Anna Karenina

Here is the promised first "movie critic of the week" post that I promised in my last post. While I was talking to some London natives, they were lamenting how all TV shows and movies release later in the UK than in the States because, duh, most popular shows and films are filmed and released by American companies. However, the new film adaptation of Anna Karenina is not one of those films. It is for all intents and purposes a British film...even though it's a Russian novel. This gets especially odd and confusing when everyone's accents in Imperial Russia are English accents...but we'll forgive and forget this little issue.

From IMDB.com

Anyways, as promised by the trailers and the movie poster (as seen above), the film Anna Karenina is a beautifully filmed and staged epic film to match the epic storyline. The sumptuous costumes and sets really set the mood for the film. Everything is so beautifully created and on top of that, director Joe Wright decided to set the entire film within a theatre. The pit, audience boxes, stage, backstage, and rafters of the theatre are all constantly transformed to create a new setting. For instance, the walkways above the stage are used to represent the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In another scene, the entire theatre was transformed into a horse racing stadium. The entire concept is both interesting and well done. For this reason, the film constantly entertains.

Admittedly, I have never read Leo Tolstoy's novel and therefore know very little about the specifics of the storyline. So in terms of the adaptation of the novel, I felt like it was cohesively put together and very comprehensive given that novel, I assume, is a very dense storyline. However, I do think that the plot did suffer from the creative ideas for the film. Properly conveying Leo Tolstoy's work didn't seem to be the main focus of the film, but rather how interestingly it could be portrayed. At one point while watching the film, I thought of a concept that a choreographer I worked with taught me. It's called "KISS", i.e. "keep it simple stupid". I personally feel like the adapting of the novel would have been benefited from this concept. But then we probably would have missed out on all the great film techniques used by Wright in directing the film. So I think how people receive the film will be based on their expectations for the film. If you love Joe Wright's work, you'll probably think its different from his past films but very interesting. If you're a huge Leo Tolstoy fan, you'll probably be disappointed.

Anyways, I can't wait for it to be released in the US so I can hear all of your opinions on the film. And overall, I would say the film is definitely enjoyable and worth paying the money to go see in theaters.

P.S. If there is anything you, as an audience to my blog, would like me to focus more on in these critics, please let me know!

P.P.S. I had my first celebrity siting yesterday! Tom Hiddleston from Midnight in Paris, which I reviewed in an earlier post, and The Avengers walked past me on his way to the bathroom in the Laban dance building while I was at a social for one year programme/post-graduate students. Seriously, I almost peed myself from excitement...

Beijing to DC to London in Nine Months...and some other places in between

Hello from the bustling city of London! I've been in the UK for a week now and have been requested by a close friend to restart my blogging. So, I will oblige my good friend as well as use this as a way to stem my boredom on empty days. For those that don't know (although let's be real, the only people that read this blog are friends but we'll pretend as if I have a huge international audience), I'm in the UK for a year studying at a conservatory in London that is for music and dance...I'm trying not to give too much personal information away but frankly, there's only one conservatory for music AND dance in the UK....so just google that now.

Before arriving, tons of people told me how I would have such a great time and how I would absolutely love the city, but most of those people also didn't have to set up a temporary, one-year home for themselves here. Therefore, since I've been in town, I have seen very little of the city, except for a few sites. What I have seen a lot of is their shopping centers (or rather "centres") where I have purchased various homegoods. This whole experience, thus far, basically reminds me of when I moved to DC to start my undergrad. The only difference is now I'm too old for the antics of the "freshers" on my floor and their tendency to make loud noises late at night. Still, don't be put off by my negative Nancy view, I expect I will have a great time in London. It just takes awhile to settle into a new city and make new friends. It doesn't really help that classes don't actually start till September 24th and I'm consequently left to fend for myself for over two weeks.

But in terms of my dance programme (I have to learn the proper British way of spelling words, after all my heathenish American English will not do!), I'm super excited for the year and I think my courses will be really good for me. It is difficult to see what everyone is doing back home and all the opportunities I'm missing, but I have to remember that by being here I'm better preparing myself to take on those same opportunities in a year...I just hope people don't forget me....

Along those lines, I will be sharing my goals for my dance career (*tingles*) in future posts on the blog. I've been told that if you write down, or in this case type up, your goals and ambitions; it helps to make them real in your mind and therefore more likely for you to actually achieve them. Two simple-ish goals that I've already slowly been tackling are: 1. creating a business card (DONE -- just waiting to print them until I get back to the US) and 2. creating a website. The website is a slightly larger undertaking, but I'm trying to use various sites to create some different ideas for what I want to visually represent me on the web. So, I'll keep you posted about that...

Okay, I've already written much more than I thought I would for this first post and I know it's a lot of text and no visuals, so sorry for that. But future posts will also be about my experiences in London, my dance programme, various opinion posts because I can't help myself, and also a "Movie Critic of the Week" post (nice rhyming eh?). The last idea is basically a tactic for me to consistently post each week and since I have Netflix, a great independent movie theater nearby, and endless amounts of boredom, I shall attempt to share old, new, and different movies with you. I'm gonna say for now, that the movie post will come out each Sunday night (this might change once I get my class schedule) However, I will post a special edition movie post (sounds so fancy) in a little bit because I just went and saw a movie today...and I want to...that is all.