In case you missed it, Paste revealed their vote for the 10 Best Movie Soundtracks of the decade. And while I agree with some more than others, I am quite pleased. I might even hop on board to say that the Twilight Soundtrack is a major contender, although I have yet to see the movie. From the sounds of it, Chop Shop thought long and hard about the best indie bands for the soundtrack.

Number 9 (Vanilla Sky) and #2(Once) were off my own favorite soundtracks list, and some were a refreshing reminder of some gems I had forgotten but I am particularly surprised by Oh Brother Where Art Thou? at Number 1. I do recall the music playing a big role in the movie, so perhaps Ill take another listen.

Paste’s 10 Best Movie Soundtracks of the Decade

This is an oldie but a goodie, it’s Vanilla Sky’s cover of Rihanna’s smash hit, Umbrella.  It’s hilarious!

Enjoy!

xx

yours in musical madness

]]> http://mavazquez.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/sevilla-plato-de-cine/ Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:17:14 +0000 mavazquez http://mavazquez.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/sevilla-plato-de-cine/

Sin chovinismo, Sevilla es una ciudad con encanto y enorme atractivo para el mundo del celuloide. La capital de Andalucía acoge el rodaje de Knight & Day, una cinta que estará protagonizada por Tom Cruise y Cameron Díaz (ambos coincidieron en Vanilla Sky). La producción de 20th Century Fox se extiende por el casco histórico y dejará una derrama interesante de euros (hasta 7,5 millones en varios conceptos, según datos del Ayuntamiento) por las molestias causadas, además del valor intangible de la promoción de la imagen de Sevilla.

Se han rodado ya escenas de especialistas ante la mirada atenta de los viandantes. El entorno de las plazas Nueva y de San Francisco ha albergado la filmación de una secuencia de acción donde el doble de Cruise protagoniza un espectacular salto con una motocicleta perseguido y tiroteado desde un deportivo. Los clones de Cruise y Díaz han tomado las calles mientras se produce el aterrizaje de los originales de carne y hueso, acompañados por su director, James Mangold. Los tres siguen en Boston por el retraso acumulado en el rodaje debido a las adversas condiciones meteorológicas registradas en el estado de Massachusetts. 

Knight & Day es una comedia de acción al estilo Misión: Imposible que desarrolla, en paralelo, un romance plagado de sobresaltos en los enclaves más hermosos del mundo. Las dos estrellas de Hollywood interpretan a una pareja de fugitivos que tiene una aventura fascinante y en ocasiones mortal, en donde nada ni nadie (ni siquiera ellos mismos) son lo que parecen. En medio de cambios de alianzas y traiciones inesperadas, corren alrededor del mundo, con su supervivencia en juego en última instancia, en una batalla entre la verdad frente a la confianza.

Cuando acabe el trabajo en Sevilla, el equipo de la Fox se irá con la fiesta a Cádiz. La fecha prevista para el estreno de esta cinta es el 2 de julio próximo.

“(…)Even in the future, the sweet is never as sweet without the sour…”

Happy Wednesday!

How’s it going out there, peeps? Today it’s bright and sunny here in Dundee, which is most unusual. But enough with the tedious formalities! Here’s part 6 of my notes from the writersroom seminar…

SURPRISE

When you are writing a screenplay, you want to write something that is fresh and original, but there are only a finite number of basic plots that you can work with (I’m going to do a blog on these basic plots later too) so you need to know what’s different about your version. What unique perspective are you bringing to the story? What’s your original touch? How are you going to surprise the audience?

When you watch a movie, or read a great story, there should be a sense that the ending was totally inevitable, but at the same time unpredictable. What I mean by this, is that, once the dust clears, you should be able to look back and see that it was obvious the story would end like this. Everything should “add up”.

A good example of this would be the movie “The Sixth Sense”, by M. Night Shyamalan. The story is about a child psychiatrist (Bruce Willis) who is working with a young boy that claims he can see ghosts.

If you haven’t watched it, don’t read any more as there is about to be a terrible spoiler…

…at the end of the movie, it’s revealed that Bruce Willis’ character (the main character throughout the film) is actually a ghost. This is a great plot twist in the movie, as, when you look back over the film, you can see that it really was quite obvious, but not (to my mind anyway) predictable. Now, not all stories need to end with such a mind-blowing twist to be a success, but they do need to come to a satisfactory resolution that has been built up over the course of the plot. Many movies start off strong, but lose it at the ending. This is usually because the writer simply hasn’t done enough to suggest this kind of conclusion to their story.

An example of a movie that (in my opinion) utterly fails in this principle, is the film, “Vanilla Sky”.

Don’t be fooled by the great trailer. This movie uses the technique that children are taught never to use in writing class, the “and then I woke up” lazy-ass ending. The writer has created all these confusing yet interesting situations/circumstances and twists in the plot, but then, instead of rewarding the faithful viewer with a great resolution that explains everything, they cop out by saying it was all a dream. Awful stuff.

So, that’s all for this section. Many of you may disagree with my thoughts on “The Sixth Sense” and “Vanilla Sky” (as there is potentially some case to be made in suggesting that Vanilla Sky does, in fact, point towards its ending), but hopefully you can see the principle behind what I mean anyway.

L.

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And, of course, by that I mean short comings…both Jonathan Swift’s and mine…but first I’d like to reply directly to your post.

I agree wholeheartedly…it seems foolhardy, if not downright reckless for these shipmen to keep inviting Lemmy on board.  This book must have taken place during the great boat doctor shortage of the early 17th Century.

But I disagree wholeheartedly with your thought that the description of Laputa was the aftereffect of a “bad trip.”  Indeed, I welcomed this introduction of whimsy into what was quickly becoming a slightly stale story.  But then Swift quickly got back to form and started making the book boring again.  Swift starts talking  the lode-stone and Jon starts skimming.

Which is the shortcoming I mentioned earlier…Gulliver’s Travels is quickly joining the ranks of Vanilla Sky, The Riches, and the Little House on the Prairie series of books.  Things that start interesting but quickly devolve into boring chores (These Happy Golden Years indeed!).

So I’m going back to reading for the poop jokes, and here luckily Swift delivers.  When describing the studies going on at the Academy of Balnibarbi Gulliver sees a scholar who’s project is “an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food; by separating the several parts; removing the tincture which it receives from the gall, making the odour exhale; and scumming off the saliva.”  Good luck with that!  (But poop, it’s nice to have you back.)

Now to the Lilliputian (read short) coming of my own.  I truly intended to be finished with part three by the start of this week…but I was distracted by a disc of the Gilmore Girls final season–and how am I supposed to focus on this book when Lorelai and Chris’s marriage is dissolving before my eyes?!  I ask you–how?!

But I’m close (ish) and I’m going to finish by the end of the month if it kills me (and it might).

Boy am I ready for a new book…

Jon

One of my favorite words is grace.  Especially as a person of faith, the infinite amount of grace that God gives me is beyond humbling.

Another of my favorite words is gratitude.  I keep a gratitude journal and try to write five things I’m thankful for everyday.  Some days are harder than others.  There are also some days where coming up with five things to be grateful for is effortless.

This past weekend, I have spent a good amount being grateful and receiving grace.  Friday, the 23rd of October, someone slammed into the back of my car.  I was befuddled.  I didn’t know what happened.  I just felt myself jerk forward.  I looked in my rearview mirror and a man reversed his car off of mine.  I looked at him.  He was panicked and he was scared.

We were in bumper to bumper traffic.  There was not a place to pull over.  I got out of the car, he said he was sorry, and I left it at that.

There was not a single scratch on my car.  It was miraculous.  It was a beautiful Friday evening.  Before the accident, all I wanted to do was enjoy the weather.  After the accident, I wanted my bed.

When I arrived, I could feel my back muscles ache and react to the trauma.  The human body is a beautiful and amazing thing, but it is impacted, even by the smallest amount of trauma.  I spent a good part of the night recuperating.  I also thanked my guardian angel for always looking out for me.  It’s impeccable how many times I could have gotten in car accidents and haven’t.

Saturday morning, I woke up and the day was filled with activity.  Lilly, Jackie, and I went to the pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins at St. Lukes Methodist Church on Westheimer.  It was absolutely beautiful.  We picked the perfect pumpkin.

The last time Lilly was at this pumpkin patch, she was 2 years old.

We saw Where the Wild Things Are.  We went to the library and I got the audiobook for Maya Angelou’s Letters to My Daughter.  Jackie and I are still on a hunt for a great Thai restaurant.  Our favorite, Mai Tai went out of business.  All I want is some decent Massaman.

Saturday night, I had 2 hours of sleep.  I’m not sure why.  I had to get up to go to work Sunday morning.  It was quite hard, but when you wake up to this, waking up is worth every effort.

This is what I think a vanilla sky looks like.

I have an internship to go to tomorrow.  Middle school students are my constant challenge.  Wish me luck!

I don’t think you could stay in any bit of sanity after watching this.

When a psychologist’s (Ewan McGregor) suicidal client starts making bizarre predictions that, to everyone’s mounting consternation, begin to come true. Now, the shrink must race against the clock to save everything he loves before it disappears forever.

The film has a very intriguing psychological twist which I do enjoy from a lot of films. Vanilla Sky and The Sixth Sense are great films that I love to think about in films, but this one doesn’t do it that right.

To start off with something good if you want to see this film do it for the visuals. They are stunning, and create a mood with the film, as the camera shifts everyone once in awhile as something just doesn’t seem right. The color green in this film is shown throughout the whole movie and is really cool to see the color put in all ways different ways throughout the film.

However, as stunning as the visuals were, I just felt like they were put in for no good reason. I felt as if they were put in at times just to be put in and be over the top and try and have us confused about a story that is already confusing as it is.

The film tries a little too hard to be good, creepy fun, but about half way through the film I found myself so uninterested with this story and these characters that I almost just fell asleep. I think that the story wouldn’t have been too confusing if the film wasn’t giving out a lot of misguided clues that didn’t really fit well with the story.

Director Marc Foster shows his true talents of not knowing how to make an effective script at all. The film’s lines in this film are so cheesy and cliched that I couldn’t help myself to laugh by how dumb these lines were being put in.

Though the screenplay is pretty crappy, Stay actually has some good acting. Ewan McGregor is very effective and shows that he can keep a story together even if he does have cheesy lines, and Naomi Watts, as much as she was barely in does a very acceptable job playing his once suicidal girlfriend. Though, Ryan Gosling I think gives the knockout performance as he is very taunting but very believable that this guy is so good at playing with this guy’s mind that you actually start to like him out of all the characters.

The ending is so worthless. The payoff is so weak that after watching this film I felt that this whole movie of 1 hour and 39 minutes was just a total waste of time and in the end pointless.

Consensus: Though visually dazzling and some credible acting, Stay suffers from a bad screenplay, worthless payoff, and ultimately a film you will lose interest for halfway through.

3/10=SomeOleBullSShittt!!!!

You may or may not have been previously aware of my obsession with New York City, but in any event…I confess I am in love! There is just something about that city that makes me ridiculously giddy, like a little kid in a candy store. I want to see everything and go everywhere and I never want to leave. Which is why I am more than thrilled to be attending November market on a media tour of sorts. Between a gazillion editor meetings I should be able to squeeze in a little shopping and “city soaking,” don’t you think.

In no particular order, my favorite things about The Big Apple, which of course is open to additions:

1. No matter the duration of the stay I always insist on walking everywhere! There is no easier city to navigate and possibly no where else in the entire United States where you can get anywhere simply by walking there. Raining, snowing, sleeting (ok, maybe not sleeting) but I am so down to bundle up and  make my way through the always crowded streets.

2. And I mean always! Aside from the sun/moon thing, Times Square always looks like broad daylight…lights, people, taxi cabs, quite literally the city never sleeps. Which is why I continually wonder how they pulled off the whole Tom-Cruise-deathly-still-Times-Square scene in Vanilla Sky?!

3. Not that cupcakes aren’t currently the most trendy food accessory in LA but I do believe NY was home to the original cupcake-store concept. There are bakeries every couple of blocks boasting vibrantly frosted morsels of goodness and unique flavor combinations that are definitely to be desired, craved, and ultimately consumed. Among some of my favorites, Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery and Magnolia Bakery.

4. Frozen Hot Chocolate from Serendipity. A definite must!

5. Wearing peacoats and mittens. The only trouble being that the number of coats I want to bring and the actual number that will fit into my luggage are somewhat different. The favorite coat this year has to be my new eggplant purple Kristen Blake a-line, it is practically jumping out of my closet in anticipation of cold weather.

6. Friendly people. I know New Yorkers have a reputation for being cold and somewhat unamiable but they are really quite helpful people. If you stand on a corner and just look lost someone will ask you if you need directions, I swear I love these city folk!

7. Central Park. Walking through Strawberry Fields and any of the surrounding area you can’t help but get the feeling you are in a scene straight from a movie.

8. The view from your hotel room, or any building for that matter. Heck even from a cab. Taking in the lights and excitement the city exudes is simply breathtaking.

9. The nightlife. Here in Los Angeles going out feels so planned and so showy. The girls who look like they spent far too long getting ready, the lines of guys trying to get into the clubs to see these girls, the pretentious heir so many think they are entitled to, it just seems forced. But in New York you stop into a bar and everyone looks sort of natural, there’s a definite portrayal of confidence that SoCal definitely lacks.

10. The drive to succeed. People seem motivated and with purpose and it’s contagious. Just being there makes me want to write a novel or sing on stage (well not quite), but you know what I mean. You just want to DO SOMETHING!

Now I’m going to start packing…have a wonderful weekend.

XOXO cpFashionista

“És mi az élet, ha nem az álom keresése, az álomé, hogy valaki azt mondja: igazából, teljes szívből szeretlek.”

Vanilla Sky

One last note I had written down about this episode…only because #1 I am trying to fall asleep #2 I like relating this project to alternate events in my life #3 I just like screengrabs a lot:

Again I’m sure you could write a whole dissertation on this subject, the therapist-patient relationship….but the way Melfi and Tony are becoming almost like a husband and wife team (he gets sounder advice from her than he generally does from the over-dramatic Carmela, even asking for advice on how hard to push his son after he screws up….and indeed they have a love spark between them, as we have seen play out) and in the movie I rewatched last night, Vanilla Sky, the mention of the father/son-like relationship between Tom Cruise and Kurt Russel’s characters…I think the overall theme of the therapist fulfilling a lacking familial role in the patient’s life…and maybe vice-versa, is a rather interesting one to observe….

Go see Vanilla Sky if you haven’t. This was my second time seeing it, but it stuck in my head long after I saw it the first time (in high school I believe) and was all the more pertinent this time.

Also I’m just in love with Penelope Cruz.

If there is one distinctive, auteurist-feature to the directorial work of Cameron Crowe, it’s surely aural rather than visual. He doesn’t necessarily have any visual style, though all of his films seem to have a misty nature to them, a kind of wistful dreaminess in their themes and in the way of their main characters. The only time this fails to happen is with Vanilla Sky, his remake of Alejandro Amenabar’s Abre los Ojos, though even here the soundtrack falls into line with his methods.

The single defining feature of a Cameron Crowe film is surely music. Crowe is interested in music of his characters, music of their time and music they would like. Some would place his squarely as a 60s-70s man, but this era-based categorisation is negated entirely by the first film I’m going to talk about in his column.

Key to Crowe’s musical choices, beyond his own preferences, are the preferences of his characters and the feel of the music. He seems somewhat interested in lyrical content, but much more tries to capture the feel which tends to be dictated by the type of story he tells. In sync with that, the question raises as to whether Crowe writes based on the music or if he finds the music that fits the story. Given that he is noted for playing music on his sets to nurture feeling or atmosphere, you would have to posit that the two come almost in sync. The music he loves will dictate the kind of characters he creates, but only in terms of the type of music his characters love. Otherwise, he is more interested in writing what he considers real people, but placed within his realm of sweetness (some would contend mawkishness).

As a general rule of thumb, Crowe will tend to work with music which displays a wistful, elegiac nature. Music which seems evocative of its time and its subject matter. A film I’ll comment on in a later column, Almost Famous, lives and dies on the strength of the music Crowe chooses. It’s all music which evokes the time and period but, with very few exceptions, transcends its time simultaneously.

His debut behind the camera, Say Anything, stands up as much for its script as anything else. It also, though, captures the kind of soundtrack he would seek to make as time went on. His soundtracks often act as mixtapes for the protagonist, a snapshot of their musical minds. Say Anything’s soundtrack does this through eclecticism, something which the lead, Lloyd Dobler, exudes through his general demeanour. Dobler seems the kind of music fan who would appreciate anything doing what it did well, no matter the genre. The soundtrack then includes the likes of Joe Satriani (‘One Big Rush’) and heavy-funk era Red Hot Chili Peppers (‘Taste the Pain’), sitting alongside Depeche Mode (‘Stripped’) and, on the insistence of star John Cusack, Fishbone (‘Skankin’ to the Beat’).

The two key songs, which would somewhat define Crowe’s approach in later years, are ‘Within Your Reach’ by The Replacements and ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel. The former, a watershed song for the band from their tipping point record, Hootenanny, plays as a kind of paean to the kind of person Dobler is set out as. He is an open, honest and emotional person, yet entirely balanced and devoid of histrionic teenager syndrome. ‘Within Your Reach’ is Paul Westerberg begrudgingly opening up, something he would continue to do to amazing impact throughout the band’s later life.

‘In Your Eyes’, a song about love as a transformative, religious experience, seems more in tune with the movie as a whole. It’s use, played from a boombox held aloft by Dobler beneath the bedroom window of his love, Ione Skye’s Diane Court, is rightly held up in the annals of history as a truly romantic moment. It could have been so different if, as Crowe recounts in an interview with Cinema Confidential, Cusack has his way and played ‘Bonin’ in the Boneyard’ by Fishbone during that scene. But Cusack lost the fight, and not only does it play as a Romeo and Juliet moment for the cassette tape generation, but the song itself speaks volumes of Dobler’s complete, unfettered, uncensored love. It’s romance comes both from the act and from the music, something Crowe’s films would continue to do for the remainder of his career. It’s the moment that caused Chuck Klosterman to pen an essay in his Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs about how Dobler destroyed every relationship he ever had because he, Klosterman that is, is not Dobler.

Whether mawkish or heartwarming, ‘In Your Eyes’ and ‘Within Your Reach’ set the tone for Crowe’s coming career, though he tended to edge towards overuse of music in later works, notably the awful Elizabethtown. The two songs are open and honest, personal in an aching kind of way, a feature that can either turn your on or forever turn you off to Crowe’s work.

Next Week: Quentin Tarantino calls on the gods of blaxploitation in Jackie Brown. Further Cameron Crowe films will be explored as time goes on.

*Source: L’internaute & TuoiTreOnline

Tạp chí điện tử L’internaute (Pháp) vừa công bố bảng xếp hạng 50 nữ diễn viên điện ảnh đẹp nhất và thể hiện thành công những vai độc ác nhất. Dưới đây là 6 nữ diễn viên đầu tiên xếp theo vị thứ từ cao đến thấp.

Đứng đầu danh sách là Isabelle Adjani (Pháp). Có bố là người Algeria và mẹ là người Đức, Isabelle Adjani sở hữu một khuôn mặt búp bê và ánh mắt mê hồn có thể thu hút khán giả ngay từ cái nhìn đầu tiên. Trong phim Possession (1981) do Andrzej Zulawski đạo diễn, Isabelle Adjani diễn rất đạt cảnh cuồng loạn của nhân vật Anna trên xe điện ngầm của thành phố Berlin.

Các nữ diễn viên “đẹp và nguy hiểm” kế tiếp là…

Angelina Jolie, vai Olympias trong phim Alexander (2004);  Asia Argento, vai Violaine trong phim Les morsures de l’aube (2001);
Ava Gardner, vai Kitty Collins trong phim The killers (1946);
Cameron Diaz, vai Julie trong phim Vanilla sky (2001); Cate Blanchett vai Irina Spalko trong phim Indiana Jones và vương quốc sọ pha lê (2008)…

Vanilla skies loom over the earth, and its beauty is an insult because it is not a reflection of a psyche haunted by images of the past.

Vanilla Sky is a story about life and its different interpretations. It has different endings because life is open-ended. Life is not “And they lived happily ever after”, although people will always yearn for this tag line. These endings are not really endings; it is only a beginning of something else. It is life’s cruel joke—the unexpected butterfly effect that cannot be undone.

It is amazing how characters can be so powerful. They evoke different emotions, different positions, different situations one identifies with.

David loses his face. With the loss of his face comes the loss of his own self-identity. He desperately tries to get himself back, but fails. He tries to pick up the pieces. His mask could never hide his agony, anguish and pain. He runs and runs through the streets of New York, looking for something. He sleeps on the floor, his life’s rock bottom. He screams. His perception fades, and nightmares become reality. His desire deludes him.

Sofia is a beautiful, intelligent, interesting woman. She never gives herself that quickly. She has dreams, and has taken risks, steps to fulfill them. She is kind, and loves deeply. Everybody loves to be with her. She is to be wooed, to be adored, not to be used.

Julie is what David claims as a friend and “workout” buddy. But for Julie, it is not about physical intimacy. For her, happiness is being with David. Her longing for David drove her to the wall. For David, she is nothing. For Julie, David is everything. Before she kills herself, she said, “You were inside me… That means something… Don’t you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise, whether you do or not?” Until her last breath, she proves that, like any other human being, she is beyond objectification.

Open your eyes. Abre los ojos.

The vanilla skies are cotton candy dreams with surreal nightmares. The choices we make seem like vanilla skies; it can be our cotton candy dreams or our surreal nightmares. We paint vanilla skies, whether we like it or not, because life will throw situations our way that will break our soul, shatter our identity, our beliefs. Our dreams taunt us with things our body and soul will not make us forget. Our minds are as lucid as our nightmares, but not as clear in reality.

We are David. We are Sofia turned into Julie, and with identity lost, dying to become Sofia again. We are characters in our own life, and we will never know the ending.

Time is not our friend. Every passing minute is a chance to turn it all around. Is there hope for that? We will never know because this vanilla sky is nothing but a lucid nightmare, and the ending is nowhere in sight.

“What is happiness to you?”
“I’ll tell you in another life, when we are both cats.”

New eclectic hip hop group, Astro is making their way to the music stage with their first album, “We Will Go.” Astro consists of 1 female vocalist, 1 male vocalist and 2 rappers. The album is mainly made up of house music with an added flavor of hip hop. The title track, “We Will Go” also features “My Lips” star, Miss Sori-shi.

The group gives off an eccentric jam like, The Clazziquai Project, but more fused with an American feel. Both tracks, “Sexy girl” & “Slow Down” are digitized whole while the other two contains more house music and vocal strategy. Their track “Slow Down” has been on my repeat ever since I played it and we hope to hear to see some music stages from them!

Check out the my fave track & their title MV below!

Astro – Slow Down

Astro – We Will Go [MV]

01. 간다 03:22
02. Sexy Girl 04:01
03. Vanilla sky intro 00:35
04. Vanilla sky 03:22
05. slow down 03:57
06. 간다 (instrumental) 03:22
07. Vanilla sky (instrumental) 03:57