Friday, March 13, 2015

Movie Recommendation Time: After.

There are just about many themes a film has had in this new age of story writing: zombie apocalypse, dreams, nightmares, robots, dystopian and utopian worlds, imagined realities, pandemic virus, time traveling, e.g. There are a few that, while its concept is in ink, are superimposed with an innovative twist, and they unanimously become one of the original films of that time. For example, the underrated Snowpiercer and The Returned of 2013 (below).


2012 was the year of the dragon, and there were a handful films that personally didn't dragged on because they expressed a storyline so unique and so imaginative they breathe fire. Where does Russovoir even begin? - Man On the Ledge, Chronicle, The Cabin In the Woods, Battleship, Moonrise Kingdom, Ruby Sparks, Premium Rush, Looper, Pitch Perfect. That's about all the films of 2012*. So later, you can just imagine how frustrated Russovoir has been when he discovered three years a span a film so enfeeblingly brilliant it was the first thing that came to mind waking up, like the first pulse on a flatline. 

Steven Strait is a perfect cast. Russovoir couldn't diagnose why; it could be from the calm in his eyes, the foam around his mouth. Strait is always this working face reference. People can't put a finger on him. Admittedly, he came as a stranger, or better yet, a long lost friend. Getting to know him again through this film was the best part.

Warren Peace in Sky High (2005).

Some of you might think the title After is short and sweet, and some ineffective and weak. That issue already has had bothered Russovoir and thought after how the film made him feel, it doesn't really matter now. Co-written and directed by Ryan Smith, your left brain and your right brain will already have done each separately: bored and confused. Russovoir asks of you to stay with it, stay with the characters, their individual lives slowly and beautifully unfold and meet. Only then we will have felt as though we blacked out throughout and woke up relieved with a second life. Mostly, strait to the heart.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

*Academy Award nominees and winners not included.

Friday, March 6, 2015

#NoHoMOORE.

"When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird, and I felt different and I felt like I did not belong. And now I am standing here. I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she's weird or she's different or she doesn't fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. Stay weird, stay different. When it's your turn and you are standing on this stage, please pass the same message to the next person that comes along."

Graham Moore, Academy Award-winning Screenwriter.

Justifiably tight competition among fellow nominees, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash, American Sniper, and Russovoir's personal favorite and should've won curse the Academy - kidding - Nightcrawler, Graham Moore and his beloved The Imitation Game was honestly both unexpected and a relief to take home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 87th Academy Awards. Russovoir took it upon himself to set the records straight (pun intended).

To begin, and blow away the air of suspicion, Russovoir adores the film. The thought of the glacial recognition of Alan Turing rebooted from tolerant eyes, through a refreshing, inoffensive storyline, in a prejudice-polluted thought orgy of society, it's a filmic achievement.

Alan Mathison Turing was responsible for the simmering of World War II by two years. Two years had saved an approximate of 14 to 21 million innocent lives. All because Turing and his team, but mostly Turing, invented a divine machine, at a pressing time of chaos, against a demonic machine. The Enigma (below) is a German invention for which since World War I the Nazi had used to write, send, and communicate diabolical plans, for instance The Battle of Atlantic of 1939. Let us not go into detail how the Enigma works because, well, for one, Russovoir failed Accounting twice. That'll do it.

Fun Fact: Germans used their girlfriends' names as keywords.

Moore was responsible for picking up on this remarkable human feat, and like the decoding of the Enigma, he spent a quarter of his life researching, compiling, and finally writing a concise and compelling screenplay, The Imitation Game, one of the best scripts of 2011.  The $14M-dollar budget film broke the box office, closing in to $180M. Based loosely on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges, and not to be confused by Kate Winslet's Enigma (2001), the story of which is focused on the cracking of the machine - no cracking was made of what was going on inside Turing's head. Often times a film becomes a brilliant classic not only for its story, and because Turing's story had just been sitting until a purposeful screenwriter scatters the dust on which it had collected, The Imitation Game is most loved for its screenplay; the enigma of words come together and 'click' in us.


On February 22, Graham Moore accepted the Oscar. He deserved it, we all think, especially after what Russovoir had diligently put together for his account. The world was moved by his acceptance speech (refer to the blue font) because it had an intended audience, for whom could have had put up a wall high up now lowered down, hiding in a shell now broken free. Russovoir saw the good in his sincerely inspiring speech. Standing in front of 'disconcertingly beautiful people' on the podium of the most prestigious and televised award show, often times acceptance speeches are the first publicly acceptable formed words in one's head. Unless you're Patricia Arquette (Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Boyhood) who had a piece of paper detailing wage gap against women; her speech did not receive positive reception. The adorable 33-year old hesitantly thanked Oprah Winfrey, sounding it hadn't had crossed his mind to win, thus further hinting what he'll about to say isn't researched nor compiled. Concise and compelling, Moore noticeably rattled on his words, nervously combing the side of his hair that didn't look it needed combing. Russovoir is afraid people are pressing (or already have) buttons when there's only one to unlock the message of his speech. Days of research about Alan Turing and the Enigma possibly had a gradual effect in the man. Let us break down each sentence from Graham Moore's comforting speech.

"When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird and I felt different, and I felt like I did not belong."

Oh admit it, this crushed you. One of the greatest writers of our time could've had killed himself. History would've had repeated itself to which Alan Turing took his own life because he felt, too, different and did not belong. We don't want that, let alone Russovoir. The Imitation Game had an obvious message and from which the world had led to believe Moore's idolatry for Turing is because he sees himself in him. That is not the case now; he had explained in an interview after the show. Articles briefly in words, as it happens for the world's dubious disbelief, obediently documented contrary to what had seemed so obvious, a particular, instinctive radar going off the charts. The real reason why he tried to kill himself and felt weird and different because twenty years ago, and admittedly every single day of his life since, is because growing up he has gone through depression. Depression is a real and serious sickness. People who have suffered depression have actually killed themselves, for example the late and great Robin Williams (Patch Adams, 1998).

Russovoir will not lengthen the issue because it's 2015, it doesn't matter. The man has won an Oscar and achieved a milestone history will remember by. So far he has come that if there's any beard he's trying to conceal, strongly implying to his sexuality, Russovoir is glad he's alive now. He speaks on behalf wherein you think the same, right?

"Stay weird. Stay different."

Weird is a complicated word. As complicated as love. One cannot just put a finite definition to it. Each of us is an interpretation of a painting; they vary. Yet each interpretation is bound to the attendance viewing the painting. Perhaps a group of close friends. What Russovoir is trying to say is, to risk in national television and say to stay 'weird' has, in a way, opened Pandora's Box. Moore has entailed validation for every random definition the attendance has for the phrase. This is unfair. Weird is not the most flattering word for who you are, now that it's been contaminated with versions of their own taste than one's life long understanding and acceptance of oneself, with which between making friends and becoming friends, there had been a genuine, mutual, and tolerant outpouring exchange of each other's similarities and differences. You are your personality. We are, by default, different from each other. Remember this my fellow readers, especially now that 'weird' is a field where people can open fire at you, you are not entitled to constantly explaining yourself.

One cannot also 'stay' weird. "It is not the strongest of the specie that survive, but the  most adaptable.", Charles Darwin said. To stay weird means to reject decency, appropriate, altogether disrespecting the particular observance in an environment. Mind you, 'staying weird' is a fissure different from 'standing out'. The latter is invariable; weird can always adapt. Standing out doesn't offend nor impose. Standing out, instead, is like giving out post-its to people to remember you. Did you ever stop and think that fitting in and standing out, while they may sound different, and they technically are, both have the courtesy, imagine with Russovoir for a minute, an action of minimum distraction in between fit inners and standing outers. There is a line as thin as people's attention span that describes an individual from unique, different, and interesting to attention whore.

The takeaway from this section of the blog is, 'stay' and 'weird' in one gratuitous phrase - 'stay weird', we've been told to dare to be different, that the eagle flies solo, the lion doesn't need the opinion of the sheep, but listen, for one's sake, career, and survival, ascertain these: what for, to what extent, and why now?

"When it's your turn and you're standing on this stage, please pass the same message to the next person that comes along."

Russovoir will phrase it differently, but nonetheless, you got it, G.