Tuesday 29 September 2015

Movie post post movies


Harold & Maude (1971, dir. Hal Ashby):

The characters in this film were amazingly written and just gorgeously whimsical. And they were so, btw, in such messed-up ways but honestly the most loveably dysfunctional characters I've seen on the big screen. We watched the film in a lecture as part of the New Hollywood topic which I still don't get but it was raaaad. Anyways, well worth watching even though it's a bit old.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015, dir. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon):

Watch this film, the payoff is worth it. Such a great ending, a bit teensy and fault in our stars but only because of the cancer topic within a highschooler world thing. I absolutely adored it and thought the ending was just perfect. Also, the first time I cried whilst watching a movie. Like legit, I was sobbing like a bad bitch in the middle of the movie theatre.

The Great Beauty (2013, dir. Paulo Sorrentino):

Beautiful cinematography of Rome. Also great dialogue at most parts, I enjoyed it even though it dragged on just a bit. I still thought it was great.Although, I didn't get the story until the end but that's probably because I tend to zone out every now and then lol

Somersault (2004, dir. Cate Shortland):

An aussie film with Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington before they were big stars and it was nice. Very pretty and just allover nice. Like in a good way, not nice as in it's like... nice.... relative to other films.... It was just very pretty and the colours were saturated af which was so nice on screen. It's also by Cate Shortland and it's her debut film which is great.

Lore (2012, dir. Cate Shortland):

This one is also by Cate Shortland and it is great. Like good good. It's about a bunch of kids who have to flee their home all by themselves because their parents were nazis and this was right after WWII ended (I think, my history knowledge is atrocious). Anyways, it's so Cate and it's so beautiful. I absolutely adored it.

Spring Breakers (2012, dir. Harmony Korine):

Pretty bad but not thaaaat awful. It was okay. I loved the style with the neon lights and colours, that was great. Costuming was pretty g too. However, they were the most two dimensional characters in the world. With the girls, their actions painted a little bit of personality but it wasn't enough to whoever wrote these could-have-been great female characters. The person with the most character was James Franco's and he was god-awful. Really bad. Like so bad.

Do the Right Thing (1989, dir. Spike Lee):

Spike Lee did an amazing job highlighting a culture, a time and such a still-relevant social issue. The colours, the costuming and the camerawork were ace too. It was just such a great film. So many gorgeously written characters with great lines and even monologues and such beautiful scenes. I absolutely adored it and you could tell it was definitely a crowd favourite.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, dir. Benh Zeitlin):

This was damn emotional and powerful shit. It was great!! It was awe-inspiring and so damn good. Quvenzhane Wallis absolutely killed it. Such an amazing child actress, she really tugged at the heart strings. The dad was great too, he was tough but he managed to make us love him so much??? Ugh, good film. It's set in a somewhat fantastical world and it's simply but so intricately wonderful.

Dear White People (2014, dir. Justin Simien):

Dear White People is about several black students in a dominantly white college and it is damn interesting. It not only highlights the many issues that black students have to face but it gives us several perspectives from characters with their own unique and specific adversities - a girl who doesn't want to be black, a dude who has to be someone he's not for reputation and politics, a gay guy who finds trouble in fitting in with a homophobic black community and a dominantly white gay community and then there's the main chick who is very intriguing. Basically, she's a powerful black voice who demands to be heard but as the movie progresses, things get a little out of hand and we question how right she really is??? ANYWAYS, I was engaged throughout most of the movie and I enjoyed it a lot.

Friday 25 September 2015

What's in a name?

We had an exercise in a tute where we just wrote as truthfully as we could about either who we were or the customs of either a name, clothing, thumbs and something I can't remember. Anyways, I wrote about my name.

The name I was born with was William Cong Hien Tran. When I was almost eighteen, I legally changed my name to simply William Tran because that was the name most of my documents had but my birth certificate included my other names and the lady at the RTA wouldn't give me my license and I really wanted ID so I could go gay clubbing for the first time and have my first drink and all that other geeky coming-of-age nonsense.

Anyways, that's why my name is William Tran now and to be honest, nowadays I'm just trying to hang onto that Tran part. I'm hanging on to it because in this industry, in the credits at the end of a film, that's where it ends up. In the industry we want to work in, I feel as if there's so much importance in representing my Vietnamese culture because really, where are we? Where am I?

When I was in high school, I had this little thing where I somewhat believed that the man I'd marry, the love of my life, would have the last name, 'Meadows', and that I would take it. I wanted it because it just felt like whatever it was attached to, that full name would sound like a happy place. "WILLIAM MEADOWS", flowers to the days. I also thought it'd be cute to call our home "The Meadows". That's passed now lol.

I low-key miss my middle names but really, knowing myself, they were always going to go. I went to Vietnam in February with my old uni mates and at one point, we all asked this one taxi driver what our Vietnamese names meant. Bao Lam Dao meant 'Golden Forest' and it had a warrior's reputation. Nhu Ngoc meant Peaceful Pearl and it was the name of a princess once. My name Cong Hien meant concentration*. Since then I've wondered why my parents chose that name for me. Did they really just want me to focus super hard all the time? That'd be funny because I have a really short attention span so whoops. I should probably ask them.

Growing up in the South West and in a school dominated by Vietnamese kids, Tran was a pretty boring name to have. It was common, not very pretty and there weren't many puns you could get out of it for your year 12 jersey. Transformers? Transcendent? No thank you. But now, it's all I have. And yes, I'm representing my family line through Tran and my individuality through William but it feels like so much more than that. I feel like I have to represent a whole country and I'll probably never become big and famous enough to actually have to but I often wonder what it'd be like to be white. Would I be just as sick to death to see a white lead on the big screen? Or would it be just straight people that I'd shun? Would history bother me so much? Would my last name be so heavy? Just to clarify, I don't think my last name is a burden and I'm not ashamed of my heritage. And I don't believe white people or rather all white people are guilty of anything mentioned above.

I just wonder what it'd be like to not feel so small.

*I got confused again, my name means determination, not concentration LOL But oh well, we move on... I'm p sure nobody in my tute knew that anyways...

I wrote that and read it out loud in class because idk, I felt like the thing needed to be addressed. The whole issue of cultural representation in the film industry and whatnot. We had to make a short doco once based on the statement 'film education is only for the privileged' and this other group interviewed me about racial privilege and basically they ended up editing it so that their doco started with me saying aftrs was so white and so is history blah blah blah and then I wrote this in my tute and then I might have commented "#aftrssowhite" when yet another white male became admin of our BA's fb group which might have been pushing it but come on, it's a facebook group, ofc I didn't mean it, it was a JOKE. Anyways, as passionate as I am about these issues, I'm trying so hard to not get my BA to hate me because in reality, aftrs is so fucking white.

Thursday 3 September 2015

21/pilots



 Every time I see this video it makes me so happy.



And this song reminds me of a long time ago. It's nostalgic, that's what I'm trying to say.