Blinded by the Light

Thinking back at all the films I have blogged about since conceiving this site, I notice there have been very few negative reviews. I once wrote to a music review site hoping to be picked up and published, and submitted a glorifying piece on Qwel + Maker’s “The Harvest”, one of my favourite albums of that genre. They loved my review, and to test my ability at criticism asked me to then write a piece on an album I did not like. Embarrassingly, I did not know what to write. It wasn’t due to a lack of bad albums, I had realised that my knowledge of music was too underdeveloped for any intelligent arguments to form against an artist and their music. This depressed me, as not only was I unable to submit the next piece on my road to becoming a published writer, but I had lost a great deal of confidence in myself and my ability to write.

That was 5 years ago, hopefully things have changed...

Every year we are exposed to a number of movies revolving around sport. Most are fairly poor. Last year Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar which garnered the film a fair amount of praise. This year I have made an effort to watch most of the nominated films, not because I believe they form a definitive list of decent titles, but because I'd like to have evidence to back up any claims of one film deserving to win over another. I have seen all but a few of this years nominees and only one or two really blew me away. It seems that the Oscars are more geared to showcase films that lack innovation and originality rather than truly push the envelope. The King's Speech running for Original Screenplay? What about Four Lions or Enter the Void? Oh that's right, these titles harbour too many social taboos for them to even be considered for an Oscar. It's no surprise these awards mean little to most film critics...

Before I decided to watch The Blind Side I had only gazed over it's average scores on IMDB, but I truly regret not going a tad further. Every scene was riddled with unbelievable scenarios, clichéd dialog and fairly wooden acting. Quinton Aaron who plays the innocent ghetto boy Michael Oher, has very little to say in the film and whether intentional or not, this didn't make me sympathetic to his strife. Sandra Bullock plays Mrs. Tuohy (pronounced too-ey), the wealthy mother who takes Oher in and attempts to give him an education, who is only noteworthy due to her performance as something other than a love interest in a romance.

The rags to riches story is so overdone that only very few films are able to pull it off, but what angers me about these stories and especially the out-of-the-hood sub-category is how it insinuates that in order to be happy, one must be filthy rich. In fact the strive to better Oher's education was merely to maintain grades high enough to play football! What message are films like this sending? Not to mention how little Oher cared when he was told his adopted family were possibly using him so he could make them even wealthier by playing football at their beloved college. All Mrs. Tuohy had to do was reassure him that he could chose to study wherever he wanted, and all was forgotten. I later checked IMDB again, and although the rating there was 7.1, it's Metascore was 53/100. Why did I not read into this earlier and saved myself two hours? Oh that's right, Oscar buzz. Well thank you Blind Side, for further consolidating my lack of trust in "The Academy".

I went to a public school and am not in jail

How can one of the most affluent countries on earth possess one of the least successful education systems? Bureaucracy and social negligence, according to Waiting for Superman. It's no secret that countries such as Belgium and Japan have far better results in education with equal if not lesser amount of spending, but where have the west gone wrong?

Let's forget the fact that decent public schools in America are so sparse that a child must enter an 'educational lottery' to grant access to a public system statistically worthy of being accepted into University. Let's also forget that most students are destined to fail their stream simply because they are in the wrong school with the wrong teachers, who may place them in a lesser 'track' in which they will be stuck due to the nature of their archaic system. This is a reality that can hardly be understood in countries like Australia, where even our public system offers an equally diverse syllabus as the private. The question is what are we to do with this knowledge?

All western nations are suffering a loss of skilled professionals. We are lacking the educated class to fill many of these positions, and this is solely because our own youth have an aversion to pursuing any type of career, let alone one that may need a 4 to 6 year tertiary onslaught. One of the major points in Waiting for Superman is the failing primary school system, which implies that a substantial impact on the forming of our children lies on what is developed in an early age. If they are raised in an environment of negligence and apathy, they are likely to grow into an adult that has little faith in their society and fellow citizens. This deserves just as much blame as the society in which these students have grown in.

The solution is simple, decent teachers in a decent environment. The money is there, and it's about time the money flew into the right hands. Education is still in need of reform (as it has been promised for years), but sadly true reform takes decades thanks to the layers of bureaucratic red tape. I am no optimist, but I can sense that the first world's leaders will see the benefit of keeping worthy teachers in decent schools, for nothing less than fiscal gain sometime in the future. This may be the only incentive, but it's better to have one than to have none.

Rip my heart in two

As embarrassing as it is, I admit that Dawson's Creek was a weekly habit for me and most other 13 year olds at the time... I remember seeing James van der Beek in Rules of Attraction (and to a lesser extent Katie Holmes in Go) and thinking: it's about time these kids were exposed to reality... Michelle Williams has had numerous minor roles, some more down to earth than others, but nothing has made me feel so much for her on screen as Blue Valentine. Ryan Gosling was equally as surprising, and together they have managed to turn a rather clichéd story of love on the rocks into a beautiful and un-pretentious drama.

The film is divided into the past and the present; the start of their blossoming relationship is intertwined with the spiraling end. This pulls the audiences emotions back and forth between each scene which creates a painful ride; more so than what a conventional timeline would for this story. Visually the film looks great, I do love a bleak color palate, and I know I've ranted about this before but a $1m budget just proves you can do so much with a comparatively small amount of money.

It's a matter of contention but I left this film feeling like Cindy (Williams) had wronged Dean (Gosling). I have yet to hear many comments from females but I'm assuming that they may feel the opposite. Looking back at the story objective, they were both in the wrong and director Derek Cianfrance may have intended it to be that way. Personally I felt Dean loved both Cindy and her daughter, and it wasn't fair to leave him simply because he wasn't "reaching his full potential". Oh yeah, spoilers...

Just for shits and giggles I've used the Thai promotional poster. It actually combines one of the standard poster designs with a promo photo shoot image.