Evening movie review

It seems that each year, we are bombarded with television Ad after television Ad telling us what we should and shouldn’t do and what we should and shouldn’t buy. The media has control over most of our thoughts and has the power to persuade us one way or another. Because of this, it is likely that each year, there are those movies that are overlooked by much of society. For your benefit, I have made a list of the 20 most underrated, under-noticed, an under-appreciated movies of the past 15 years.

1) Unbreakable: In my opinion, M. Night Shamyalan’s best work. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson clash to perfection in this film about two men, one with self-sustaining powers and the other, on the option side of the spectrum, susceptible to everything that is bad in this world.

2) 12 Monkeys: I promise I am not starting a trend of Bruce Willis movies. However, this film, intriguing from start to finish, gives its audience a peek into the future of our planet. Bruce Willis goes back and forth between present and past, trying to save the day, as usual.

3) Frailty: Probably Matthew McConaughey’s best film. About a very religious father who has visions and murders people who God has supposedly told him are demons from hell. Bill Paxton joins the cast in a movie with a tremendous twist.

4) Almost famous: Thought Kate Hudson received acclaim with an Oscar for best supporting actress, this film is relatively unappreciated in the realm of movies. A superb cast including, Frances Mcdormand, Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup, and Jason Lee takes us through the coming of age of an aspiring music journalist who travels around the country with an up and coming band. Full of sentimental moments, great music, and a look into the 70s world of rock, you are guaranteed to be enjoying this movie from start to finish.

5) Friday Night Lights: An intense look into the arena of Texas High School football, this true story makes any high school athlete remember the great moments and amazing relationships they had on their teams. Good performances all around combined with realistic live football action makes for another great film. My favorite sports movie of all time.

6) The Sandlot: A kid’s movie at heart, this movie has been watched by children for over a decade. However, it is also a film for adults, discussing Babe Ruth, parenting, and, of course, our pastime, baseball. Adults with enjoy every moment of this movie as it will bring them back to a time when their lives were precious and innocent and when the most important thing in the world was when they had to leave the baseball field.

7) Hook: An amazing cast, including Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams, and Julia Roberts makes this one of the most entertaining movies around. The story of Peter Pan is moved to the future after Peter had left neverland. Hook never forgot Peter and his lost hand. He wishes to fight once again and lures Peter back to neverland by kidnapping his two children. A new age look at Peter Pan, with real people, makes this film another must see.

Fifth Element: Yes, Bruce Willis in on the list again. Although this movie is a little hokey, it is exciting throughout. An fun movie about aliens and the end of the world will keep you on the edge of your seat. The action and quirky moments are what make this movie thrive.

9) Vanilla Sky: Tom Cruise hits the list with this movie that got little acclaim from critics. Once you start this movie, you will be glued to the screen. A great plot, and super twists throughout are what make this movie good. And Tom Cruise doesn’t get to wow audiences with his good looks the whole movie and his face is mutilated early in the movie.

10) Boiler Room: A young cast of men portray a wall street stock broker company that cheats its clients into paying absurd amounts of money for stocks that don’t exist. One man’s world is destroyed by this and another’s is turned upside-down as he learns that he is not working at a real company.

11) Resident Evil

12) Hoop Dreams

13) Butterfly Effect

14) American Psycho

15) Eyes Wide Shut

16) Election

17) School of Rock

18) Donnie Darko

19) Truman Show

20) Con Air

Thanks for checking out my article. I write a lot. I’m aspiring to be a journalist as I am currently in college. I write on a variety of different topics, pretty much everything and anything actually.

In the past, producing a video meant producers had to hire an entire production team, including a cameraman, gaffer, grip, director, sound man, talent, and other crew members. Then, the team had to be transported to the actual location. If shooting in another country was necessary, the producer had to either fly the entire team there or hire a local team. Either way, he or she faces a logistical nightmare.

After booking your crew, you are at the mercy of bad weather, or the possibility of your talent not turning up. Even worse, what if your client disapproves of the final result of the shoot?

The world of video production is a very different battlefield now. With the advancement of fiber optics and broadband technology, producers are literary shopping their video footage on the Internet.

Instead of assembling a team and going to the location to achieve the desired shot, stock footage providers of all genres, from all over the world, have instead presented their own footage catalogued and nicely sorted on a website, allowing the producer to select, view, purchase and download instantly without ever leaving his or her desk.

We are talking about Royalty Free Stock Footage library. Royalty free licensing is an agreement that allows buyers unlimited use of the footage in a wide variety of ways. There are no restriction as far as the number of projects, release locations, and time frame; they are all covered under a one-time licensing fee. The only restriction is resale, in whole or in part.

Royalty Free Stock Footage are usually categorized by different genres, e.g. animals, landscapes, people, business, food, sports, time lapse, technology, medical, landmarks, background, elements, visual effects and 3D animation just to name a few. They can further be divided into sub-categories, e.g. 3D animation can be sub-categorized into spinning globes, waving flags, ocean and water etc.

While the availability of Royalty Free Stock Footage on the Internet is exploding, it is far from being saturated because every project has unique needs. For example, an outdoor shot can have different lighting moods and environmental settings, weather conditions, color tones, camera angle and camera movements. Likewise for 3D animation, each animator may create, texture and render each scene differently.

In the past, there were only a handful of stock footage companies around. They typically charged a few thousand dollars per clip, and those were not even royalty free. Your licensing cost had to depend on how many times you intended to use the footage, and in how many countries or regions your footage will be broadcast or distributed.

Now, thanks to technology advancement, more people can afford to own high quality video cameras, desktop editing systems and animation software. With increased broadband speed, people across the world can now deliver their own Royalty Free Stock Footage online, via niche websites that offer to consolidate individual video into a huge mega stock footage library. This online stock footage library is easily browsable, offers a secure payment system, and also includes a digital download delivery back-end. Some videographers and animators even set up their own online stores selling their personal video or animation footage. As a result, cost is lowered exponentially.

Typically, Royalty Free Stock Footage prices can range from 10 to 50 dollars per clip, depending on video resolution, uniqueness and technical demands, or if the footage includes identifiable people. They are sometimes sold as a collection of 20-30 clips for as low as a few hundred dollars. Compared to hiring a production team, these affordable rates provide video producers with great purchasing power and incredibly vast choices.

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. With so many stock video contributors, there is great diversity in levels of professionalism and skill. Video producers must decide on the quality of the shot, based on information and previews provided by the website, reputation of the website to properly screen footage before accepting them, and the reputation of the stock footage providers.

Okay I admit it. I am a fan of HBO’s Big Love. Although I haven’t seen every episode I find it very entertaining for a variety of reasons none if which is to satisfy my curiosity. Okay, that isn’t true. I do want my curiosity satisfied. I was curious to see how polygamy was going to be portrayed on a widely watched network. I was curious to see how the influence of that show would ultimately affect the mainstream opinion about polygamy. But mostly I was curious to see elements of my childhood lifestyle, depicted by famous people on TV. The irony of seeing so many things that were meant to be kept secret openly displayed on an electronic device that was seen as mostly evil, is the object of much pleasure to me. The idea of peculiarity being popularized, that which is hidden exposed, I find to be a kind of therapy.

I don’t really mind that the show is off the mark on a lot of issues. Most of television is off the mark anyway and is used as a kind of amplifier rather than documentation. After all, it is meant to be entertaining and Big Love is certainly that. Besides, if you applied the same scrutiny to other shows I think you’d find much of the same result. The Sopranos for example, do not necessarily portray an exact mafia lifestyle anymore than Lost, depicts the true drama of being stranded on a deserted island.

I don’t find Big Love offensive in any way. In fact, I am grateful it is on the air and doing well. It gives society a reference point in which discussions about the issue of polygamy can be addressed. It is time for polygamy to come out of the closet and it is programs like Big Love and the stir of controversy that it creates, which will bring it out into the light. On that note, I would like to add my voice to this subject.

Polygamy is not about sex. I know, that is really hard to understand and most of you reading this will not believe it, so let me elucidate. Polygamy is about marriage. Most would agree that marriage is not about sex. Sex is a part of marriage, it is a vital part of marriage and it is a vital part of polygamy in the sense that it promotes the perpetuation of the family and that is a powerful motivating factor in a belief system where the family is the holiest of social structures. Polygamy is not the only way a man can have multiple relationships at the same time and certainly not the easiest way. So to say that it is all about how much sex a man can get is just narrow thinking and doesn’t say much about the one making the statement.

There is also another factor that must be considered. The vast majority of polygamists are practicing polygamy because of a religious mandate they call “The Law.” Everyone is not running helter skelter scooping up women for their sexual beds. And unlike Bill Hendrickson, the husband in Big Love, being able to sexually satisfy all your wives is not a great concern. Sex was not designed for intimacy and satisfaction but was designed solely for procreation. Intercourse is not permitted during pregnancy and with procreation being a high priority; you can imagine that there are a lot of women who are pregnant a lot of the time. The religious term for polygamy is “celestial marriage” and is viewed as a higher form of living, marriage according to the gods, if you will, while sex is considered lower or beastly. To make a TV program that depicts polygamy through a sexual lens is repugnant and offensive to most practicing polygamists and runs counter to their beliefs.

On the other hand, there is a broad range of characters who are practicing polygamists, some of them pretty shady. There are many who do not live chastely within the principle, and sex is often used as a power tool for gaining favor or manipulating others. Some men seek many wives for sexual perversion, tainting the holiness of “the law” for those whose aim is much higher. Some men have wandered from the organizations of polygamy and have gone their own way as independents, embracing polygamy and little else. There is no established and consistent foundation of beliefs. And many men have father/daughter roles with their wives which add to the dysfunction. Most of these men were born under polygamy and know nothing else but a single spectrum of marriage. A man who believes in polygamy is always practicing polygamy even if he has only one wife. Therefore to compare men who have only known polygamy to men of monogamy is ineffectual, misleading and unfair. Apples to oranges.

What of the women you say? Well, there are many women that are fierce proponents and advocates of polygamy and it is usually the women who support it publicly as well. And there are some advantages as one woman I know stated, “I have the best of two worlds, the freedom and independence of a single woman and the security and companionship of a married woman.” This is by far the minority and only those who practice polygamy with a liberal viewpoint know this as personal experience. The other minority are the women who feel totally abused and want to get out. Most are doing only what they know and believe, their happiness being of no consequence. To assume that all polygamous wives are secretly longing for life in the outside world and a monogamous marriage is as likely as all Christians secretly longing for Hinduism. Yes, it is that stark.

Big Love offers a glimpse into the potential thrills and hazards of life in polygamy but it is in no way a definitive description of the lifestyle. The religious depiction is laughable but there is an emotional integrity that makes the show compelling. There are probably a few families who identify with Bill Hendrickson and crew but most would not. So is Big Love fact or fiction? It’s a little of both, as all great entertainment ought to be.