003. Mary and Max (Australia - 2009)

On the 12h, me and Jéssica watched this beautiful animation. Mary and Max is a stop-motion film with clay figures that tells the story of a young and lonely girl from Australia and her 41 year-old pen friend from New York as they start writing about the former's doubts about life. It's a film that depicts the innonence of a young girl who is bullied in school and grows to like her only friend, a socially bothered man that suffers from Asperger and eating compulsion from the other side of the world. They support each other in their sociological and psychological conundrums. The writing is beautiful, an honest way of communicating to the viewer that is unusual for relatively big-budget animations such as this one. But so are its tragic happenings throughout the story.

Director: Adam Eliot.

Score
Cinematography: 8.5
Voice acting: 9.0
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 9.0

Average Score: 8.4

002. Mammuth (France - 2010)

Not sure what I felt when I watched Mammuth. It was also on the 11th, right after Summer Wars. From a relatively flamboyant filmic experience (typical of animes) to an apathetic, dull session of this French drama. Don't get me wrong, this is not necessarily bad. I quite like apathetic, dull narratives. Serge Pilardosse is a misanthrope that will win one's heart either by his honesty or his stupidity as he sets out on a French motorcycle quest in search for documents needed for him to be entitled to a retirement pension.
How can't one love Depardieu's acting? It's great here too, as usual.
However, the film has got plenty of cons, beginning with the confusing camera movement and cuts. Editing here is an enigma, floating from sequence to sequence without so much as a random blink. Dialogues are not special, but the general idea of the narrative is quite pleasing and dramatic. A subtle schizophrenia, dream-like existence, and the suffocating reality of Serge. I liked it.

Directors: Benoît Delépine & Gustave de Kervern.

Score (all the categories are score out of 10)
Cinematography: 8.0
Acting: 8.5
Editing: 5.5
Sound: 5.5
Text: 7.5

Average Score: 7.0

001. Summer Wars (Japan - 2009)

Same director as Digimon. I've come a long way. Not exactly into animes or anime-style motion pictures (their melodrama and thematic stalling gets on my nerves), but Jéssica convinced me that this one was good. She wasn't wrong. Summer Wars carries a fairly creative idea for a theme - the world of the social networks and their symbiosis with life itself -, and with a careless although cunning drop of naiveté, the film presents us with chaotic climax enhanced by conflictive and selfish characters. 

Nice art, flat dialogues, bad ending.

Director: Mamoru Hosoda (細田 守).

Score (all the categories are score out of 10)
Cinematography: 7.5
Acting (in this case, voice acting): 6.0 
Editing: 8.0
Sound: 7.5
Text: 6.5

Average Score: 7.1


P.S.: Watched on the 11th, just now reviewing. Oh, well...

01/11 to 01/11 - Prelude

The name is George. Born 1987. Brazilian. Love for film.

My story with cinema is no different from the man on the street. Grew up watching them in a linear proportion that always accompanied my age and maturity, to a certain extent. Cartoons and Disney classics as a child, action films and blockbusters as a teenager, and all sorts of films as an early adult to this day.

Favourite genre for films? Heh, the ones that have got no genre. Those are the ones that transcend the taste discussion more often than not.

Finished undergraduation (in English languange and literature) in 2010, finished MA in Literary and Film Studies last year, starting my Doctorate in the same area in 2014. Can't say that I'm not passionate for the thing for no reason.

However, something here needs a reason. The begetting of this blog. Talking to my girlfriend two nights ago while watching some films, I realised that watching the same number of films as the days of a year would be a great idea to get my - our - knowledge catalog vaster. She agreed, and we got all the hype that always comes out of a fresh idea for creative writing, thinking, whatnot. It was only a sketch of an idea, really. As we woke up, during a beautiful brunch she had made us, I had the idea of setting up yet another blog for myself. Soup, sandwiches, orange juice and Earl Grey can make one get insights, after all.

Starting another blog... that's a tough endeavour, considering the handful of them I've left behind thus far. I like to believe this one is for good.

So, watching 365 films in the timespan of 11 Jan 2014 to 11 Jan 2015. That's my goal. And criticise them in a brief paragraph. And give them marks regarding basic aspects of filmmaking/organisation.
I'll finally pay my respects to my repertoire of films watched to this day and start a casual blog-style catalog of my thoughts on some of them. I can't wait.

This shall also shorten my "Bloody hell, I've never watched that film that everybody's watched, even though I'm a film student, in theory!" list.

Well, I believe that's all there is to it for now. I'll start writing critiques up later today. It's 04:27 AM and I've gotta have some respect for my own sleep before I can have respect for the film medium.

Good night, and good luck (to me and Jéssica).


P.S.: The title of the blog (more specifically, the word Jēran) comes from the Old Germanic root for the word Year. No, not original, not neat, I know. I was simply looking for an adequate name for the project. :-)