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!`

Casablanca

In Roger Eberts Review on Casablanca in way he is very brutal but at the same time he gives me some inspiration on seeing the old film again and viewing it on a sort of different level. Like in the part where he Robert says :

"In her closeups during this scene, Bergman's face reflects confusing emotions. And well she might have been confused, since neither she nor anyone else on the film knew for sure until the final day who would get on the plane. Bergman played the whole movie without knowing how it would end, and this had the subtle effect of making all of her scenes more emotionally convincing; she could not tilt in the direction she knew the wind was blowing."As much as i disslike love stories this is probably one of the few that i actually enjoy. To me is not one of those cheesy drama romantic comedy movies that people nowadays think is soo cute and romantic and so enjoyable to watch.. To me i think that romantic movies nowadays have aged greatly. Old romantic movies are completely different than the ones we have today.

What goes Ebert mean by an "A list" movie. By definition what is an "A list" movie?

I think its really good that Ebert takes the time to look over this movie and see it in different ways. But at the same time i sort of disagree with how he said that color nowadays has some what aged.. maybe i just dont quite understand what he means by aged. Does he mean its been used in a different way than it actually should be used.

There i somethign i actually agree withEbert on which is think in my opinion is amazing.

Much of the emotional effect of ``Casablanca'' is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans.

If i had to chose between old love movies and new love movies i would most likely chose old ones because i feel like the love is actually there compared to the ones today. I think part of that has to do with the characters. The Characters in the older ones i have exactly heard of so it makes the experience different. In the new ones we have seen most of the actors before in different love movies or action movie and etc.

sam

The Departed

To me The Departed is one of the best movies i have seen in such a long time. Yeah i agree with the fact that the crime is sort of drawn out in the movie but i think that it keeps you interested throughout the whole movie. In this review by Beth accomando, it seems like this woman thinks that she know everything about film. I dont get why she is trying to compare this movie to "Infernal Affairs". "The Departed" is its own movie, so why should you event think about comparing it to anything else. First of all i havent even heard about this movie and this apparently came out in 2002. This review questions Martin Scorceses ways of making film. She thinks that this movie was a huge dissappointment. Apparently the only reason why Martin even made this movie was so that he could win an Oscar. Which yes im sure anyone that makes a movie would be happy to win an oscar and do anything to win a oscar but she makes it out to seem that he wasnt even trying to make a good movie.

I disagree with the part that she says that Mark Wahlberg gets all the good lines in the movie and that jack nicholson is running close in second for the best lines. I mean seriously how do you even judge who has the best lines or not? Are there certain rules or something? Yes Mark wahlberg has some pretty awesome comebacks to Leonardo Dicaprio but come on thats what makes his character interesting but Jack Nicholson in my opinion had the best delivery of lines than anyone else in the movie. His Character just amazed me. I remember right after the movie even came out people were quoting some stuff that jack had said in the movie.

I also dont think taht there was really suppossed to be suspense going on in the movie because the audience basically knew what was going on during the movie. Like we knew that two of those people in the movie were undercover. I think we got suspenseful during the end of the movie when just everyone started getting shot. I remember seeing that in theaters and some people just gasped because they had no idea that, that was going to happen.

She says that the whole gang and drug related stuff in the movie was not accurate to that kind of thing going on in New York. I thought it was pretty darn believeable. it may not be right on the dot of how gangs actually function but who can actually get that thing down to the T.

Just in general i think that this woman just totally over analyzed this movie. The stuff that she said about the movie just didnt exactly make sense to me in general. It feels like she walked into the movie and started comparing it to infernal affairs right away . its like she didnt actually want to get different perspective on it. In my opinion best movie i have seen in while like i have said before. Thanks!

~!sam!~

Harry Potter and ther Flight of Phoenix

I did my blog on the wonderful movie Harry Potter and the flight of the phoenix which to me was an awesome and gripping movie. To me it was either the best or second best out of all of the harry potter movies so far. This review says that all of the Harry Potter movies were in his opinion all terrible. That its just one of those typical movies rgar all teenagers see now a days. He says that the first two movies were terrible and the 3rd one was ok and the fourth one was just your typical teenage movie that they would like just because of all the excitement that goes on. He does make an interesting point though, he says that people tend to judge the movie too much because allthey do is compare it to all the books. For example Harry Potter and the prisoner of azkaban did not follow the book that J.K Rowling wrote whatsoever. He says that the movie lacks the real intesnity from the book but at the same time he says that the book lacks intensity. So what exaclty is this guy actually saying. He is be contridictory in ever way shaper and form. He says that the movie is great one time and the next time he says that its not good enough.

Samantha Crowther