Avatar

James Cameron created a landmark in film with Avatar.  This film has special effects that has not been seen in any other movies and is truly a breakthrough.  Something like this has not happened since 2001 A Space Odyssey in 1968.  Everything about the movie is completely original, from the world of Pandora to the animals, characters and even language.  I found this to be extremely refreshing to watch something new that was not another remake or adaptation.  There is thankfully not an insane amount of action or dragged out conversations, but is so perfectly evened out you do not realize the movie is over three hours long.  It is largely CGI but it all seems realistic.  Although this film had many accomplishments, best picture was not one of them.  I personally felt that The Hurt Locker did deserve to win, but Avatar will by far be remembered and loved by many more people.

Gone With the Wind

Gone With the Wind is based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, titled Gone With the Wind

The scene i found memorable was that while in Atlanta, Scarlett dances with Rhett.  He tells her that he intends to win her but she assures him that will never happen.  They later marry and have a daughter.  

Scarlett's drink of choice is Brandy

Scarlett's dress was a dark green when she visits Rhett Butler in jail.

The dress was hand made from the curtain in the house.

The time period and date of the film is during the Civil War in 1861 to early 1870s

My favorite quote is "Frankly, my dear, i dont give a damn" this famous line is used at the very end of the film when Rhett decides to leave Scarlett.  She begs him to stay and asks what will she do or go.  His response is this.

To start, i would say clear four long hours out of your day.. possibly more because you might need a break.  Its understandable why it won so many awards, the acting and the film as a whole is very well done.  But the story line seemed to drag out.  With a film being this long there needs to be alot happening to hold the attention of the audience.

A Bronx Tale, Goodfellas, The Godfather

Compare and Contrast- Although all three are italian mob movies, there are significant differences.  Unlike A Bronx Tale and Goodfellas, The Godfather is primarily about family.  Its all about mob wars between different families where the story surrounds the Corleone family.  By blood relation you are automatically assumed to have a role in the mob.  The only complete trust is between family members.  A Bronx Tale is about a specific mob in that neighborhood.  Everyone in the neighborhood, no matter how young, recognizes the members of the mob.  Different from the other two films, has a side that concentrates on a main character not in anyway involved in the mob.  Robert De Niro's character strongly disapproves in his son C's relationship with the head of the mob.  He tries to influence him that a man who works hard and earns money through a job is a real man, not one who steals and kills.  The film Goodfellas is more about the friendships within a mob.  Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy form a close bond and stick together.  It also deals with drugs very strongly in the storyline.  A similarity of the three that stood out the most to me (other then the obvious of all being italian) was that if someone in the mob didnt trust you, you dont have a chance of living.  People were killed off like it was nothing if they were suspicious in any way.  Other similarities are the loyalty, fear, and power that comes with the mob.

Stereotyping- The stereotyping the the films is very evident.  They are all very stereotypical huge, italian family.  Stereotyping is most obvious in A Bronx  Tale where C cant be friends with or date a black girl.  The African Americans are the opposite of C and his friends who also live on the opposite sides of town.  It also stresses how all Italians are completely loyal to their family.  Also in Goodfellas, Tommy is the stereotypical angry italian who curses every three seconds.  If he gets the tiniest bit angry, he'll start a brawl or just shoot and kill you for making a disrespectful remark.

The True Story of Goodfellas- Goodfellas is the true story based on the novel Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi.  The author is a crime reporter who tells the story of Henry Hill's life.  The film very closely follows the true events in the book except for a few minor changes and some names have changed.  Every event happened and took place in that time period as depicted in the film.

Citizen Kane

The extremely young Orson Wells co-wrote, directed, and starred in the landmark film Citizen Kane.  It is the essence of film noir and is often mentioned as one of the greatest films ever made, although it has been negatively reviewed by a few critics.  This film is all about technique.  One scene where the camera pulls back from Kane as a child playing in the snow to inside the house where his mother is talking is truly incredible.  Another example is as Kane becomes older and more distant from his wife, the dining room table becomes longer, further separating the two.  At one point the wife is even reading the rival newspaper.  The film revolves around Charles Foster Kane's last dying word, "Rosebud".  No one seems to know what it means regardless how well they knew him during his life.  Thompson is the reporter who digs into Kane's life trying to find the meaning of his dying word.  Throughout the movie, his face is covered in dark lighting.  The men conclude that they will never find out the meaning of the word, but it doesnt matter because one word will not explain a man's life.  The film ends with the camera pulling back to a "No Trespassing" sign.

Vertigo

The last movie in the Hitchcock unit was the 1958 film Vertigo.  From the very beginning of the film we see how James Stewart's character John, or Scottie, developed his fear of heights.  His acrophobia (as well as the title) seemed irrelevant until the scene where "Madeleine" is running up the stairs of the bell tower determined to throw herself off committing suicide.  He runs up after her, but his vertigo stops him dead and is forced to watch her jump.  If it wasnt for this, he would have saw that it was entirely fake and the real Madeleine was already dead but made to appear as a suicide.  The Madeleine he knew was another woman playing a role in a twisted plot to cover up a murder.  Hitchcock manages to successfully accomplish keeping the suspense in all of his films to make them all memorable.

Notorious

Alicia Huberman becomes an undercover agent who has fallen for the government agent Devlin, played by Cary Grant.  He has also fallen for her but when he has to put her into another man's arms he covers his true feelings but acting cold toward her.  She marries a German Nazi in order to spy on the group of Nazis.  Her new husband soon catches onto her true motive for marrying him after she finds her investigating the wine cellar with Devlin.  Honestly, the mother seemed more evil than the Nazis.  She is the one who poisons Alicia day after day with the intent of killing her while controlling her son.  Devlin realizes that they have caught onto her being a spy so he rescues her from her death bed leaving Alexander to his Nazi buddies.

Shadow of a Doubt

Uncle Charlie and Charlie probably have the most uncomfortable close family relationship ive ever seen in a film.  She seemed to have an awkward crush on him and watching their conversation and body language felt almost romantic at times.  She was captivated by his sophisticated attitude and loves the fact shes named after him.  Even though Charlie looks up to her uncle she cant help but feel something is not right with him when he starts acting strangely.  When detectives are closely watching him because he is suspected to be a murderer, she tries to protect him even though she knows the truth about him.  It actually came as a shock to me that he attempted to kill his niece on several occasions.

The Birds

What Hitchcock does in most of his films which I love is he takes something we do and see in an average every day life and turns it into something terrifying.  He made people scared to take showers, made you think twice about your neighbors, and think what if there were murderers at your dinner party hiding a body in a chest.  The Birds is no different.  The reason he gave no concluding explanation to why the birds viciously attacked people was he said that in giving a reason, he would be turning his film into science fiction.  This film is supposed to be very real and make you question what if something that seems harmless that is always around you suddenly became deadly.  Hitchcock wants the audience to consider that this could happen giving his film that frightening element, (or at least for back then, now its a little more laughable then scary).  Having very little music, the sound is extremely important.  The sounds of the birds needs to be realistic and give the audience chills.

American Graffiti

This film is largely about a group of teens from the 60's just hanging out on an average summer night.  They cruise around in their cars starting street races and fights and picking up girls.  There is no one story line, just a bunch of characters doing their own thing.  No clear objective or goal is in mind for these kids, other then Curt who is still debating on leaving for college.  The music is a huge aspect of the film.  From the rock and roll music coming from the car stereo to the jukebox in restaurants the music gives a complete realism to the scenes.  I personally am not too familiar with the time period, so at first I thought they actually had a destination through all that driving.  Further into the film I realized that just aimlessly cruising around with no destination was their idea of something to do letting the night and people they run into control the events.

Psycho

Every time I see this film, I am more and more intrigued with the character of Norman Bates.  He just seems quiet and normal with a dominating mother who he cares for.  Its not until the ending it is revealed he's completely insane.  The music is so critical in Psycho with it alone building the suspense.  Watching the famous shower scene with and without music, there is such a huge difference.  One scene that I have always loved is when Norman is carefully covering up the murder that his "mother" had just committed.  The entire scene has no words and you are so focused on what he is doing making sure he cleans up every spot of blood.  At this point, you need to stop and realize that you are almost rooting for him to not be caught and successfully cover up the murder.  

Edward Scissorhands

With any Tim Burton film, you have to expected the production design, art direction, and costume design to be very different.  Edward Scissorhands is a prime example of classic Burton.  Everything about Edward stands out from the neighborhood where every single house is the same with a different solid shade of a pastel color.  From his dark, broken down mansion up a mountain to his black outfit, he is a complete contradiction from everyone else.  The second you see the design of his home you immediately know this person does not belong.  Very early in the movie the audience realizes how truly genuine and pure he is despite the sharp knives and scissors he has for hands.  He is so gentle with the lethal weapons attached to him he can cut a dogs hair.  When Edward does speak, which is barely ever, he talks in such a low and soft tone furthering the idea that he is completely harmless...well, until you try to kill him after you hurt the girl he loves.  The entire production brings out the sympathy for Ed needed to make this movie impressionable.

Network

For our unit on screenplay, Network is definitely the perfect film.  The entire movie is just the screenplay.  This 1976 film emphasizes how crazy and extreme the news is behind the camera.  The memorable character Howard Beale is played by Peter Finch.  When ratings get too low he is fired.  His response to this- announce on air he's going to kill himself.  This of coarse skyrockets the ratings so they keep him on.  As he completely descends into lunacy the viewers cant get enough of him.  He becomes their channel into their own anger and frustration.  The famous line that is said with such power is "im mad as hell, and im not gonna take it anymore".  The news has not changed since this movie, people are still so intrigued by the craziness and wild antics of people that they cant look away.

His Girl Friday

A newspaper editor Walter Burns ' ex wife is about to be married to another man.  In the coarse of only one day, he tries to get Hildy to come back to him and leave her soon-to-be husband.  Cary Grant plays Walter who uses tricks and anything else he can to get her to stay.  After a series of sabotaging and convincing her to investigate one last murder case, she goes back to him.  There wasn't any music at all that i can remember except for in the beginning and end, and was mostly all dialogue.  I've even read that this movie is one of the first to have the actors speak their lines over each other instead of waiting  for them to finish.  This was meant to give a more realistic tone of conversations.

Twentieth Century

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Twentieth Century is the insane, slightly over the top character Oscar Jaffe, played by John Barrymore.  I thought his face was going to fall off his facial expressions were so exaggerated.  The story is that he is a successful Broadway director working with a wannabe new actress named Lily Garland.  As time goes on she becomes a star to the point she wants to leave and grow further as a movie actress.  Realizing his shows are nothing without her, he follows her on the Twentieth Century train where the rest of the film takes place.  There are a good amount of laughs throughout the film and Barrymore's performance is worth watching.