Vern's QuickTime Quick Picks - Two Views: The Believer & DysFunKtion Family

by , 2:15 PM EST, March 28th, 2003

Every week, Vern Seward takes a look at Apple's latest offerings at the QuickTime Trailer site, letting your know what's new.

Perspective.

In movies, some directors use perspective to tell a story from a view not normal to us, be it physically through tricks of the camera as it was used quite creatively in the movie Being John Malkovich, or through the story itself as in the upcoming movie The Believer.

In Being John Malkovich, people paid to see the world as seen through the eyes of John Malkovich for 15 minutes. The very idea of becoming another person by crawling through a tiny door should make you snicker and maybe a little curious. What if you actually could view the world through the eyes of another person for a limited time; who would you choose and what would you see?

In The Believer, a young Jew believes the neo-Nazi propaganda that depicts Jews as evil, yet he also believes in the religion of his father that promises that they are the Chosen People. How can two distinct and opposite views exist in one man, and how could this young man, steeped in the trapping of his faith, come to embrace ideas that are so violently different? The only way to understand him is to see the world as he sees it, learn what he knows to be true, view life from him perspective.

Comedians use their talents to show us the world from odd perspectives. In the new movie DysFunKtional Family, Eddie Griffin (Undercover Brother) offers views into his family through his stand-up routine interspersed with documentary footage of the subjects of his jokes. After seeing this movie you'll likely realize that everyone has a DysFunKtional family to some extent.

One of the definitions of perspective offered by Webster's Dictionary is, "That which is seen through an opening; a view; a vista. 'The perspective of life.' --Goldsmith." It could be correctly argued that all movies are perspectives, offering views into lives and situations for our enjoyment, but most don't emphasize the view and why it is important, and most don't make perspective a primary part of the movie. Instead, perspective is just a tool with which to tell a story. Both The Believer and DysFunKtional Family are movies of views that are different yet familiar to us. It is these views that make these movies worth seeing.

Other movie trailers to see:

• City of Ghosts: Matt Dillon is a con man who has just completed the con of his life. He goes to Cambodia to collect his money but finds that the con may not be over, and that he may be the victim.
• Malibu's Most Wanted: You know that record labels created the boy-bands to sell pop records, right? What if they tried the same thing with a rap artist, and the rap artist is White? Such is the premise of this spoof starring Jamie Kennedy, Taye Diggs, Anthony Anderson, and Ryan O'Neal. Looks like silly fun.

That's it for this week. Just a reminder, the second X-Men movie (X2) is coming next month. If you haven't checked out the trailers yet you might want to.

Attention AniMatrix Fans!!! The second in the series of animated short movies based on the Matrix, this one called Program, has been released and is ready for you to download. There will be 9 AniMatrix movies in all, 4 of which will be released as free downloads and you'll be able to buy them all on DVD in June. Originally, all 9 AniMatrix movies were to be free downloads but perhaps the money to be made in DVD sales was too great to pass up. Oh well.

Apple's QuickTime Movie Trailer