Adapted Screenplay

I'm going to be doing adapted screenplay, which is how the scriptwriter interprets another source, mostly novels. I'll be watching the Oscar nominees for adapted screenplay, as well as successful movies. The movies that I'm going to watch are:
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook

And to compare the movies with, I'm going to watch:
Brokeback Moutain
The Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter

Cinematography

As mentioned in our first post, we are each going to focus on one aspect of movies and then use that as the basis of our critiques. As my category to focus on, I have chosen cinematography, mainly because I am a visual learner and personally, the visual aspect of a movie really influences my opinion of it as a whole. Also, I'm going to narrow in even further on, by only watching coming of age films. The reason being that I thought the movie Slumdog Millionaire had stunning visual effects, and it is a coming of age film. Seeing as I'm not an expert into what qualifies as good cinematography for a film, I did some research and here are some of the things I am going to be looking for in each movie to critique it on:

Does the film make certain use of color, texture, lighting, etc. to enhance the theme, mood, or setting?

Are the camera angles used effectively? Are they ever used for a particular effect?

Are there special effects in the film? Are  they essential to the plot? Are the handled skillfully?

Does the film have the same effect on viewers that a photograph or painting would?

Do the aspects listed above influence the way the viewer feels about the story being told?

Welcome/Plans

Welcome! Obviously, we have created a new blog to coincide with our new group project which will be focusing on movie critiquing. This idea may seem a little lame and may seem like it's going nowhere, but we are super excited and into this! Our past attempts at a group project have failed to succeed, as none of us were really ever interested in the topics. But, who doesn't like watching movies and talking about them? That's exactly what we're going to do with this project! We've discussed what aspect of a movie each of us enjoy the most, and using these different aspects, we are going to watch movies and critique them. To get a better understanding into each of the topics that we are interested in (e.g. cinematography, screenplay), we plan to see new movies that come out in the spring together as well as viewing older movies that have been influential in each category or topic. As we see each movie, we are going to post our thoughts about the movie, as well as comparing our thoughts to those of real critics and see how similar or different they are.