Kyle Review

Relationships are never easy to figure out. There is almost no one you can talk to who can give you perfect advice on the subject. They are confusing. Partly because you have trouble really understanding the other person. Mainly because they are not you. Nowhere is this more difficult to figure out than in school.

Not only do you have the task of learning all sorts of information and figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life, but you have the added stress of trying to figure out people. School is a proving ground for more than just test scores and knowledge. It is a proving ground for life.

Which is why it is so difficult. It is why there are so many films about the school, and particularly the high school experience. Juggling the two can be hell. Doing it on film can be even harder to figure out. You have to find a way to compress a story of what is most often a romance into an incredibly short period of time. Anyone who has attempted it knows it is a lot harder than it seems.

So I applaud Amy Hill for making the attempt. Although I am not entirely sure that she pulled it off. She appears to have fallen into a trap that many have in their attempts. I have fallen pray to it myself. The idea of having a particular scene in mind and writing to that. In this case it is a scene of two young school chums walking home together.

What the film lacks is a progression of character and dialogue. From the get go it is unclear as to what each character is doing and why they are there. The implication at one point is that they had made plans to walk home together or that the young girl has agreed to be walked home. This has not really been set up properly and thus we run into problems.

There are certain elements to the characters which are interesting. Their family lives and what they plan on doing when they grow up, but it feels like this has not entirely been thought out and the characters are designed to find reasons to talk rather than to actually attract the audience and keep them engaged for the full 12 minutes.

Still, the concept is pretty cute and worth looking at. I look forward to seeing what else the filmmaking has out there. To see what I am talking about, check it out below:


You can also check out more content at Film Annex.

Chemerical Review

A lot of debate goes into what we do these days as a society. What we want to do and what's good for us. One of the biggest debates that goes on is the question of natural products versus chemical based products. Whether it's the food we eat or the cleaning and beauty products we use, there's a big question out there with regards to what the right way to do it is. Testing on animals has been a common practice over the years but a serious move has been made towards trying to reduce or eliminate this type of testing wherever possible. But that doesn't make the products themselves any safer for us. There's always the chance that what we put on our bodies or what we use to clean our homes can be harmful to us and the people around us. Which has triggered the rise of all natural products in the market place and a desire to eliminate products with harmful chemicals from our lives. Some contend that the all natural route is just another market for people push and make money off of, while others have fully embraced this type of product and swear by it to everyone they meet.

So what is it? Is it a cash grab or does it actually have beneficial effects on individuals who use them? Andrew Nisker attempts to answer that question in his documentary film Chemerical, and the results may surprise you. In a documentary tradition similar to Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me and 30 Days, Nisker challenges a family to try and live chemical free for 90 days. Can they live without the products they use to keep their house clean and use more healthy products instead on an average family's budget? Or will the family implode from internal drama caused by the change? One of the most interesting aspects of the film is its ability to switch between the real life situation the family is living through and the quirky, cute and sometimes funny animated commercials that are intercut between them to inform people about the potential benefits of making the type of change the Goode family goes through. Whether or not that's a truly positive change is something that individuals will have to decide for themselves if they want to take up the challenge.

But I think that the film does a good job of both entertaining and informing any audience who might see it about what is increasingly becoming a serious problem in society. It's definitely a film that the average movie goer might enjoy and be amazed by, but I would say that on some level it is definitely aimed at the people who are environmentally conscious and concerned about the footprint they are leaving but aren't quite sure how to go about changing it. Good choices are often hard to make, but one good choice would be to see this film.


You can check it out on Amazon, Vudu, and Youtube which you can also see below:

Switched at Birth Review: Could you live with being “Switched at Birth”? - TV Reviews, Television, TV, Television Reviews, Movie Reviews, Movies, Film, Film Reviews, Entertainment, Film Entertainment

Quite a few TV shows recently have taken something of a soap opera approach to storytelling when it comes to creating their basis for their ideas. Most notably there are shows like Pretty Little Liars which focuses on the problems you run into while lying coupled with a murder mystery plot, Ringer which was about a twin who took over her sister’s life to escape her own problems, and Switched at Birth, the story of two families who took home each other’s daughters, only to discover the truth almost 16 years later.

This sets up an interesting twist on the concept of family and how it is defined in the modern world that you don’t generally see in a lot of places outside the soap opera genre. How does one define family? Where does the connection between you and the family you were born into begin and where does it end? This idea is taken on in many different genres and stories but it often takes a backseat to the other themes within the shows. It seems to be a foregone conclusion by most storytellers these days that family is what you make it, not what you were born into.

And that’s where this show is different. Switched at Birth takes the concept of how to define family and puts it front and center. From the very beginning, the show focuses on the two young girls who were switched, Bay and Daphne, whose life has been turned upside down by the chance decision of Bay who questioned her place in her own family. After a DNA test reveals the truth about their birth, two families attempt to deal with how their lives are changed.

Everything stems from that one moment and the way in which they deal with the fallout. The families develop all sorts of insecurities and fears because of the new dynamic between all of them. Bay and Daphne start to question who they are and who they want to be and the friends they spend time with, but also who they would be if they hadn’t been switched the way they were. Their parents, Katherine and John Kennish, and Regina Vasquez have to deal with each other and figure out a way to parent their respective children together without crossing any boundaries.

As things progress for the Kennish and Vasquez families, we are introduced to other friends and family members who have their own problems with members of the two families and this helps to broaden the characters and the way they deal with each other. That in and of itself would be enough for most television shows to sustain itself for several years, but Switched at Birth adds another dynamic to the mix which makes it fascinating for me and fans of the show. About half of the characters and some of the cast themselves are hearing impaired or deaf.

Watching the show then becomes even more interesting for someone like me as a writer, because so many of the scenes are told without any audio dialogue. It relies heavily on the actors to show the story and the character’s stress in the moment rather than tell it. They do have subtitles for those of us without a working knowledge of sign language but rarely do they tone things down for people who can’t read them as they go by. I’d also say that I have picked up a sign or two from watching it and I love that they have managed to do that for the hearing and hearing impaired alike. Ultimately they never lose sight of the truth of the show, which is the characters and the question they often ask themselves either figuratively or metaphorically.

Could you live with being Switched at Birth? I probably couldn’t, but I love watching it play out on TV.

Can "Writers" write from anywhere but the heart?

I have been a long time believer in the idea that a writer that is worth the words they write does so from a place of passion. A place where they care about the material they are creating and the ideas they are talking about through it. But is that actually true? Do you actually have to write with your heart and soul or do you simply get better at it if you do it often enough? Not long ago I watched a speech given by acclaimed TV writer Matt Nix, creator of such TV shows as Burn Notice. In it he looked at the idea of art and how he went about it. He spoke of some of the most common advice that any writer gets when he or she starts out. Primarily, that you should write what you know. Some of the most fundamental things about ourselves that we know is how we feel, how we think and how we act, even if we can’t quite articulate all those things in the moment itself. But is that the same as writing what you know?

Are writing what you know and writing from the heart the same thing? Is it possible to do one or the other, or do we do both at the same time? Watching the new film Writers from Josh Boone, I had to ask myself that question. The film is based on the personal experience of the writer/director himself and I think it really shows in the story being told. Starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly as well as younger actors like Lily Collins and Nat Wolff, it’s the story of a family of writers struggling to express themselves to each other after the parents of the family get divorced and the mother has remarried. Thankfully, each of them has writing as a way of coping with their lives. Three of them have taken to writing to express themselves in some way, perhaps not to each other or about each other directly, but to someone.

Each of them writes about the experience of their lives and the way in which it has shaped them and their ideas about the world. To quote from the film, “Writers are the sum of their experiences, go have some”. When a person writes however, they often aren’t talking about the situations themselves. Personal experiences can be used in and modified to fit for a story, but there is usually a deeper truth in the experiences that is at the core of the story being told. Sometimes the meaning is that there is no meaning, but by and large a combination of such experiences overall is about life or love or culture. Rarely is it the case that these ideas aren’t somewhere in the script or book or film.

This film is very much about coming to terms with those experiences, which is what most writers do through their work. A lot of films focus on the ultra dramatic moments in life. The moments in which someone finds out their spouse has been cheating on them, or the moment two people meet and fall in love. “Writers” is very much about the moments in between such events. It’s about that second when you realize “Oh wait, that’s what I learned from that mistake” or “Now I realize that this is how I dealt with it and moved on”. And aren’t those the moments in which you truly understand what was going on with that experience? Those are the times when you feel comfortable enough to write down what it is that happened and how you feel about it now. That’s the point where what you know and what you feel meet, and I think that’s what “Writers” is in fact about.

Can writers write from anywhere but the heart? I think they can, but the heart always has to enter into it somewhere, and watching a film like “Writers” is one of the best ways to explore that about yourself.

Can a family survive the story of Ginger and Rosa?

Family, it can be a bit of a strange thing to deal with. On the one hand they can be the best people to turn to when life gets you down sometimes. That blood relationship is a powerful one and it can be a great comfort in times of horrible stress. However I don’t think anyone would disagree with me if I said that they can also be the source of that stress at times as well. For Ginger and Rosa, family is something of a combination of both in their lives. Against the backdrop of 1960s London England, they don’t have the most traditional kind of family, or at least not by any standards that would have come before such a time in society. Nowadays this type of family dynamic is somewhat common place and as a result there are quite a number of parallels and metaphors to be drawn about today’s world through this look into the past of any uncertain family.

Ultimately, the film is focused on the story of our main characters, Ginger and Rosa. Two young girls who grow up almost like sisters. After all, the film begins with the birth of these girls. Their mothers (played brilliantly by Christina Hendricks and Jodhi May respectively) lying together in the same room as they seem to be in labor at the same time, friends seemingly united against all the odds in a world that is rapidly changing after the devastation and pain of the Second World War. It seems only natural then, that their daughters (played by the young and incredibly talented Elle Fanning and Alice Englert) would grow up united by a common truth and a common pain that through the 1960s, a time of turbulence and upheaval, at least they have each other

Or do they? Sisterhood is not without its difficulties. Particularly as you grow up and you experience new things, the bonds which held you through your childhood become harder to hold onto. These are the types of things that Ginger and Rosa struggle to figure out as time goes by in the film, and this of course is set against the struggles of a world in which the very real truth of ultimate annihilation by nuclear destruction becomes a true possibility. It’s a difficult thing to watch, not because there’s anything in the film that’s particularly gruesome or violent, but because you can see the cracks start to form in these relationships as the story moves along and part of you wishes that you could do something to stop it.

In today’s modern world, these cracks in our family are something that all of us have had to deal with at some point or another. What’s interesting is that, much like Ginger and Rosa and their families, it’s often much easier to see the cracks in someone else when you’re not involved then it is to see your own. As the audience we understand what it is that they are facing and how they could stop it if they only tried to deal with their problems, but in the 1960s it was harder to do that. For all the talk of that time and the repeated insistence of freedom and personal conviction, these guiding principles can also be the thing that tears Ginger and Rosa’s families apart.

Can a family survive the story of Ginger and Rosa? You’ll have to buy a ticket and see, but I have no doubt it will be worth it.