Run Lola Run

Aside from Run Lola Run being in German it was very different from what we have watched so far.  There is one story line, with three alternates where some parts are changed.  Im still not completely sure what the significance is to having three slightly different alternatives to the story.  In every one the main plot is that Lola needs to come up with 100,000 marks in twenty minutes or her boyfriend will be killed.  She runs through the city to try and get the money from her father who is in banking.  She runs into various people and through a series of flash forward photographs we see their future.  The same people also have different futures in the three parts.  It is an interesting film and the heavy techno throughout it was enough to hold my attention.

MEMENTO -What am i doing? Oh im chasing this guy...No, he's chasing me

Ever since I watched Memento for the first time over a year ago, it easily became one of my top favorite movies.  The fact that it is told in reverse order was at first hard to comprehend and follow.  Ill admit I had to watch it a few times before coming up with my own solid conclusions on who i believed to be lying and what story is true.  The compelling aspect of the film is that it is open for your own interpretation.  There is no definite answer to if Teddy was lying or being completely truthful, if Leonard's wife was murdered or survived it, what the true story of Sammy Jenkis is, how much of Sammy's story is actually Leanord's, ect.  The director Christopher Nolan has not even answered these questions.  The objective of the film being backwards is that when Leonard does not know where he is, the audience is as lost as he is.  The scenes in black and white are in chronological order where Leonard talks to an unknown person on the phone telling the story of Sammy's condition(it is implied to be Teddy).  Leonard solely relies on only his own handwriting and facts.  He doesnt take anyones word on anything.  One conversation that Leonard has with Teddy that stood out to me was at a diner where he explains and sums up why he cant rely on memory.  He says how memories can be distorted and are irrelevant when you have facts.  The camera is always constantly on Leonard so we follow him everywhere giving the fullest effect of what he is going through.  The twist at the end is we find out (if you chose to believe this is the truth) that the real "John G." was found and killed by Leonard a year prior with the help of Teddy.  The chase and investigating gave Leonard a reason to live, so (supposedly) he himself ripped and crossed out pages of police reports creating an unsolvable puzzle.  He admits in the voice over that he is going to set it up so Teddy is the murderer and will put it all to rest.  By this it is revealed that Leonard knows Teddy did not murder his wife, but will create a puzzle to lead himself to believe he did.  I also have recently watched the entire film in chronological order and i have to say its more confusing.  At the beginning of events (the end of the original film) when everything is revealed, by watching this first you dont understand what the significance of it all is.  After watching this you need to decide for yourself what were facts and what were lies.

The General

First, i'd like to point out that I officially adore Buster Keaton.  Although The General is not claimed to be his funniest (but rather best), it had me completely laughing out loud.  I will reiterate what I said in my previous post of Sherlock Jr... I honestly wish that modern movies now would have at least slightly similar aspects of this type of clever humor.  Words, or title cards, are not needed in this film.  Everything is explained flawlessly through actions.  As Buster faced some problems while first on the train, we know he will have more on the way back but this time with the girl.  Most of the problems he faced were solved by shear chance and accidental.  The climax is reached on the way back with the girl leading to a battle.  Buster's character is ultimately honored and gets the girl he saved.  Actually, I liked this movie so much I bought myself my own copy.  

Bicycle Thieves

The film Bicycle Thieves is about a struggling italian father named Antonio searching for work.  You immediately realize how desperate his family is for money when they are forced to sell their sheets for money.  With the money he buys a bike in order to be hired for a job.  Everything goes downhill once his bicycle is stolen, hence the title.  Other then knowing that this will cost him his job the real sadness if for his young son Bruno.  The film turns into a father-son story where the son goes every where with him in search of the bicycle.  With no help from the police they go everywhere looking for the one thing that every person seems to have.  You start really feeling miserable for these two and are as lost as the father is on what he should do.  The little boy's acting was surprisingly impressive for someone who appeared to be just picked off the streets.

Some Like It Hot

This film was overall very funny and entertaining.  The conversations between the two men dressed as women had most of the class laughing.  Creating the names "Daphne" and "Josephine", Jerry and Joe pretend to be women in an all women band to escape a mob who are after them when they witness murders.  They try to keep their identities a secret but sometimes have trouble staying in character due to falling for Sugar played by the icon Marilyn Monroe.  The humor throughout the whole movie and cleverness makes it a great film.

The Penalty

There was about one thing that i couldn't stop thinking about throughout the movie; how much it must have hurt Lon Chaney to have his legs tied back and walk on his kneecaps.  I've even read that he could only keep the harness on for a few minutes at a time before the pain became too much.  Being able to act as he did as an amputee is amazing.  When he happily posed as a model for a Satan look alike sculpture, his face was powerful and actually scary.  The silent film lost it for me with the ending.  Im not sure if it was believable in the 1920s that evil can be caused by something wrong in the brain that can be easily treated, but now it is very laughable.  

Forever Young James Dean

In James Dean's tragically short career, he has been immortalized in his films.  One of these being East of Eden which is his first lead role.  Since this was part of our acting unit, i'll try and break down his acting choices.  James Dean plays the "bad son" who fights for his fathers love and acceptance.  His somewhat boyish and quirky  disposition is seen throughout the movie.  He can go from saying something with strong conviction to immediately smiling with a chuckle, and running away.  One scene specifically that caught my attention was when he is in a room talking to his mother and he cannot seem to keep still.  His jittering adds to the youth of his character.  At some points he even seemed to be muttering his lines in a shy voice.  Everything he did seemed so natural, as in I could believe if he acting just this way in his every day life.  Aside from his acting its necessary to point out that pretty much everyone (yes even guys) will admit that James Dean is the epitome of beauty where everything he does you cant help but love.  I believe that James Dean will always be remembered and remain an icon.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon

Translated into The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, this film is probably one of the most impressionable ones I have ever seen.  The fact that the entire movie is in french made me hesitant to watch it, but I remembered the name from being nominated for oscars a few years ago so i decided to give it a try.  It quickly held my attention more than most english speaking movies ever can.  This incredible true story is about a man named Jean-Do.  He is the editor in chief of Elle magazine and has suffered a massive stroke that leaves him completely paralyzed and unable to speak which is known as "locked in syndrome".  The only thing he has control over is his left eye.  We hear his thoughts in his head as he can think clearly and rationally.  He states that other then his eye there are two things that are not paralyzed, his imagination and his memory.  Almost 80 percent of the movie is entirely through the view of his left eye.  As he lays motionless in the hospital bed, his speech therapist teaches him a method to communicate using his eye by blinking.  She recites every letter in the alphabet and he blinks when she says the letter and repeats this until he spells out what he wants to say.  They also tell him to blink once for yes and twice for no.  After a few months, he decides to use this method to write a memoir (which this movie is based on).  A young woman named Claude was sent to dictate and write down what he spells.  The process of him spelling out every word was extremely tedious and painstaking and only half a page was completed a day.  She would go to him every day, recite the alphabet repeatedly, and wait for him to blink and write down letters that develop sentences.  Throughout the movie, we see flashbacks of his life where he is with his father or playing with his three children.  Two days after his memoir is published, he dies from pneumonia.  This film was very moving and the cinematography was incredible.  The fact that it is all in french is completely irrelevant.  

Freaks

I have to say, the title sums up the movie.  Freaks is truly about the sideshow freaks in a circus which ironically, you never see them actually perform in front of an audience.  The entire movie takes place off stage.  The plot focuses on a beautiful woman who works in the circus and the midget Hans who is in love with her.  Hans' fiance Frieda tell Hans that she is only after his money and nothing more.  This is in fact the case and after Cleo marries him, she tries to kill him with poison to inherit his money.  The other freaks include a man with no legs, a torso man, siamese twins, pinheads, and an armless girl.  When they catch onto Cleo's plan, they rebel on a stormy night.  It was actually a very disturbing scene watching them crawl through the mud toward her.  It is revealed that she is somehow transformed into a chicken type person that is the new act in the sideshow.  The film has a history of being rejected and banned because all of the freaks are really sideshow acts, which i guess was too much for people to handle watching. 

Rear Window

I have been a long fan of Alfred Hitchcock and his film Rear Window did not disappoint.  Although it starts off a little slow, it pretty much has to in order to get an idea of who his neighbors are that he is watching.  Jeff is a photographer who brakes his leg while photographing a race car which goes out of control (this is explained silently while the camera passes a series of pictures of the accident).  Jeff is confined to his wheelchair where his only form of entertainment is to observe the lives of his neighbors out his rear window.  The concept is extremely interesting where you basically only see what Jeff is seeing and can only hear what he can hear.  Throughout the movie you follow the lives of very different people.  Miss Loneyhearts seems to be depressed without a man, a songwriter struggles on his piano, Miss Torso prances around her apartment and has men over at night, the newlyweds immediately close the blinds to keep their privacy, and then there's the Thorwalds.  Their constant fighting makes Lars Thorwald a very suspicious man in Jeff's eyes when his wife mysteriously disappears.  There were points in the movie where I was sure Thorwald killed his wife, and others where I thought that Jeff was just misunderstanding the situation.  The one thing that amazed me was knowing the entire setting was a set and not real apartments.  The sets were so real, each room had running water and electricity.  Hitchcock makes the ending ironic in a way when Jeff sits again at the window like in the beginning but this time with two broken legs.

The Night They Raided Minsky's

Overall, i thought Minsky's was a cute film about a naive amish girl wanting to be a dancer on stage.  At first I was a little confused on the plot of why they wanted her to perform her dances from the bible as the main act.  The small skits they showed with the two main male characters, Chick and Raymond, were humorous and actually had me laughing.  One of the songs they sung was catchy and entertaining.  Most of the movie takes place either on stage or backstage.  The one thing that stood out was the couples times for a few seconds, a few frames were black and white then would go back to color.  This was actually an accident by the editor.

Do The Right Thing

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing captures the tension between different races in a predominantly African American Brooklyn neighborhood.  At the height of hip-hop culture, teenagers of the neighborhood blast their music through the streets.  The local pizzeria owner Sal and his two sons make it clear that they are not very tolerant of their African American customers.  Sal denies the request for putting up pictures of black people even though they keep his business going.  The tension is not only with the Italian family, but also with an Asian couple at a local market, a latino group, and a white man driving through the street.  One scene that I thought was powerful is when some characters each get a turn to yell at the camera every derogatory and racial slur they can name towards a group of people.  In a matter of seconds, the ending of the movie takes a huge sharp turn where absolute chaos breaks loose.  The movie suddenly becomes violent and shows what racism and intolerance can lead to.

Traffic

The one thing that truly stood out was the color changes from the scenes in Mexico with Benicio Del Toro and in America with Michael Douglas.  The shade of yellow in Mexico was perfect in representing the dry deserts and seriousness of the scenes.  The blue tint gave a solemn and dark feeling.  The sadness is brought out more when Michael Douglas's character is trying to deal with his drug addicted daughter.  Although I enjoyed the film, it was honestly a little hard to follow watching it over a four day period trying to remember the story line between about three different yet connected people.  I also thought it was interesting how most scenes in Tijuana were shot with a hand held camera.

Robin Hood

Learning about the beginning of Technicolor, watching The Adventures of Robin Hood was a perfect example.  The film completely utilizes every color so brightly.  The actor who played Robin Hood, Errol Flynn, portrayed the hero with confidence and the relaxed demeanor that you envision Robin Hood would have.  After watching a few films in black and white, I imagined this film without color and I believe the whole feeling you get from watching it would be different.  Not necessarily in a bad way, but the vast colors contributes so much to this particular film.

THE ROAD

A couple days ago, I was lucky enough to go to a private screening of The Road.  Reading the novel a year ago, I have been not very patient to see this movie (especially because the original release date was last November).  Since the film was pushed back an entire year, I had my doubts on how it would turn out.  I was not disappointed in the least bit.  With a cast of Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, and brilliant newcomer Kodi Smit-Mcphee, you can expect perfection and not be let down.  The overall concept is so poetic yet dark.  It will break your heart and move you to tears.  The cinematography captures the sorrow and sadness that the world has succumb to after an unexplained apocalyptic event.  The relationship between the boy and the father is incredibly powerful.  They walk through a dying Earth with each day a struggle to survive.  The film is nothing short of a masterpiece.  Most of the dialogue is taken right out of the novel written by the genius Cormac McCarthy (author of '08 best picture No Country for Old Men) and is thankfully faithful to the book.  The Road comes out in theaters in about a month, and i will most definitely see it again.  I also cannot stress enough how this is not just another apocalypse, "what will happen when the world ends" movie.  It is so much more.

Raging Bull

The film Raging Bull tells the story of an italian middle weight boxer Jake LaMotta.  The black and white sets a specific tone to the film that i believe cannot be achieved with color.  It gives a certain dullness and simplicity to scenes.  You are not distracted by bright colors and only see the characters and their story.  The scenes where Jake is in the ring fighting, the dark shading adds a dramatic and serious element.  Through black and white, the story seems more real which draws the viewer in.  The dark blood that runs down their light faces is eerie and realistic.  I feel like i cant entirely explain it, but there is a different feeling that you get out of a black and white film opposed to a color film.

I was not in class for any day that Long Voyage Home was watched, so i do not know much about it other then what my classmates explained to me and that it was a part of the black and white film lesson.

Saw

Over the weekend, i watched Saw 1 and 2 with a few friends.  I haven't seen any of the Saw series in the past, and was actually surprised on how it held my attention with suspense and twists.  The gore wasnt too bad and i felt that it wasnt over done with exaggerated blood and guts.  Although for those who dont have a strong stomach, some parts will make you cringe or even look away as I did a few times.  It was more then just a cliche modern torture horror movie which main objective is to gross out the viewer as much as possible.  Overall, the concept is very clever.  The main idea of the movies are that people who are "undeserving" of their life are put to the ultimate test.  It is all up to them whether they live or die.  People are locked in a room, or in the second movie a house, where they have to use their brains as well as their will power to live.  The first movie keeps the mastermind Jigsaw as a mystery, only knowing that he is behind all the puzzles and the game.  I usually like to think that I'm pretty good at predicting endings of movies (especially horror movies), but I honestly did not expect the twist at the end.  The second Saw goes deeper into his mind and the viewer gets an idea of why he created this game.  As long as the victims play by the rules, he lets them live.  He makes it clear that he wants them to survive and go on living with a new perspective on life and hopefully start valuing every day from now on.  What most terrifies me is that Jigsaw just sets up the puzzles, then sits back and watches the victims destroy themselves.  In making a series of the Saw movies, the writers have created a memorable character, Jigsaw.  These movies also make you ask yourself what would you possibly do in situations like these.  It also does a good job in capturing believable human emotion and what an average person might do in these situations.  There is currently five Saw movies out so far with Saw 6 coming out in theaters soon and a Saw 7 in production.  I am definitely curious to see how the rest of the movies are but i have a feeling they might get old after a while, but i could be wrong.

Tristram Shandy

The humor in Tristram Shandy was unfamiliar to me and apparently other classmates.  The dialogue between the english actors such as in the opening scene seemed like pointless rambling and dry humor.  I was at first confused with the plot and even trying to figure out if there was one at all.  The concept of making a movie about actors making a movie is interesting but at times hard to follow, especially with Steve Coogan playing himself acting as two different characters in the movie.... within a movie.  I actually missed the last day of watching this film because I left for Ireland for two weeks which is also why i missed Long Voyage Home.

first blog: Purple Rose and Sherlock

This is my first blog in film studies. So far we have watched The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Sherlock Jr.(1924).  I have extremely enjoyed both films. I observed that many students were disappointed with the ending of Purple Rose, however I felt it was perfectly unexpected.  You would figure Cecilia would end up happy with the man she loves and who loves her in return. The whole movie had an uplifting tone with upbeat music and Cecilia finding not one, but two men who love her and can take her away from her terrible, ungrateful husband.  Then it ends with the girl being used by a hollywood star only looking to further his career and leaves her without a word.  The director, Woody Allen, was once quoted saying that the ending was one of the reasons he even made the film.  

My thoughts on Sherlock Jr. are that it was incredibly entertaining and funny.  This film made me wish that more current movies could have similar aspects such as using a simple magic trick as humor.  Buster Keaton is also clearly doing his own stunts regardless of how dangerous.  He has the ability to create humor with his facial expressions and actions without speaking.