Training Wheels – movie review

I’m not actually going to review the content of the movie at this time, and I’ll tell you why. First though, I need to say that Training Wheels is an independent film, locally written, filmed, edited, and shown. It is playing right now at the Harkins Centerpoint theatre in downtown Tempe, and will be playing through Thursday (11/14/2002). If you have the opportunity to, you should go see it. It was filmed digitally and is projected digitally, but it is one of the best looking digitally created independent films I’ve seen.

So as I was watching it, I was impressed by the story and the acting and most of the writing (this is Matt Lagman’s first screenplay, and is very well done), but as an aspiring film maker most of my attention was on the technical aspects of the film. I’d emailed with the Editor Friday, and seen and read everything on the website for the movie, which really helped me to see what it had taken to create each scene to the degree that is possible with a finished movie. I definitely learned a lot by watching it, and from teh Q&A after the movie and by chatting with the film makers afterwards even further.

So most of what I would have to say about the movie is not a review of the story, but my impressions of the movie from a technical standpoint, and that’s not what you want to read. (I think.) Not helping is that the movie is actually a pretty complicated thing, with half a dozen main characters plus some supporting characters, and a lot of believable character growth and experience throughout. I was a little confused about one or two of the characters, and now that I think about it, they seemed to disappear somewhere in the bigger story of the movie, but taking them away may have made the scope of the movie seem much smaller… I should stop talking about the movie so you can go see it. It’s only playing for a limited time, don’t miss out.

I don’t support local bands, but I definitely support local films. You should, too.

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Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

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