My review of the lecture at USC

On Wednesday, November 2, Maddy, Sara, Katharyn, Ayan, Mrs. Kirk, Dr. Dasgupta, and I all piled into Dr. Dasgupta's mini van and made our way to the Rutledge Chapel at USC. We went there to see Martin Doblemier talk of how to tell a story with moral and ethical themes. This is not what he talked about at all. All he talked about was Gandhi and his influence on Bernhofen (that spelling is probably totally wrong). The most exciting part of the whole lecture was when Dr. Dasgupta asked her question about Gandhi and how religion had nothing to do with his pacifist ways. He didn't even answer her question, and it didn't even sound like he knew what he was talking about when he tried to answer her question. I went to this hoping to learn about filmmaking, and I came out with no more insight that when I went in. I was very disappointed.

Slumdog Millionare

So this weekend I watched Slumdog Millionare. It was ok. I liked how it flashed back and forth; that was neat. I didn't really like the part where it showed the people blinding the kids. That was awful. I thought that it was funny when the little boys were giving tour guide at the Taj Mahal and how they were stealing peoples' shoes. I thought that the ending was good. I do not know if I would have given it best picture of the year, but it wasn't up to me, and I'm not an expert on movies. The four characteristics of great movies are uniqueness, highly crafted and layered, they achieve what they set out to do, and takes on a complex theme. This movie is unique, with its flashbacks, highly crafted, also the flashbacks, make the audience happy in the end (which was what the moviemakers wanted to happen), and takes on a complex theme, this one being "never stop looking for true love." I liked The Shawshank Redemption a lot better... :)