Research on Documentary

City SquareMission Statement:
CitySquare exists to fight the root causes of poverty by partnering with those in need. Working together as a community, we feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless and renew hope in the heart of our city.
They are a Christian company, and they believe that there is only one faith and that is Christianity.
Began in 1988, became non profit in 1990.
Also present in san Antonio and Austin.
They reached over 43,000 people in 2011.
HUNGER, HOUSING, HOPE, HEALTH are all of the regions that they provide help in.
HUNGER: problem with child hunger. durning summer when kids no longer get free lunches at school, they provide food to the children. 84% of DISD kids qualify for free lunches. Food on the Move. They also have a Food Bank open to communities.
HOUSING: provide permanant housing to people. while living with them, they provide classes on these ten things that help the people learn how to live and succeed on their own.
     

Self-Care and Living Skills

Managing Money

Social Network and Relationships

Drug and Alcohol Misuse

Physical Health

Emotional and Mental Health

Meaningful Use of Time

Managing Tenancy and Accommodation

Offending

Motivation and Taking Responsibility

HOPE: they help people gain equality by educating them on the legal systems and such and this helps the non profit achieve one of their main goals, renew hope for the chronically homeless
HEALTH: they provide health services to people without health insurance. the main set back is that they lack the space and or resources to fully reach the 600,000 without health insurance.

DISD Homeless Education Program
Mark Pierce is the head. They are trying to offset the recent budget cuts and closing of elementary schools in DISD. They are in need of donations for the schools who will now have even larger numbers of children in poverty. The children will have little supplies when the time comes for school to start this next year. The McKinney-Vento Act provides the funding for homeless DISD students and their families, if they have any.

Next Project

The next project I will be working on is based on the arc of an abusive relationship. It will be silent, besides some eerie music I hopefully or create to over lay on top. It will be a boy and a girl standing profile with the backdrop as a plain white screen. I have this great shot of vodka being lit on fire and it continually burning until it goes out and then it pops back up out of no where. I will be cutting in between the vodka shot and the people shot to parallel the two.

What we are working on

Currently, I am finishing up the DIFF entry that I have been working on for a while. I will be finished by next Friday and we are currently brainstorming what my next project will be and I will start that future project the following Monday.

happythankyoumoreplease

This film premiered at Sundance last year and I yearned to see it daily for about a year until finally it got released into theatres and onto Netflix recently. happythankyoumoreplease was written, directed, and starred in by Josh Radnor, who is famed by his television show, How I Met Your Mother. The writing of the film was superb, very witty, on point, and just quirky. The directing was normal at points, but in others, it took my breath away. Sam is a writer, played by Radnor, and when on the subway, he sees what he thinks is a boy get separated from his mother. The boy is actually in foster care and he does not like the foster parent he currently has. Sam decides to keeps him for a while as they become fond of each other. That is just one of the stories going on. There were three interlacing stories that were all mainly focused on love. My favourite of which was Sam's. He met a girl, Mississippi (played by Kate Mara, sister to Rooney Mara who is in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo right now), and before sleeping together, they decide to make a contract saying that they have to live together for three days before doing anything. It was just very interesting things like that that made the film what it is.
As I said previously, the directing was pretty good, at moments better than that. The writing was the best. The details that were inserted into the screenplay were put there in such original ways. One of the story lines is that Sam's friend who has some sort of auto-immune disease that renders her without hair, throws a party and invites all of their friends to explain the disease better. I had never thought of something like that before and it was details like that that made me smile because they were so original, or at least in my eyes they were. The ensemble acting was amazing. There were actors from everywhere that people would recognise but not be able to remember their name necessarily, but those are the best in a lot of situations.
I really enjoyed this film, which says something because I built it up in my head for a long time and it didn't live down my preconceived expectations.

Young Adult

This movie stars Charlize Theron as the grown up in age, but in mind still young, "bitch you hated in high school" as the trailer dubs her. She is the writer of a young adult fiction series that is published under someone else's name and she is just merely the writer. She lives in the relatively large city of Minneapolis and is from some other small town in Minnesota. She gets an email that her high school boyfriend just had a baby and she decides then and there to go back and break up his marriage and win him back.
I thought the writing of this film was superb. Diablo Cody, who also wrote Juno, was the screenwriter and she teamed back up with director Jason Reitman of Juno and Up in the Air. I love when the two do a movie together because the product is just so great. The directing was pretty wonderful. There were some shots of Minnesota and Minneapolis that were just wonderful because they showed just how bleak these places were. The opening shot was of a single skyscraper that the lead lived in and it had a banner on it that read, "Lots of Space" or something of that manner. Cody's writing is always on point. She develops such odd characters. The lead has to be borderline unlikeable and you ride that line the whole time, and for me, I didn't verge to the unlikeable side.
The acting was also rather amazing. Any Charlize Theron movie will be pretty amazing though. After her turn in Monster as the first woman serial killer where she was all dirtied up (and won an Oscar), you turn and look at this where she just diversifies herself as an actor. She played this woman who is just so unhappy and drinks herself to sleep, and its just so cool to see someone be able to not be defined by a certain type of role and go from different role to the complete opposite of different (which i guess would be the same, but you know what I mean). The supporting cast not only held her up, but stood out at points. But still, the true star was Charlize Theron.
I loved this film because it was just so blatantly true and didn't care about anything but to tell the truth. If Diablo Cody doesn't get an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay I will be very surprised.

My Week with Marilyn

I saw My Week with Marilyn this past weekend and thought it was a successful film. Focusing on the true story of Colin Clark, at the time a twenty-four year old third director's assistant on The Prince and the Showgirl. His job at times enlisted him to look after the star, Marilyn Monroe, who, much to director, Laurence Olivier's, disdain, was rather erratic. Colin ended up helping Marilyn, and eventually falling in love with her, though she was in her third marriage to Arthur Miller at the time. She breaks his heart in the course of the movie, but they remain close.
Acting wise, I thought everyone did a fantastic job. Michelle Williams as Monroe was brilliant and you could really see the look of nervousness on her face when it came up in the scene. Her raw performance was breathtaking at moments. Eddie Redmayne as Clark was also superb. He had to be a lover in this film and did it well. He previously was on Broadway in one of my favourite plays, Red by John Logan, and won a Tony as Mark Rothko's timid assistant. It was a far stretch from what I'd seen him in before and he pulled it off. Emma Watson as Lucy, a wardrobe mistress, was a quick appearance, but it proved that she could play other roles than that of Hermione in the Harry Potter series. Kenneth Branagh as Olivier was brilliance, but he is brilliant in every role.
The cinematography by Ben Smithard was the stand out of the film for me though. The lighting was just perfect the entire film. It gave me chills at points to see the way the shot was lit and the angle that they were shooting from. The colours as well... They were breathtaking. I don't have much to say on the cinematography besides the fact that it was perfect.
This film was put together really well, with only a few flaws that I can over look due to the other aspects of it.
Grade: A

The Descendants

I saw The Descendants this past weekend. Overall, I thought it was a rather beautiful film, crafted well. When it first started, I thought that I was going to hate it. George Clooney, the star, just talked over the film for the first ten minutes. Voice overs used when they could just use a regular scene are one of my pet peeves and they did it over the first few scenes. That was my main issue with the film. It was filmed in Hawaii, in places that I have actually been so that was fun to see. They had landscape shots that were beautiful and really showed the scenery and setting well. The acting was superb, especially by the daughters, Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller. Many have said that Woodley's portrayal of Clooney's seventeen year old sarcastic daughter will earn her an Oscar nomination, along with Clooney. I agree completely that they both deserve the nominations. This adaptation of a novel was very successful. The writers did a superb job. They created a character that was a friend of the older daughter and he
just follows them around, supporting them all the way. At first, you think, "Why is he there", and then he turns out to be a really sweet character.
Overall Grade: A-