Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-08-24 08:11 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-08-24 08:11 pm
I Took It Very Seriously From The Start.
There's a twenty-minute gameplay preview of Life Is Strange 2! It takes a while to get going and then gets extremely going very quickly. I'm already invested. (And it's already upsetting, which is very Life Is Strange.)
I was a little sorry at first to learn that Life Is Strange 2 was going to focus on male protagonists, when the original Life Is Strange was about young women, but then I watched the trailer and went '...siblings? on the run? I'm in so much trouble.' Someone's baiting a Riona trap and I am going to walk straight into it.
(Rei commented on similarities to Supernatural and then made the mind-shattering observation that the sibling protagonists of Life Is Strange 2 are named Dan and Sean.)
I watched American Animals last night! It's an excellent film. I don't often get very into films, but I hugely enjoyed this one all the way through.
The story American Animals tells is true; it's about the Transylvania University rare book theft of 2004. A group of students decided that their lives needed more excitement and romance, and that the best way to achieve this was by carrying out a heist. The film is cut with interview segments with the actual people who were originally involved, which I think work very well. (If we hadn't seen the real Warren in the film, I'd have gone 'pfft, obviously Warren's character is hugely exaggerated, some "true" story.' But no; the real Warren seems just as larger-than-life as the character.)
It was a preview screening (the official UK release date is the 7th of September), and the writer/director, Bart Layton, did a Q&A afterwards. I was impressed by how much thought had gone into the film. A few interesting details from the Q&A:
- The writer originally got in touch with the culprits when they were still in prison. He was fascinated by the case and couldn't work out why they'd gone 'hey, let's do a heist!' in the first place, so he wrote to them and they wrote back. As he came to understand the 'it just seemed so romantic, it was a fantasy, and we were just playing around in the expectation that at some point we'd hit an insurmountable obstacle, and, whoops, that obstacle never came and we found ourselves actually doing the heist' reasoning behind it, he started to think this might be a story worth telling. The whole film was based on what he learnt from the people who were actually involved.
- The actors weren't allowed to research their roles by talking to the actual culprits. 'The real Warren is very charismatic, and I didn't want him telling the actor "hey, don't make me out to be too much of a dick." But the actor, obviously channeling Warren, completely disobeyed me and tracked him down on Twitter. I had to put a stop to it.'
- To begin with, the film's shot in a fairly low-key, 'realistic' style. As the boys get more caught up in the fantasy of the heist, it becomes more like a 'heist movie' in visuals, structure, sound. Until they cross that line and realise that, whoops, this is reality, this isn't a daydream, actual heists have consequences, and the style snaps back to realism.
- In the process of the heist, the culprits seriously traumatised a librarian. She was initially hesitant about being involved with the film, but she eventually agreed to be a part of it. Apparently she loved the final film and said it had helped her begin to forgive the people involved, because she had come to realise that they were 'idiots rather than criminals'.
American Animals is fun and interesting and stressful and I recommend it!
I was a little sorry at first to learn that Life Is Strange 2 was going to focus on male protagonists, when the original Life Is Strange was about young women, but then I watched the trailer and went '...siblings? on the run? I'm in so much trouble.' Someone's baiting a Riona trap and I am going to walk straight into it.
(Rei commented on similarities to Supernatural and then made the mind-shattering observation that the sibling protagonists of Life Is Strange 2 are named Dan and Sean.)
I watched American Animals last night! It's an excellent film. I don't often get very into films, but I hugely enjoyed this one all the way through.
The story American Animals tells is true; it's about the Transylvania University rare book theft of 2004. A group of students decided that their lives needed more excitement and romance, and that the best way to achieve this was by carrying out a heist. The film is cut with interview segments with the actual people who were originally involved, which I think work very well. (If we hadn't seen the real Warren in the film, I'd have gone 'pfft, obviously Warren's character is hugely exaggerated, some "true" story.' But no; the real Warren seems just as larger-than-life as the character.)
It was a preview screening (the official UK release date is the 7th of September), and the writer/director, Bart Layton, did a Q&A afterwards. I was impressed by how much thought had gone into the film. A few interesting details from the Q&A:
- The writer originally got in touch with the culprits when they were still in prison. He was fascinated by the case and couldn't work out why they'd gone 'hey, let's do a heist!' in the first place, so he wrote to them and they wrote back. As he came to understand the 'it just seemed so romantic, it was a fantasy, and we were just playing around in the expectation that at some point we'd hit an insurmountable obstacle, and, whoops, that obstacle never came and we found ourselves actually doing the heist' reasoning behind it, he started to think this might be a story worth telling. The whole film was based on what he learnt from the people who were actually involved.
- The actors weren't allowed to research their roles by talking to the actual culprits. 'The real Warren is very charismatic, and I didn't want him telling the actor "hey, don't make me out to be too much of a dick." But the actor, obviously channeling Warren, completely disobeyed me and tracked him down on Twitter. I had to put a stop to it.'
- To begin with, the film's shot in a fairly low-key, 'realistic' style. As the boys get more caught up in the fantasy of the heist, it becomes more like a 'heist movie' in visuals, structure, sound. Until they cross that line and realise that, whoops, this is reality, this isn't a daydream, actual heists have consequences, and the style snaps back to realism.
- In the process of the heist, the culprits seriously traumatised a librarian. She was initially hesitant about being involved with the film, but she eventually agreed to be a part of it. Apparently she loved the final film and said it had helped her begin to forgive the people involved, because she had come to realise that they were 'idiots rather than criminals'.
American Animals is fun and interesting and stressful and I recommend it!
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It does sound incredibly you.
If we hadn't seen the real Warren in the film, I'd have gone 'pfft, obviously Warren's character is hugely exaggerated, some "true" story.' But no; the real Warren seems just as larger-than-life as the character.
Ooh, I really want to see that now!
To begin with, the film's shot in a fairly low-key, 'realistic' style. As the boys get more caught up in the fantasy of the heist, it becomes more like a 'heist movie' in visuals, structure, sound. Until they cross that line and realise that, whoops, this is reality, this isn't a daydream, actual heists have consequences, and the style snaps back to realism.
Stylistic choices that serve the narrative! I have to see it now!
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(Anonymous) 2018-08-25 01:55 pm (UTC)(link)I really need to play Before the Storm. I own it; I just haven't got around to it yet.
I don't really watch films, but that does sound interesting and experimental!
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This Summer, I've finally been working on Assassin's Creed again! Long story short, I played Assassin's Creed 2 on PC when you were writing about it in your journal. The controls are very unforgiving when you multi task as badly as me and they involve both keyboard and mouse, and they're set up like mine were. (Iirc, camera control was on the mouse, while the keyboard was everything else.) I got very frustrated and didn't finish it.
I picked a bunch of Assassin's Creed up on PS4 earlier this year, and have been playing it this summer! I replayed 2 and finally finished it, and am about halfway through Brotherhood at the moment. I jotted down some thoughts, comparisons etc - they did get a bit absurdly long so I think I'll post them as a separate reply to this!
I won't talk about Brotherhood yet except to say I did the world's most frustrating mission last night. I nearly rage quit, haha. "Shut the gates!" Er, sure, okay. -gets hit- -kills guys by the switch so I can close the gate- -six more swarm in- Rinse and repeat. I desynchronised at least 3 or 4 times - I don't even know why for two of them! I don't -think- I died. (Once I desynchronised as my ally died.) Though I have also had a mustery desynchronisation before in Brotherhood; I logged out between missions in the big castle, and it restarted me in the middle of the town despite the fact I needed to climb upstairs. I started running back and after about 30 seconds the game desynchronised me for literally no reason, probably realising the area I was in was supposed to be out of bounds or something, and restarted me in the town where I was actually supposed to start the mission from.
Okay, lots of WORDS incoming.
-timydamonkey
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(Anonymous) - 2018-08-25 13:55 (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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(Anonymous) - 2018-08-25 14:56 (UTC) - Expand