War of the Worlds

"Breathless" (feature)
Dir: Jean-Luc Goddard
Premier: 1961
Viewed: 3/23 & 3/26/09
Review: “Breathless” was hard to follow because I couldn’t really identify with any of the characters. I thought the dark haired girl in the beginning at the film, whom he stole money from was exponentially better looking than the girl who occupied the remainder of the film. Funny enough, this nearly took me out of the film. What also interfered with my experience was the sudden bursts of English in an otherwise French-language film. I can’t say why this worked for “The Celebration” and not for this film, for me. Maybe it was the strong sense of character that film established early on.

The acting seemed almost forced, but maybe it was the language. This film puts a lot of thought on old-fashioned French flirting. This was starting to make me ill when I had to listen to some of the character’s lines. The cinematic layout of this film definitely gets the point across as to the new wave of film techniques, we have French new-wave to thank for a lot of new film conventions moviegoers are used to today. The jump cuts were refreshing, as I assume they were meant to be. The only thing is when the two leads were in bed together, and the jump cuts started helping the film drag on.

Ben 10 Alien Force: "War of the Worlds" (tv series)
Dir: Dan Riba
Premier: 3/27/09
Viewed: 3/27/09



30 Rock: "Apollo, Apollo" (tv series)
Dir: Millicent Shelton
Premier: 3/26/09
Viewed: 3/28/09
Comment: I was pleasantly surprised by this show in that it proves just how far the upper crust of TV animation has gone. This show and Amy Poehler's "The Mighty B!" essentially share the same sense of humor (give or take a difference in target demo and subject matter)!