...Essay on Essay Analysis on The Movie "The Terminator" For the purposes of this essay I have chosen The Terminator, a science fiction B-movie feature from 1984. Although I intend mainly to study this purely as a single film, I do intend to study Terminator 2 in addition, thus making the essay a study of the series. In addition, I will be contrasting the theory written surrounding these films in relation to other contemporary postmodern theory, and as a result will be mentioning several other films by way of a comparison or contrast. The Terminator seems quite remarkable to me, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is one of many action films I watched in my early teens; a considerable number of which, like this film, starred the Austrian body-builder turned actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. What is so different about The Terminator though, is that unlike most of these films, this movie has enough depth and substance that, not only does it still bear watching now that I am older, but it also has an archive of academic theory written about it. The Terminator tells of a cyborg, a human shaped machine coated in flesh, that is sent back in time, from an apocalyptic future in which machines have 'got smart' and acted on their own to destroy the human race. The cyborg's mission is to assassinate the mother of the human's great leader, the man who taught the survivors to fight back against the machines. The woman, a young waitress named Sarah Connor, is protected only by a lone warrior...
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...Derrick Lee Introduction to Film 11/16/2013 Saturday A.M Raging Bull Film Analysis My reaction to the film Raging Bull was a positive one. The film displayed a troubled fighter looking to escape his personal reality by fighting in a boxing ring. Martin Scorcese directed the film it was to be his Swan song from movie making. Robert Deniro starred as Jake Lamotta a troubled individual who didn’t feel comfortable in real life situation but once he enter the ring it became his world. Joe Pesci costarred in the movie as his brother/trainer this was Pesci first big break as a film actor he had done mostly minor films prior to the making of the film. The movie takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride through Jakes life from a wannabe fighter into one of most fierce men to enter the ring. The film also showed his insecurities out of the ring with the women in his life. He was very insecure in relationship from males and females mostly from the women in his life he didn’t trust them at all. He met and married his second wife while she was just a teen which added more fuel to the fire of an already insecure man. His decisions out of the ring made him a very volatile inside of the ring he threw a fight on purpose just to get a shot at a title. His decision to throw the fight almost cost him his career because it was so obvious to the spectators the boxing commission had to suspend him. Jake also had several memorable...
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...This starts around 55:00, when Stretch falls into Leatherface’s room, which is littered with skinless corpses. She hides because she knows how crazy he is and that he could overpower her in an instant (like when they had the encounter in the radio tower at 41:00). Later, around 1:07:00, she escapes Leatherface’s room. She quietly traverses the caverns she is stuck in, anticipating being captured once again. This is a perfect example of Solomon's nightmare world because it fits in with everything he said. Stretch was not prepared to be in the hellhole called Texas Battleland; she was a simple radio host days before. Also, Leatherface seems to have abnormal strength, and just seems so inhuman that it is difficult for the viewer to associate with him. These match up with Solomon’s statements about the unpreparedness of the victim and the strength of the source of horror. When Stretch is exploring the Texas Battleland in search of an exit, it shows Solomon’s idea of the victim knowing that there is danger around them as they explore....
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...social. How significant is ideology, as well as genre theory, to your case-study? This essay will explore the ways in which the horror genre perpetuates repressive and oppressive social institutions, value systems and codes of behaviour surrounding the homosexual subject. It will be suggested that the generic conventions of horror films sustain repressive understandings of the normative order which position the homosexual subject as a threatening ‘other’. This essay will offer the opinion that it is through these representations that the horror genre produces the ideological figure of the ‘monstrous homosexual’. The discourses and ideologies explored will primarily be those relating to coding of the homosexual subject as predator and paedophile. This essay will engage with genre theory in order to demonstrate how narrative repetition in the horror genre mediates the homosexual subject as a disruption to the social order which must be eliminated in order to restore the heteronormative order. The methodology of genre theory will first be outlined, and the generic conventions of the horror film will be explored. The methodology of discourse analysis will also be employed in order to expose the ideologies at play in the case study. This essay will take Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm St II: Freddy’s Revenge as a case study in the examination of the oppressive and repressive social institutions, value systems and codes of behaviour which are perpetuated by the horror genre with regard...
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...The film Reportero encapsulates many of the ideals and themes that have been examined in the Human Rights in Latin America Class. These themes contribute to the frantic and dangerous dynamic that many journalist face in Mexico on a regular basis. The idea of borders and corruption are physical ideas that are not regularly seen with a person’s eyes, but are rather recognized by their mind. Death is another theme, though unlike the previous two, present a real, noticeable physical response. Born out of these physical themes, the idea centered on the motivation of Fear and Resilience is found. These two metaphysical thoughts are encouraged and enlightened by the other physical themes associated with Human Rights. However, before diving into a...
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...Does the film Huang tudi (Yellow Earth) offer a critique of the Communist revolution? If so where and how? Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou’s Yellow Earth is a meaningful and controversial film that highlights the young and old, realist and idealist, as well as the ideal utopia and bounded bureaucracies – touching on the notion of fate. Set in early 1939 in China, Yellow Earth follows the story of Gu Qing, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) soldier sent out among the peasants in Northern Shaanxi to collect folksongs, to which the Communists intend to rewrite new lyrics to help inspire soldiers and peasant followers to fight the Japanese invasion and work towards the revolution. Gu Qing comes across a village holding a wedding procession and is invited to join the feast. He stays at a peasant’s home, and meets a father with a daughter (Cuiqiao) and a son (Hanhan). There are several significant scenes in the film that suggests the filmmaker’s potential critique of the Communist revolution (CR). The film begins with a magnificent panning view of the vast and mountainous landscape. As with many nationalistic films, landscape plays a very important role, as it indirectly depicts the village peasants as slaves to the land, and a sense of hopelessness that comes with working the land. The several slow scenes focused on the horizon and landscape also represent the notion of an ‘unchanging China’, and it’s backwardness with it’s social and political margins. The film has many scenes depicting...
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...Film Analysis Paper: The Breakfast Club “To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others”. -Anthony Robbins All living beings are, in one way or another, drawn towards each other. We, as humans, strive to “communicate” with individuals who are in our environment. Communication is literally defined as: “the sending and receiving of verbal and nonverbal messages between two or more people”. When pondering on what film I should base my essay on, many factors came in to place; such as, “How many different types of communication are taking place? What is the predominant type of communication? And how many characters are communicating at the same time? After much thought, I decided on the world-famous cult-classic, The Breakfast Club. The setting for the film is Sherman High School; Sherman Illinois on a Saturday morning. Five very different students gather to serve their sentence of Saturday school under the careful hawk-like watch of the school’s vice principle Mr. Vernon. They are classified as a jock, a princess, a brain, a basket case, and a criminal. After arriving and selectively taking seats in the library, they are assigned an essay of, “no less than a thousand words, describing who [they] think [they] are.” After a short time the students completely ignore the assignment and begin interacting with one another. As time...
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...Under “Western Eyes”: The Personal Odyssey of Huang Fei-Hong in Once upon a Time in China by Tony Williams Rather than being read in exclusively postmodernist terms, Tsui Hark’s series Once upon a Time in China may be understood as a new version of a Hong Kong cinematic discourse involving historical “interflow.” It deals with dispersion, China’s relationship to the outside world, and strategic forms of reintegration designed to strengthen national identity. In Sammo Hung’s Wong Fei Hung Ji Saam (West Territory Mighty Lion/Once upon a Time in China and America, 1997), Master Huang Fei-hong (Jet Li Linjie) travels to the Wild West to visit an American branch of the Po Chi Lam Clinic set up by his student Sol. During the journey, he bangs his head against a rock in a turbulent stream and loses his memory. He is rescued by a friendly tribe of Indians. Moments before we see Huang again, an Indian emerges from a tepee proudly announcing the birth of a child. When Huang recovers, he stumbles around in the Indian camp wearing an Indian costume, and his loose unbraided hair is flowing like an Indian’s. After using his martial arts prowess to defeat a hostile Indian, who ironically mouths racist American platitudes against the outsider—”His clothing is different, his skin color is different, his speech is different”—Huang is adopted into the tribe and given the name “Yellow.” Before this, he attempts to remember events of the recent past. But his vague recollections...
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...Matt Williams Splitting Hairs in Disney’s film Tangled Cinderella tells us that a dream is a wish that your heart makes, and following suit dreams play a large part in the newest Disney princess film, Tangled. In the end of the film Rapunzel holds Flynn and they admit their deep secret that they had become each other’s dream, and an “awww” moment ensues. The question to ask is “Where do these dreams come from?” and “What do these dreams mean?” Taking this second question, the implications of Rapunzel and Flynn’s dream impact more than just the world of the film. The Disney Princess films have been studied within an inch of their lives by a great number of scholars in a great number of fields. One common study takes the ideas of gender development and combines them with the Disney Princess films. However, the implications of gender do not stop here as gender identity can still be impacted as the viewers age. Interpretation of the princess films has been a huge aspect of their scholarly application as the behavior of the princesses, and princes, can be interpreted and compared with gender stereotypes and norms to assess the impact their portrayals can have on the viewing audience. The film Tangled is often seen as Disney’s take on a modern princess, and Rapunzel and Flynn have a great deal to contribute to both gender development study and media interpretation of gender. Gender development is a field of study which has been impacted in a number of ways by modern theorists...
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...Analysis of the Major Characters In Lord of the Flies by William Golding In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements in English 140 Submitted by: Ryan Mark L. Catanio Submitted to: Prof. Donna Alna C. Cortez September 08, 2014 A. Author’s Biography William Golding Biography Author (1911–1993) a. Synopsis William Golding was born September 19, 1911, in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. In 1935 he started teaching English and philosophy in Salisbury. He temporarily left teaching in 1940 to join the Royal Navy. In 1954 he published his first novel, Lord of the Flies. In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On June 19, 1993, he died in Perranarworthal, Cornwall, England. b. Early Life William Golding was born on September 19, 1911, in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. He was raised in a 14th-century house next door to a graveyard. His mother, Mildred, was an active suffragette who fought for women’s right to vote. His father, Alex, worked as a schoolmaster. William received his early education at the school his father ran, Marlborough Grammar School. When William was just 12 years old, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to write a novel. A frustrated child, he found an outlet in bullying his peers. Later in life, William would describe his childhood self as a brat, even going so far as to say, “I enjoyed hurting people.” After primary school, William went on to attend Brasenose College at Oxford University. His father hoped he would become...
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...Date: 5th October 2009 Assignment: Assessment Point One Essay Title: No. 4) Analyze a movie poster from a film directed by Martin Scorsese and then, with reference to the ideas of Pierce and Saussure, apply techniques in Semiotics and Semiology in order to illustrate how the text can be interpreted. Any and every piece of text in this world has meaning, or a point it is trying to put across. If you look at a portrait, or a page in a book, different aspects of the picture, or the way the words are put together on the page, all have purpose; To convey a certain message. This technique of analyzing different parts of texts, using signs and symbols, is termed “semiotics. [1] In this essay, we shall be using the techniques of semiotics, to interpret a poster of renowned Director, Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster movie, “Shutter Island”. According to Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles S. Pierce, two founding fathers of semiotics; a sign consists of “the signifier” and “the signified”. The signifier of a sign is the form in which the sign takes, and the signified stands for what the sign represents. [2] Let’s take for example, a picture of a young boy crying. In this scenario, the little boys face would be a sign, the act of him crying would be the signifier, and the signified would probably be that the boy is sad because something has gone wrong. Delving deeper into semiotic analysis, there are two types of relationships signs and signifiers can have with each other; they are syntagmatic...
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...Anbe Sivam- Project on MoS Introduction and plot There are good films, there are great films and then there are some films which become a part of your soul forever and have an impact on the very way in which you live your life. The last category is extremely rare, and I have hardly found across a couple of movies which have moved me to this extent. Foremost among those would be the 2003 Tamil masterpiece Anbe Sivam (translated to Love is God). Anbe Sivam was released about 8 years ago and is widely acknowledged as the most profound and deepest of Kamal Haasan’s films till date; Kamal also co-wrote the dialogues with Madan, apart from playing one of the protagonists. The other protagonist is played by Madhavan in probably what is his most memorable role ever. The film also stars Kiran Rathod, Nasser and Santhana Bharathi in important roles. It was directed by Sundar C (though widely rumoured to have been ghost-directed by Kamal himself) and the music was composed by Vidyasagar. The film basically revolves around the lives of the two protagonists over the course of a few days as both of them get stranded in Orissa due to torrential rains and floods, cutting off all forms of transport; the entire plot is rolled out as they try to get back home to Chennai. Madhavan plays Anbarasu (A Ars as he prefers to call himself), a young and successful ad film-maker who has recently got engaged and has his marriage scheduled in about a week’s time. Kamal plays Nallasivam aka Nalla, a middle-aged...
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...spectators differently. The divergent (emotional) reactions towards both films are the effect of different rhetorical strategies: the first can be seen a typical example of baroque discourse and the latter as a specimen of mannerist discourse. The reference to the terms melodrama, mannerism and baroque does not imply that these films are just formal repetitions of historical periods or that they thematically and structurally refer to historical styles, but that they are characterized by opposing discursive strategies which came to the foreground in a specific historical time and constellation. Because these discursive strategies return in other historical periods and socialpolitical circumstances in different guises and with different aims, they can be compared to what Aby Warburg calls Pathosformeln (pathos formula). The expressive forms, gestures and discursive modes of melodrama, baroque and mannerism can thus be understood as transhistorical (gestural) languages of pathos that recur in history. Résumé Bien que All that heaven allows (1954) par Douglas Sirk et Far from heaven (2002) par Todd Haynes se caractérisent nettement comme un mélodrame, les deux films adressent leur public de manière fondamentalement différente. La divergence au niveau des réactions (émotionnelles) envers ces deux films, résultent d’une différence au niveau des stratégies rhétoriques auxquelles ils font appel : alors que le film de Sirk semble être un exemple type du discours baroque, l’autre...
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...AN ANALYSIS OF IRONY AND SARCASM IN SOUTH PARK BY PHILIPP PAYR Table of contents 1) Introduction 2) Definition of irony and sarcasm 2.1) Irony 2.1.1) Verbal irony 2.1.2) Situational irony 2.1.3) Dramatic irony 2.2) Sarcasm 2.3) Difference between sarcasm and irony 3) Mechanisms of irony 3.1) Overemphasis 3.2) Internal inconsistency 3.3) Stylistic inconsistency 4) Methodology 5) Analysis of irony and sarcasm in South Park 5.1) Episode 14:11: Coon 2 5.2) Episode 16:08: Sarcastaball 5.3) Episode 07:14: Raisins 6) Conclusion 7) References 1) Introduction The use of irony and satire is known for a long time. The mediums to transmit ironic and satiric effects, however, can change with the course of time. The use of them in TV series evoked my interest to examine this phenomenon. Irony and Sarcasm are the stylistic features principally used in the comic TV series South Park. Although the concept and the humor of the show remains the same, the success now persists for more than a decade. For that reason, I decided to make use of excerpts of this series and to analyze the methods of how irony and satire are created. Despite the sentiment of many that South Park is nothing but a threat to young people because of its massive use of scatological language, a multitude of messages can be uncovered in this TV series. Therefore, not only the surface structure of the often-obscene content has to...
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...Karen Conner Professor Pridgeon English 252H Spring 1993 Semester Film Production: Final Project After the astounding success of my last film endeavor [final project for ENG 251H], Townies, my production company, Gateway Productions, has con¬tracted me for a new endeavor, this time for an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. The company says that I may have full creative license in this one so, as Orson Welles did in his film Citizen Kane, I intend to oversee all aspects of the process. In selecting my staff, I have decided to keep some of the old faces from the previous film. My friend Julie Weaver will once more be at my side. As you recall, I chose her previously because she is not only a good art director but a talented illustrator as well. Her ability to do on-the-spot sketches of ideas saved me a great amount of time and money on the last project. I have also decided to keep Brightwood as cinematographer and Wise as sound director, again for the same reason for which I chose them last time, because they would make good contributions to the creative aspect of the process, and I felt that these two could best translate my ideas to film. Another old face will be Joyce Nevelson, my editor. I chose her last time because she was well-known in the industry and had won many rewards, proving her talent. Changes I have made will be in the writing, sound, and music departments. I have chosen Paul Gainritch to write my screen¬play. He is...
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