First, here are the brief citations for those essays, just so you know, for your; I don't require a bibliography, so it's enough to write something like "(Ebert, p. xx)" or "(Sterritt, p. xx)." Cite their ideas, don't plagiarize them:
"Psycho," The Great Movies, Roger Ebert
"Psycho," The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, David Sterritt
You're to write a formal argumentative essay of approximately 500-750 words that analyzes the movie by responding to the Sterritt and Ebert essays. Some possible approaches: What is the movie about? How does the movie use its visuals and words to address its issues? How does your own view mesh or contrast with the views of the essayists? As in an essay on a piece of literature, think about how to divide up the paper, focusing on a particular aspect of the film or idea from the film in each body paragraph. Use the Ebert and Sterritt essays as touchstones and reference sources. You could simply use the Sterritt piece as a springboard, with your entire essay responding to his arguments. Whether you merely reference the essays or directly quote them, you still have to cite them properly in the paper.
This is not due on your next class day, but on next Wednesday and Thursday. If you're having trouble framing an argument, please talk to me.
Post any questions here.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A test approaches!
Next Wednesday and Thursday, I'll give you a test on film terms. You'll be given approximately 20 definitions; you have to produce the terms. Everything I'll use will come from the glossary I've linked to at right.
The one term there I haven't dealt with yet is "deep focus," which you'll see examples of in the next few days.
With any luck, we'll be watching one of the worst movies ever made on Thursday and Friday. Let's hope it comes in at the library!
The one term there I haven't dealt with yet is "deep focus," which you'll see examples of in the next few days.
With any luck, we'll be watching one of the worst movies ever made on Thursday and Friday. Let's hope it comes in at the library!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Double Indemnity assignment
First: If you had me today, Thursday, I forgot to hand out some reference material at the end of class. If I don't locate you in the next day, please find me. Sorry about that.
The assignment is as follows; please read the directions carefully; if you have questions, please post them here, as others may have the same questions:
Read the handouts on film noir. (On the larger packet, there's a section after film noir about the blacklisting era in Hollywood; read that as well. It's likely you haven't heard of this odd time in Hollywood.)
You're to write a reaction piece on the movie. It's not a review, per se, but an organized essay of approximately 500 words that analyzes your response to the movie by focusing on three scenes in the film. (Each body paragraph would deal with a particular scene. Also provide some kind of introduction and conclusion. Again, I'm not looking for a research paper, but rather a response piece that employs the language we've been using in class to discuss film.) You'll want to consider scenes that had an impact on you--scenes that are at the heart of why the film struck you, why the film is successful, and the film noir aspects that make it interesting.
Enjoy.
The assignment is as follows; please read the directions carefully; if you have questions, please post them here, as others may have the same questions:
Read the handouts on film noir. (On the larger packet, there's a section after film noir about the blacklisting era in Hollywood; read that as well. It's likely you haven't heard of this odd time in Hollywood.)
You're to write a reaction piece on the movie. It's not a review, per se, but an organized essay of approximately 500 words that analyzes your response to the movie by focusing on three scenes in the film. (Each body paragraph would deal with a particular scene. Also provide some kind of introduction and conclusion. Again, I'm not looking for a research paper, but rather a response piece that employs the language we've been using in class to discuss film.) You'll want to consider scenes that had an impact on you--scenes that are at the heart of why the film struck you, why the film is successful, and the film noir aspects that make it interesting.
Enjoy.
Monday, October 12, 2009
New links
Look to the right. Now look to the left. Now look to the right again. That's just good exercise after staring at the screen for too long.
But seriously, folks: Look to the right. No, really. I've posted two new links for your education and enjoyment. The Moving Image Collections site contains a host of research and browsing resources. I've linked you to their movie page, with links to resources about films, but if you go to their home page, you'll find even more pages and links of interest. Errol Morris's home page, with its somewhat wacky layout, belongs to one of the great filmmakers of our time. You may not have seen his work because he makes documentaries—but let me tell you, kids, his documentaries are more interesting and riveting and thrilling than 95% of what passes for an "action" movie these days. Ebert often speaks in praise of Morris, mentioning him in the same breath as Hitchcock. Anyone who cares about the history of warfare and U.S. foreign policy should watch The Fog of War; anyone who cares about Abu Ghraib, the Iraq conflict, torture, human rights, and the power of the image should see Standard Operating Procedure. Not every one of his films is quite so political: his first movie, Gates of Heaven, is about a pet cemetery.
But seriously, folks: Look to the right. No, really. I've posted two new links for your education and enjoyment. The Moving Image Collections site contains a host of research and browsing resources. I've linked you to their movie page, with links to resources about films, but if you go to their home page, you'll find even more pages and links of interest. Errol Morris's home page, with its somewhat wacky layout, belongs to one of the great filmmakers of our time. You may not have seen his work because he makes documentaries—but let me tell you, kids, his documentaries are more interesting and riveting and thrilling than 95% of what passes for an "action" movie these days. Ebert often speaks in praise of Morris, mentioning him in the same breath as Hitchcock. Anyone who cares about the history of warfare and U.S. foreign policy should watch The Fog of War; anyone who cares about Abu Ghraib, the Iraq conflict, torture, human rights, and the power of the image should see Standard Operating Procedure. Not every one of his films is quite so political: his first movie, Gates of Heaven, is about a pet cemetery.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Review assignment
The assignment has three components:
• an approximately 250-word review of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
• an approximately 100-word review, and
• a ten-word-or-less snapshot of the film.
Keep in mind these elements:
1. What to reveal about the plot. This typically becomes a problem in the longer review as you're looking for something to say. Avoid getting too bogged down in the plot (" . . . and then this happens . . . followed by this happening . . . but that guy turns out to be . . . "); don't reveal the twist at the movie's conclusion.
2. Names. Go on imbd.com to look up the names of the director, writer, the actors, and the characters. You don't need to mention everyone, not in short reviews like these (and not at all in the ten-word take), but you need to get these things right.
3. Elements of the film. Think about what struck you most in the movie. Comment on those elements (since this film has no sound, we're largely talking acting, script, direction, and set design). You'll notice different things than someone else.
4. Audience. Who is reading your review? Think of how you might write this for your peers so they appreciate what you've seen.
• an approximately 250-word review of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
• an approximately 100-word review, and
• a ten-word-or-less snapshot of the film.
Keep in mind these elements:
1. What to reveal about the plot. This typically becomes a problem in the longer review as you're looking for something to say. Avoid getting too bogged down in the plot (" . . . and then this happens . . . followed by this happening . . . but that guy turns out to be . . . "); don't reveal the twist at the movie's conclusion.
2. Names. Go on imbd.com to look up the names of the director, writer, the actors, and the characters. You don't need to mention everyone, not in short reviews like these (and not at all in the ten-word take), but you need to get these things right.
3. Elements of the film. Think about what struck you most in the movie. Comment on those elements (since this film has no sound, we're largely talking acting, script, direction, and set design). You'll notice different things than someone else.
4. Audience. Who is reading your review? Think of how you might write this for your peers so they appreciate what you've seen.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Batman, Yet Again
Back on Sept. 5 and 20, 2008 (look in the blog archives before reading this), I commented on The Dark Knight. This weekend, I watched the film again, and I gained an appreciation for it that simultaneously reinforced my view of its problems.
I watched it on my computer in half-hour chunks. This helped considerably, as I didn't have to see the movie as one giant block of narrative. One of my problems with the film is its novelistic structure: it's trying to do too much and gets somewhat lost doing it. This felt more evident on the big screen, where you're careening along and its easy to feel that something slipped past you. This time around, I appreciated how the Nolans did try to make a coherent argument. I still don't think it makes as much sense as they hoped, but by chopping the movie into pieces and viewing its pieces, the incoherence is actually less grating.
There remains the strange problem that Batman says "I'm going for Rachel" but ends up getting Dent. It was hard to be sure that he'd said that the first time around (that scratchy voice Bale uses is really a bad choice on somebody's part), but I confirmed it this time. So, does the Joker lie about who is where, knowing that Batman would choose to save the woman, which is who the Joker wants to kill? If so, fine, but at no point after these events does anyone say, "The Joker lied to us." When Dent is waving a gun around, why doesn't someone say, "The Joker set us up"?
It is an exciting film with solid direction. I think it should have gone in different directions, and some of its choices are baffling, but it's still a fine-looking movie, and it was nice to see Ledger's work again. (Really, all of the actors except Bale do great work; Bale is fine, but the script somehow hems him in.)
I watched it on my computer in half-hour chunks. This helped considerably, as I didn't have to see the movie as one giant block of narrative. One of my problems with the film is its novelistic structure: it's trying to do too much and gets somewhat lost doing it. This felt more evident on the big screen, where you're careening along and its easy to feel that something slipped past you. This time around, I appreciated how the Nolans did try to make a coherent argument. I still don't think it makes as much sense as they hoped, but by chopping the movie into pieces and viewing its pieces, the incoherence is actually less grating.
There remains the strange problem that Batman says "I'm going for Rachel" but ends up getting Dent. It was hard to be sure that he'd said that the first time around (that scratchy voice Bale uses is really a bad choice on somebody's part), but I confirmed it this time. So, does the Joker lie about who is where, knowing that Batman would choose to save the woman, which is who the Joker wants to kill? If so, fine, but at no point after these events does anyone say, "The Joker lied to us." When Dent is waving a gun around, why doesn't someone say, "The Joker set us up"?
It is an exciting film with solid direction. I think it should have gone in different directions, and some of its choices are baffling, but it's still a fine-looking movie, and it was nice to see Ledger's work again. (Really, all of the actors except Bale do great work; Bale is fine, but the script somehow hems him in.)
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
While you're away, I cogitate
As we view the earliest films, I want you to see how people drew on previous forms of expression and entertainment in order to craft the new medium. Those first movies, with their fixed perspective on unscripted scenes of ordinary life—the factory day ending, people disembarking from a boat, a couple feeding their child—are nothing more than animated photographs. The decision to film the arriving train at an interesting angle represents a decision to bring drama to the proceedings. The troublesome boy stepping on the hose is our first example of a script, a story.
Méliès takes his lessons not from photography, but from the stage. He not only crafts theatrical pieces, he constructs elaborate sets and moves from scene to scene through the use of the dissolve (know that term). He also employs special effects, some learned from his stage magician's act but others only possible with the invention of film. Multiple exposures and the use of cuts let his imagination take on reality.
What you're seeing is film develop its own language even as it borrows from the visual and narrative language of other forms that precede it. I started watching Watchmen last night (I had avoided the film, though—or perhaps because—I like the graphic novel) and it made me think about how film continues to compete with and borrow from other forms of narrative. One complaint about the film leveled by critics is that it tried to merely emulate or reproduce the images from the graphic novel rather than develop its own way of approaching the material. It's a complaint you could level, in a different form, at other adaptations. After all, films of books or plays borrow something of their narrative structure, even if there's no visual structure from which to lift. Though some of the shots are indeed exactly from the book, the director still has to present movement between those shots, so it's not as if the device spares him from having to employ some creativity. So far, he seems to handle that pretty well. However, I'd say that the narrative itself is a challenge for the unitiated to follow—or to care about. The actress playing Silk Spectre is dreadful. (The other actors seem fine, but Ozymandias's German-with-a-lisp is a profoundly wrong choice.) The conceit of the original material is that only Dr. Manhattan is superpowered, but the people in the movie shatter people's bone (and blocks of granite) as if they were super beings; that's just wrong, and misses the point. The script isn't working well to hold the narrative threads together. I find that the problem isn't the look of the thing but that, in trying so hard to have his film look like another art form, he forgot to labor on a script that didn't merely lift words from the graphic novel. Forms of entertainment always inform each other and borrow back and forth, but you still have to labor at every element.
Méliès takes his lessons not from photography, but from the stage. He not only crafts theatrical pieces, he constructs elaborate sets and moves from scene to scene through the use of the dissolve (know that term). He also employs special effects, some learned from his stage magician's act but others only possible with the invention of film. Multiple exposures and the use of cuts let his imagination take on reality.
What you're seeing is film develop its own language even as it borrows from the visual and narrative language of other forms that precede it. I started watching Watchmen last night (I had avoided the film, though—or perhaps because—I like the graphic novel) and it made me think about how film continues to compete with and borrow from other forms of narrative. One complaint about the film leveled by critics is that it tried to merely emulate or reproduce the images from the graphic novel rather than develop its own way of approaching the material. It's a complaint you could level, in a different form, at other adaptations. After all, films of books or plays borrow something of their narrative structure, even if there's no visual structure from which to lift. Though some of the shots are indeed exactly from the book, the director still has to present movement between those shots, so it's not as if the device spares him from having to employ some creativity. So far, he seems to handle that pretty well. However, I'd say that the narrative itself is a challenge for the unitiated to follow—or to care about. The actress playing Silk Spectre is dreadful. (The other actors seem fine, but Ozymandias's German-with-a-lisp is a profoundly wrong choice.) The conceit of the original material is that only Dr. Manhattan is superpowered, but the people in the movie shatter people's bone (and blocks of granite) as if they were super beings; that's just wrong, and misses the point. The script isn't working well to hold the narrative threads together. I find that the problem isn't the look of the thing but that, in trying so hard to have his film look like another art form, he forgot to labor on a script that didn't merely lift words from the graphic novel. Forms of entertainment always inform each other and borrow back and forth, but you still have to labor at every element.
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