ILM and Diva

This week we covered both Cinema du Look and the importance of a once small company by the name of ILM, or Industrial Lights and Magic.  I absolutely loved watching Diva this week, and I’ll get to why later.  First let’s talk about some movie magic.  This documentary is one that I may have already seen, but come on, it’s awesome!  Even if you don’t find the technical aspect of CGI to be incredibly interesting (you’re just wrong by the way!) the history of ILM is one that has touched nearly every single blockbuster hit that we all watched as kids.  I particularly enjoyed watching the model making scenes in this documentary.  I have next to no idea how someone can ever come up with something as iconic as a Star Destroyer.  First of all, awesome name for a type of ship, but most importantly I can’t even imagine how the model designers got from what looked like a flying pizza slice on storyboards to this extremely sleek and menacing design that represents the fist of the Empire.  Seeing Robin Williams was a nice touch as well, and really makes you think about what actors have to deal with when acting alongside CGI characters.  Then hearing Jon Favreau’s story about how he accidentally picked the real life shot as the unrealistic one really got to me.  When CGI is to the point that not only can you no longer tell but it’s actually even better than the real thing, what will it look like 10 years from now?

Now I want to talk about Diva, because I feel like I could talk forever about ILM and my personal love for Star Wars and George Lucas.  We also studied Cinema du Look this week.  And wow was I blown away by Diva.  Okay, quick side note here.  Hollywood seriously needs to get their shit together.  Diva came out in 1981 and the cinematography was so tight and strong.  There are so many movies today that don’t even come close to the level that this movie did, and they did it almost forty years ago!  While the plot is a little all over the place (the actual diva in the movie really doesn’t serve a massive purpose to the overall action and plot) I think that it was still good enough that by the end I understood everything that had happened.  I wasn’t too worried anyway.  The rest of the film was a trip.  The stylistic choices and the random symbolism that was thrown in really made the film feel alive, like this was our reality but just slightly off.  I loved every second of it.  The characters outside of Jules were pretty one dimensional which is actually really cool.  The gangsters that stalk Jules throughout the film both have really interesting personalities that don’t really change throughout the film.  The one with the stupid glasses kept saying that he didn’t like anything, and yet he really enjoyed music as that was what was playing out of his headphones when he died.  Similarly, the other gangster seemed to enjoy killing much more than his partner and nearly every murder he committed was elaborate, showing that he was a professional.  So much about this movie was highly stylized, and it was just really enjoyable.  I found that I lost track of time in the viewing and just got wrapped up in the scenes.