perks of being a wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower – review: Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, thursday 4 october 2012

Ezra Miller is given a disappointing role in this teen agony drama that has a strong flavour of phoniness.

Production year: 2012

1. Country: USA

2. Cert (UK): 12A

3. Runtime: 103 mins

4. Directors: Stephen Chbosky

5. Cast: Dylan McDermott, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Kate Walsh, Logan Lerman, Nina Dobrev, Paul Rudd

Those who admired Ezra Miller’s performance in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, and were eager to see what he did next, are going to be dismayed at the way he has been cast in this passive-aggressive teen agony drama with a strong flavour of phoniness. Miller gets to play the campy-witty gay best friend, who is simply a sacrificial figure; his function is to lend depth to the straight characters’ stories. It is 1991, and Logan Lerman (who played the lead in the fantasy movie Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief) is Charlie, a sensitive, lonely boy who is just starting out in high school. He gets taken under the wing of sassy step-siblings Patrick (Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson) and soon finds the resulting emotional triangle just as painful and complex as the loneliness he’d left behind. Sam is supposedly much hipper than her crass classmates, being into the Smiths and Dexys Midnight Runners. And yet, bafflingly, she does not recognise David Bowie’s Heroes when it comes on the car radio. Patrick is catty and bitchy, but his inner life is a mystery. The theme of child abuse lingers and is there to underline the overwhelming importance of all that is happening – common or garden-variety unabused loneliness is, of course, nowhere near dramatic enough – but the drama fails to absorb this theme, or to do justice to it. The movie has its moments of soap-opera excitement, but it has all the substance of a teenage strop, and none of the energy.

 Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, thursday 4 october 2012

my review:

Let’s start with saying that I don’t agree with the review of Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian. In the original review the writer blames one of the characters of not recognizing the song of David Bowie. I found it rather refreshing and endearing that they search the title of the song. It is the year 1991, the characters are allowed to be ignorant of some things, they didn’t have access to the internet yet and young people still wrote letters and made mixtapes in that time.

The reviewer says that the movie does not do justice to the theme of child abuse. I totally disagree with that. It only becomes clear at the end of the movie that Charlie, the main character, has been abused when he was a child. For me, that puts the whole movie in a whole new perspective. I like the fact that you only know the complete situation at the end of the movie. Because like that you still think about the movie afterwards and you try to find signs of child abuse in the rest of the story. I hardy ever think about a teen movie after I see one. But this one has depth and made me think about it even days after I saw it.

The movie is filled with so many different characters that it is impossible not to relate to one of them. Especially because everybody has experienced how it is to be a teenager, and how it feels to grow up. There are some cheesy elements in the script, for example the characters think that everything is infinite. I found it naive, but then I thought of the time when I was their age and realized they captured exactly how I thought back then.

The cast was amazing. You can clearly see that all the actors are also friends in real life. There is a great chemistry. I can’t say anything bad about the acting performances. I did not saw the movie ‘we need to talk about Kevin’ but the character that Ezra Miller plays in this movie is everything but disappointing to me. The character moved me. He was not like a ‘typical gay friend’ like in so many other teen movies. He was sincere and his battle for acceptance is shown in the story.

The film is based on a bestselling novel, athough I did not read this book. I like that Steven Chobsky, the writer, was completely involved in the making of this movie. He was the writer, the director and the producer. I am sure that this was a big influence on how the movie turned out. I think that because of Chobsky the story remained pure, honest and in some way simple. 

I thought the movie was inspiring and beautiful. It made me laugh and cry at the same time. The story lingered in my head for some time and ‘heroes’ from Bowie was on repeat on my playlist. This tells me that the movie is captivating. It was nice to feel like I was in high school again. You can sit back and relax while watching the movie but the movie can also make you wonder. That is why this movie is so great. Somebody recommended this movie to me, and I would definitely recommend it to somebody else.

 

Jane Perkins- Portrait of Nelson Mandela

 

Jane Perkins is an artist from Devon. She uses unwanted objects in her work like beads and buttons. She starts with a photograph as a guide, sticking the pieces on with a glue gun. Her work always contains an element of fun like in this portrait of Mandela where she used the arm of a Barbie doll to make his ear. Environmental artists are very popular at the moment as they help to promote recycling to help save our planet. They see potential and a new life in trash. Perkins’ work is a good example of this kind of art.

There are several artist who work with garbage. But I think that the work of Jane Perkins really stands out because of her use of colour and humour .Her portraits are really lifelike as you can see on the portrait that I chose. The portrait shows the kindness of Mandela. That is the main reason why I chose this work. She captured his personality and that only with garbage. She has a real gift. Her work makes me smile, and I am sure that she has that effect on a lot of other people around the world too.

This work is very dynamic because of the diagonal lines in the background that suggest movement. Perkins uses bright colours, and those colours add liveliness to the work of art. The work keeps on surprising you. When you look from afar, you see a beautiful portrait. When you look at the work from up close you can see the details and the material that Perkins has worked with. A plastic spider and tiny green dinosaur are part of the multi-coloured pattern on his shirt.
The materials tell us a story too, they can be funny, but most of all I think it is inspiring to see the materials. It makes me think about all the things we throw away. I am sure that that is what Perkins intends to say with her work.

This work won the People’s vote prizes at different open art exhibitions during 2009. I think that Jane Perkins and her piece of art totally deserved it. There should be more artists like her. She is innovating, modern and inspiring. I think that modern art misses ‘a spirit’ sometimes, that is certainly not the case with this work. This proves that not only painters or photographers are able to display the world in a realistic way. Her originality and use of colours are sublime. To make something from nothing takes a lot of talent and creativity. Perkins brings awareness to our consumers society. She made me think twice about what I should throw away and what I should keep. We should recycle and think about the purpose of each object.