Akira Kurosawa is a Japanese filmmaker who directed films in the 40s, 50s and 60s. The clips from above are from one of his more famous films, Rashomon. Kurosawa basically puts on a school for shot composition and texture throughout every scene I have watched of his so far. I love the way he uses the camera narratively and the overall look of his movies. His movie Seven Samurai is incredibly long, but definitely worth the watch if you are ever feeling like a black and white movie night.

As a random tidbit: George Lucas was influenced by Kurosawa. Something about Samurai swordsmen perhaps?

- Ted

As I’ve watched clip after clip of his comedy remaining relevant to this day, and after being frequently amazed by his ability to set up comedy, I’ve begun to really appreciate what Chaplin contributed to film development. I’ve also begun to appreciate the liberties he took within the creative process. He was producing movies in a time when people were still acclimating to shot sequences with multiple edits rather than just one shot takes, but managed to create complex humor based off of complex editing that controls what the audience is viewing and understanding. It’s incredible to me that his ingenuity and creative ability propelled him into his now American icon status (even though he is British). Charlie Chaplin new that moving pictures moved people.

Maybe not quite on the same scale as Chaplin (haha), but hopefully I can do the same at one point or another.

Here is a Desktop Wallpaper that I created, feel free to download it if you would like: click here to download (1680×1050)

This “movie review” is coming from someone who has absolutely no authority whatsoever to critique or analyze a movie, I am simply a movie-lover, in college, studying film, who hoped Avatar might be like it was cracked up to be.

People who know I was one of the nerds who waited up until midnight to then watch a 2 hour and 40 minute movie, have pestered me with questions, asking what the movie is like and the best answer I can come up with is as follows:

You know that dream you always wish you could have had when you were a kid? The one where you hit your pillow and find yourself to be 10 feet tall, a different color, you can jump higher and run faster, you can connect with animals and then ride them, then plants interact with you, and you made friends and then got to fight something? – Well maybe that wish was just mine… but that was Avatar.

Before I get any further, I have to suggest to you (yeah you, the person reading this right now) to see it in 3D – the 3D experience in this movie is comparable to the first time you happened to see High Definition TV after years of standard definition.

The 3D takes a solid 15 minutes to let your eyes and brain adjust to it. In real life you get to choose what to focus on in your own 3D environment but in the movie the focus is done for you, so it isn’t until you sort of “give up control” of your eyes’ depth of focus that you begin to feel like you are the camera and you get to fully take in the new world James Cameron created.

The only downside to the movie is the unabashedly political undertone in which Cameron and his team entirely oversimplify the War in Iraq that he obviously criticizes throughout the film. If the circumstances in Iraq were the same as they are in the human’s assault on the Na’vi in Avatar, then even the farthest right wing conservative would be in agreement on who the protagonists are (Jake Sully and the Na’vi) and who antagonists are (us greedy humans). This however does not inhibit the story-line which is good enough to stand alone (without the special effects, I mean) and only further proves Cameron can simply make a good movie.

All in all, I was blown away. I began to halt my anticipation a couple of days prior to the movie’s release just in case it was a huge flop as some had anticipated, but I do not see any glaring signs of a budding box office dud. It’s one of those movies that people will talk about and refer to for quite sometime and you will find yourself the outsider if you have not seen it.

Go see it, and be prepared to suspend reality – a lot.

- Ted