IAN ANGLUM
BBA '19
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond Review
For the documentary review, I watched “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond”. The Documentary is about Jim Carrey’s transformation into becoming Andy Kaufman, the famed comedian and mad man. To get the role, Jim Carrey basically became Andy and behaved just like him. The entire time they shot the movie “Man on the Moon”, Jim stayed in character, from the moment he woke up to when he went to bed. Even when they were shooting scenes of Andy’s alter ego Tony Clifton, Jim would stay in character as Tony and talk and act just like Andy would. One great part of the movie was when Jim had to portray the moment in Andy’s life where Andy fought the WWE wrestler Jerry Lawler. Jim began taunting Jerry, just like Andy did to the point where Jerry actually beat up Jim on set of the movie.
The footage from behind the scenes of the movie was released to Netflix 20 years after the film, and Netflix used the footage to create a documentary and brought in Jim Carrey to narrate and talk about his experience on set. The main focus of the documentary was of course Jim’s experience, but they did a good job of weaving out his reflective opinion on his experience to what he was doing then. What was also good about the documentary was the past footage of other people on set of the movie. Whoever filmed the behind the scenes asked other people on set questions about Jim’s unusual behavior, which allowed other opinions to be filtered into the documentary. What was also a cool technique the filmers did was have Jim Carrey look straight into the camera when being interviewed, giving a fresh new perspective on interviews. The lighting and background they used for the interview offered really good depth and was visually appealing. They would also leave in long pauses when Jim finished speaking, allowing the viewer to soak up more of what Jim said and allow new audio to transition smoother. The constant back and forth of old more grainy footage to the new high quality shots of Jim now offered good diverse techniques to filming as well. The old footage was pretty amateur and laidback, but went well with the newer footage of Jim’s interview. If it was just old footage, the documentary would not have been as intriguing because Jim offered a lot of good context.
I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys either Andy Kaufman of Jim Carrey skits/films. Even though I am not that big a fan of Jim Carrey, I still found the documentary very amusing because of the work ethic Jim put towards recreating the timeless personality of Andy Kaufman. The history behind Andy Kaufman and what he did was well portrayed, even in a documentary loosely based around him. I would also recommend this film to anyone that enjoys biographies about actors, because it portrays the process of getting an acting gig and what it takes to truly capture a role in a movie.
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Isle of Dogs Movie Scene Critique
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In the Wes Anderson movie, Isle of Dogs, the “OK, it’s worth it” scene in the beginning of the film helps establish the circumstances for these dogs that have been ostracized to Trash Island due to a “dog flu” that has been spreading in Japan. The scene opens up from a fade to a trash bag being dropped onto the ground by a cart that takes trash from Japan to Trash Island (a foreshadow to later scenes). After the trash bag drops, five dogs appear behind it, all eager to get their paws on the contents inside. The playing of the flute during this part of the scene represents the curiosity they have for the bag. Suddenly, the soundtrack changes to a heavy drum, the dogs all look up to see five figures in the distance, which we can predict are other dogs. The camera focuses on the figures to reveal that they indeed are dogs. A tumbleweed of trash rolls through the frame to represent a standoff between the two packs.
The camera then moves to a close up of each dog that has appeared, with the background matching their glowing eyes. This is also how we get to learn their names by reading their dog tags. We also get to slightly know the personality of the dogs through these close up shots. Rex, the first dog we see, looks ravenous and wishing to eat whatever is in that trash. Duke seems calm and collected with the help of his bright blue eyes and blue background, a color we associate with calm and cool. Boss, the dog with the Dragons baseball jersey, seems very scared of the opposing dogs, with his pupils severely enlarged and his jaw dropped slightly. The final dog does not have a dog tag, so we do not yet know his name, but we can tell he is the unofficial leader due to Anderson revealing him last.
The camera goes back out to a wide shot with a sideline perspective of the standoff. As both packs of dogs move statically closer to the trash, the camera zooms in with them as well. We then get a low to the ground shot of each pack growling furiously at each other. This goes on until Rex cuts in to negotiate with both sides that they should look into the bag to see if anything is of worth to them before they “tear themselves to shreds”. Both packs investigate. We first get an evaluation from Rex of the contents with a shot looking up at the dogs from the perspective of the trash. Our unofficial leader cuts into the eloquent evaluation to state that it’s worth it, to then we are immediately met with a fight scene between the two packs. The camera goes back to the sideline view we had before to a dust cloud with limbs flying within it. Anderson actually used stop-motion cotton for the dust instead of CGI for this fight. We get a close up shot of the fight to show the leader of the pack biting off one of the opposing dog’s ear, ending the skirmish. The scene ends with losers of the fight walking away in defeat, with a medium shot to let dialogue unfold.
In total, there were 25 shots that were used for only 1 minute and 40 seconds of the whole film. Each shot was specifically planned to show and establish the setting of the movie, as well as what is to come later as this scene is so early on in the film.