Gabriel Mascaro’s unadorned sophomore feature, “Neon Bull”, brings to the big screen the lives of a few individuals connected to the Vaquejada, the typical rodeo of the Northeast Brazil.
Iremar (Juliano Cazarré) is an experienced bull handler who prepares the opulent white animals before being released in an arena where two men on horseback will persecute and throw them on the ground with a violent tail tug. This is what he does to make a living, but his real dream is to become a fashion designer. In his spare time, he goes to swampy fields where he collects pieces of broken mannequins and other discarded props that he uses to feed his fashion fantasy.
Usually, he has the company of Cacá (Alyne Santana), a sharp-tongued adolescent girl who love horses and whose mother, a dancer named Galega (Maeve Jinkings), is also the
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driver of the truck that transports the bulls and serves as their improvised home. Iremar and his funny assistant, Zé (Carlos Pessoa), also live in the truck. The men have such a great relationship that they share a porn magazine, which has two functions: Zé uses to masturbate while Iremar uses what’s left of it to design his clothing models on top of the naked girls. Despite these curious behaviors, everyone shows respect for one another even if it’s discernible some tension in the way they talk, which happens to be more a natural thing than a confrontation.
Many of these verbal tensions come from Cacá’s stubbornness and wry commentaries that leave her mother and the men frequently out of their minds.
Even occasionally infusing a spontaneous humor, “Neon Bull” is a tough watch due to the constant violence that takes both the physical and emotional forms. This factor is counterpointed by explicit images of intense sexual pleasure, when Galega accepts a newly arrived attractive cowboy named Junior (Vinícius de Oliveira, the kid from “Central Station”) as her sexual partner, and when Iremar becomes physically attracted to a pregnant woman, Geise (Samya De Lavor), a perfume seller during the day and a security guard at a knitting factory during the night.
All these dualisms - violence and pleasure, ugly and beautiful, hostile and respectful, reality and dream - make “Neon Bull” such a powerful drama, enhanced by a confident structure and fabulous acting from the cast of professional and non-professional
actors. Mr. Mascaro, here even bolder than in his debut, “August Winds”, doesn’t refrain from showing whatever he has to, good or bad, to guarantee that the characters’ painful reality is passed to the viewers. The images captured by the cinematographer Diego Garcia are fiercely expressive, showing a mix of compositions that keep alternating between atrocious, brisk, laid-back, and carnal. Some of them can be pretty disturbing with its intensity and rawness, being so hard to digest but also to forget. The movie’s less positive aspect has to do with a couple of scenes attempting to shock in too obvious ways. Still, this transient quibble doesn’t remove the power of the tale. Mr. Mascaro, with his very personal vision, didn’t take the bull by the tail but rather by the horns.
The noir style is showcased in Sunset Boulevard with its use of visually dark and uncomfortable settings and camera work, as well as its use of the traditional film noir characters. In addition, the overall tone and themes expressed in it tightly correspond to what many film noirs addressed. What made this film unique was its harsh criticism of the film industry itself, which some of Wilder’s peers saw as biting the hand that fed him. There is frequent commentary on the superficial state of Hollywood and its indifference to suffering, which is still a topic avoided by many in the film business today. However, Sunset Blvd. set a precedent for future film noirs, and is an inspiration for those who do not quite believe what they are being shown by Hollywood.
Bye, Bye Brazil (1980), a film by Carlos Diegues, tells a story about the struggle of two couples trying to find their dreams in a country, Brazil, that is being overcome by social changes and undergoing massive technological transformations. United by their dreams, the couples travel through the backlands of Brazil in a truck, to seek places where they can not only make a living, but also find their dreams. The insights gained in the course of the journey are insights of both acceptance and change.
Have you ever felt unsure about a topic? That is how I felt at first when I read “The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed Matador” by Karen Russell. I felt that bullfighting was simply cruel, but then I understood the culture behind it. The more I continued reading I understood the love and passion that Juan Padilla had for the sport. It seems crazy that what you love to do could almost cost you your life, and no matter the consequences you’re not willing to give it up. Although many people may agree bullfighting is a cruel sport, being a bullfighter is a part of culture, passed on through generations, and there is a passion behind it.
...ing is a team effort. It is a true art form but one that has many elements that must come together to tell the story from the director’s perspective. This paper explored the mise-en-scene of a clip from A Few Good Men. This included all the components of a scene to include the sets, lighting, costumes, actors, and hairstyles.
He talks about distinct variety of genres like the action genres, slasher movies, war films, western, Rambo movies, Bond movies and many others. He tells that the role-played by the superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone in the action movies was more fascinating than that of an everyday guy dealing with everyday botherations in an phenomenal way. Further he brings out about slasher movies also known as sub-genre of haunted movies and argues, “ In slasher movies, the woman’s entire body is the male psychopathic killer into the ‘bleeding wound’ that signifies castration, slashers concern male anxieties above all”. Another genre is the war films where the main focal point is on violence, action, and forcefully curbs its ability for homosexuality while western movies are mostly based
To conclude, Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns was grotesque during its release because of his unique style of storytelling. Throughout his career he was famous for three films: A Fistful of Dollar, For a Few more Dollars and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly which is known as the Dollar Trilogy. In Leone’s westerns he parodies the classis westerns in many way which include his unorthodox ant-hero, twisted plots focused on revenge, violence and his use of extreme close-ups. Leone unique style changed the way we look at westerns forever and he felt that “when he went to the cinema, he was often frustrated because he could get what was about to happen ten minutes into the screening.” This led his revolutionary style that shifted the direction of westerns forever.
The imagery associated with bulls and steers is confusing, since it is clearly supportive of bulls over steers. Bulls are associated with passion. Those who identify with bulls through their enthusiasm for bullfighting are called "aficionado" from the Spanish word for passion (131). Those who lack aficion are valueless while a true aficionado is a "buen hombre" (132). The bulls are "beautiful," muscular, aggressive and "dangerous" (139, 141). Because of their physical prowess and their sexual potency, bulls are capable of ascending to the heights of glory. They arouse passions in the crowds who gather to watch them run and fight. In sharp contrast, the steers are weak and emasculate. ...
In the movie, “From Hell” the plot is based around the strategic string of murders of women in a prostitution ring. The success of this movie is accredited to the usage of dramatization, music, and its transitional cut scenes. “From Hell” is an intriguing, suspenseful, thriller that plays off of the audience's perceptions of horror, while also effectively keeping their interest and building suspense throughout the movie.
Williams juxtaposes the three genres together, to reveal similarities and differences, and, in turn, their similar and different desire effects on the audiences. Specifically, she points out the physical reaction of characters in the films, and how the audience members mimic them. Firstly, in regards to the physical body, Williams discusses the similar uncontrollable “convulsion or spasm,” that comes with the different genres; a body on the screen is “’beside itself’ with sexual pleasure, fear and terror, or overpowering sadness.” (729) Next, she dissects the sound of these bodily reactions – the overpowering moan, scream, or sob that the chara...
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.
In the moving picture ‘Bella’ the director Alejandro Monteverde uses certain scenes to project a series of ideas and themes to the audience. In order to do so, Monteverde uses a variety of film techniques, which help to develop the narrative. One of the most important parts of the film where these techniques come into play is ‘The home scene’
Lars von Trier is undoubtedly a polarizing filmmaker. His repertoire invokes a range of emotions from earnest avoidance to curious infatuation. He’s been pointed out as a purveyor of misogyny as he famously and deliberately places many of his females in rather unkind situations to say the least (i.e. the brain-searing climax in Antichrist). And his penchant to depict the uncomfortable and sometimes unfathomable has been interpreted as obscene and sensationalist for its own sake. And yet his work continues to prevail, standing on its own, whole and unapologetic.
Taxi Driver is an extraordinary explicit film displaying a piece of American vigilante to the extreme. “The end sequence plays like music, not drama: It completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level. We end not on carnage, but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorses’s characters” (Ebert 455). Taxi Driver is considered to be a psychological thriller with neo-noir elements. “The film is regularly cited by critics, film directors, and audiences alike as one of the greatest films of all time”
Pedro Romero comes closest to the embodiment of Hemingways’s code hero because of his strength, courage, and confidence. Brett is enchanted by this handsome, nineteen-year-old matador. He is a fearless figure who confronts death in his occupation; he is not afraid in the bullring and controls the bulls like a master. Pedro is the first man since Jake who causes Brett to lose her self-control. She...
The classical Hollywood tradition of filmmaking has been both extremely influential and successful since the 1920s. Furthermore, the classical Hollywood cinema technique of making movies is not limited only to movies in the United States. For instance, “The Road Warrior, although an Australian film, is constructed along classical Hollywood lines” (Bordwell et al. 97). Director Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, which was produced and distributed originally in Mexico, is a coming of age story revolving around two young friends, Tenoch and Julio as they go on a several-day road trip to the beach with a woman named Luisa. Through its use of the coming of age narrative, Y Tu Mamá También is a good example of the classical Hollywood cinema form.