Change Your Image
ostockman-2
Reviews
The IMAX Nutcracker (1997)
Dream and poetry.
I like traditional films and I tend to see Imax like a gimmick. In this case, however, I felt that the story, the emotions and the music of the film were not overtaken by the spectacular FX and I liked that. Less tricks, more feelings.... Tricks can be fabricated by the lorry load, it is just a question of $$$, feelings, poetry and emotions cannot be replaced when missing. In this film there is plenty of the latter. I would say it is a Low Tech piece of poetry.
The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream (2001)
A great film performed by children.
Children don't act. Acting is a grown-up thing. Acting requires experience, self-knowledge, self-awareness, all manner of tricks and skills, `turnings and windings'. But children play. They play at being someone else, a character. And that requires honesty, great earnestness and intense faith. It requires believing in what you are playing totally. An actor who ceases to believe in the character he portrays can get by through habit and devices. A child who ceases to believe in what he or she plays just stops. The thing ceases to exist. The child who plays, sees, hears, feels the character and the action. The actor sees, hears, feels himself in the character, engaged in the action. Actors have skill, technique; actors are artists. Children who play are rough and clumsy, awkward. Actors embellish. Children who play speak plain and rush to the point. Actors take themselves seriously. The children take the play seriously. And we should take the children seriously. For here, the play comes first. And what a play!