SFL 358 Blog Entry #16 - The Fellowship of the Ring

In my eager anticipation of The Hobbit later this year, I've started reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the second time. The first time I read The Fellowship of the Ring, I had already seen the movie once. This will be the first time, however, reading the second two books since seeing the movies.

Now, I've actually just finished reading the first one, so I'm gonna watch the movie now! I love it!

SFL 358 Blog Entry #15 - My Letter to Tom Hanks concerning The Pacific

For an assignment in my media class, we were asked to write a letter to someone in the media calling for some kind of change. I wrote a letter to Tom Hanks, one of the executive-producers of the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific. I'm posting the entire letter, but it is a lot longer than I anticipated, so don't worry about reading all of it. What was meant to be just a page about how there shouldn't be any nudity in the war series turned into three pages about what I liked and didn't like about The Pacific in general, including the bit about the sexuality. Anyways, here it is:

Dear Mr. Hanks,

Let me first say that I am a huge fan of your work! I am a college student and I absolutely love film. Today I write to you specifically about Band of Brothers and The Pacific. I absolutely love Band of Brothers. I saw the episodes when they originally aired and I’ve watched them several times since then. I even recently bought the book and the series on blu-ray. It’s such a masterpiece! The efforts you, Steven Spielberg, and everyone else made to make it as true to real life as possible and to make it all about the real men of Easy Company make the miniseries one of my favorite works of film of all time. Bravo!

So naturally, when I heard you guys were making another similar series about the conflicts in the Pacific theater, I got really excited to see it! I watched the entire series as soon as I got a chance, but unfortunately, I was actually pretty disappointed. I’ll start with what I liked. I love the measures you took to make it as realistic as possible. The marines’ conditions were brutal! I had no idea they had it so rough, with such outdated equipment, too. Their story doesn’t get told as often as those in Europe. The war scenes were phenomenal. They were very intense and at times quite unsettling, but that’s what it was like. I think they were handled magnificently.

One of the things I did not like so much, but I’m not sure you could have executed better, was character development and attachment. Unlike Band of Brothers, The Pacific didn’t follow one group of soldiers throughout their campaign; it followed a few different main characters, often in different places. As a result, I didn’t get to know much about these characters, and I wasn’t particularly attached as they made their way through the war. This is really a shame because I wanted to really get to know these guys like I feel I did in Band of Brothers. Though I of course in real life didn’t come even close, I felt like I experience the war with them. This just wasn’t the case in The Pacific. It felt like a lot more time was taken showing the soldiers outside the battlefield in this series than in Band of Brothers. I really don’t know for sure if this is the case, but that’s how it felt. During Band of Brothers, I loved all of the quiet time spent with soldier, getting to know them. I wouldn’t change a thing. In The Pacific, however, all I wanted was to get to the next battle. I didn’t really care so much what was happening with these characters because I constantly had to meet new ones before I got so attached to the old ones.

Now, admittedly, I don’t know the source material very well at all, so I don’t know how much you had to draw from to write the miniseries. I know Eugene Sledge has a book, but maybe it wasn’t enough on which to base an entire series. Perhaps you had no choice but to break it up into a few different marines’ stories. Because I don’t know, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t have much of a choice. I didn’t like that aspect of it, but perhaps nothing could have been done better in that regard.

What I cannot excuse, however, is the excessive sex and nudity that was in this series. The violence and gore needs to be there because that’s how war was. We weren’t there, so we can’t imagine what it was like without the intense, gritty, realistic portrayal you so masterfully executed. Again, though it was very intense at times, I wouldn’t change a thing about that. But do you really need to have nudity? My friends and I were so put off by that. That’s not why we watch these war movies and series. I don’t think anyone watches these things for the sexuality. I don’t think you would have sacrificed anything valuable to the story by excluding these scenes, or at least being more subtle. Yes, these men apparently had sex with women on their time off, and yes, it shows a lot about how valuable their time off the battlefield was. But it did not need to be shown so much, or at all. For these scenes alone I can’t recommend The Pacific to any of my friends or family. It’s a real shame, too, because I think more people need to see these series to more fully appreciate what these brave men and women did for us.

Mr. Hanks, again, I am a really big fan of your work, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you for putting so much effort into telling these stories right. I would love for you to somehow make more similar miniseries, because I know there are plenty of stories yet to be told from World War II. However, what I ask is that you keep out the explicit sexuality so that more people can appreciate it for what it is. Please do this. No one will complain about a lack of nudity. I know you’re a busy guy, and so I understand if you can’t write back to me, but I’d really appreciate it if you could. I’d love to hear what you think about all of this. I hope I’ve been respectful, and I hope you take what I’ve said seriously. Thank you.

SFL 358 Blog Entry #14 - The Artist

So, as many of you are aware, The Artist took Best Picture and Best Directing this year at the Oscars. I can't say it was a big surprise. Because it's a silent film, it's certainly unique (nowadays), and I have to say, it was very well-done. I'm not so sure it was the best film made all year, but I'm sure it really hit home with the members of the Academy, so they loved it. Don't get me wrong - I really did enjoy it, but largely due to how different it is to what we're used to.

One thing I found quite interesting is how much they are able to convey without words. Some of the time, they follow an utterance with a caption that tells you what they just said, but much of the time, it is left to the audience to surmise from the gestures and facial cues what they are saying. I was surprised how much I was able to pick up without hearing them saying anything.

The story itself was nothing new, really. It was pretty easy to see where it was going, and if I were the type of person who guesses every plot point along the way, I probably could have gotten it pretty close. Put simply, it's about a silent film actor who struggles as the film industry moves on to films with sound.

The acting, on the other hand, was really quite phenomenal. Jean Dujardin earned his Oscar for Best Acting as far as I'm concerned. He was very fun to watch throughout the whole thing. I recommend this to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

SFL 358 Blog Entry #13 - The Hobbit is Coming!!!

I am SOOOOOOO excited for this movie!!!! The first part doesn't even come out until December 14, 2012 (the second part comes out December 13, 2013)! Aaaaghhhh! I can't stand the long wait! Fortunately, however, Peter Jackson has been posting production videos online that show different aspects of making the movie as he's making it. A new one (#6) just came out yesterday (found here), so that explains my recently heightened excitement. Also, I just finished reading The Hobbit for the second time last week, so now I remember what exactly to expect from these films!

For those of you familiar with the book, you're probably wondering, "At that point in the book will the first movie end?" We don't know for sure yet, because they haven't revealed that officially, however, if you watch video #6, Peter Jackson kind of gives it away. He says they're currently filming part 2 and they're in Laketown, but they can't show us that yet because that movie doesn't come out until 2013. So, from that, we can deduce that the dwarves and Bilbo do not make it to Laketown yet by the end of the first film. Then, later in the video, they show the filming of the dwarves floating down the river in barrels. So, if they can show us the dwarves in barrels, yet they can't show us Laketown, that most likely means that the first part will end as they escape in barrels! More to follow later as more information comes out...

SFL 358 Blog Entry #12 - The Oscars

If you can't tell, I love movies! So naturally, I'm pretty interested in the Oscars. I haven't always been, but this year, I decided to see many of the films up for awards, including all the films up for Best Picture. It was neat to actually be interested in who won because I was familiar with all the nominees! I'll write more about this later and give a better post about my Oscars experience this year!

SFL 358 Blog Entry #11 - Marriage Counseling Ad

For my class, my group and I had an assignment to produce an ad promoting something about the family. Chantel Jarrett, Stephanie Lyon, Jacqueline Kiewra, and I came up with the following commercial promoting marriage counseling at the BYU Comprehensive Clinic. I'd also like to give credit to Adrienne for her awesome acting skills! Enjoy!

SFL 358 Blog Entry #10 - The Lord of the Rings (the books)

My current favorite book is The Lord of the Rings. I know what you're thinking: "Hey, I thought that was three books!" Well, you're right, but I love the trilogy as a whole and I can't pick only one of them that I like the most. I actually hadn’t heard of The Lord of the Rings before the first movie came out, but after I saw it, I instantly fell in love with the series and read each book as quickly as I could. It is about a hobbit who, after chancing upon an evil ring of great power, must rely on new friends to journey into the heart of the evil land and destroy the ring. Not bad for one sentence, eh?

The books are packed with so much detail concerning all the numerous cultures of the imaginary place called Middle Earth. When one reads the trilogy, he gets just a small glimpse of the entire world Tolkien created. That’s one of the things I love about it. He created entire cultures, languages, and histories for his books, and though these three books make only references to this world, the thoroughness of the author’s work truly shines through. The story itself is great, too, as the heroes rely on friends and undergo many personal sacrifices as they seek to do what is right. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it yet!

For those of you who have read it, I recommend The Silmarillion. It is basically the history of Middle Earth from very beginning up until The Hobbit. It's only for die-hard Tolkien fans, but it's great!