DREAMER

Every Wednesday for the past few months, I was able to watch movies during International Film Club at school. We had watched a total of three movies: a Japanese cartoon Totoro, Secret, and La Vita e Bella.

Secret: The Secret that Cannot Be Told. It is a Chinese movie starring Jay Chau. I thought it was a really interesting movie, although I didn’t like the ending of it. However, I just watched the trailer for this movie, and it was even worse than the ending itself! That was when I remembered I had made a movie trailer myself. I realized once again how it is important to have a good movie trailer because that is what makes the viewer make his or her last decision. I was very disappointed when I saw the trailer for this movie. It definitely did not do its job of capturing a viewer’s attention. I stopped watching it even before the trailer was half way done.

First, it was slow and quiet. Movie trailers should be the complete opposite - quick and loud. It should have quick snapshots of several interesting scenes from the movie that somehow describes the overall plot. In other words, it should be short but smooth at the same time. The scenes don’t necessarily have to be in sequence from the movie. For example, the infamous Harry Potter series have excellent movie trailers.

As you can see, there is music in the background and the trailer sums up the three hour long movie in less than three minutes. It shows scenes that leave people thinking “What does that mean?” or “I want to know what happens next”. The scenes shouldn’t show too much of the movie because then viewers wouldn’t go to the movies to actually watch the movie. The objective of a trailer is to captivate people’s attention.

Having an efficient movie trailer is almost as important as a book cover for a novel. Many of you may know the phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. No matter how interesting the cover may seem, the actually story may be complete rubbish. And vice versa, a novel may have the simplest cover possible, but the content may be amazing. You will never know until you open it up and examine what is inside it. The same goes for movies and movie trailers. If a movie trailer is the equivalent of a book cover, you should not judge a movie by its trailer. Just as I had experienced, not all trailers depict the movie. I suggest you read the synopsis rather than watch trailers while deciding which movie to watch.

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Mar Adentro is a Spanish movie I happened to watch today. I was flipping through the channels when I should have been doing my homework. I probably wouldn’t have watched it but I heard the characters speaking Spanish.

I wanted to know how much of it I could understand. I’ve watched several movies in Spanish with English subtitles, but the one I watched today had Korean subtitles. It was a bit harder to understand because I am faster at understanding English than Korean. Either way, I couldn’t understand the whole story of the movie because I started to watch it half-way through. It was a mellow dramatic movie. If I ever get the chance to find a DVD for this movie, it is first on the list of movies to watch this summer.

I could understand bits and pieces of what the actors were saying. I could understand it even better when they spoke slowly. They had a tendency to talk super fast so I couldn’t understand most of the time. It was actually fun to try and understand what they were saying without reading the subtitles. And, believe it or not, I could understand about 60% of it. I guess my 10 years of learning Spanish actually pays off. It seems like a really interesting movie and I would really like to watch the whole film one time.

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Your friend’s brothers ran away from home during the middle of the night. As everyone is out looking for them, another family member is sexually harassed. You don’t know anything about this as you return holding the boys’ hands. You found the two boys. However, people mistake you as the man who harassed the girl. Without a chance to speak for yourself, you are sent away with the police.

This is the general story of “Atonement”, a recent movie starring Kiera Knightley.
“Yes, I know it was him. I saw him”. These words changed the lives of two people in love. Cecilia and Robby were crazily in love. They could not live without each other. However, Cecilia’s younger sister, 10-year-old Brionny, was too young to understand this. Brionny believed that Robby was the harasser even though he was the one who had found the two boys. Robby was separated from Cecilia and they had to live without each other for years. Brionny, on the other hand had to live with the blame and guilt until the day she died. She published a book based on her experiences just before she retired.

I felt how important it was to be careful of what we say. I never knew a few words could change the rest of people’s lives. It reminded me of a quote I had read before: there are there things will never come back – a bullet, an arrow, and words you speak. Now I try to be careful and think before I speak.

Atonement: reparation for a wrong or injury. This goes perfectly with the story of the movie. The book that Brionny had published was a form of atonement. She had explained everything that had happened as to solve any misunderstandings. However, at that time, everyone around her was gone and no longer kept contact. She had either lost contact or the others had died like Cecilia and Robby.

This is a movie that I recommend to women. There was this particular aura and atmosphere that I know all women will like.

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