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Choosing Movies According to the Actor

Posted on November 21, 2009 Written by ripitup

I have a favorite video store and I just have to get in there and browse through their stuff. My friends do occasionally try to stop me so I just tell them to hang out somewhere and I go in the store anyway. Sometimes they come in and look around. Occasionally the store manages to catch up with my speed and has some promising movies I haven’t seen. When my friends ask why I pick on particular movie I give a simple answer like: “Oh, Christian Slater is in it! Can’t believe I haven’t seen this one before”. Or “it has Hugh Jackman! ” “you wouldn’t know him- but James Spader is a great actor.” One time one of my friends went: “What? You pick the movie according to the actor?” And I said yeah. I know he thought I was just being superficial and picked the movies where the leads are hot but I really didn’t bother correcting a guy whose favorite actress is Megan Fox.

A movie consists of many elements. It has the behind the scenes crew, the actors, the story…I always read the plot summary before I buy a movie but that’s hardly enough. This is the year 2009 and so many movies have been made that complete/partial originality is almost a luxury. I can follow a director but a director usually favors a genre and there are hardly many directors out there whose most work I enjoy. I mean I don’t like Quentin Tarantiono or Oliver Stone. I only liked one movie by Stone so far. I am not a fan of Brian De Palma and I like half of Spielberg’s work but I am not sure he mixes personal with entertainment well. I love Richard Donner- the guy directed a lot of my favorite Mel Gibson movies. Since directors usually shoot less movies than a famous actor appears in on average, it is statistically better to follow an actor if you like his movies. The style varies yet there is a possibility that you will enjoy his choices.
For the 90s and up until his “I- love- directing- so -much -more”- phase, Mel Gibson was a great choice. He did drama,thriller, romance,action,epic, adaptation and he did them all well. The 90s have great actors in that sense: Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Christian Slater… Keanu Reeves still makes good movies, and a recent fav. of mine is Gerard Butler. As for actresses, Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock have made some great movies, as well as Nicole Kidman. See how many movies it made in total? If you know the actors’ work, why not choose according to the cast?

Alias TV Show starring Jennifer Garner, Michael Vartan, Bradley Cooper and Victor Garber

Posted on November 2, 2009 Written by ripitup

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in Alias — Some of Sydey’s many disguises in Alias

Before 2001, I had no idea who Michael Vartan, Jennifer Garner and Bradley Cooper were. I had no idea the terrific actor that is Victor Garber existed and that Ron Rifkin made such a great villain. In 2001 – before Lost- there was Alias. The connection between the two shows? The creator/executive producer J.J. Abrams. The two shows could not have been more different. Yes, both include mystery, some unexplained supernatural possibilities (Alias will remember “Rambaldi”) and lots of action. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why Lost became the phenomenon that it still is. Sure it is captivating and all, but Alias had created an addiction in me that Lost didn’t. For those of you who never caught Alias, here’s the plot (although I should mention that the order we are given the story is more complicated & intriguing than my orderly version).

THE BACKGROUND

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow

Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is a promising college student, with a great boyfriend Danny (Edward Atterton) and loving friends (Will and Francie; played by Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey). Her estranged father Jack (Victor Garber) is a businessman she barely talks to and her mother died when she was a kid.

What she told Danny and her friends:

Graduation is taking a tad longer, since she is “working at the finance department of a bank called Credit Dauphine”.

REALITY, as Sydney knows it:

It’s not really a bank. It is SD-6, a secret branch of the CIA and Sydney is a secret agent there. She fights well, speaks many languages and knows her hi-tech gadgets, prepared for every mission by the fast -talking and nice geek Marshall

(Kevin Weisman). Every time she tells her friends, she is going on a business trip, she is actually going on a deadly assignments with her partner/trusted friend Dixon (Carl Lumbly). But Danny proposes ans she feels obliged to tell him. So she does..

He gets into shock and leaves a drunken message on her machine. The agency guys has him killed. Why would CIA kill an innocent civillian? They wouldn’t. They also wouldn’t go after her to kill her.

REALITY

She’s rescued by her absent businessman father and is told the truth: SD-6 is not CIA, in fact SD-6 is an enemy of CIA. Also, he is not a businessman; but a senior SD-6 agent. He offeres Sydney an escape route. But Sydney is upset and she wants vengeance. So she proves herself useful to her boss Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin). She further proves her loyalty by undergoing tests/interrogations and is cleared. After all, she is the best agent they have. Then she goes to the real CIA and joins them.

There she meets her “handler” Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan– the guy who is supposed to tell her about the counter-missions. Oh,that’s right! Now she is only pretending to be loyal to SD-6, while being true to the actual CIA. Now each mission has a counter one, making the timing harder, the missions more dangerous. She also has to pull this off under the unsuspecting nose of her SD-6 partner, who is genuinely a good guy that doesn’t know what SD-6 is really up to…

Then of course her father isn’t really only SD-6. He is also CIA, and he is loyal to them, not Sloan.

It is full of action. Car chases, gadgets ( lipstick with cameras and all that nice stuff), disguises, plane crashes, travelling all over the world- even 3-4 countries in each episode back to her resident location: Los Angeles.

MISSIONS

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow

Michael Vartan and Jennifer Garner in Alias.

Of course as smart, gorgeous and dangerous as she is, Sydney is only human and taking all of the below very badly:

Arvin Sloane:

*Arvin is the man whom she regarded as a father figure until he turned out to be a psychopath and her fiancée killed. He also sent men to kill her. We also know he has lied to her everyday, since her recruitment. Now she has to see him everyday and smile to his face; so that she can bring the whole organization down when the time comes.

Not to mention the fact that she has to live with the fact that she worked for that organization for 7 years, thinking that she was helping the government whereas she had been betraying it.

Jack Bristow

* What is worse than an absent father? Probably a father who lied to you all your life, and seems to be revealing the truth at his own convenience: Oh yes, he has more secrets. He is not just SD-6, he is also CIA-a double agent. He also seems to be deprived of emotion. The guy has a poker face that makes him a great agent and the social bonding skills that make Hugh Laurie’s House seem like a teddy bear. He does love his daughter but he really has to work on the honesty issue. Her mother may not have been a school teacher after all. Telling what happened to her will be a spoiler, sorry…

WILL & FRANCIE

Will and Francie played by Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey

*Oh, she has great friends who know nothing about this secret life so she can only talk about trivial stuff with them and hang out. They love her and for the lives of them can not figure out why Sydney doesn’t leave her boring bank job. Pl?us, Will is a journalist and nosy by nature; and he suspects Danny’s murder was no ordinary crime. If he gets close, he too will be killed so she has to protect him from himself. It gets tricky to lead a double life when you live with one of your friends (Francie) and the other is fixed on solving your dead fiancé’s mystery.

DANIEL HECHT

* She has to live with the fact that her fiancée Danny was killed by her boss, and because she told him who she is.




MICHAEL VAUGHN



If her cover is blown, and he is discovered to be of CIA, they are both screwed (as in risking to be murdered by SD-6)…It really doesn’t help matters that they keep getting closer and become increasingly attracted to each other…

Their relationship never lacks adrenaline, friendship, honesty, sexual chemistry, bottled up feelings and not to mention the fact that they both face death almost everyday. It is nerve-wrecking to go on missions and fight together on the field- without being detected by SD-6 and it is worse for Michael to sit and watch as Sydney overtakes one deadly mission after another. So she can tell Michael anything. But she can’t even go out with him. Another thing about her life that drives her mad.

This is as close to a date it gets for Syndey Bristow and her handler Michael Vaughn. She’s being briefed about her missions while pretending to be too strangers streching on the benches.

So this eventually happens: Sydney and Vaughn get together. But how many episodes does it take? You are just going to have to see it for yourselves.

The Guest Stars

Yes, of course each episode has many guest stars but some of them are remarkably famous and it was certainly fun to see them in those kick-ass episodes: Ethan Hawke, Christian Slater and Quentin Tarantino.

Ethan Hawke appears in Alias episode Double Agent (Season 2, Episode 14)

Christian Slater appears in two episodes of Alias: Endgame (season 2, episodes 15 & 19)

Quentin Tarantino appears as McKenas Cole in 4 episodes of Alias.

TO SUM UP:

Season 1 is brilliant with an incredible season finale.

Season 2 does not dissapoint. Moreover it features guest stars that I love; such as Ethan Hawke and Christian Slater.

The whole season is amazing and the finale is arguably even more shocking than the first season’s. In season, 3 the show is still good- you hardly get upset with the script but with some actions of some characters (major actions of major characters, to be exact) but after season 3…The show is no longer addictive. It lose its vibe. The characters and their actions aren’t interesting anymore. The story twists are sort of desperate and you say “Come on,what the…?” a lot. Don’t even get me started on the 5th season. Of course they are worth watching in the sense that you want to know what eventually will happen to characters you have come to care about but still, if you quit with the 3rd, I am not gonna blame you.

My guess is J.J Abrams found a new show idea that he liked (Lost) and fell out of love with Alias. Writers wrote with the philosophy of “anything goes” and since this is not a soap opera, they failed.

However I watch the first 3 (and especially 1st &2nd) seasons over and over. After all, real life is never going to get that interesting and exciting. It is fun to be in a world of lies, deceit, passion, fights and chases and espionage for about 40 minutes each episode.

Why Movie Taste is Relative feat. Christian Bale, Quentin Tarantion, Ridley Scott & More.

Posted on October 3, 2009 Written by ripitup

Your favorite painter, movie-maker, musician, …Who you like and why you like them are easily defined by you. Depending on how fanatic you are, you are ready to argue the merits and reasons of your taste. And yet the argument is unlikely to have a winner.

Take my student advisor for instance. He is one of my favorite people and one of the few that I respect, and yet he was very skeptical when I told him about my intentions about studying film. His reason? I don’t like Quentin Tarantino and therefore I do not belong there. I thought he was insane. I am skeptical of all authority when it comes to passion and dreams, and when a business T.A. condescends you about your dreams, you just want to punch him in the face.

The thing is, people don’t have to like Polanski or Tarantino. Or Spielberg or one of the Scott (Ridley Scott, Tony Scott) Brothers. You might think the Coen Brothers have got it all and some will remain unfazed by their efforts. And that’s completely alright.

You don’t have to follow all the festivals. It is OK to like a movie just for the sake of loving a low-budget, character-driven film, just like loving a good old epic film (in my case I love Braveheart) does not make you unworthy of applying to the MFA area of your choice.

Christian Bale is quoted to have said “I think there’s a kind of pretentiousness to the idea that serious work is only found in low-budget independent movies–I can’t stand that snobbery.”

I couldn’t agree more. He has proven himself in a variety of roles. I think only mentioning The Machinist and Batman in the same sentence will suffice to prove the point.

Some people loved Black Swan. Some people hated it. Some couldn’t see why many people adored The Social Network. Some people thing The Hangover is an awful movie, and some just laughed their butts off while watching it…

It is all relative. It depends from person to person, and that is all the whole point. That’s why it is so fun to share- you never know what the other person might think.