Cinematography: Mad Max: Fury Road

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015)
Director: George Miller
Cinematographer: John Seale

Honestly speaking, I never expected Mad Max: Fury Road (aka MMFR) to be that good. I was expecting an "average Hollywood movie." You know, the kind that heavily relies on its stars' bankability, disregarding the quality of its plot and cinematography. (MMFR is a Hollywood-Australian production.)

Hollywood's Gift of Remakes

Fueled by repetitive remakes, Hollywood now gives us The Gift. No, it's not that movie wherein Katie Holmes bares it all. This one is a blatant remake of Caché, Michael Haneke's 2005 film about a man's vengeful past.

Made ten years after Haneke's film, The Gift borrows quite a lot of plot elements from Caché: the videotapes are now a series of gifts, the Paris neighborhood turns into a Los Angeles suburb, Daniel Auteuil is now Jason Bateman (they kinda look alike though), Maurice Bénichou is now Joel Edgerton, and Juliette Binoche is now Rebecca Hall.

Dismantling the Stereotype

SETTLE DOWN
Guy Franklin, 2010

And in celebration of Women's Month, here's my take on Kimbra's feminist song, Settle Down. Kimbra, in my opinion, is kinda like the sober and sane version of Lady Gaga. Born in New Zealand, this underrated singer is mainly popular in Australia, focusing more on her music as an art, not as a means of worldwide fame.

I happened upon one of her songs, Settle Down, when its video was used as a promo for a music festival here in the Philippines, in which Kimbra is the main performer.

Settle Down has a sardonic undertone in it, implicitly saying that not all women want to get married, at the same time dismantling the stereotypical notion of "a lady housewife."

Gone Girl Finds Herself

Forsaken by that Lady fair

She glides unheeding through them all

Covering her brow to hide the tear

That still, though checked, trembles to fall

She hurries through the outer Hall

And up the stairs through galleries dim

That murmur to the breezes' call

The night-wind's lonely vesper hymn.

- Emily Brontë

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK

Peter Weir, 1975

Forming a sense of attachment is often easier than the mere thought of detachment. Change is the only thing that is permanent in this world. That's a fact that we know. So why do we still cling to things of temporary existence? Simply because we want what we can't have.

In Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, a group of schoolgirls and their teacher disappear during a Valentine's Day picnic at Hanging Rock. Those left behind are shaken to their Victorian core.

Fave Movie Quotes: Picnic at Hanging Rock

Our seven year-old monitor finally gave up, and I'm typing this on a darkened half screen. Won't be getting a new monitor until around early next year. So all I can post as of the moment is this tiny but memorable quote from 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock. Happy holi-f*cking-days!

What we see and what we seem are but a dream... a dream within a dream.

- Miranda

Subplot: Picnic at Hanging Rock

Nearly forty years since it came out, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock is still a visual poetry of an enigmatic kind, as fascinating as the mystic clairvoyant that is Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert).

Princess Sara Loves Queen Miranda