People will change, popular culture will change, and movies will change, but some will continue to defend and marvel over the past, especially past movies. In the essay, “Movies on Television” , Pauline Kael effectively uses similes and parallel structure to ridicule popular culture and its ironies for the lack of appreciation for movies from the past. The parallel structure present in “by contrast, movies, through the accidents of commerce, are sold in blocks or packages to television, the worst with the mediocre and the best, the successes with the failures, the forgotten with the half forgotten, the ones so dreary you don’t know whether you ever saw them or just others like them with some so famous you can’t be sure whether you actually
One could easily dismiss movies as superficial, unnecessarily violent spectacles, although such a viewpoint is distressingly pessimistic and myopic. In a given year, several films are released which have long-lasting effects on large numbers of individuals. These pictures speak
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
Have you ever had one of those days that were so bad that you desperately needed a night at the ice cream or candy store? The 1970’s was that really bad day, while the night of self- indulgence was the 1980’s. Americans love to escape from our daily stress, and of all the products that allow us to do so, none is more popular than the movies. Movies are key cultural artifacts that offer a view of American culture and social history. They not only offer a snapshot of hair styles and fashions of the times but they also provide a host of insights into Americans’ ever-changing ideals. Like any cultural artifact, the movies can be approached in a number of ways. Cultural historians have treated movies as a document that records the look and mood of the time that promotes a particular political or moral value or highlights individual or social anxieties and tensions. These cultural documents present a particular image of gender, ethnicity, romance, and violence. Out of the political and economic unrest of the 1970’s that saw the mood and esteem of the country, as reflected in the artistry and messages in the movies, sink to a new low, came a new sense of pride in who we are, not seen since the post-World War II economic boom of the 1950’s. Of this need to change, Oscar Award winner Paul Newman stated,
Thompson, Kristin , and David Bordwell. Film History : An Introduction. 3 ed. New York:
Before the civil rights movement could begin, a few courageous individuals had to guide the way. Dr. Vernon Johns was one of those individuals. Dr. Vernon Johns was a pastor and civil rights activist in the 1920s. Johns became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in the late 1940s. During his time as a pastor, Johns preached many sermons on how African American people were being treated not only in the community but in society. Johns on multiple occasions upset his community through his ideas on social change. Through a sociologist perspective, many sociological concepts were displayed in The Vernon Johns Story. Some of those concepts included: ascribed status, conflict theory, deviant behavior, alienation, and
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
In his essay, “It’s Just a Movie: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes”, Greg M. Smith argues that analyzing a film does not ruin, but enhances a movie-viewing experience; he supports his argument with supporting evidence. He addresses the careful planning required for movies. Messages are not meant to be telegrams. Audiences read into movies to understand basic plotlines. Viewers should examine works rather than society’s explanations. Each piece contributes to Smith’s argument, movies are worth scrutinizing.
" Cinema and the Nation. Ed. Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie. New York City, NY: Routledge, 2000. 260-277.
The Associate is an entertaining movie that brings forth gender disparities in the workplace. Whoopi Goldberg, Laurel Ayers, portrays a financial analyst who has been stuck in a position that does not give her true credit for all of her hard work and talents. The Associate exemplifies the sexism that is occurring in the workplace through satiric wit and a strong story line.
The world before her is a film of hope and dreams for Indian women. We examine two girls with different paths but one goal in common, empowerment. This term conveys a wide range of interpretations and definitions one of them being power over oneself. Both Prachi and Ruhi manifest a will for female empowerment but both have distinct views on how this is achieved. Prachi believes the way to achieve empowerment is through her mind and strength, while she still confines to tradition views of Indian culture. Ruhi desires to achieve female empowerment by exposing her beauty in a non-conservative way while maintaining her Indian identity.
The purpose of the review assignment for the movie “The Great Debaters” was to allow students to learn how to discuss a point intelligently. When research and facts are presented calmly and logically, it is more easily understood. Changing another person’s opinion on an idea is more likely to happen when there is no conflict or disagreement. The instructor wanted the students to view the difference between aggressive and non-aggressive behavior.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
The theories of the window and frame had its origins in the schools of formalism and realism. Both schools main objective was to amplify the prestige of film. During that era of film was an upstart sideshow attraction, high class form of entertainment was the theater and the visual art forms of paintings and statues. Both schools saw cinema as a way of looking a through an aperture but keeping the audience at a distance from the subject on the screen. Whether looking through at frame or looking through a window the audience would be viewing the subject matter but they would only be able to absorb it. That’s where the similarities end the formalist lead by theorist Sergei Eisenstein saw film as frame and would create shock in an attempt to provoke or raise consciousness. Sergei Eisenstein would create what he wanted to the audience to see in his films. For example in the Battleship Potemkin Eisenstein wanted to address the situation with Russia and he created the situation in his film to incite a revolution by creating chaos. The realism school lead by André Bazin saw cinema as window. To Bazin a spectator would be apart of the film as more of a witness more than just a spectator. In the movie Rear Window Jefferies was witness to his neighbor wife murder while looking through window because while looking through a window what one sees is real.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...