BOYHOOD - 12 to 18 growing to be a man in the Americas!

BOYHOOD - 12 to 18 growing to be a man in the Americas!

Cast: Mason - Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette - Mom, Elijah Smith - Tommy, Lorelei Linklater - Samantha, Steven Chester - Prince, Ted (as Steven Prince), Bonnie Cross -Teacher, Elementary School Girl (as Sidney Orta), Libby Villari - Grandma,Ethan Hawke - Dad, Marco Perella - Professor Bill Wellbrock, Jamie Howard - Mindy & many others

& Crew: Director: Richard Linklater, Writer: Richard Linklater

Story & Backdrop

Set in Houston, Texas this film is extraordinary in parts ordinary and painfully slow and bad in parts. It is a docu-drama about an American kid growing up from the age of 7 and follows his passion photography. Finally at the age of 18 he earns a scholarship to study photography. 18 is age is considered by Americans as the transitional stage of the boyhood-adult transformation. If you are tuned to the American culture and their way of life, growing up and parenting you will probably enjoy this film the best. For those who are looking at sheer entertainment this film will be torture and a big bore! The sheer determination and the patience of this director must be appreciated.

We in India by nature deeply treasure and cherish our family bonds. I am sure that quite a few of us - amateur cameramen and photographers While growing up have managed to capture those precious moments with their own families, grandparents, parents, children, their b'day's, weddings and holidays etc by shooting it on their own (colour and black & white) with their respective old super 16 cameras, video cams, and more recently mobile phones and DSLR'S. Now all u guys would then have to do is to locate these video treasures and dust them out of old 'trunks orJathika potties'. Next locate a good video editor to sequence these clippings and 'voila' u will have a fabulous 'desi 'version of your own 'Boyhood!' The whole family can then sit, watch, share and enjoy those great moments captured by you! All the best! For the others who prefer 'masala' and lighthearted 'desi' entertainers 'Boyhood' in my opinion is a big No! No!

I have anyway managed to collect quite a few trivia and critical reviews for you to read and assess for yourself whether u want to watch this film or avoid it!

Trivia:

1. Richard Linklater cast his daughter Lorelei Linklater as Samantha because she was always singing and dancing around the house and wanted to be in his movies. At about the third or fourth year of filming, she lost interest and asked for her character to be killed off. Linklater refused, saying it was too violent for what he was planning (Lorelei eventually regained her enthusiasm and continued with the project).

2. Ellar Coltrane, who plays the boy of the title, was 7 years old when the movie started filming and 18 when it finished.

3. Had Richard Linklater died during the 12-year shoot, Ethan Hawke would have taken over the directorial duties.

4. The film was shot over 45 days from May 2002 to August 2013 which, roughly speaking is spanning more than 4,000 days.

5. As it is illegal in the U.S. to sign contracts lasting longer than 7 years, nobody could sign a contract for their 12-year commitment.

6. Richard Linklater and his crew got together annually to film Linklater's script about a boy who will eventually grow up into a college freshman. Linklater's method behind production was essentially to make several 10- to 15-minute short films over the course of 12 years, each depicting a year in the life of the boy, and then edit them together as a feature film.

7. Boyhood (2014) is one of only 11 movies to receive a metascore of 100, the highest possible score that can be attained from professional movie critics.

8. The film began production as "The Untitled 12 Year Project" and then became just "12 Years". But when the film was finished, Richard Linklater changed the title to Boyhood (2014), to avoid confusion with the similarly-titled, Academy Award-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013).

9. The guitar-playing street performer is Ellar Coltrane's real father, Bruce Salmon. He is a musician based in Austin, TX, where his cameo scene is set.

10. David Blackwell played Liquor Store Clerk in director Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993) and again here in Boyhood.

11. Lorelei Linklater is only three months older than her on-screen brother Ellar Coltrane. Richard Linklater jokes that he didn't so much cast her in the movie, as give in when she insisted on playing the part after hearing about the project.

12. Longtime friends, Linklater and Hawke both grew up with divorced fathers from Texas who worked in the insurance business, assessing risk--exactly the career Hawke's character, Mason Sr., eventually takes on in the film.

13. Mason Sr.'s roommate Jimmy is played by Charlie Sexton, a real-life musician who toured with Bob Dylan for many years. Several pieces of Dylan-themed artwork can be seen on the walls of Mason and Jimmy's apartment.

14. The GTO used in the film belongs to Richard Linklater.

15. In the campfire scene, the movie showed Dad and Mason talking about the possibility of another "Star Wars" movie. The campfire scene and the previously shown Obama/Biden campaign scene set in 2008 showed Mason at the same age. The real plans for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) were first conceived after the acquisition of Lucas film by Disney in 2012. Thus you might say that this movie's script in 2008 predicted the 2012 plans. Eventually, this movie was released in the same year that Episode VII started filming.

16. The film takes place from 2002 to 2013.

17. The film features two songs by Arcade Fire ("Suburban War" and "Deep Blue"). Coincidentally, two of the film's actors (Sam Dillon and Zoë Graham, who played Nick and Sheena, respectively) also appear in Spike Jonze's Scenes from the Suburbs (2011), a 2011 short film based completely on Arcade Fire’s 2010 album "The Suburbs," and featuring numerous songs from the album. Both Boyhood (2014) and "Scenes" were filmed in Austin, Texas.

18. The baseball game that Dad brings Mason and Samantha to was a real Brewers / Astros contest, held on August 18, 2005. The Astros' Jason Lane actually did hit a home run down the left field line (precisely where the camera was pointing) during the only inning, the 2nd, that the crew shot on-field action. However, in the film, Mason reports afterwards that the Astros "won it on Lane's three-run homer," while in reality, it was a solo home run, and the Astros lost when Roger Clemens gave up four runs in the seventh inning.

19. There are 143 scenes in the film.

20. Near the end of the movie, while talking to his father about relationships and girls, and in the next scene with his mother and sister, Mason wears a t-shirt with a painting "Collective Vision" by Alex Gray, an artist known for his artwork for the metal band Tool.

21. The football game that Mason and Samantha play with their father was filmed at the Miller Outdoor Theatre in Houston. The pavilion of the theatre itself can be seen at the top of the hill.

22. In the scene when the Dad takes Mason to a band practice after his graduation, a poster behind on the wall reads the name of one of the producers of the film, Cat Sutherland.

23. Mason's full name, as seen on his engraved Bible, is Mason Evans, Jr.

Critics/Viewers - How do they rate this film?

1. I don't know. I rated it 5 out of 10 stars. It got better after a while when Mason had grown up a bit but that was a long way into the movie. Acting was not very good and story was very cliché. Some of the conversations had that special Linklater quality to them and were actually rather good in the end. But overall it was a huge disappointment to me. Perhaps the stretched out production is to blame? Making him loose touch with what he was doing and perhaps not paying attention to the acting in the beginning not knowing if the project would take of? I don't know. For reference this is how I've rated other Linklater movies just so you don't take me as a Transformers guy or something like that.

Other films by this director: 1. Before Sunrise. 10/10 2. Walking Life. 10/10 3.Before Sunset. 9/10 4. A Scanner Darkly. 8/10 5. Before Midnight. 10/10

2. And I saw Slacker ages ago. Would rate it high but it's been too long to make an accurate rating. So yeah. I was expecting to give this movie a better rating. But you should go see for yourself. Most people seem to like it.

3. This reality film with a run time of 165 mins lacks an orientation a complication and a resolution. Every film needs an orientation a complication and a resolution. Nothing really happens it’s sought just the growing up of a boy within 12 years, first film to do this but is it really necessary. The only reason this film stands out is because the acting and the idea. But putting all that aside this doesn't even qualify as a movie.

4. I don't agree a lot of things happen in the movie. So much that you could do a film about any of the events of the movie. For example, the entire situation with the alcoholic husband and their struggles on trying to become a family composed of two half of previous families. Or the childhood with a non-present father and a mother trying to educate and sustain them. Or the first experiences of love on school.

5. I think that, on the contrary, this film expands above a lot of films on its theme... It tries to grasp his process of becoming an independent subject in the world and you could do a handful of films about it.

6. And of course a film doesn't have to be structured always like you expected, but even then I could say that the film is related to that structure. There's an orientation that's the introduction to the family and the roles every member of the family has related to Mason on the first scenes of his childhood. The complication... Every scene in the movie where Mason struggles to be himself to do what he wants without hurting others.

7. This isn't a movie about some extraordinary event. It's a movie that's supposed to reflect life and does so very well. If you thought nothing really happened, well that's usually how life goes if you think about it. And it also depends what angle you view the movie from. The power of the movie is in its humanity and how relatable different aspects of it are.

8. My wife and I saw this movie the other day and we kept waiting for it to get interesting. The novelty of the kids growing up in front of your eyes got old (no pun intended) pretty quick and we were left with a depressing movie with pretty terrible acting.

9. I would say Ethan Hawke was the only good character in the movie and I liked to see his progression and where his life took him. Otherwise the characters were pretty blah even though there were major events that took place in this movie (leaving an alcoholic abusive step-father etc) it was boring and very predictable.

10. Patricia Arquette character was very depressing and her lines seemed so forced we actually laughed at a few serious places. Her breakdown at the very end was how I felt about her acting and lines.

11. The two kids were equally confusing. The boy seemed lost and uninspired to do ANYTHING with his life. Seemed like a kid who thought he was entitled to the world for doing absolutely nothing. And what a depressing view to see this cute kid at the beginning turn into a dirty lazy nothing at the end.

12. The daughter was slightly interesting at the start and follow her brothers overall thought process. At least she was cute throughout.

13. I'm sure I'll get bashed by all the artsy film students out there but oh well. Movie sucked and I wish I had those 2 hours and 42 minutes back of my life.

14. Wow! You think the kid turned into a "lazy dirty nothing" at the end? I thought he turned into a pretty good kid who was somewhat confused, but still going to college to try to make something of his life and pursue his dream of being a photographer

15. Every scene at the end was like pulling teeth for this kid to do ANYTHING on his own. He looked "dirty" because his hair looked like he hadn't washed it for ages, his posture was always slouched and frail, everyone around him was giving him advice that he never took, and he was just wandering through life expecting things to fall into his lap while spouting off profound things that really made no impact on his actions... "I hate cell phones"... "Btw look at this pig while you drive". Maybe this is how kids are these days but it was a poor representation of what a "good kid" should be IMO.

16. This movie was just annoying because I wanted it to go somewhere and it never did. This alone made each scene and character that much more bland and uninteresting.

17. The story wasn't some groundbreaking tale and the characters while developed weren't that interesting. The writing was so bad at times and the acting was so forced in other areas. Just painful to watch at times.

18. I'm sure this movie touched you or somehow you connected with the characters in some way and that's great but it still doesn't make this a good movie.

Bottom Line: Strictly for those who get high on a nostalgic trip of 'look back'!

Quote: A film need not necessarily entertain all the time; At times it simply serves to revive forgotten memories!

My Rating: 2.5 + .5 for sheer perseverance of the director. Total: 3/5

Until Next Time

Director Haricharan

17/11/2014