{"id":8684,"date":"2014-05-01T12:39:22","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T16:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=8684"},"modified":"2014-05-01T12:39:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T16:39:22","slug":"br-dreamworld-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=8684","title":{"rendered":"BR: Dreamworld (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dreamworld2012_BR\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: Excellent \u00a0\/ \u00a0Extras<\/strong>: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>Sneak Attack<\/a> \/ CAV<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong> All<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong> \u00a0January 7, 2014<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> \u00a0Drama<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong> An animator takes a leap of faith and drives with an impetuous girl to San Francisco in the hope he’ll land a job and find true love.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Filmmaker Commentary Track \/ 3 “roguemantic” short films: “Long Story Short” + “Elliott” + “Tomorrow” \/ “Life After Myth” animated sizzle reel \/ Oliver and Lily’s Blog \/ Artwork and Photos.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dreamworld<\/strong> follows struggling animator Oliver (actor \/ writer Whit Hertford) as he makes a rash decision to hitch a ride with a complete stranger \u2013 \u2018manic pixie\u2019 Lily (Mary Kate Wiles) – to San Francisco, where a contact at Pixar might finally give him a badly needed break.<\/p>\n

36 hours into their trip the pair begin a relationship, share some secrets \u2013 Oliver\u2019s father abandoned the family for his own stab at an animation career, Lily\u2019s pixie mood swings and energy spurts stem in part from self-medicating heroin use \u2013 and seem to be on a path to couplehood, but during a stopover at the apartment of Lily\u2019s \u2018Pixar friend\u2019 Colin (Piranha 3DD<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Matt Bush) Oliver discovers she\u2019s a liar, unfaithful, and spiteful.<\/p>\n

When she furiously bolts from Colin\u2019s apartment, a stranded Oliver finds a peculiar camaraderie with Colin (Lilly\u2019s most recent ex) and his best friend Richard, and the trio venture to a local gamer hangout to ease their troubles. Some conflicts erupt at the store, and Lily unleashes some vicious, cruel verbal assaults before fully abandoning Oliver and taking valuable presentation files needed for his Pixar pitch.<\/p>\n

Things ultimately work out in the end, with Lily being the right medicine to push and engage Oliver to gamble on his skills as an animator, and meet new friends who instill a new sense of purpose, and giving him a decisive focus.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s ultimately one of the film\u2019s key messages \u2013 just do it \u2013 and to an extent it resonates, but the meandering structure established by director \/ producer \/ cinematographer \/ editor Darst\u00a0is further stressed by Hertford\u2019s loose script that was crafted from improvised scenes worked out prior to filming.<\/p>\n

Once Oliver and Lily are on the road, the film essentially becomes a straight road movie, with various unknowns resolved rather soon: they flirt, they fall in love, they share some level of personal & emotional intimacy, and then there\u2019s a long stretch before Lily\u2019s quirky persona is shattered. Interpolated with these micro conflicts are a series of repetitive music montages in which Darst assembles footage of the pair walking, touching, sitting, nuzzling, laughing, and sitting still; each set should show some advancement of their relationship or seed a new conflict, but it\u2019s often repeated information, culminating in one more extended montage where they pair tour San Francisco \u2013 a sequence which, until a frank discussion at the tail, is just padding. They\u2019re nicely cut and shot sequences, but they prolong getting the pair to Colin’s apartment where the film’s more aggressive conflicts are unleashed.<\/p>\n

When Lily snaps, it\u2019s a fast escalation from being pissy to sadistic, and her vicious downgrading of Oliver before she takes off with his folder doesn\u2019t have any continuity with prior scenes. Both Colin and Richard tell Oliver ‘she\u2019s crazy’ and manipulates men before trashing them, but there\u2019s no insight as to why; Lily just switches gears from manic pixie to a sociopathic bitch, and in spite of Oliver offering a second chance \u00a0in the finale, she fails to provide a compelling reason for her quixotic behaviour (and regain our sympathy). \u00a0There\u2019s also the issue of Oliver\u2019s best friend Jules who rescued him from being stranded in San Francisco: with the couple restarting their relationship at the end, Oliver must explain to Jules why he\u2019s back with the girl whom she utterly loathes – a move that would undoubtedly bring stress to what’s a tight friendship.<\/p>\n

Both writer and director also relied a little too much on the actors\u2019 improvisation to build drama and create scenes with meaty content. The weakest effort is the so-called pitch session near the end where Oliver junks his original idea, and asks a pair of guest speakers from Pixar for their opinion on a \u2018classic concept\u2019 involving a Hobo and his companion – a bottle of pee.\u00a0After the pitch, Jules tells Oliver \u2018he owned the room\u2019 by taking control of his life and gambling on a wackier idea, but the actual moment where Oliver is supposedly enthralling the Pixar men and regains his self-confidence is over after a few cursory words; the actors and director may have known the gravitas of the scene, but none of it\u2019s translated onscreen, especially from the perfunctory dialogue.<\/p>\n

Dreamworld<\/strong> has a story, but it seems to have gotten diluted and elongated during the improv process, losing some important dramatic beats. Even if the lead characters were driving around to clear their minds, learning from each other\u2019s company and life lessons, falling in \/ out of love during the intense few days of the story, Darst\u2019s music montages kind of negate the drama of prior scenes by being giddy, quirky, and ultimately fluffy; there\u2019s a strong sense of what the filmmakers were after, but it\u2019s only occasionally palpable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Blu-ray + Extras<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sneak Attack\u2019s Blu-ray offers a really beautiful transfer of the film, and Darst\u2019s meticulous colour scheme is filled with soft candy colours which are balanced with the actor\u2019s costumes and the exterior shots of open skies, sunsets, and the various natural and architectural elements. The digital sound mix is generally fine \u2013 the audio\u2019s been cleaned up in spite of some obvious use of location sound \u2013 but the music track is pushed a little too high, blasting higher than the dialogue throughout several scenes.<\/p>\n

Extras include a sometimes meandering filmmaker commentary track which heavily favours reflections on acting; some publicity materials associated with the films\u2019 characters (Lily\u2019s Diary, character blogs, and some animated material), plus three shorts directed by Darst featuring Hertford. Both have collaborated on several long- and short-form projects developed from improvised material which are distributed through the pair\u2019s company, Sneak Attack, and the trio of shorts \u2013 branded as \u201croguemantic\u201d short films \u2013 presage some of the content and problems in their feature film debut.<\/p>\n

Each film stars Whit Hertford as a man searching for love, and taking simple yet daring steps to meet and lock into what may be the perfect romance. In Long Story Short<\/strong> (2010) he\u2019s an actor who woos fellow improv artist Georgia (Kirkpatrick, who also performed the score); Elliott<\/strong> (2011) has Whitford struggling to move on after the love of his life (Wiles) is killed in a car accident after a heated argument; and in Tomorrow<\/strong> (2012) he plays a screenwriter who spots an old flame on the subway and attempts to rekindle an old romance (Stephanie Allynne) after freshly breaking up with a bossy girlfriend (Holly Prazoff).<\/p>\n

The shorts could be regarded as stepping stones where both Darst and Hertford experimented with the latter\u2019s concept of the sensitive bachelor – a character hungry to connect with someone,and a guy willing to articulate feelings to pro-actively problem-solve upcoming rough spots. Darst also tests out creamy lighting styles which evolved into Dreamworld<\/strong>\u2019s lush look, and assembles similar montages of a couple discovering, playing, nuzzling, and finding calm amid a prolonged endorphin trip.<\/p>\n

Not dissimilar to Dreamworld<\/strong>, the weakest sections in the shorts are direct confrontations where arguments and emotional ugliness aren\u2019t developed and paced in relation to follow-up scenes (the \u2018big argument\u2019 in Elliott<\/strong> which, as acted and compacted in the final edit, is quite civil, with a palpable but hardly abrasive sternness) and a few sections of the improv-styled dialogue feel a little trite.<\/p>\n

Even with its flaws, Darst and Hertford\u2019s Dreamworld<\/strong>\u2019s a laudable effort, and it\u2019ll be interesting to see whether the filmmakers can refine scenes into a tighter feature-length project, and find a balance between a looser and natural screenwriting style with better orchestrated conflicts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2014 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nIMDB<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using a road movie structure in which the mini-adventures and personal revelations during a journey cause characters to reassess their lives and intended goals at their journey\u2019s endpoint, Dreamworld follows struggling animator Oliver as he makes a rash decision to hitch a ride with a complete stranger…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[2717,2719,2721,2718,2720],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-2g4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8684"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8696,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8684\/revisions\/8696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}