Highly Recommended Books on Filmmaking

Preparing for my road to Hollywood, I've been doing research, reading books and surfing blogs. The information I get in the past five months is tremendous. From university programs, to screenwriting and photography, I must say that I'm a much better candidate.

Books I recommend are:
- From Reel to Deal by Dov Simens
- Rebel Without A Crew by Robert Rodriguez
- Essentials of Screenwriting by Richard Walters

Blogs and website I recommend:
- John August
- Scriptmag

Break a leg!

Life is Biutiful?

Biutiful (2010) Trailer

This is one of the movies that thoroughly translates the title of my blog: Movie Moves Me.

Biutiful is about a man, Uxbal, struggling from the dark side of living before his death. It talks about redemption, love, and helplessness. The background of Uxbal is complicated. He's a coordinator of police and drug dealers. He's a middleman of human trafficking. Yet he builds a relationships with some of the illegal immigrants.

His wife has bipolar disorder which she would hurt their children. He loves her and wants to fix their distorted relationship. He and his children moves to live with her again. But not for long, she can't control herself and hit their son. Uxbal is angry and disappointed.

He tries to bargain a better living environment for the Chinese illegal immigrants. He buys them heaters. However, the low quality heaters kill all the people in a locked basement.

He has super power of communicating with the dead. But he is too late that the Chinese nanny passed away and couldn't hear his apology.

He wants Igre, one of the illegal immigrants' wife, to look after his children. She gets the money and tries to get away.

The whole movie is dark. It takes time to absorb the heavy food for thought.

Is life beautiful? Apparently the director wants to say "No".

The beginning of the story seems awkward. But when you continue to watch the movie, you'll find that it is carefully planted by the director. And the ending echoes with the beginning.
It's brilliant.

I'm inspired to write a story on a desperate accountant. Even though the situation would not be as bad as Uxbal, but money, sex, lie and murder are inevitable.