Film School in a Box for $25

If you want to learn about making movies, but you don't want to, you know, go to school for it or anything, probably the best resource you can get for the money is the box set of the "Mexico" trilogy by famed indie Robert Rodriguez. It contains his first film, El Mariachi, which he made only for practice, but was so impressive that it opened Hollywood's doors to him. Next is his follow-up film Desperado, showing what he could do with a real budget. Finally comes Once Upon a Time in Mexico, in which the filmmaker declares "film is dead" and converts his entire operation to digital.

Anyone with aspirations to indie movie making should memorize the commentary track on El Mariachi. Rodriguez there details how he begged and borrowed his way into sets, props, and actors for his zero-budget film. In addition to the excellent commentary, El Mariachi also contains Rodriguez's first "Ten Minute Film School" segment, in which he shows several examples of how his film-making style allowed him to shoot the movie for practically no money while delivering astonishing production value.

In the Desperado commentary, Rodriguez describes how he applied his unique creative style to a "Hollywood" movie. A tiny budget by Hollywood standards, but literally a thousand times what he had to spend on Mariachi! Rodriguez also gives us the second installment of his ten minute film school, "Ten More Minutes: Anatomy of a Shootout". Here he describes his use of "video storyboards" as a fast method of combining rehearsals and storyboards to communicate the intent of the scene, and also as a sort of test run for planning shots. Brilliant.

In his commentary on Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Rodriguez at once expresses his frustration with the "Hollywood way" of making a movie, and his epiphanic liberation on discovering that digital acquisition and a digital workflow allowed him to return to his rebel roots. One of the extras on the DVD is "Film is Dead, an evening with Robert Rodriguez", in which the artist gives a talk (to film students?) about shooting on digital and how it reawakens the creative process of movie-making that gets lost in the technical complexity of managing a film shoot.

Rodriguez adds another film school installment, "Ten Minute Flick School: Fast, Cheap, and in Control", in which he expresses the importance of being well versed in special effects and technology. Also included is "Inside Troublemaker Studios", a tour of the artist's private lair. If you are at all into the technical side of of the trade, you may simply expire from envy of what this man has in his garage. "That's just an Avid," he says at one point, waving at a huge bank of computer and HD monitors backed by a hundred thousand dollars of computing power and storage. "We have a couple more upstairs."

The disc also includes "The Anti-hero's Journey", a more traditional "making of" documentary, in which the creator talks about all three movies, and "The Good, The Bad, and The Bloody: Inside KNB FX". Not to mention the first installment of the Rodriguez "Ten Minute Cooking School". (Notice that the entire cooking school segment was shot by Rodriguez by himself with a small video camera.)

I love this guy, his work, his attitude, and most of all his free encouragement to all the rebel movie makers out there. And at this price, you'd have to be pretty broke not to snap up a copy of the Mexico trilogy for reference and inspiration.

Flags of Our Fathers; Letters from Iwo Jima

I wanted to review Flags Of Our Fathers earlier, but I decided to wait until I could view its sister film, Letters From Iwo Jima, as well.

I’ll start by saying that I believe Clint Eastwood has crafted two exceptional, but flawed films.

Flags Of Our Fathers tells the story of the U.S. Marine Corps landing on the island of Iwo Jima through the eyes of three of the six men that were immortalized by the photograph of the famous flag raising. This is the films strength and its weakness. Using three main characters to tell the story gives the film focus, but its continual use of flash-back and flash-forward editing takes away from that focus, and removes any type of emotional tie-in we might have with them. Instead, you are left as an objective viewer watching the stories of three individuals unfold. Maybe that was the point?

The battle scenes, as filmed, are truly horrific and powerful and play on the screen as they should; yet we seem to follow the main characters on their bond drive in the States more than on the island. This I believe is what makes me feel like the film lacks a proper denouement, and I figured maybe we would get to that in the next film.

Letters From Iwo Jima is the same battle as told from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. While the obvious agenda of this film was to humanize the men the Marines fought, I was worried it would carry it too far. Some of the dialog has the Japanese commanding officer saying that if he could keep his home safe by continuing to fight, then he would do so. Yet history shows that the U.S. never made any type of military advance on Japan until after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But the film did not move in that direction. A small part of the story even made a point of showing the cruelty dished out by the Japanese soldiers on those they captured.

Because the telling of the story of Letters from Iwo Jima remains on the island throughout the film, it comes across as more focused than its predecessor. It follows a few characters as they realize the hopelessness of their situation, and their willingness do to as their country wants them to do right up to the point of complete extermination.

While this is a great companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, I still felt like I wasn’t given enough at the end. I was curious about the completion of the taking of the island, and I thought some stats showing what and how the U.S. used it once they had it needed to be included at the end of either film. So instead of a film trying to give you the complete war history of one island, you get two films telling the separate stories of a few characters involved in the same battle.

Two great films on human interaction in the face of horror, but lacking in the history department.

Flyboys

Wow! Flyboys has one of the best DTS audio tracks I have ever heard. Sounds of plane engines, weapons firing, bullets whizzing by, explosions all over the place, and whatever else they could jam in there comes to full, exuberant life in this World War I film. It was so realistic; my wife came running downstairs to see if I was firing guns in the house (she had warned me about that before). The problem though, is you find you don’t really care.

A film about the Lafayette Escadrille, the first American fighter pilots serving under France in WWI, seems to be a promising premise worthy of a good film treatment. Yet the direction, screenplay, and photography of this film come across as so by the numbers, that nothing plays as exciting or emotional as it should. Instead, I found myself bored and not caring about the characters I was watching. I think some of their dialog was inspired by some fine Roger Corman movies.

All through the viewing, I could tell that the filmmakers worked really hard to make a good film, and at times maybe too hard. Most noticeably in the musical score. The music by itself sounds great, but for the film, it’s so overwrought that it becomes irritating. There was even one theme that played throughout that sounded eerily a lot like some of James Horner’s fine score for Braveheart.

Watch it if you know nothing of the history of this particular story and aren’t interested in reading a book. Just don’t expect too much. I don’t think it’s a terrible movie, I just think the subject matter deserves more.