Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Beauty- Directed by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro



This stunning and captivation short film was directed and edited by the Italian experimental animator Rino Stefano Tagliafierro. I have been to his website and checked out other pieces of his and I must say his work is very addictive to watch. It is never boring and, in my opinion, you will not learn or see the underlined meanings or symbolism with in his work.  Below is the film's manifesto if you will by Giuliano Cori but before I get to that I wrote a little bit on what 'Beauty' meant to me as I was watching and a little bit on the message it holds.


Mr. Tagliafierro brings to life the frozen moments in time captured with in the paintings and tells a cohesive, well structured and believably connected story with one hundred and seven-teen different paintings from what I was able to count.  Through the work of his CGI and digital construction Beauty dose not seem or feel as if the viewer is looking at painting but actual people who are at times looking back at you as the piece goes on. I loved the movement from life, happiness, innocence, to passion, desire, fear, anger, chaos and death. With the ties to religion, politics, war and science "Beauty' flawlessly accomplishes summing up the characteristics and history of humanity. The title 'Beauty' is thus not only represented within the paintings of the short film but in the story it tells about our past and about society.  I know that I am still not doing this phenomenal piece any justice which is why I have also put in the Manifesto for 'Beauty.'



«Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;»
(W. Shakespeare, Sonnet no. 19)
"Over Beauty, there has always hung the cloud of destiny and all-devouring time.
Beauty has been invoked, re-figured and described since antiquity as a fleeting moment of happiness and the inexhaustible fullness of life, doomed from the start to a redemptive yet tragic end.
In this interpretation by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro, this beauty is brought back to the expressive force of gestures that he springs from the immobility of canvas, animating a sentiment lost to the fixedness masterpieces.
Its as though these images which the history of art has consigned to us as frozen movement can today come back to life thanks to the fire of digital invention.
A series of well selected images from the tradition of pictorial beauty are appropriated, (from the renaissance to the symbolism of the late 1800s, through Mannerism, Pastoralism, Romanticism and Neo-classicism) with the intention of retracing the sentiment beneath the veil of appearance.
An inspiration that returns to us the sense of one fallen, and the existential brevity that the author interprets as tragic dignity, with an unenchanted eye able to capture the profoundest sense of the image.
Beauty in this interpretation is the silent companion of Life , inexorably leading from the smile of the baby, through erotic ecstasies to the grimaces of pain that close a cycle destined to repeat ad infinitum.
They are, from the inception of a romantic sunrise in which big black birds fly to the final sunset beyond gothic ruins that complete the piece, a work of fleeting time.
Giuliano Corti
(english translation: Thomas McEvoy)"




And here is a show reel of Mr. Tagliafierro's work


Show Reel 

http://vimeo.com/61252928 

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Why I Watched I Am Number Four



Because I watched Beastly and it was way better than I thought so I figured I'd give Alex Pettyfer another shot at impressing me.....sadly I have to say he failed. There were so many moments while watching this movie I kind of just went "What?......What is happening right now?" You know when I wasn't laughing so hard at how ridiculous everything was and how serious everyone was trying to act about the entirety of the situation. 

It wasn't until 25-30 minutes until the end of the film that things started to get good. Now I have not read the book I Am Number Four, or the Lorien Legacies series by Pittacus Lore, however, I have put it on my to read list because I strongly believe that the story had the potential of being way better than the way it was presented in the film. Because let's face it who doesn't love a good Sci-fi story about aliens living among us? I know I do! Makes me think of the good old days when Roswell was still on the air. Now THAT was a GREAT show.

Getting back on topic here, I felt like the film was trying to hard to cover everything the book series covers which is what lead to it's failure. 

Summing up the Film I Am Number Four:
Plot holes, cliches--gaa-lore-- a lot of inconsistencies in regards to the direction in which the story was suppose to go. Something that was really annoying and not really clear to me was why there was such a pushing need to have a love story between the main character, John Smith aka Number Four aka Alex Pettyfer, and--the lamest blonde wanna be photographer ever--Sarah Hart aka Dianna Argon. I wanted to like her, honestly I did but her character made it so hard not to. When ever she was in a scene she never sounded or acted as smart or as rebellious as she is painted to be.

No to mention how the two of them are literally just kind of thrown together, I mean he--John/Number Four-- is not even there five minutes and he has dinner at her house??!? With her family?? And then because they know so much about one another  they go up to her bed room together, alone. And he just picks up her personal journal and she just lets him?!?!? BS!

But what really got my blood boiling was when she gave him one of her Nokia SLR cameras. I mean,why the hell did she give him that? Not only was it an expensive vintage camera, but one of her favorites to a complete stranger?!?!? False. Everything about this is just----no, wrong.

Moving on to the the bad guys/alien villains:
They were not at all scary, why? Oh, so many reasons but off the top of my head: they're wearing these 1970's platform shoes with bell bottom pants, shopping in the super market and driving around in this brand new black Camero. Wow! I didn't know killing royal aliens paid so well on here on Earth.

When Daniel/John Smith/ Number Four& The Discovery of His Powers or Legacies:
One second, John/Number Four has no idea about his powers/legacies, as his hands start glowing and heating up in class, and then the next he is suddenly aware of all of his powers?  And greater still we see him testing them for all of five seconds resulting in him not only having complete control over them but he has also somehow mastered them...... BULL.

Number Six & The Shape Shifting Alien Dog (Possibly The Only Good Parts of The Movie):
She was bad ass and consistent! I'd watch the film again for her scenes only because she saves everyone, covers John/Number Four's tracks in the beginning of the film and could clearly hold her own against the weird 1970's bad guys who some how managed to kill several of the other royal legacies holders. And the little alien shape shifting dog like creature was a nice touch but how Number Six, aka Teresa Palmer, knew who or what it was having not met the dog was a little strange and random. 

"The dog just shape shifted!"-Sam

"Oh that's because he is your dog from our home planet, he came here with us to protect you(only you didn't know it)"--Number Six

Thus ends this movie review rant. Till the next time goonies!(oooh Goonies......)