"Born into a world of highs and lows"


So this movie was shown in our cinema class but unfortunately I wasn't there. I was really curious, because my classmates were all talking about it and saying that I have to watch it, and it was good and has sex in it. Yes! They really did say that and oh yea! We have to make an essay about it. So I figured, I had to watched it at home by myself with a bag of chips and a big glass of iced tea and some ice cream that is already half empty, I might add.
Ok! On to the film. It's a plus for me that Ewan McGregor was in it. I'm a fan! Although I've only seen two of his movies,Tim Burton's Big Fish and Star Wars prequel it was enough for me to admire him with the talent that he has. Each character, every role, he delivers it with finesse. At the beginning of the film I saw Renton (Ewan McGregor) running and then thought oh this is gonna be a good one.

So the film is based on a book, Trainspotting is a 1993 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh and soon after it was published, was adapted for the stage.It is about drug addiction, it shows the pleasure of drug-taking both for itself and for the joy of escaping for a time with the kinds of life the characters are likely to have without it. The story focuses on Renton, his journey of taking in drugs and how he tries to distance himself to his peers to stop himself from taking the drug. The production. First off a round of applause for the actors, they were superb with their characters. Robert Carlyle as Begbie did a great job acting as a violent sociopath, and of course Ewan for his watershed performance as a heroin addict. The editing is good, especially the part where he went into the toilet. I don't know if he really did went into it or not but it is really disgusting! Anyway, the scene where the baby died is really disturbing. It's one of the negative effects of what a drug can do to your life, they take away your loved ones. I think the climax of the movie is when Renton was house arrested, suffering from heroin withdrawal in his parents house where he started to hallucinate. The part that he saw he baby crawling on the ceiling towards him really freaked me out. It flashbacked on him on how awful and tragic it was that it happened. His personal ghosts of addiction were coming back to haunt him. 

On our first day of cinema class our professor made his introduction about the subject and discussed about films. He made us watched this documentary about Hollywood styles, which I think are t.v episodes when I searched about it on google. Well known directors and filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Joseph Mankiewicz and Steven Spielberg where in this documentary film. Each shared their own favorite films and how they connect to their work. There are also discussions about how different directors achieve different effects with the available materials.The documentary was I think an hour long, which contains 13 episodes and each episodes in the series takes a look at the several styles Hollywood has gone through years. It features a rich collection of clips along with comments by actors, directors and other industry experts. It was hosted by John Lithgow who was an American actor and an author. This particular episode examines what makes a film a Hollywood film.  

In a classical Hollywood film, the story is dominant. The filmmakers rely on  narrative and visual elements to effectively tell their story. The audience were involved with the story and also they make sure you where with the characters, you connect with the character to the point that you wouldn't even notice the set design, the angles or the editing or any of the craft that created the whole film. Americans back then like stories more than anything else, so business people gathered some of the best storytellers to help them develop a style of story telling that is unimaginable.