The toxic storm at the end of act one, and one of my favorite shots of the whole movie.
Over fall break, I flew to California on a United flight. (It wasn't great... The flight, I mean). However, I did have an excuse to watch a movie that I really liked when I saw it this summer, Mad Max: Fury Road. The Mad Max films are set in a post-apocalyptic Australia where a former cop named Max essentially loses every person in his life he cares about and switches into survival mode. Mel Gibson stars as Max in the first three films, Mad Max,Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, released from 1979 to 1985. In the Mad Max world, pretty much everything has turned to dust literally, the currency is oil and bullets, and the world is running dangerously low on food and water.
This guy was my favorite. <3
This time around I chose to focus on the colors in the film. I noticed many shots with orange and blue.
Like Cole wrote in his blog, I also used the The Colors of Motion website to look more closely at the colors and sure enough, it wasn't just me, it was a lot of orange and blue.
Part of this was obvious to me. Orange and blue are complementary colors, which means that when placed in close proximity, they contrast. In films, contrasting colors are important because they draw your attention to different things on the screen. You might remember learning about complementary colors when you learned about the color wheel in elementary school art class.
Color grading has been around for a while now, but the Coen brothers are credited for starting the orange and teal trend in their 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? Since then, more and more films have used this complementary color palette when color grading. It's especially common in action movies because explosions are typically bright orange. Since it's become a convention, one theory suggests that it is used to make movies look more like movies. Another theory suggests that digitization in color grading made it easier to apply a uniform color scheme to multiple scenes at once. This then speeds up the process for color graders. A blogger named Todd Miro suggests that we just love seeing the contrast of orange and blue on screen.
Lots and lots of orange and blue in these movie posters.
Once you notice this trend in one film, you see it in a lot of other movies. I presume this trend will eventually become less common and a different color scheme will be used. I have no idea how long this will take, so I guess I'll just have to get used to seeing orange and blue for now.
So last semester I was in the class "Leisure and Society", and we were assigned a group project where we needed to analyze a movie of our choice and how it related to recreation or leisure. It didn't take long for the group that I was in to choose The Big Lebowski. The movie just exudes leisure, especially through the life of the protagonist, The Dude, portrayed by Jeff Bridges. Initially we chose the movie just because they like to bowl a lot, but soon we discovered that the movie had a pretty interesting impact on the world since it's debut.
Normally when people say the worship a movie or a character in it, they are usually just joking around, but in the case of this movie, some wouldn't be lying. A religion, based on the lifestyle of The Dude, was founded and that religion is known as... Dudism. Sure at first it seems like a joke, but then you realize that some people are actually serious about this. They have books, had specials on Dateline, and offer up the chance to become an ordained Dudist priest (which is hilarious in it's own right).
Basically, Dudism is based on a modern form of Taoism, with it's main principle being to take it easy, man. A religion where everyone lounges around in a funemployed state and rolling with the punches is definitely an interesting idea, and one that more one person has gotten behind. In short, media can have impact in unusual and unexpected ways. I'm sure the Coen brothers had no idea that a religion would spawn from the movie, but such is life. In any case, Dudism was born, and I personally feel that it is a cool faith to follow or practice, but that's just, like, my opinion, man.
The simple fact that films typically have a musical score always seems to slip right by me when I'm actually making any kind of short film or TV show myself. It's just not something that I would typically think about. Good audio? Sure. Sound effects? Yeah, why not. But never a score. This lead me to thinking, hey, who says that films need to have any kind of music or instrumentality at all? That, in turn, lead me to google, which lead me to some interesting websites, which lead me here, to this blog post.
As behind-the-scenes as they typically are, we all know the names of a few movie composers: Hans Zimmer (please click that link for your own sake), Danny Elfman, and of course, the legendary John Williams. Their scores don't just add noise to all of their respective films: they add feeling, and set a tone for any given scene or even the movie as a whole If you need an example for a really amazing score that is spot on in terms of creating an entire atmosphere for a film, look no further Howard Shore and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It doesn't just add tension or give scenes a certain flavor: it's music that like, I could actually see hobbits playing out on their front porches. Or whatever hobbit holes have instead of porches. Dirt clods? I don't know.
But what I'm curious about is if some films rely too heavily on composers and a musical score in order to fix what would otherwise be a weak script. Recently, there was a video going around the internet called "Star Wars without Williams." While it was meant to be funny, it also pointed out something pretty important: this throne room scene is super awkward without music. What was once a jovial and triumphant scene is now just echoey and weird. Don't get me wrong, I like Star Wars as much as the next guy or gal, but Audio (and script) - wise, Lucas kind of dropped the ball here.
On the opposite side of things, however, is it possible to have a good film without any scoring at all? Sure. Just check out No Country for Old Men, The Birds, and 90% of Castaway. The key to scoring films, as I'm slowly but surely finding out, is to balance a good script with subtle yet powerful music. Emphasize certain emotions or themes that you want to have emphasized, while at the same time making sure that your film could still be successful without the music shoving those emotions down your throat. If you're looking for some more interesting info on how composers mess with our emotions, you check out a BBC article on that very topic right here.
A lazy hippie's favorite rug was urinated on, and from there, the story only gets weirder. That basically sets up one of my now favorite movies, "The Big Lebowski." I have seen the Coen Brothers' comedy twice before and after watching it a third time, I now am certain that it is one of my favorite movies.
The movie is about an aged hippie, Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges of "Crazy Heart" and "True Grit") who prefers to be called the Dude, or "his Dudeness, Duder, or El Duderino if you are not into the brevity thing." Two men break into the Dude's house, looking for Jeff "The Big" Lebowski, demanding money from Bunny, the wife of the latter Lebowski, and pee on the Dude's rug. After this case of mixup, the Dude gets involved in the life of his rich, sophisticated counterpart. The Big Lebowski, who hates bums, pays the Dude to drop off the ransom for his kidnapped trophy wife, Bunny (Tara Reid from the "American Pie" films). Soon, he gets involved with nihilists, a feminist artist, a pornographer, a high school kid, all while going bowling with the veteran Walter, played phenomenally by John Goodman, and the naive, but nice Donny, the hilarious Steve Buscemi.
The Dude, probably one of the best comedic characters created in the last 20 years, a memorable protagonist, loves white russians, bowling, and relaxing, makes this movie a home run in my opinion. Walter and Donny are great sidekicks. Every character is quirky, giving the movie more life; Walter is jewish and observes Shomer Shabbas and doesn't bowl (or roll as he calls it) on Saturdays, and Jesus (a bowling rival played by John Turturro) talks in the third person and is a registered sex offender.
The movie is a complicated mystery, a modern comedic "Big Sleep," that is always engaging and fascinating. I have seen it three times now and each time I notice new things about the film. It is another classic in the Coen Brothers filmography.
