PIXAR

“Pixar is a community in the true sense of the word.” I think this sentence summarizes what is the special thing that makes Pixar different from any other company. The collective creativity they work with makes the studio have great ideas without buying scripts or movie ideas from the outside. Creativity is something that is achieved in a better way when worked in teams because there can be an exchange of a lot of ideas, and every movie contains a lot of ideas. That’s why Ed Catmull explains that good ideas are not rarer or more valuable than good people and many companies have a misconception of what creativity really is.

People are more important than good ideas. This is significant to mention because Pixar prefers to professionalize his people, rather than hiring new one. It’s very interesting because in this way team work is strengthen and by making great teams they assure a great work, even though ideas may not be good ones. A fundamental item for the proper teamwork is to accept criticism, a person will not have all the ideas by his own and other opinions may create a better work, in other words, it must be safe for everyone to offer new ideas, and not just safe, but basic. Honest feedback from everyone helps the project become in a great idea or they may add elements to the idea that make the story work.

There must be certain risk. People will always want to see something new when they go to the movies. This requires risk because Pixar comes up with really strange stories, for example, a robot in a post-apocalyptic world, a rat who wants to be a chef, toys that have life, etc. These strange ideas didn’t come up by one person from one day to another, it was needed of many people with different ideas and perceptions. In this business if you don’t make any risk you’ll never have success, and the studios and movie companies shouldn’t prevent risk (they should know how to minimize it) but have the ability to recover from failure. For any company this may sound frightening, but that’s why collective creativity is such an important element for the creation of audiovisual projects.

Finally, the culture that Pixar manage in which people at any level support one another shows the interest in helping not one person, but the entire company. The brain trust is an attractive method to receive different opinions and feedback from the senior managers, especially because it’s the production’s leader choice to use or ignore what they say. There are several benefits of doing this, but I consider that the primary one is that there are no surprises, because the team received the support of the studio, so they should had taken what they consider appropriate and the best for the story.

As we have seen, all of Pixar’s success is related to its teamwork. People play a fundamental role in this company because their opinion and ideas are important, no matter their level or disciplines; they have the opportunity to give their opinions. The consideration of new technology as art is also a key fact to its success. Pixar is a great example for any other company, because they make their people identify with their company and they work not for them, but for Pixar. 

Taxi Driver

This is the final scene of the movie "Taxi Diver" by Martin Scorsese, in which the protagonist Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), an ex-Marine who drives a cab, goes and saves little Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12 year-old prostitute who is controlled by a pimp called Spot. Travis is a depressed guy disgusted by the city in which he lives in, specially of violence and prostitution, and that's why when he meets Iris and discovers she is trying to escape from Spot, he decides to help her. 

We can find out several changes in the life situation of the main character during the scene; the main value change I would like to talk about is cowardice/courage. Throughout the movie, Travis looks the city ripping apart, but he never says or do anything, until now. He could be considered as a coward because of his apathy and disinterest for live but by the end of the movie (and of this scene) he rescues Iris and releases her so that she could go back to her parents house. The fact that at the end of the movie there is a newspaper in which they write that Travis is a hero, not an assassin, makes it even more credible. I thought another value change could be that at the end he dies, but while analyzing the scene, I discovered that we don't know if he dies; Travis is really ill, but he doesn't die. 

To find the beats in the scene we must find every exchange of behavior; from the moment in which Travis gets down of the cab, until he saves Iris.  He walks across the street and find Spot in a porsche, talks to him in a very friendly way (Beat #1), then they begin fighting and Travis talks in a sarcastic way (Beat #2). Spot gets really angry and kicks him, so Travis takes out his gun and shoots him in the stomach (Beat #3). He walks down the street like hesitating of what he is doing or waiting for something and then decides and goes in the building were Iris works (Beat #4). Travis goes in the building and shoots an old man in the hand but Spot shoot him in the neck (Beat #5), so he turns back and kills him. Our protagonist goes up the stairs, were he is shot again by the guy who was with Iris (Beat #6), Travis falls down but takes out another gun and shoots the guy. Finally, the taxi driver kills them all, incredibly he survived the shoot-out, but he tries to kill himself (Beat #7), but he is out of bullets. At the end, the police arrives and Travis moves his hand like if he was shooting himself (Beat #8). 

After the game is before the game...

Lola has to save his boyfriend’s live, that’s it. It doesn’t matter how she makes it, but she has to get 100,000 marks in less than twenty minutes. She has to run, a lot. The movie is divided into three different plotlines of the same story in which some specific events make a “butterfly effect” in Lola’s journey. The dog in the stairs, the lady in the sidewalk, the homeless tramp, the guy with the stolen bike, the ambulance, his father’s colleague who crashes his car, his father, and obviously, Manni. But, can we consider that there is a special thing that makes the outcome of each of the three plotlines different?

I think there isn’t, everyone of them is important, maybe in each plotline all the events have a different magnitude, but there is not an event that changes everything. Some of them don’t affect Lola and it’s the other way around, Lola affects their lives. Maybe some events affect in a more considerable way, but if one didn’t happen, everything would have changed. Each of them is important because it affect time, which in the story is essential to save Manni’s live.

As I said before, all the events are important in each plotline, but we must consider some of them that may affect more the story. For example, the dog in the stairs; maybe in the first plotline it doesn’t have an effect on Lola, but in the second one the guy with the dog makes Lola fall down the stairs. This simple fact may seem stupid, but it changes the whole story because it makes Lola run slower, so by the time she gets with his father, Lola listen to everything he says to his lover. This makes Lola furious and decides to rob the bank.

Finally, other event I consider makes the outcome of each plotline different is the father’s colleague who crashes his car. He is part of the story in a secondary way because he is going to pick Lola’s father, so if Lola hadn’t make him crash, the three plotlines would had changed and Lola wouldn’t get in time to the bank to talk with his father. Unconsciously, by meeting him, Lola makes possible getting to the bank in time, and even though in the last plotline were she wins the money in a casino because she doesn’t find his father at the bank, neither Manni or Lola end up death, so that was the answer for the whole thing: not talking to his father.


It is very interesting how such insignificant things can change the plotline in such a big way; even a fall, a car accident or a dog barking can change a story. I like the movie because it really gets you, there isn’t a moment in which you can get distracted because if you do, you may lose a thing that may change everything. The three plotlines are very exciting because everything happens really quickly and you can get identified with the fear of Lola and his true hurry to save Manni's life. TIme is fundamental because every second Lola wastes has a consequence in the future. 

Tybalt: the perfect bad guy...

"…talk of peace! I hate the word, as I hate hell…" I believe this is one of the sentences that best describe the character I am going to talk about: Tybalt, Juliet's hateful cousin who is always angry and hates Montagues with all his heart, a man who will never stop or hesitate until he gets what he wants. I would like to talk about him because in my opinion he is one of the main characters who is best represented in the movie. Even though the setting of the movie changes I think the essence of the character is the same, making a very interesting character who is willing to kill everyone who gets in his way.

First of all, I think it's very important to mention the fact that the whole movie uses the original dialogue from Shakespeare's masterpiece; this makes the movie really boring in some parts, but I think that this can also be taken as a good point because in some moments the dialogue makes you understand the true feelings of the characters, for example, Tybalt, who in every dialogue talks about how much he hates love, peace and Montagues. It is good because it makes the history even more dramatic and the characters can show what they think in a very clear way. Even though, they are some problems, because some dialogues refer to things that make you think you are in the XVI century, for example, when they are fighting and they mention swords, when they are referring to guns. It was a good idea to keep the original dialogues, but maybe they should had changed just some of them to make the movie more interesting.

One of the main reasons that I like this character is because Tybalt is the most archetypical bad guy from every movie; the way he walks, the way he is dressed, the way he talks, even the way he looks at his enemies… everything. He is the archetypical bad guy who will be causing trouble the whole movie. Tybalt is trying to kill Romeo since the time he discovers Romeo is at the party were he meets Juliet, after that, he kills Romeo's best friend Mercutio. He never has mercy of anybody or anything, many times this kind of characters are very selfish and hedonist, and this is just the case. Every single action of this character is to make something bad or evil, he never has a feeling related to love or peace, the only thing he thinks about is war, death, revenge and killing Romeo. His is always angry, even if he has no problems or he is in a party, were he should be having fun, he just thinks about bad things.

Finally, the way he looks like is just perfect, since the first time you watch this guy you know his is the bad one. Maybe he doesn't looks like the Tybalt many people imagine when reading the original play, but when you look at John Leguizamo dressed like a gangster and with a huge gun and a funny haircut, you understand that you can't trust this guy. As I said before, his attitude is the perfect one, and even if you haven't read Romeo and Juliet, you can understand that Tybalt hates Romeo and his family and that he is ready to do anything to destroy them. The characterisation is really well-done and despite some exceptions it is the same person of the book. He is always dressed with formal suites (dark colors) which gives him a more serious appearance, in the other hand, the Montagues are always dressed very casual, like if they were going to the beach or to a party. 

In my opinion, I think the movie is really bad, even though they tried to adapt the original play into the movie by saying exactly the same, the change of setting really affected the movie. They tried to make an action movie from a tragedy, and it looks ridiculous, in some parts it even seems a parody. Even though, they achieve to remain the essence of most of the characters and in my opinion they did a great work with Tybalt, because he is the archetypical bad guy, the way he express his feelings and the way he looks like.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is a surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel. The history is about a group of people (bourgeois) trying to dine together. Even though they are constantly interrupted by different kind of events and can´t have dinner, they continue attempting and trying to dine together. This is the main point of the movie, that´s the whole story; it may sound really stupid, but it’s an excellent satire of bourgeois and their way of life. 

It is difficult to identify the “Freytag´s Pyramid” in this story, especially because it´s a surrealist film in which the line between reality and dreams is very thin. The exposition is the beginning of the movie when the Thévenots, Rafael Acosta and Florence arrive to the house of the Sénéchals, in order to have dinner. In this part the characters are introduced and there is some information provided about them, also, there is an initial conflict or inciting incident, when Alice Sénéchal (host of the dinner party) tells the guests that she was expecting them the day after, so she has no dinner prepared.  

Many things happened after this, they go to a little inn to have dinner, but they can´t because the manager died some hours before, they also tried going to a tea house where they were out of beverages, also in the Sénéchals, but they don’t arrive because they run and have sex in their garden instead of joining their friends. These events can be considered as the climax because it is the most important part of the movie; there appear soldiers and a bishop that represent the military and cultural power they had during dictatorships, even though they appear to understand the hypocrisy, corruption and prejudice in which they lived.  

Finally, I don’t think there is a turning point or a resolution; because there is no problem solved in this story, we can even see in one of the last scenes the six main characters walking in a deserted road, resembling that they are going nowhere. As I said before, it is difficult to identify ideas because there are some disconcerting dream scenes (one of Buñuel´s specialty).

Follow the White Rabbit...

“The Matrix” is a fantastic movie.  I don’t have a favorite movie because they are a lot that I really like, and it is very difficult to decide which is my favorite one, but this movie is one of them and I would like to talk about it. The movie is about the nature of reality, it is based in Plato´s “Allegory of the Cavern”; according to this parable, we live in a material world in which we understand and know through our senses, but there are the “ideas” which can be comprehended through reasoning and this constitutes the fundamental kind of reality, the true world. The Wachowsky Brothers only customized a story for this theme, and there are many things that make the movie great, although they are also some bad things to be said.

First of all, I consider Matrix as one of my favorite movies because of the story (the beginning is really intriguing), maybe the story of the guy who lives alone as a hacker and then becomes the messiah of the world wasn’t very interesting, but the context in which the world is described: we live in a virtual-simulated world (Matrix) created by machines to keep us docile so that they can us our bodies to create their energy. That´s why I love this movie, this wacky idea of machines taking control of the world to use us as their batteries, I think is just great. This simple fact makes the movie one of my favorite ones, I think it has a lot of details that may be improved, but while watching the beginning I was really intrigued, even though I must admit that the first time I watched it I didn´t fully undertand it. I consider “The Matrix” one of the best sci-fi movies ever done; it may turn into an action movie were the bad guys chase the good guys and they is like the whole Police Department against Neo, who doesn’t receive one of the million bullets shot during the movie. This may be taken as something bad, but it may be also good becasue it makes the movie even more interesting and you can´t stop watching it.

In the second place, a very important thing I would like to mention is the influence that the movie had. “The Matrix” has a very numerous and vast literal and philosophical influence, as I said before the movie is based in Plato´s “Allegory of the Cavern”, but it resembles a lot of reflections from many different ideologies from different philosophers and even religions, that makes this movie even more interesting. Most of these reflections are about the power of the mind and the importance of reasoning and I think during the movie Morpheus resume it in one sentence - The body cannot live without the mind-. This combination of metaphors introduced into an action movie makes it really cool, because you are thinking while watching an action movie, this makes it an absorbing movie.

Finally, one of the movie´s characteristic for which it became worldwide known and even won an Academy Award, the special effects. You can´t remember the movie without imagining people walking through the walls, staying like ten second in the air, jumping buildings and dodging bullets. Many people like this movie because of its visual effect, and it really is great-looking throughout the whole movie, but that´s not it, I think it is just a bonus; it avoids people getting bored and the animations and special effects make you visualize the region in which the movie take place, maybe in the virtual world, fighting Kung Fu or in the sewer of the real world where you are chase by giant machines with the form of octopuses. I think the second and the third Matrix movies are not as good as the first one, maybe they just focus in the visual effects, but I think that as in many trilogies, the first one is the best one.

I consider “The Matrix” as one of my favorite movies because its story, its influence and special effects (Visual and Sound). These may be the three main points of why I like so much this movie; the ability of the Wachowsky Brothers of creating an action-entertaining movie in a very interesting philosophical one. They exploded all the elements they had in order to make a film to be remembered.   

James Dean

James Dean was an American actor from the 50s. He is well-known because of his roles in movies such as “Rebel without a Cause”, “Giant” and “East of Eden”. Even though he got nominations in the three movies, he never won anything; just after his death he received a posthumous Academy Award. He died in 1955 in a car accident while driving his Porsche Spyder 550, which he called “Little Bastard” (this car became a legend because several people have died while driving it). I really don’t know why James Dean is such a cultural icon, but I think that the fact that he died at such a young age (24) and while being in the peak of his career makes people wonder what would had been of this handsome, possibly homosexual and rebel boy who had a crazy and liberal way of live.

My Story

Last year I went to France to a little village called Montpellier, I studied there for about four months. Many things happened during my journey, but I would like to talk just about an specific trip I did with some of my friends. We had two weeks of vacation and many of my friends wanted to stay in Montpellier and get to know every "interesting" place in there, but I disagreed because it is a very small place and we could explore it like in three days. 

So my best friend and I organized a trip in which we travelled throughout many cites such as London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague and Frankfurt (not a very interesting place but our bus back to Montpellier departed from there); we talked with all the students and many of them thought it was a great plan, specially because it was really cheap. So we went to London, the must beautiful city I have every seen, but also the must expensive one. From there we travelled to Amsterdam, were many crazy things I wouldn't like to talk about happened; after that we went to Berlin, a city full of great history and many interesting places to visit. Finally we went to Prague, the city of the prettiest women, it is amazing the number of hot ladies living in there, I think they should export some of them to Mexico. 

From Prague we took a bus to Frankfurt were we would get back to our home. It was like 4:00 a.m. when we arrived to the border of Czech Republic to enter Germany, suddenly, one German policeman got on the bus and started asking for our passports, I was asleep so I didn't even notice when he arrived. One of my friends woke me up because the policeman saw the passport of one of my friends and got him down of the bus, and he did the same thing with the whole group. We really didn't understand why he was doing that because he couldn't even speak english, one of my friends that had just seen the movie "HOSTEL" even started shouting that maybe they wanted to kidnap us and torture us; until an officer who knew to speak english arrived and he explained everything to us: we had a French-Student Visa, so we were not supposed to get out of France. I couldn't believe it, we had been traveling thorough all the European Union and anybody told us anything until then.

They took us to the police station and kept us there in a little room for about four hours, one friend was really scared and even started crying because they told us they had to deport us back to Mexico, I must admit that I was very scared too. I called one of the policeman and asked him if there was no other solution and he told me that we could buy a one-day German visa just to get out of the country, but it could cost us €200 per person. My friends instantly agreed, but I only had €20 in my pocket, so I tried to convince the policeman to let me go for free, but he didn't agreed. I was shocked of how Germans are, like "THE LAW IS THE LAW" and you can´t change their mind, I'm not saying that is wrong, but here in Mexico it would had been easy to give €50 to the policeman and he would let us get back in the bus, but their culture is outstanding. I asked a friend to lend me some money and they freed us. We went to Frankfurt to take our bus back home, I was really upset and angry because I felt those Germans had robbed me, until in the bus station I ate the must delicious hot dog I have ever tried. It may sound stupid, but that hot dog remind me that even though shit happens, you have to look for the bright side of the story. 

I consider that journey as the best trip I have ever done and I had a great time with my friends and I would never change that trip for anything, although when I got back to Mexico I had to work four months in the movies in order to pay my father those €200. We returned to Montpellier and I couldn't help making fun of my friends and how we were really scared, how they started screaming because they thought they wanted to kidnap us or that they began crying because we would get deported.