...Annette Ngo Kotna Ngo Kotna 1 EN 102 Prof. Robinson October 11th 2013 Film Argument Essay “From Hell” “From Hell” is a movie based on the case of Jack The Ripper by the New 20th Century Fox Production. Jack the Ripper, a serial killer, haunted Whitechapel, a district of East London, during the late 1880s; The Ripper was said to be the first documented and investigated serial killer at the time. The movie “From Hell” relates how, when and where The Ripper killed his victims. The main point of this movie is illustrate exactly how Jack The Ripper was operating back in those days, to give us an image of what the district looked like, of how it was like to live there. Now the question is, does the movie accurately deliver the history of Jack the Ripper? The physical appearance of Whitechapel? The way people lived at that time? Attempting to answer these questions will be the main focus of our essay. Let’s start with the context and costuming: the murders of the Ripper occurred in the 1880s in London, making it a little hard to capture the essence the fact and a physical space looking East London. Fortunately, the story was documented, and adapted into a book in which directors and producers drew the plot of the movie from, and the movie...
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...dogs): the #1 The Rules of the Game September-October 2006 FILM COMMENT 33 Sunrise PREFACE THE BOOK I DIDN’T WRITE I n march 2003 i was having dinner in london with Faber and Faber’s editor of film books, Walter Donohue, and several others when the conversation turned to the current state of film criticism and lack of knowledge of film history in general. I remarked on a former assistant who, when told to look up Montgomery Clift, returned some minutes later asking, “Where is that?” I replied that I thought it was in the Hollywood Hills, and he returned to his search engine. Yes, we agreed, there are too many films, too much history, for today’s student to master. “Someone should write a film version of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon,” a writer from The Independent suggested, and “the person who should write it,” he said, looking at me, “is you.” I looked to Walter, who replied, “If you write it, I’ll publish it.” And the die was cast. Faber offered a contract, and I set to work. Following the Bloom model I decided it should be an elitist canon, not populist, raising the bar so high that only a handful of films would pass over. I proceeded to compile a list of essential films, attempting, as best I could, to separate personal favorites from those movies that artistically defined film history. Compiling was the easy part—then came the first dilemma: why was I selecting these films? What were my criteria? What is a canon? It is, by definition, based...
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...Name: Course: Date: Film Essay Antonia's Line (Marleen Gorris 1995) This is a 1995 film revolves around Antonia who is the main character. It is a “feminist fairy tale” film. Antonio returns to her place of birth, a Dutch village and establishes a matriarchal community (Kooijman, pg 19). This film covers several themes including sex, intimacy, lesbianism, friendship, and love. It is after World War II that Antonia, a widow and her daughter, Danielle decide to travel back to their home town. Antonia’s mother dies just after their arrival. Farmer Bas opts to offer a marriage request to Antonia, but she turns it down. However, she develops a romance relationship with him. On the other hand, Danielle becomes an artist and later decides to have a child. She does not accept to have a husband (Kooijman pg 19). Therefore, Antonia takes Danielle to the city so that they find someone who will serve her. This leads to the birth of Therese, and she emerges to be extremely intelligent. Danielle later starts a lesbian relationship with Therese’s teacher as she fell in love with her at first sight. Pitte, a young man rapes Therese. Pitte had also raped her mentally ill sister, Deedee. Antonia curses Pitte because of raping Therese. This eventually leads him to his death whereby his younger brother drowns him in the water tank (Kooijman pg 20). Therese fails to find a partner with intelligence that matches hers. She decides to have a relationship with her...
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...The movie Film study essay Grade 12 The films reasonable man and tsotsi both deal with how one faces and deals with his past, therefore the theme “emotional journey” is revealed clearly in characters. In comparing and contrasting the characters of Sean and David (Tsotsi). Write an essay of about 700-800 words to discuss which movie best portrays that. Refer to the uniquely filmic issues such as composition, lighting, sound camera shots and angles to smoothly weave them into your reasoning. 2014 Mulondo Nethengwe English assignment 7/21/2014 How strange, a movie where a bad man becomes better, instead of the other way around “Tsotsi” a film of deep emotional power, considers a young killer whose cold eyes show no emotion, who kills unthinkingly, and who is transformed by the helplessness of a baby. He didn't mean to kidnap the baby, but now that he has it, it looks at him with trust and need, and he is powerless before eyes more demanding than his own. On the other hand, the movie Reasonable man tells a story of a city lawyer who comes across the case of the herd boy from remote, rural Zululand, who killed a one year old baby in the mistaken belief that he was killing an evil spirit known as the tokoloshe. Secrets of Sean from the past were revealed as he tried to help the herd boy, siphon. In such parameters of the two movies the one that best portrays “emotional journey” is that that brought the images to life. The movie that best portrays the theme at hand, which is...
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...Juno: Film Essay An important idea in the film Juno directed by Jason Reitman, is the idea that all of our choices will have consequences. This idea is shown in many ways throughout the film. For example, Juno’s choice to have un-protected sex, her choice not to abort her baby, and the choice to carry out an adoption even though her plans didn’t turn out the way they had expected, all had following consequences. The protagonist of the film is 16-year-old, Juno MacGuff. Juno has to face the dilemmas of an unexpected pregnancy. She finds what seems to be the perfect adoption couple, but when her adoption plans take a turn for disaster, Juno must dig herself out of her sticky situation and do what’s best for her baby. At the start of the film, Juno decides to have unprotected sex with her close friend, Paulie Bleeker. Her choice to have un-protected sex is a choice she hasn’t taken into a whole lot of consideration, consequently leading Juno to becoming pregnant. The mise-en-scene at the start of the film shows us how Juno now feels about her pregnancy. Juno stands across from the armchair Bleeker and she had sex on, while a voice over says, ‘It started with a chair.’ The armchair seems much larger than Juno even though they are about the same size. The chair represents Juno’s sudden pregnancy, something dominant, something overwhelming her. Juno looks small in comparison to the chair, showing us that she feels small, insignificant and weak. Juno plans to quickly...
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...1 English 103 Date: May 28th, 2008 Fiction into Film Even tough the film “Smooth Talk” & Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” are supposed to be the same story, one can only wonder if the same message is actually being presented. Through extensive research on the criticisms of both the story and the film, I have come to the realization that the overall moral & the characters of the story have been changed so much for the film version that at the end it’s questionable at best if the overall message of the story comes across as intended. Beginning with the moral of the story, in an article by Joyce Carol Oates herself entitled "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? & Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film” she discusses how she “deferred in the end to Joyce Chopra's [The Film’s Director] decision to reverse the story's conclusion… [in which] the film ends not with death, not with a sleepwalker's crossing over to her fate, but upon a scene of reconciliation, rejuvenation” (Oates, “Where” para 10). Yet, as this deferral might seem slight, in actuality it changes the whole tone of the story, as critic John Simon put it, “[this] disgraceful ending… turns allegory, Gothic horror, and tragedy into soap opera” (Simon, “Lowering” para 1). Yet, besides the ending Joyce Carol Oates did approve of the film, in the same article she also stated, that “Laura Dern is so dazzlingly right as "my" Connie that I may come to think I modeled the...
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...In this essay, I will be looking at how sound, cinematography and mise en scene construct meaning and provoke response in the 5minute opening sequence of the film “Prisoners”. Prisoners is directed by Denis Villeneuve, and came out in 2013. The first minute of the film, is set in a woodland forest surrounded by snow and tree trunks. It shows a wide shot of the forest with a dear in the far background. Non-diagetic sound appears when the dear starts to come closer towards the camera. The non-diagetic sound is of a man repeating a prayer. This builds suspension and makes the audience question why he is narrating a prayer. The camera then walks back, and soon focuses on a rifle gun, which is pointing towards the dear, as the non-diagetic sound of the prayer is still being said. This suggests to the audience that the dear is either going to get shot for pleasure, or for food. As soon as the non-diagetic sound of the prayer ends with an “Amen”, the camera comes behind the 2 men, which shows an over shoulder shot, and the gun then gets fired. Diagetic sound of the gunshot is loud and clear. The over shoulder shot, allows us to know who is firing at the dear, and shows us from behind there point of view. Diagetic sound of the dear dying, suggests its been killed in a miserable way. As soon as the rifle has been fired, non-diagetic music appears with a slow beat thud noise. This shows that it’s the ending of the scene. As the slow beat music is playing, the man with a rough looking...
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...Orientalism in Films There have been many uses and abuses in Western view of the Eastern cultural and social concept of orientalism. This paper discusses how orientalism relates to the three films namely M. Butterfly, Madame Butterfly, and Lost in Translation. Like the title, "M. Butterfly" basically was playing about transformation. This is the first of the Giacomo Puccini opera metamorphosis that was famous, in which "Madame Butterfly" became the modern geopolitical argument to understand the culture. In this film, through love relations that really did not make sense between a French diplomat and the Chinese opera singer he believed the man became the woman, how could the failure for the wish to be separated from reality result in the deception and the tragedy. Gallimard changed Sole from "only humankind" in the "Perfect Woman". Due to his insecurity about his own masculinity, Gallimard needs to create Song in the image of the perfect Asian woman, which is exotic, sensual, and acquiescent, in order to feel wholly male. Although he seeks to confine Sole within the context of his fantasy, Gallimard poster vulnerability and need actually free Sole by providing her with an outlet to flee the Orientalist representation of Asian people. Gallimard transforms Sole into a butterfly, boots instead of transforming him into one of the butterfly. Whereas Gallimard, is actually the one who eventually ends up trapped by his own fantasy. Through an analysis of Gallimard practice cultural...
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...Hundreds of CDs, a few dozen LPs and a couple of books on film music. Can this prepare me for a 4000 word essay on the development of film music in American cinema? You bet it can. The topic of the essay for the unit of study American Film and Hollywood in my US Studies course will be about the development of film music over the last century, but in particular how it just isn’t as good as it used to be, and there are people to blame for this, which I’ll get to further below. When you’re passionate about film music and you’ve been listening to the works of composers such as Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, James Horner, John Barry, and many others from the so-called Silver Age of American cinema, you develop a certain taste and an in-built aural detector forms in your brain, connected to your ears, that makes you automatically know what separates a good film score from a bad one. Hell, even some bad film scores can have a sense of fun about them, even if they draw attention to themselves because film score aficionados are tuned into their siren-like abilities that lure us in to take notice and enjoy it for what it is. It may have a certain charm about it that makes it unique. Then you take a look back at the Golden Age film scores of Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Roy Webb, Alex North, Dimitri Tiomkin, and you realize that these guys were true musical artists working with an antagonistic studio system, but they delivered so many winners...
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...adaptations of traditional fables and fairy tales which can often be traced back to Victorian times. In particular, stories from “Kinder -und Hausmärchen” written by Jacob and Wilheim Grimm are commonly employed in producing Disney films which adapt and elongate their storylines for the big screen. Consequently, much of the original storylines are altered for theatrical and practical purposes when adopted by the Walt Disney Company, and creative liberties often distort the intended portrayals of the characters that were determined in the original stories. For instance, in Walt Disney’s film “Cinderella” (1950), Cinderella’s stepsisters are portrayed as unattractive, with boyish figures and rectangular frames as well as facial features which may be considered ‘manly’. The discrepancy between the physical traits of the stepsisters featured in Disney’s film versus Grimms’ original description, which characterized them as having “beautiful features but proud, nasty and...
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...The Vietnam War was the longest lasting military conflict in American History. What was originally fear of communist expansion became one of America’s most expensive and strenuous efforts, consuming over fifty eight thousand American lives. As casualties increased throughout the 1960’s, so did the domestic opposition to the war. In turn, large-scale protests and a lack of trust between government and its people rose. Today many of the war’s details remain unclear; however, Hollywood has had its hand at depicting what occurred. This paper provides an analysis of the Vietnam War, as well as its depiction in the 21st century film industry. “The Deer Hunter,” “Born on the 4th of July” and “Casualties of War” are three different interpretations of the war in both foreign and domestic settings. Each film offers a different point of view, varying from social, political, and military perspectives. Following the Second World War, the French set forth an effort to regain their former colonial possession of Indo-China, which had been occupied by the Japanese throughout the war. After nearly a decade, the French were unable to establish a presence in what they called their “inheritance”, and as a result withdrew under the Geneva Accord in 1954. Meanwhile conflict within the regions of Vietnam created instability. A communist regime called the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN), headed by Ho Chi Minh obtained power of the North. In contrast Ngo Dinh Diem established an interim government that...
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...The Excitement in a well written book happens from word to word, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter. But usually the turning from page to page is incidental, and in a long book a bother. It doesn't matter if something happens on page 9 or 289. While reading a book, I sometimes wish I didn’t have to hold it up, it gets so heavy, and I fantasize a sea of type automatically unrolling, one word in focus at a time, at just the right speed, on a moving screen or scroll. A scroll, or long paper with accordion pleats or separate sheets in a portfolio are all books of a sort. But a book, as we refer to it today, has distinct physical properties, just as painting, sculpture, film, and other art forms have their distinct physical properties A book is a series of pages held together at one edge, and these pages can be moved on their hinges like a swinging door. They could also be half-doors, doors with windows, double doors, like fold-outs, doors with attachments, pop-ups, textures or moving parts, and shaped doors. Of course if a door has something completely different behind it, it is much more exciting. The element of delight and surprise is helped by the physical power we feel in our own hands when we move that page or door to reveal a change in everything that has gone before, in time, place, or character. A thrilling picture book not only makes beautiful single images or sequential images, but also allows us to become aware of a book's...
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...Catrina Chandler English 101 Professor Cogswell Film Essay A Bronx Tale “A Bronx Tale” is a film about directed by Robert Di Nero about a boy named Calogero an Italian American male, and his life as he grows up in a town occupied by the mob in the 1960’s. Calogero has two strong influences in his life. They are his father Lorenzo a proud middle class bus driver and a mob boss named Sonny. In the film there are three scenes that especially demonstrate the influence Sonny and Lorenzo have on Calogero. An example of Lorenzo’s influence on his son takes place in front of their apartment building in which Calogero witnesses a gruesome crime committed by Sonny. Lorenzo basically instills in Calogero that he needs to lie and say he saw nothing. He is teaching him not to be a rat. When the police later question Calogero and have him look at a line up of suspects he denies knowing all of the men there, including Sonny. An example of Sonny’s influence is when Sonny belittles Mickey Mantle in front of him by saying “Mickey Mantle earns $100,000 a year. How much does your father make? You don’t know? Well, see if your father can’t pay the rent go ask Mickey Mantle and see what he tells you. Mickey Mantle don’t care about you, so why should you care about him? Nobody cares.” This causes Calogero to have negative feelings about Mickey Mantle, someone...
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...Inside Job Film, essay The global financial meltdown in 2008, at a cost of over $20 trillion, was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It was completely avoidable. A number of things occurred to create the economic crisis, including massive accounting fraud, securitization of mortgages, credit default swaps and synthetic CDOs to name a few. During the Clinton administration the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was enacted which banned all regulation of financial derivatives. Lenders no longer carried risk; they would sell mortgages to investment banks to create complex derivatives. They were more concerned about maximizing volume and getting fee out of it. Mortgage loans nearly quadrupled and the cost of homes doubled. Leverage limits were lifted on the investment banking industry which allowed them to borrow more money. Investment banks begin using credit default swaps to bet against the same mortgage securities that they are selling as extremely safe. They preferred subprime loans because they carried higher interest rates, which lead to an increase in predatory lending. In 2007, the housing bubble burst, as the financial sector runs out of people willing to borrow and purchase more housing; home ownership reaches an all-time high, while savings rates are at historic lows. And, if that wasn’t enough, the top executives and CEO’s of firms that declared bankruptcy were allowed to be in positions that made financial decisions for the government...
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...boundaries of anything we have seen in the universe. In Juan Solanas romantic science fiction film Upside Down, dual gravity worlds exist next to another. The two worlds that are separated are very different, the upper world being rich and the lower being the poor. In the film Upside Down Juan Solanas uses various film techniques to describe the segregated societies as different, sync with a bond and how destructive the societies are. In the film Upside Down the two societies, up or down are viewed upon differently. In the beginning of the film the screen goes from darkness to light when describing the science behind the gravities of the two worlds. This is the first initiation that emphasizes the difference between the two worlds. It highlights the separation of the two worlds through their gravities. In a wide-angle shot scene you can see both worlds in the shot, one of them being the light world and the other one is dark. The light world has an elite and aristocratic look to it, which suggest it is the upper class world. On the other had the dark said looks run down and has a other half look that suggest it is the poor world. The idea of the wide-angle shot with the light and dark worlds pushes this view of two different worlds that share the same atmosphere. In the film Upside Down these two worlds, which are different any many ways, just so happen to share a bond within the film. In a wide-angle shot of the two worlds there is a corporation that links both worlds to each...
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