Voir

[Greg]

I am so in. I recognized one of the voices in the piece. He's Tony Zhao. He did a great series on YouTube called Every Frame a Painting.

[thatguy]

I am so in. I recognized one of the voices in the piece. He's Tony Zhao. He did a great series on YouTube called Every Frame a Painting.

I saw that was coming and thought it might be up your alley...

--tg

[Greg]

It's like they made it just for me.

[Greg]

And then reality set in. I was hoping for a new documentary about films and that's not quite what Voir is. Judging from the first episode alone, Voir is an essay about film. The episodes are short, ranging in length from 18 to 22 minutes long. Which is good, because I don't think I could take much more of Summer of the Shark, the first episode of Voir.

Summer of the Shark revolves around the movie Jaws and the effect it had on two young sisters growing up in California. The sisters saw the film over forty times, staying through multiple viewings every chance they got. One of the sisters is the narrator of Ep01. She talks about her mother's abusive relationships, living on food stamps and hanging out the beach with the surfer kids. She talks about the profound effect the film had on her and movie making in general, how Jaws spawned the blockbuster mentality in Hollywood. But no films were ever as good as Jaws.

There wasn't any talk about how the film was made. Or any other films for that matter. It was all about these two sisters and watching movies.

[Greg]

Redemption! Ep02 Tony Zhaun, who does the great YouTube series about called Every Frame a Painting, does the second episode called 'The Ethics of Revenge' and the central film he talks about is Park Chan-Wook's Lady Vengeance. The episode covers a bunch of films that have Vengeance as the central theme but he keeps cycling back to Lady Vengeance to back up his theory about the steps for a successful Vengeance film. Lots of great clips from a lot of movies.

Ep03 Another good one. But we are back to the motif where we see the narrator in the theater talking about films while the films play on the screen in front of them. But Ep03 "But I don't Like Him" is all about films with unlikeable leading men. The narrator starts out his thesis with Lawrence of Arabia and how he's scene the film dozens of times but he doesn't really care for Lawrence himself. And that is perfectly acceptable. He then goes on to prove his point about unlikeable characters in films by showing a lot of great film clips. He particularly points out Scorcese who has made a career of films with unlikeable protagonists with Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. He also does a take on the Godfather films. Very enjoyable clip extravaganza.

A must see for film aficionados 

Here is Tony Zhaun's take on Jackie Chan. It has 22 million views on YouTube.

[Greg]

Ep04 The Duality of Appeal. Not a great episode. I think because they couldn't frame the question very well and then didn't do a great job answering the question. The episode was about animation and it started off strong with a comparison of how women in animated films are drawn versus how men are drawn. Naturally, the women are all drawn to be appealing while the men are drawn to show character. Then they went off to show how they would design a female character to have more character.

Ep05 Film vs TV. Back on track with this episode. It does a good job of showing the differences between TV and Film and how over time those distinctions are blurring. Lots of good clips. It also reminded me that we don't have 3D releases anymore.

[Greg]

Ep06 Walter Hill's 48 Hours. The birth of the buddy cop story and the ascent of Eddie Murphy as a super star. This was another good episode despite the fact they kept lauding Walter Hill. I mean, I did work for him on Stupidnova so.....

But I could see their point. The episode also covers a lot of the racism in the movie. At this stage of the game it was disturbing to see Nick Nolte use the 'N' word. All in all, I recommend this episode as well.