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
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STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
S O U T H P A W
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Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is the fifth installment in the Mission Impossible series. Just to give you a sense of how old this franchise is, it started off as a TV show in the 1960’s and the first movie installment was released in 1996. That makes the first and fifth movies almost 20 years apart! Despite the massive time difference Mission Impossible now has more fans than ever, and it’s especially thanks to the popularity of the recent Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. The movie starts off with a thrilling and action packed scene. We see Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) chasing a plane that’s about to take off a runway, and just before it does he jumps onto the wing of the plane and grabs on for dear life. Finally with the help one of his field-mates, Benji (Simon Pegg), he is able to get inside the plane and save the day. This stunt looks incredibly realistic and that’s because it is. As usual Tom Cruise actually performed this stunt himself without the use of a stunt double. This opening scene is highly enthralling, and does a great job of setting a tone for the movie and putting the audiences at the edge of their seats right from the get-go. The synopsis of this movie is that the director of the CIA, Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) wants to shut down the IMF or, the Impossible Mission Force. His main reason for this is that the CIA is more effective, because they are able to get the job done just as easily without causing nearly as much damage as the IMF does. Hunley succeeds in his efforts and the IMF is shut down. With the IMF disbanded, Ethan and his team decide to “go rogue” and attempt to take down a team of highly skilled agents who are part of a group called The Syndicate. Ethan’s first task is to prove that The Syndicate actually exists, as nobody believes they do. The Syndicate is dedicated to establishing a new world through a series of Terrorist attacks. They are often referred to in the movie as an Anti-IMF or “A Rogue Nation”. Along the way Ethan and his team join forces with the complex Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who may or may not be part of The Syndicate. The movie was extremely successful for the franchise. Paramount Pictures released this movie on July 31st, 2015. In it’s opening week it made $55.5 million and since then has grossed $194 million in North America and $679 million worldwide. Good for more than any of the other previous installation of the franchise. The movie provides for a great combination of drama, action and humor. One moment the audience is cracking up, and the next biting their nails. The director of this movie, Christopher McQuarrie, through beautiful cinematography and a thrilling plotline is able to successfully captivate viewers. The movie received positive reviews from critics, receiving a 93% from Rotten Tomatoes and a 75 from Metacritic.
by Kyra Mo It is silent. Yet with a glance at the skeletons that lie about the withered grass, I hear the gunshots. Thunderous is the sound of this graveyard. As gentle trunks crowd to caress the bones of another fellow, mourning the fallen, I feel the bullets punch, greedily, into the peaceful hides. Wrinkled with beauty, the remains now decay on the ground. I see the ghosts of the tusks, extending proudly into the sky, before we turned them into a currency. Such are the shivering emotions triggered in Dereck and Beverly Joubert’s eye-opening film, entitled Soul of the Elephant. In a 53-minute documentary produced for the Nature Series on PBS, the award-winning conservationist photographer-filmmakers’ work invites us to enter the intimate lives of the elephants in a protected area in Botswana. An enigma opens the film. The Jouberts discovers a peculiar twin death of elephants in an open field. To find out the cause, the couple traverses by canoe the length of the Selinda Spillway, home to the largest elephant populations in the world, to investigate the poaching levels and the footprints of mankind, and eventually, to develop a hypothesis. Through their journey, in face of daunting challenges and dangers, the Jouberts enliven the elephants’ gentle gestures and their capacity for memory and emotion. Ultimately, they also unveil the elephants’ inner souls. The facts against the elephants’ survival today are haunting. The African elephant population is diminishing by 30,000 a year. Between 2010 and 2012, more than 100,000 elephants were slaughtered. Against this bloody backdrop, the Joubert’s documentary becomes a poignant and timely cry for one of the most iconic animals on earth. The Jouberts have lived in Africa for over twenty-five years, producing over twenty films, ten books and six scientific papers. Their work has received the numerous accolades including five Emmys, a Peabody, a World Ecology Award, and also, induction into The American Academy of Achievement. I was able to put forth a few questions to the filmmakers, to which they have generously replied. They are below:
Q&A Q: What do you find special about documenting animals in danger? We all want to do something positive for the planet, and more and more, as the planet is under threat, each and every person’s positive role is more important. We have some skills that we can apply (via film, photography and talks) to that basic effort, and everyone has something different to offer. For us though it became personal along the way, not just something to do on weekends, or to make money from. We witnessed animals being killed and looked into the eyes of poachers, and at the same time spent four years or more with one leopard (whose eyes we also looked into). We crossed a point where, even if we wanted to, we could not turn our backs on the atrocities, so we threw everything at this challenge—our lives, our time, our passion—to correct a terrible wrong that we are doing to the animals and the environment. It is not all hardship though. We have a very enriching life. And like most giving, the more you think you are forfeiting to give and make a difference, the more satisfying it is, and you realize (like we have) that we have received much more than we give by way or satisfaction and joy. Q: What were the most challenging parts of this film’s production, technically, personally, and professionally? We work in remote areas, so that brings with it a load of difficulties. We need to transport everything in, from heavy cameras and gear (clothing against the elements), to food and even water filters.
We have to think about basics like that, while at the same time very technical things like 6K digital super HD cameras with hard drives and sensitive electronic gear, all in the heat and dust and water crossings and flying across Africa. It’s romantic and wonderful but if we leave a single half-inch screw behind (as I have done), one that attaches a plate to a camera that slides into a head on a tripod…I basically cannot film a thing. It’s details, details, details. But, despite the snakes and lost screws and drowned vehicles from time to time, it is an internal struggle that wears us down most. We see lions killing prey, and we are used to that, but not every kill is clean and easy. We were the first to film lions attacking elephants and elephant babies. Difficult. We are angered and frustrated when we come across an elephant that has been poached, angered at ourselves for not changing the world fast enough to prevent this. We may spend two years on a film and have its budget cut, or find out that someone else just released a similar film. But we’re driven by a vision and mission, and we often look at each other and say: “Okay, it’s a problem, but how big on a scale of one to ten is it? Would it even make it into our life’s memoirs?” It’s usually a 3. Not enough to even move the dial on scale of life-threatening, terrible problems to overcome, even though it might be an elephant attack or a snakebite. Q: How did you film the shots (such as the aerials, the planted cameras) in this documentary? We used 11 cameras, some really big and expensive and others small and basically throwaway’s (in case an elephant crushed it). So most of the film
DVD REVIEWS
DVD REVIEWS
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
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by Armand Dang
SOUL OF THE ELEPHANT CINEMANN / Fall Issue
MISSION IMPOSSBILE: ROGUE NATION
Q: How do you achieve your calm state of mind when facing a charging elephant? I think you get calm people and excitable people. It’s quite hard to change that basic formula one way or another. Often Beverly will say to me after a great scene: “WOW did you get THAT?” and I will say, “Yes, I got it.” We have to push ourselves to be expressive about these things, because so much is going on inside our heads in the moment. In reality, the more you do something the better you can read it. So an elephant charge to you may be the scariest thing in life. To us as we look at it we’re going, “Okay, he’s coming, but he’s young and he won’t follow this through to an actual attack, and then look at those flapping ears, its all a mock. Now see he is kicking dust, if he wanted to kill us he’d come straight in quietly and smack us without any warning. This is ALL about warning.” It is, for us, about reading the signs. We’re often asked what we took away from school. We’re not mathematicians or physical scientists. Did we need those lessons? The answer is as an elephant is charging we’re running percentages, looking at the closing distance, calculating whether a 30-degree angle to run at would be more than his turn. We’re running numbers and science in our heads all the time, changing apertures (which are basically long division numbers) and running them against shutter speeds (which are proportions). We are the product of everything we know. We are the sum of the decisions and mistakes we make and how we learn from them. Q: At what moment did you clearly sense that there was a soul beneath the hide of the elephant?
Q: What do you think is different between the souls of the humans and the elephants? I don’t think there is a difference. If we think that we have souls, and accept that (and the jury is out on if we do!), then it would be human arrogance to think we are the only other species in the universe with a soul. Personally I think if we do have a soul, that it is a universal soul that embodies the values of life, not just similar to an elephant’s soul but the very same thing, one universal soul. It would help us all to understand that when we kill elephants we kill a connected part of ourselves. Q: Are there any similarities and differences between your experience with the elephants and your past experiences with the big cats? If so, what were they? Yes, working with big cats is energetic and filled with excitement as they hunt, and chase and kill. At the same time, it’s all go go go, or nothing for hours on end. If you imagine a graph, working with lions has this long flat time and sudden spikes of crazy ups and downs and then 16 hours of flat line (sleep.) Elephants move at a slower pace but they move almost all the time. So a difference is if we wanted to find one particular baby elephant two days in a row it would be really difficult. Finding lion cubs on the second day (once you have them on day one) is easy. You just go to where you left them. Being around lions is energizing, and we work hard. Being around elephants, just makes us better people. Q: How do you see this film impacting the current plight of the elephants? In the light of falling elephant numbers (30,000 a year) it’s easy to get caught up in the anger and revulsion of this and forget what it is we will lose if we lose elephants—that caring, and compassion we see, the empathy, the trust and respect, the knowledge and the journey we still have to travel with them on the planet. Conservation is all about the numbers. But it is also about the compassion we need to share—and
learn from them. Q: What is the next step for you on the elephant conservation project? We are working with US Fish and Wildlife Services and other groups to see what we can do about banning all ivory trade. We feel that this is an evil or corrupt community to be trading in, a little like human body parts that many people see as a beautiful art piece or an investment. We want to see all ivory destroyed and made illegal. In the East we want to get the message out to as many people as possible that elephants die when someone buys a tusk. Most don’t know that. In the West we want people to understand that to fly to Africa to shoot an elephant just for fun, for recreation or sport as a hunter is a horrible thing to do. In the East buyers trade in ivory and that is bad, but many Western hunters go and actually enjoy the act of killing an elephant. That is worse in my mind.
to kill rhinos or elephants, or what our rights are, or if we should be allowed to carry automatic weapons to school. We have to speak out in favor of sanity and reason in our relationship with the people around us, and the planet we are a part of. If film, digital and in everyone’s hands, is the platform, we need to be—and we need the next generation to be—very smart and very active on that ‘stage.’ Q: What is your next documentary, and why? We’re moving 100 rhinos from high poaching areas in South Africa to safety in Botswana. And we’re making a film on that process, but it will also follow the trade route of ivory and rhino horn from Africa to the poacher to the trader, and ask questions about why on Earth we have this insane desire to kill. It’s even worse when you understand that rhino horn does absolutely nothing at all. It’s like eating fingernails or hair. It’s useless.
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There are no moments spent in the presence of elephants when one is not struck by the sense that they have deep wisdom. I don’t know what a soul is to be frank, but if it is what I think it is, it is the collective values of who we are at our very core, without the makeup or the intellectual clutter of who we think we are, or who we want others to think we are. It is who we are. And who we are is made up of those values we have. The values we have are made up of a combination of learning and values we have inherited. If we unpack it like that, there is no way on earth that we could have souls and elephants would be evolutionarily excluded from having souls. Stand on the ground as an 8-ton giant walks by and stops, turns her head, and looks into you with her soft brown eye, and you know that elephants have souls.
Q: How do you see yourselves as a documentary maker? As a filmmaker or photographer? We’re conservationists who use wildlife documentaries and photographs to get our message across. It’s a kind of non-answer answer but there is a reason for the distinction. I film, Beverly takes photographs, so there is a difference, but we make the films together—assemble them, work the ideas and edits. A documentary filmmaker, by all definitions, should not express an opinion and should give a balanced, journalistic view on a subject. We don’t do that. We give opinion. Q: How do you see the next generation of wildlife documentary makers and conservationists? The industry is becoming much more of a cause-driven one and is leaving behind the ‘balanced view.’ People have things to say, and we want to all say them now, and today most people have the means to make a film or take images (cell phones). If audiences want a balanced view today they have to watch a few different films. But the next generation has a voice, and they will use it. And they should use it. The cell phone is the next generation’s graffiti. In the 1980’s and 90’s the only outlet of expression for many was to paint street art. Today that same group can do a YouTube film. It can be seen, not by passersby, but by people who want to engage. I think that next-generation viewers will start tuning out the clutter, like we stop seeing graffiti, and they will seek films, mostly documentaries, and they will watch them (for free) and define their ideas by who makes a more convincing online argument. Conservationists will be in that space because the environment will be an increasingly hot topic with each generation. We don’t have the time to accept a middle road of nonsensical debates about whether it is okay
DVD REVIEWS
DVD REVIEWS
shot either from vehicles or canoes but we also added GoPro’s to everything, and then if we ‘read’ a situation well, and elephants were walking towards a salt dig or waterhole, we’d get out quickly, lay a camera or two and then back off before they arrived. That is how we got those really low angle shots. One day we laid out GoPros and ducked back quickly and a herd came virtually over the camera, but a young bull of about 17 came from behind and stopped at the camera, sniffed it, then picked it up with his trunk and eyed it out (of course the camera was still filming all this) then he got bored with it, and flipped it over his head into the air and walked on. The camera flew up over his back and landed upright and pointing at him as he walked away. Cool shot. One I could never have even planned. Ironically so cool we couldn’t use it either because everyone would have been saying ‘Hey, how did you get that???’ and that would have detracted from the story. (Also I didn’t get it, he did!) For the aerials though we hired a helicopter and used that for about two weeks. That camera system is not a throw away. It costs something like $700,000 so we rent one with a helicopter attached and then send it home afterwards!
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Q&A
Q&A
OUT NOW
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
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The Good Dinosaur by Pixar was released on November 25th. It’s based in a world where Dinosaurs were never killed off by a meteor and go on to live at the same time as humans. The movie follows a dinosaur named Arlo who never managed to fit in with his family. After a series of tragic events, he is lost far from his family with only a rambunctious human baby to help him find his way back. Along his struggle to get home, they bond and help each other to overcome numerous obstacles and villains. Even with a fairly simplistic storyline, the movie is endearing and exciting for people of all ages. Although its plot does not live up to the standard of many Pixar films, it’s lovable characters and incredible animation make it a film worth seeing. It has a great mix of humor and touching moments between Arlo, his family, and Spot, his human friend. The animation style is another key point in The Good Dinosaur. The beautiful scenery is incredibly lifelike down to the tiny details in the texture of the dinosaur’s skin and the raindrops. The art style adds to the sweet nature of this movie. For those that don’t like animated movies, this may not change your mind, however, it is a very adorable and hilarious movie. If you’re looking for a family friendly movie that does have some surprising emotional depth, The Good Dinosaur is a great choice this holiday season.If you’re interested, you’re in luck, It’s already playing at a wide range of theaters across the tristate area.
extremely mundane. Many action movies lack a substantial plot, but with the previous Bond film, Skyfall, having excelled in both areas, Spectre comes as a disappointment. While tradition can be endearing, Spectre’s plot comes across as uninspired. Though after fifty three years of the James Bond franchise, who can blame them.
MOCKINGAY PART TWO by Charlotte Pinney Out of all the book to movie adaptations I’ve seen this one has me the most conflicted. The plot of the movie was incredibly accurate, with only a few discrepancies which I won’t complain too much about. The problem I had with this movie is that it was purely Mockingjay come to life on the screen. And normally you would think that to be a good thing, but in my mind books don’t belong on the screen. The director Francis Lawrence, didn’t, in my opinion, take any cinematic risks. He didn’t properly adapt the film to make the viewer more comfortable, which made for a disappointing viewing experience. This version breaking-up-the-last-part-of-a-movie-franchise-into-two-pieces-for-no-reason, was pretty thrilling. The tragic passing of two certain characters did bring a tear to my eye, and the very last scene which acts as an epilogue for the story, brought a satisfying and heartfelt ending. As always Jennifer Lawrence was incredible as Katniss as only Jennifer Lawrence can be, but I think my favorite character in Mockingjay Part 2 was Peeta Mellark, played by Josh Hutcherson. I’ve been excited to see how Hutcherson would play Peeta during this part because of the immense change his character goes under, and I was more than impressed. If I had to give Mockingjay a rating it would be 3½ out of 5, but that doesn’t change the fact that I cried at the end.
OUT NOW
Spectre, the latest addition to the James Bond franchise, follows the same blueprint, used by the twenty three other bond films, to the tee. As if written with a checklist, the film’s plot contains all the worn out characteristics of a Bond film. With Bond girls, shaken martinis, and a plethora of new gadgets, Bond (Daniel Craig) must try to stop, yet another, evil mastermind (Christoph Waltz) threatening the fate of the world. The movie begins in Mexico City, during Dia de los Muertos festival. Bond, who is there unofficially, is trying to stop a terrorist plot. In an elaborate and continuous shot, we watch Bond navigate through the parade, into a hotel, and across rooftops to the location of the terrorists. Following the remarkable opening sequence, the true highlight of the film, Bond foils the terrorists attack, but soon realizes the plot was a part of something greater and tied to a man dubbed the “Pale King”. Bond returns to headquarters, where M (Ralph Fiennes) suspends him for his unauthorized excursion. M, the head of the double-0 program, is having troubles of his own; his boss, C (Andrew Scott) , wants to replace the spies with a massive surveillance program. In an attempt to make the plot more relevant, we soon find that global surveillance becomes a major part of the movie. Bond enlists the help of friends and coworkers, Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw), to find the “Pale King”, against M’s command. He travels to Rome, Austria, and Tangier, and meets a widow (Monica Bellucci), an assassin (Jesper Christensen), and the assassin’s daughter (Léa Seydoux) on the way. Spectre delivers action well. The various fights, chases, and stunts performed routinely throughout the movie are quite engaging. However, the plot line that strings these action sequences together is
by Sophia Schein
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by Zarina Iman
THE GOOD DINOSAUR
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
SPECTRE
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WINTER MOVIE PREVIEWS CALENDAR:
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SISTERS ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE ROAD CHIP DECEMBER 25
JOY CONCUSSION THE HATEFUL EIGHT POINT BREAK DECEMBER 30
ANAMOLISA
More than ten years after the last installment in the Star Wars franchise, a new epic story based in that galaxy far far away is set to take the stage. On December 18, the highly anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be opening in theatres around the globe to what is predicted to be one of the largest audiences ever seen in the movie industry. With indisputably one of the most devoted and expansive fanbases of any franchise, Star Wars will continue, through the seventh installment, to tell the story of the Sith and the Jedi; the Empire and the Rebels, now thirty years after Luke Skywalker and his friends defeated the Emperor and brought freedom to the galaxy. This time, however, Star Wars will be directed by J. J. Abrams instead of by Star Wars creator George Lucas. =Abrams has stated that he understands the importance of authentically construing a continuation of the legacy Lucas’ brainchild holds among its fans. That legacy is especially important to the franchise’s most loyal supporters whose endorsement of the movie as accurate to Lucas’ original vision Abrams believes is critical to the movie’s success and reception by broader audiences. No concrete synopsis of the plot has been released and all cast members have been evasive in answering plot related questions. All we know is that Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), and Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) are back working together with new friends Rey (Daisy Ridley) and reformed Stormtrooper, Finn (John Boyega) among others to overthrow a new threat to the galaxy’s peace. The Dark Side of the Force is back with a vengeance, and an army of Stormtroopers led by warrior Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and with Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) at the forefront of the action with plenty of other bad guys rights behind. With many show times already sold out for opening weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a must-see for sci-fi lovers over the holidays and promises to be an action-packed thriller destined to entertain.
SISTERS by Madeline Bender Sisters, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s highly-anticipated new collaboration, released on December 18th, will be a Winter Break must-see. Fey and Poehler play Maura and Kate Ellis, sisters with radically different personalities, as they reunite in their childhood home with one goal in mind: to host one final party for the ages. Fey, the easygoing sister, is tasked with showing high-strung Poehler how to loosen up, and hilarity is bound to ensue. In past productions, Fey and Poehler have proven themselves to be a dynamic duo in terms of both energy and chemistry. 2015 marked the end of their three-year stint hosting the Golden Globe Awards, a series of successful and titillating events for all involved. According to Variety, the overall ratings of the Golden Globes in 2013-2015, the years Poehler and Fey hosted, were higher than any of the event’s ratings from 2008-2012. Other notable cast members in Sisters include former and current Saturday Night Live cast-mates Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Bobby Moynihan, Kate McKinnon, and the screenplay was written by Paula Pell, another SNL alumna. Since the movie will not premier until December 18th, fans and critics alike can only anticipate the film. 96% of users who responded on Rotten Tomatoes said that they wanted to see Sisters. “The Farce Awakens” is one of the films (albeit jokey) catchphrases, and, if Fey and Poehler deliver, Sisters could easily prove a box-office rival to a film with a similar name as the catchphrase.
WINTER MOVIE PREVIEWS
WINTER MOVIE PREVIEWS
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS
byJames Arcieri CINEMANN / Fall Issue
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS
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JOY
ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE ROAD CHIP CINEMANN / Fall Issue
by Sophia Schein
If you are looking for a fun-filled family movie to watch over the holidays, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip is it! As the fourth film in this series, there are few surprises but the adventure is complete with mischief, entertainment and valuable lessons on friendship. The three chipmunks, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, have settled into a nice life with the frustrated songwriter Dave, voiced by Justin Long. But when Dave seems to have fallen in love with a woman named Samantha, the trio begins to worry that they are going to lose their buddy and their boys’ club lifestyle. The real journey begins, however, when the chipmunks meet Samantha’s son Miles. Miles is not only a handsome human, but he is also unruly and very much liked by Dave. At first the chipmunks and Miles are at odds with each other but when they suspect that a proposal is in the works, their bond begins to form as they undertake a road trip to Miami to thwart the proposal. The road trip takes the wacky boys through all kinds of wacky adventures. They don’t have a lot of time since Samantha and Dave have already left and so they set out first by land, then by sea and then by air. Each segment of the trip is filled with tomfoolery, near disasters and lots of laughs. In the end, the rascals, including Miles, arrive in Miami in one piece and most importantly, as friends. As for the proposal, you’ll have to see the movie to find out more.
by Charlotte Pinney Joy, is a new movie coming out December 25, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, under the direction of David O. Russell. This movie is about a woman named Joy, played by Jennifer Lawrence, struggling for success. American Hustle, and Silver Linings Playbook, were both directed by David O. Russell, and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, seem to follow along the same themes of family, romance, and crime. It shows her journey of inventing the wonder mop, while following her story through college, marriage, her parents divorce, and having kids of her own. At first glance this movie looks heartfelt and meaningful, but under a microscope I start to worry about it. It looks to be beautifully directed, and wonderfully cast, but my issues lie in the script. I’m worried that it will fall into mediocrity. I see it having a conclusion that doesn’t offer a solution and instead finds itself leaving its viewers feeling like they climbed to the top of a mountain but never actually got to stand on the peak. Over all I think Joy could go either way, and I’m really excited to see how it turns out.
CONCUSSION by Samuel Heller The upcoming film Concussion the of incredible true of a forensic Pathologist named Dr. Bennet Omula who discovers the brain damage in a recently deceased football player and attempts to raise awareness for this disease while being threatened by the National Football League. Directed and written by Peter Landesman (Parkland) and starring Will Smith (Men in Black) will play the role of Omula. Other Stars include Alec Baldwin (30 Rock) as one of Omula’s supporter who is a doctor as well David Morsely (the Green Mile) as the deceased athlete, Mike Webster, with the neurological disease. The film is set to be released on December 25th 2015 and offer insight in the dangers of the NFL. In the film, as well as real life, Dr. Omula discovers a disease he names Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that is caused by repetitive trauma to the head and “chokes the brain”. Shortly after Dr. Omula’s findings were discovered in 2005, many others deceased Football players with diagnosed with CTE. The NFL felt threatened by these results, and act as the antagonist in this film as they urge Dr. Omula to back down, In the classic tale of the one man taking on the faceless organization, Dr. Omula attempts to release the truth about the danger that America’s most popular athletes race every time they play. Before release, this film faced a lot of controversy as the Sony hacks revealed that the actual NFL played into there part and ironically pressured Sony into cutting out the parts in the film that make them look antagonistic and inhuman. While it is unknown how much was cut out, the actors and real life Dr. Omula claim that they were not swayed by the NFL and attempted to get the truth out. This films promises a high paced drama about a mostly unkown medical condition that forces the viewer to wonder about how safe a football helmet really keeps its players.
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DECEMBER 25
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THE HATEFUL EIGHT
by Jasper Cox
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POINT BREAK CINEMANN / Fall Issue
Inspired by the original 1991 cult film of the same name, Point Break , an American-Chinese co-production, will be opening in US theaters on December 25, 2015. The storyline follows Johnny Utah, an FBI agent who goes undercover to join a group of extreme athletes who are suspects for executing master heists that have largely upset the world’s economy. “To catch them, he must become them,” announces the movie’s first official trailer. To break into the cohort of criminals and gain their trust, Utah joins them in daredevil pursuits such as free rock climbing, surfing, snowboarding, and wing suit flying. As he bonds more and more with the group, Utah realizes that the athletes are giving the stolen money to the underprivileged and poor. There exposes a moral dilemma at the core of the film. Filmed in four continents in locations stretching from Austria to French Polynesia, Point Break boasts of sharp and stunning natural vistas. The production is directed by Ericsson Core, the cinematographer of the Fast and the Furious (2001) and features screenplay by Kurt Wimmer, the writer of the 2012 Total Recall remake. Luke Bracey takes the Utah’s role, previously played by Keanu Reeves.
WINTER MOVIE PREVIEWS
WINTER MOVIE PREVIEWS
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
by Kyra Mo After 3 years, Quentin Tarantino is back in the director’s chair, hoping to add to his impressive filmography with his newest release, The Hateful Eight. After Django Unchained bagged multiple accolades from awards committees all across the world, Tarantino will try to recapture the spark that led that film to critical and commercial success. Considering the sky high reputation that Tarantino has, it will come as quite a surprise to a regular movie goer that Hateful will be just his 8th film as a director. Although when one scrolls over his filmography, it’s not hard to see why he is one of the most revered directors currently working in the industry. He has directed gems such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Bastards, and the aforementioned Django. He has picked up two Oscars and a plethora of other awards during his career, and he has shown no signs of a creative plateau. The Hateful Eight showcases frequent Tarantino collaborators Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Dern, along with other well-known Hollywood actors Michael Madsen and Kurt Russell. The story centers around eight strangers who are forced to take shelter from a blizzard at a stagecoach passover. It doesn’t take long for seeds of distrust to bloom within the eight strangers. Although it is not explicitly shown in the trailer, we can expect violence to ensue. The film seems to be similar to Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None, but with a western twist. The movie could go in many different directions, but don’t be surprised if more than a couple of the characters are left without heads. One interesting aspect of this film is that it was filmed using 70 mm film format, the same format that IMAX films such as Gravity or Interstellar were filmed. Films like this have a higher resolution than films of 35 mm format, and give off a sense of hyperrealism. Tarantino has decided to release the film only in 70 mm format; it should be interesting to see how this will affect viewer experience and commercial success, but since Tarantino and a stellar cast is involved, it should do well regardless. The film, surprising as it may be, almost did not get released. In January of 2014, the film’s original script was leaked onto the internet, and Tarantino was considering scrapping the project altogether and writing a novel of the film instead. However, in April of the same year, following a live reading of the same script, Tarantino announced that he was writing two other scripts with different endings. It wasn’t until San Diego Comic-Con 2014 that Tarantino confirmed that the film was being made, and production began later that year. This film has great amounts of potential. Considering that Tarantino has arguably never made a bad film and the star-studded cast behind it, it’s hard to see this film not being a huge success, both critically and commercially. Whether this film will receive the same Oscar recognition as Pulp Fiction or Django Unchained, but the fact that it’s being released in the thick of the holiday season, where all the big awards contenders come out in theaters, is the cherry on the cinematic sundae. I definitely recommend checking the film out.
DECEMBER 30
ANOMALISA by Zarina Iman
Anomalisa, an animated film directed by both Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Duke Johnson, started as a Kickstarter project. The Kickstarter’s success led to the film’s production company, Starburn Industries, to increase funding on the project. The film transitioned from a 40 minute featurette to about an 80 minute full feature, and was bought by Paramount Studios. Anomalisa is adapted from a script that Kaufman wrote for a staged reading, ten years ago. The story revolves around Michael Stone (David Thewils) , an author of books about customer service. Michael is unhappy with his mundane life. On a business trip to speak at a convention for customer service professionals, he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a baked goods sales rep. Certain that Lisa will help him escape his dull life, Stone falls in love with her. Animated with stop-motion, the film stars realistic 3D printed puppets and includes detailed handmade settings. Kaufman uses the animation to show how unique Michael sees Lisa. All characters, except for Lisa and Michael, share the same face and the voice of Tom Noonan. After reading about the Fregoli syndrome, a disorder that causes one to think that different people are the same person wearing masks, Kaufman wanted to use the idea to, “explore ideas about connection to people and seeing people.” Though Michael does not suffer from the syndrome, he still believes Lisa is an anomaly, inspiration for the title of the film. With Anomalisa, Kaufman and Johnson intend to explore human emotions and humanity itself with puppets, a daring move.
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD 33
police return in full riot gear, and Travis and Chris are unable to get back to the car. The riot is getting rowdier and rowdier, and people begin breaking windows, looting, and lighting random things on fire. Chris and Travis are taken in (albeit begrudgingly) by the proprietors of a barbershop to wait out the riot. At this point it becomes clear that Fear has fully embraced the impending apocalypse. In two days, things went from completely normal to crazier than you could ever imagine. Just as we were getting used to a show about a dysfunctional family growing together through adversity, it is clear that familial adversity is going to be the least of our protagonists’ problems. After all this is a show with “the walking dead” in its title. However, these characters still react to walkers with the same level of expertise we would expect from those on a show about family drama. They are not accustomed to the necessary brutality in this new era of their lives, and the walkers they encounter are not random people; they are friends, neighbors, and family. This dynamic between the protagonists and the walkers creates another distinct juxtaposition between Fear and The Walking Dead. While the walkers show the same resolve and desire to eat characters we are growing to love, these characters seem incapable of defending themselves adequately. They do not realize the severity of the crisis that the world is encountering. They demonstrate a complete reluctance to talk about what is going on and what it means, or even warn their neighbors of a clearly infected person running around outside. Much happens as the season progresses. Chris and Travis reunite with Chris’ mom, Liza; the three of them, along with the family from the barbershop, go to hide out and Travis and Maddie’s house; the army takes over and forms a safe zone around their neighborhood; the army begins to act suspiciously, taking people they deem unfit to a different location. Eventually Nick is taken by the army (due to his heroin addiction), and the protagonists finally the realize that the army may not be there to protect them. They decide to rescue their season and head east. After being taken, Nick was placed in a different army zone, and put in a cell with several other detainees. During this time, he became friendly with another prisoner, Victor Strand, a man with a commanding presence who reveals to Nick a plan for escape. As walkers begin to infiltrate the compound, Strand and Nick take the opportunity to enact their plan and are rescued by Maddie and Travis on their way out. As the season comes to a close, Strand suggests that the protagonists follow him west to “Abigail” rather than east as they had planned.. He takes them to his house on the water, and as the season comes to a close, shows Nick “Abigail,” a massive yacht lying out in the water. Overall, Fear is off to a good start. The acting has been incredible and the show’s portrayal of powerful (and controversial) topics is genius. It doesn’t get cheesy by embellishing the fact that it takes place in LA; there are no shots of the Hollywood sign on fire. What may have seemed to some as just another way for AMC to profit on The Walking Dead’s massive success has turned out to have a mind of its own, and one that gets us engrossed in its characters and enjoy the season. Let’s see where it goes next.
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
After the conclusion of the first season of Fear the Walking Dead, one thing is clear: the show is a complete foil to its predecessor. While the characters in the The Walking Dead have a nonchalant, almost formulaic approach to decapitating walkers, their Fear counterparts have a much harder time taking what was once a human life. These characters are thrown into a somehow completely zombie-laden Los Angeles in a span of roughly two days, leaving no time for them to adjust to the new way of life. Additionally, Fear does not rush into the gloomy, vicious, and unabashed goriness seen in its predecessor. Though the first scene of the Fear does feature an escape from walkers by one of our protagonists in a church-turned-crackhouse, the rest of the world appears to be functioning normally. There are no huge hordes coming in from Santa Monica, no rumors of the dead not dying. Sure, the flu seems to be much more contagious than usual this year, but there is no mass hysteria. But this wouldn’t be a TV show if there were no conflict. So, of course our main protagonists comprise a dysfunctional family who are joined by various others throughout the season. Leading the family is Madison “Maddie” Clark, a high school guidance counselor with two kids of her own. Alicia, the eldest, is a junior with a scholarship to Berkeley in the works and Nick, the younger child, is a heroin addict and encounters the zombies in the beginning. Maddie is dating Travis, an English teacher at the same high school with baggage of his own. Travis is trying futilely to stay connected with his teenage son, Chris, and get along with his ex-wife, Liza. For the first episode – and much of the season in general – everyone is occupied with the stresses of everyday life. Where exactly are the kids right now? What’s college going to be like? This delusion continues even when videos of a man being shot and still getting back up goes viral, and it begins to become clear that everything may not be normal. While we know what most of the characters in The Walking Dead did before the apocalypse, their back-stories are no longer relevant. In Fear, however, the personalities of the main characters revolve around who they were before the apocalypse. They are still teachers, guidance counselors, barbers, and students. They have not accepted their imminent doom; they cling to their former lives as a sort of a coping mechanism because they don’t realize that there is no going back, that who they were before will have no effect on who they will have to be in the future. As the world begins to fall apart, Fear does a good job at hitting on modern pressing social issues. Starting with a lone cop stealing gallons of water from a gas station mini-mart, the show addresses our stubborn faith and belief in structure and shows us that this faith may be misguided. Next is a scene in downtown LA where a cop publicly shoots an unarmed man in the head (this man has clearly turned into a zombie, but the people who witness it don’t know that). A crowd quickly forms, screaming how unjust the shooting was, how the police should not get away with that. Caught up in the crowd is Chris, Travis’s son, who is just walking through but stays with the crowd to videotape what is going on. It’s around this time that Maddie and Travis start to realize that they should pack up and leave, but Travis refuses to leave without Chris. So of course, Travis ventures into what has become a fully-fledged riot to retrieve his son. As he arrives, the
TELEVISION
TELEVISION
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
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by Noah Berman
QUANTICO by Lisa Shi
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
Arrow returns this fall on the CW network on Thursday nights. The show takes place in the fictional Starling City and follows the story of Oliver Queen, a billionaire playboy who at night is a super hero and vigilante. The third season of Arrow fell far short of the bar set by the second season. The plotlines were dull and predictable, which contrasted to much more exciting storyline of the second season. Dedicated fans are hopeful that the series will be able to match the quality of the show prior to the last season, which we will all gladly forget. Arrow left off after the defeat of Ra’s Al Ghul. Oliver Queen has retired as the Arrow and the public believes that he is dead. For a while, everything seems to be perfect in Oliver’s life. Arrow season 4 episode 1 begins with a clever shot of Oliver running through the forest of the suburb he lives in with Felicity, his girlfriend. This references the similar scene of Oliver running through the forest of the island Liang Yu, where he was trapped during the flashbacks in the first and second seasons. Oliver and Felicity have left Starling City for a suburban lifestyle. Oliver only occupies himself with cooking, while Felicity still works for Palmer Technologies. Oliver is about to finally propose to Felicity when his longtime friend Laurel, who is the Black Canary, and sister Thea, who is the Red Arrow, come to ask for his help. The Arrow is needed again to save Starling City. While the Arrow was gone, the Red Arrow, Black Canary, and John Diggle are left to defend the city. I enjoyed the strong tensions that were conveyed between John Diggle and Oliver. Their friction completely changed their traditionally strong friendship, and it made the relationships in the episode much more complex. They are forced to bring back Oliver when a new villain, Damien Darhk, rises. Damien Darhk is the leader of a villainous organization called H.I.V.E, which is on a mission to take down the government of Starling City for currently unknown reasons. The Arrow is not able to defeat Darhk because he has mystical powers unlike any seen in Starling before, giving him powerful telekinetic abilities. He will be the main villain this season, and he seems much more interesting than last season’s villain. There are many mysterious things about him, such as H.I.V.E., his strange powers, and his true motivations. Darhk’s actions are very unpredictable. He likes to keep his own hands clean, but doesn’t accept failure from his mercenaries. At the end of the episode, there is a huge plot-twist. We see Oliver crying before a gravestone in a flash-forward. There is no indication of who it is, but it must be a central character because of Oliver’s strong emotions. There is so much to learn and be excited for on Arrow this season. As someone who has little to no knowledge of the comics, the rest of the season’s plot will be a total surprise. From the great first episode with a million cliffhangers, I know I’m going to watch all of it.
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by Philip Shen
TELEVISION
TELEVISION
CINEMANN / Fall Issue
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ARROW PREVIEW
One of ABC’s newest shows, Quantico, has seen overwhelming amounts of success since it first aired. The protagonist of this FBI-based mystery is agent Alex Parrish, portrayed by Bollywood’s Priyanka Chopra. Each episode transitions between two time periods. The present, where Parrish is framed for the bombing of Grand Central Station. And nine months earlier, where Parrish spent training at the FBI’s Quantico base. Now Alex is being hunted down by her own peers who she trained with in the FBI. With with the help of her mentor and the Academy’s director (Aunjanue Ellis), Parrish must clear her name by discovering which one of her Quantico classmates was the real culprit of the bombing. With each flashback the audience is introduced to the diverse group of agents that attended the FBI academy with Parish. Each agent is unique, like Nimah (Yasmine Elmasri), a devout Muslim, Shelby (Johanna Braddy), a classic Southern debutante, and Natalie (Anabelle Acosta), a policewoman and Parrish’s biggest rival. The terrorist attack causes Parrish to re-evaluate all her relationships with her peers, leaving viewers to scrutinize the equally suspicious characters as well. Quantico’s alternating time lines, diversified cast, and fast pace mimic that of producer Shonda Rhimes’ other shows such as Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder. Priyanka Chopra brilliantly portrays the strong yet clever female lead who constantly commands respect on the screen. With the ability to expose both the vulnerability and tenacity of agent Parrish, Chopra has created another dimensional character akin to Olivia Pope and Annalise
Keating, other strong female characters from Rhimes’ other shows. Quantico plunges yet another resourceful woman into chaos with a storm of flash forwards and flashbacks. Though the transitions are not as abrupt as those of Scandal or How to Get Away With Murder, Quantico doesn’t lack intensity or suspense. The show’s producer, Joshua Safran, adopted a framework that has been proven to engage viewers. Each episode is intricately laced with clues for the audience and packed with plot twists that never fail to shock the audience. Quantico’s success is not surprising at all. Quantico is entertaining to say the least. The plot lacks realism for sure, but the cast’s gripping performances more than compensates for this. Every complex and action-packed episode effortlessly captures viewers’ attention. Filled with uncertainty, Quantico forces the audience to search for clues and observe every detail. The show’s unpredictable and erratic nature will leave you holding your breath.
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