Fight the Powa!

I loved seeing this movie because i think we had some great discussions in class. This was by far the most interesting and enjoyable time that i have had during my art of film experience! People expressed their opinions very well which was awesome to me. In this movie do you guys think that anyone did the right thing in the movie? In my opinion i dont think that anyone at all necessarily did the right thing. Maybe in their own minds they themselves did the right thing. for example some people may think that at the end of the film that mookie did the right thing. I personally didnt think that he did the right thing. Mookie destroyed the one job that he actually had and paid him well. Unfortunately i dont think that he deserved any of the moey that he earned. The police for sure didnt do the right think by murdering Radio. Mookie didnt do the right thing by avoiding his son and his "girlfriend" (then again i dont blame him at all ha) but thats not the point.

There are so many ideas and opinions and subjects that are running through my head right now i have no idea what to say.

do you think that this movie represent race well?

( I think that this movie tried not to show off race as much as it may have wanted to. Idont think race really shows up towards the middle and end of the movie. Yes there are some minor encounters of racism, like for instance when radio tries to dominate over the hispanics music, or when pino sometimes gets on mookies case once and awhile during work. I mean is Sal a racist? I would think that if he was a true racist he wouldnt exactly serve african americans in his restaurant or he would act exaclty like pino.)

Is mookie a complete idiot?

(In some ways he is. i think that he completely screwed himself over but starting a riot at sals restaurant. Now he has no job and now his crazy girlfriend is going to be on his ass all the time for not supporting his son because he has no money what so ever.Not only did he lose his "best friend" but he lost some other friends. But in the other way he stood up for what he believed in and that way he is somewhat of a heroe)

i would love to here your opinions! :-)

Film Noir! Out of the Past

I didnt actually enjoy Out of the Past as much as i had thought i would. I thought that the movie was a little confusing at times and i got off track on who was screwing who over and blah blah blah. I did however think the acting was well done in it. The man who played Jeff Bailey was awesome. His conniving character made the film more interesting. also as much as i didnt lke Kathie in the movie she played the past very well. As much as she screwed other people over she still managed to portray herself as the victim of everything. she clawed her way out of certain situations. Whit could have killed her and gotten rid of her earlier on the movie but he didnt, something she must have said or done changed his mind. One thing she didnt succeed in was convincing Jeff to come with her and say that she is the only one for him. But in the end he double crossed her. The thing that predicted for the ending was that after Kathie shot Jeff he would still survive and return home to woman that he actually loved, Ann. I thought the ending was a little abrupt but it wasnt that bad.

In the beginning to the middle of the movie it didnt seem like the woman was the dominant person throughout the film. I didnt really notice the domiance until Kathie sent Joe out to kill for her. I loved the female dominance. I think it changed the movie up and made it way more interesting


sam

His Girl Friday!

By Far my favorite movie out of any movie that we saw. I loved the dialogue in it. It was one of those movies where the characters talked really fast, you really had to pay attention to what the characters were saying if you missed hearing a couple of words you wouldve missed the joke or missed a very important piece of the movie. Walter was my favorite character. His personality and wit in this movie really made me pay attention to what he was saying. It was funny how the whole time he kept managing to stop Hildy and Bruce from leaving town. Right there is just showed how much Walter actually loved Hildy and didnt want to see her leave with some successful but yet boring guy. It just seemed to me that Hildy was only with Bruce because Bruce was everything that Walter wasnt. Bruce was a kind, caring, and loving gentlemen, but Walter mostly cared too much about the paper and didnt pay much attention to what Hildy felt or anything. But once they reunited again after Hildy was gone for 3 months you could tell that she really cared for him when she returned to his office in the beginning of the movie. Whether Hildy liked it or not she couldnt get away from the paper no matter how much she tried to fight it. This is what made this a really good screwball comedy.

~!sam1`

StageCoach/ Unforgiven

As much as i love movies these two movies didnt exaclty catch my attention. Stagecoach to me was one of those movies that were hard to stay awake on. Im pretty sure there a lot of people out there that can somewhat relate to what i am saying. Although Stagecoach did relate to most of our common westerns with the whole good guy bad guy scenario and cowboys and indians , horses and guns and booze. I didnt just like Unforgiven more than Stagecoach because it was in color., but the camera movements and everything else taht went along with it was pretty good. I thought that the whole good guy bad guy scenario was just awesome. The action and the dialogue in the movie really caught my attention. I also liked that fact that the whole indians were bad guys thing was not present in this movie. But just in general western is probably my least favorite genre out of anything else but i still had a good experience watching these western movies, i got to expand my verizons more.

~!sam!~

Drunken Master 2
(1994)
directed by Chia-Liang Liu, Jackie Chan!
I chose this movie because in my opinion Jackie Chan is one of the most enjoyable and most respected asian crime fighting actors that we have today. I really enjoyed how the camera just completely attracted Jackie Chans way of movement especially during important and entertainng fight scenes. the camera captured the other peoples emotions and reactions during the fight scenes. it represent pain and amazement and almost disappointment. I also noticed that during fight scenes the camera was either placed high or low to get the effect of the whole thing. for instense during one scene were Jackie Chan is fightin this guy in some sort of a warehouse Jackie has hit him at least 3 times and the camera is set low looking upwards at them to get the effect of the hits and get the expression of the hits from the guy that he in than fighting.

Another really awesome thing that i discovered by watching this movie is that during the fight scenes the amount of hits seem counted and timed and completely layed out almost with the music. Every hit or shot that was made during the movie was set at a louder sound to get the full power and passion behind every hit that had been performed. I counted some of the hits and the hits were almost sets in set of 3 or 4. 3 was the number that i got most often

The music that is played during the movie is your ancient chinese music very smooth and interesting to listen to. To me its interestng to listen to because i feel like it tells a story and it represents the right mood no matter what pace its going on. even during like a normal scene the music doesnt exaclty need to speed up or slow down and during the fight scenes it seems like it doesnt need to do change a thing. For that i seriously admire the music. The music in this movie made me pay attention more to certain aspects of the movie. Even when Jackie Chan is drunk all the time it still fits Jackie chan just still being a drunk and beating the crap out of everyone without any problems or anything just makes it one of the best type of action films that you could watch in my opinion. I mean come on now what guy do you know who is completely drunk and still have the technique and endurance to beat the mess out of everyone.

I couldnt just chose one certain thing for this movie because there wasnt exactly just one thing that i liked/ enjoyed. But i give serious thumbs up for this movie@!

~!sam!~

StageCoach. In my opinion this movie was not as interesting and i thought it would be. I think tat the action themes in western movies are pretty dang entertaining. In the movie during the battle scene this movie made it play out to see that Indians (Native Americans) are evil blood thirsty people that are completely and utterly disliked and she be destroyed but as a audience i dont exactly think we are supposed to sit and understand the history behind this actual scene, i think that we are supposed to see within the characters eyes and not yet our own. Also in the movie i noticed that during the end we would expect an awesome and riveting battle scene with Ringo but it turns out that you dont actually see the real shooting lke the man dying or anything and i thought that kind of took the greatness of the movie out. Critics say that this movie is the start of all the great Western American Films. In some ways i can understand that and in other ways it puzzles me. Is it maybe that i have seen so many diff versions of western movies that im not used to this kind? But overall i give it 3 stars out of 5. We will see if my attitude changes when we see Unforgiven


~!sam!`

Citizen Kane

I think the two biggest things that i noticed in Citizen Kane was the Editing and the Low key and sometimes High Key Lighting. I really like how the director used this. The part whne Kanes opera singing wife complains to him about how she doesnt actually want to sing anymore and she is yelling and screaming and soon after Kane stands over her while she is sitting on the floor and a huge dark shadow takes over her face and at the point she is powerless and she is done trying to argue about the matter. she will sing if Kane tells her too. The Dark shadow def. shows Kane power over her and as a matter a fact it shows his power over anyone. When she becomes sick later in they put her in dark lightening to sort of recognize what sort of pain she is in. Later on we get a close up of her in higher lightening and you can see even more what sort of pain she is in. Towards the end of the movie Kane of course gets older and the director puts in darker lighting which i think that that represents how he is feeling on the inside. He is very lonely and really keeps to himself at times. During the movie i sort of the felt the same way just because how the movie was set up. But the very end of it when Kane says "Rosebud" right before he dies, only his mouth is showne and th rest of the his face is pitch dark, this makes the effect even greater. I think the film was a great movie just by how the director used lighting and editing in the movie.

~!sam!`