Madmind

I have never read a novel by Stephen King. I was more a Dean Koontz guy. Why? I think one of the reasons is the fact that I have watched too many film adaptions of his works to be interested in the originals. Perhaps – and I hope – I am not the only one with this kind of feeling.

This week I have nevertheless watched the adaption of his 1980 short story THE MIST in a sneak preview.

Well, after watching it I have to say that with THE MIST I again feel the same as with most of “his” films: nice moments, great concept but negligent execution. I don’t know if this problem is also predominant

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(Warning: Spoilerific Post about THE ISLAND)

Besides the many things I have and want to do I yesterday took some of my precious time and watched Michael Bay’s THE ISLAND on TV. As some of my friends told me that this movie was not perfect at all it was at least some fun. In review I can say that the rating of 6.9 on IMDB is OK, although I would rank the movie around 6.5 or lower.

The reason for my rating are not the 3D special effects (which are over the top by the way) but rather the fact that the story contains some problematic ‘hiccups ‘.

Wrong Character Motivations in THE ISLAND

One thing that I particularly didn’t like was the missing or wrong motivation of the female protagonist, Jordan Two

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I don’t think that there are many people out there who in fact love Voice Over Narrations over everything else. Each film book I read dealt with this story device and in each one “complained” about it. And some movies even get their voice over narration cut out as in BLADE RUNNER.

Nevertheless you stumble over it again and again. I can understand why it is used but in my eyes it has some problems too big to be used at all.

The Beauty of Voice Over Narration

Let us be frank: a voice over narration is really easy to write (and perhaps to direct). The screenwriter doesn’t have to think very much about the visuals and can simply show one or many characters do unimportant stuff on screen while the narrator talks

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After the analysis of the first 16 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick this part continues the series by looking at the beginning of the second half of “The Dawn of Man” – the space waltz sequence that introduces us with the future.

(Note: All images are copyright Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and used solely for the purpose of analyzing 2001.)

After the death of the ape in the first part of the movie, the bone-wielder thrusts its “tool” flying into the air. Exactly at that moment, Kubrick cuts to the future:

This “match” cut, which visually connects the first image with the later, is not without reason one of the most stated cuts in the history of film.

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After analyzing the overall structure we can now begin to look at the movie in detail. This part of the series will analyze the first 16 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick.

(Note: All images are copyright Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and used solely for the purpose of analyzing 2001)

(Another note: as stated in the introduction part of this series, this analysis will work almost solely on certain images or moments. Therefore it is written in a purely linear way, from the beginning of the movie to the end and might therefore be not the usual film analysis you find on the net)

The first part of the chapter “The Dawn of Man” can be seen as one of the most unusual beginning of a movie ever printed on

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