I just watched a beautiful film this evening.
It's called Proof. I watched it on BBC iPlayer (something I quite simply couldn't live without nowadays). Here's the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/jpxrt/ pop over there and give it a watch, it's 90 minutes of pure film brilliance.
BBC 4 have been showing a lot of films like this for the past few months, however most of them are in French (as a side note, I have grown to love a lot of French cinema, they are far more creative in many ways than most in the UK and the US), if you have some spare time I would recommend you google 'Blame it on Fidel'. It's in French but it's very well subtitled and the story is very moving and easy to follow.
Anyway as usual I'm getting off topic... where was I... oh yes, Proof, It's about a young woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) whose father was an incredibly brilliant Mathematician but has a medical condition that has caused his memory and general brain function to deteriorate and so the woman decides to quite college and care for him instead. This is all revealed to us very slowly throughout the course of the film. She must contend with her quite formidable Sister after their father dies, as well as deal with her emotions for her fathers former Student (Jake Gyllenhaal) who she falls in love with all whilst she is concerned that she will follow in her father's footsteps and lose her mind as well.
I won't go into any more detail of the plot as it will ruin it for you. The film has been shot extremely well, one thing that a lot of films neglect to use is distinct lighting states for certain types of scene. Sure, Star Trek (2009) has a lot of lens flare for battles, and The Dark Knight has... well it's kinda gloomy all the way through... yes they are wonderful wonderful pieces of work (some of my favourite films actually) but they weren't the best shot. For instance, in Proof we have three distinct states, slightly washed out colours and generally darker were used for most of the sad or emotional sections, we had the classic sun through the window with light streaks across things with everything else generally in shadow for the realisation type scenes and finally the Happy or content scenes where they use a lot of mild yellows and real skin tones in the lighting.
Another thing which I've seen in a couple of films in the past few years, when the film jumps around chronologically, you need a point of reference for your audience to know where or when they are, in this case it seemed to be Paltrow's Hair style... which I must say was rather effective.
I'm sure I'm missing something from here, If I can think what it is I might do a better review type thing and post it to the Cerberus Film Blog.
Onto the rest of the blog now...
As per usual I'm thoroughly confused... those of you who know me well will probably know why, I won't go into it though, it would only bore you all. Some of you I'm sure will be happy to know that I'm feeling better than I have done for a long while, I've managed to put the Three Bitches and the School Incidents to one side for the moment and so it's all rather good.
I've started using a timetable type thing for my tutoring and work, I only do one subjects 'Homework' a day, even if I have multiple subjects of tutoring that day. It seems to be working quite well for me, I'm certainly getting a lot more done.
I've submitted my application to the SYP (Scottish Youth Parliament) for the elections later this year. I'm also finishing off my application for the SYT (Scottish Youth Theatre) Summer Festival, despite the likely hood that I won't be taking part due to film commitments but still, it's a fall back plan, oh and certain people would kill me if I didn't apply...
Finally I'm going to the premier of my latest film 'He's Not a Vegetarian' at the Kingussie Food on Film Festival on the 4th of February with a few friends and colleagues. Oh and very finally... I appear to have been Head Hunted by a very prestigious and important film organisation in the UK for some reason, I should be finding out more tomorrow... or should that be today :-S
I should really be getting to sleep now... I just realised what the time is...
Goodnight all and thank you for reading another one of my blogs :-)
Much Love my friends
Oliver V. Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment