Indiana Jones

Heroic characters like Indiana Jones are popular in our culture because girls/ women are attracted to their type since they make us feel safe in a manly way. We also need heroes to look up to for role models, security, and just for fun. Indiana Jones is one of the best examples of that type of hero. I say this because he is easily noticeable with his style of hat, jacket, bag, and his whip, also because he is not afraid to get down and dirty, he even has scars to prove it. Indy just pulls out his whip and does what he needs to do.

Sci-fi assignment

Serenity is a 2005 science fiction western genre film. It is set in the universe of the canceled FOX show, FireFly. It’s the story of a caption and a crew of a transport and cargo ship. The caption and first mate were veterans of the losing side of the Unification War, who now lived a life of crime. Though that was interrupted by a psychic passenger who carries a dangerous secret. Serenity mixes genres by being set 500 years in the future and using very technological devices, but the war and the plot is said to be influenced by the post American civil war period. The setting also looked futuristic but very deserity. The director also used the Wild West style of drab earth tone clothing.

Firefly is an American science fiction cult television serious that has been canceled. Its naturalistic future setting, modeled after traditional western movie motifs, presents an atypical science fiction backdrop for the narrative. They developed the concept for the show after reading The Killer Angles, a book about the battle of Gettysburg, and from a book about Jewish partisan fighters in World War II.

The show and film developed a theme of a dystopian future by setting it 500 years in the future were mankind has abandoned Earth. They are now being controlled by an alliance and keep going to rambon rural planets for fights.

musical assiment

The musical film genre came about with the transition from silent film to sound film and also a natural development of the stage musical. A musical is in which several songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative. The directors used the songs to advance the plot or develop the film’s characters. The performers would often treat their song and dance numbers as if there were a live audience watching, by looking directly into the camera and performing to it. They used to be very popular but then had a fall out, though they are coming back again.

The 1930’s, 1940’s, and the 1950’s were often considered the golden age of musical film. That time was also by far when the genre’s popularity was at the top. The first so called “musical” was The Broadway Melody; it won the 1929 Academy Award for best picture. Another early musical, The Gold Diggers of Broadway, remained the highest grossing film for a decade. By the late 1930’s audiences had been oversaturated with musicals and studios were forced to cut music from films. Director Busby Berkeley brought musicals back though. He began to enhance traditional dance numbers with ideas drawn for the drill precisions that he had experienced as a soldier. Other directors followed his style and many more great musicals were made like Singing in the Rain, Over the Rainbow, The Wizard of Oz, and The Band Wagon. But yet again in the 1950’s musicals declined again in popularity. There was only one reason to explain this…the culture change in music to things like rock and roll and the freedom and youth associated with it.

Through-out the decades directors had been avoiding musicals by using popular music at that time as back ground music and then sell sound tracks to the film. Certain films began to make though; there were musicals made about actors, dancers or singers, and children’s animated movies. Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) has been widely credited with revitalizing the musical genre and setting the stage for films such as Chicago, Rent, and The Phantom of the Opera. The film was an instant success, in limited release it grossed $185,095 in only 2 theaters opening weekend and when it expanded to over 2,500 theaters it made $14.2 million in its first weekend. Eventually Moulin Rouge! grossed over $57 million domestically and made over $120 million internationally. It even broke box office records in Australia and won an Academy Award. Another big “new age” musical was Rob Marshall’s Chicago (2002). It won six Academy Awards, including best picture. The film was the first musical the win the Best Picture Oscar since 1968’s Oliver.

I think the upsurge in the popularity of musicals happened because there had not really been any good ones for a couple of years and people wanted something different for a change. It shows that to in the amount of awards and money that was come from the newer musicals.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was a British director and producer, who fittled with many relatively new techniques for his time in the suspense and thriller genres. Through out his six decade career Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films ranging from the silent era, to talkies, to the color era. People begin placing him in the auteur category because all of his films were shot and acted out practelly the same.

Hitchcock became famous for is expert and largely unrivaled control of pace and suspense through out his movies; how his movies draw on both fear and fanesty; and the cynical view of tradional romance the most of his films took on. Many of his early movies created the techniques that he would end up using through out his film career. Blackmail was his tenth movie and introduced the tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences. The 39 Steps(1935) brought about the ‘MacGuffin” concept, a plot device around which a whole story would revolve in. Those are just a couple of examples that I have picked up on in the Hitchcock movies that I have watched. Many other directors have been placed in this category too, like Sara Allgood, Cary Grant, Vera Miles, and Annie Ondra.

horror assiment

The horror genre was designed to elicit fright, fear, terror, disgust, or horror from the audience. The plots use evil forces, events, or characters to come into the every day world. “Horror” characters include: vampires, zombies, monsters, serial killers, goasts, and many other fright-full things. The horror genre is nearly as old as film itself, with the 1st film in 1890. Most of the early horror films came from characters and stories from classic literature such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The two most influencal films, that set the tradition of horror movie setups, were Nosferatu and Frankenstein.

Nosferatu has been said to be the most enduring horror film of 1910’s and 1920’s era. The film was a German Expressionist film shot in 1921 and released in 1992 by F. W. Murnau. Murnau got the idea for his film from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This was the first and last movie from this company because they had to file bankrupency for being sued for copyright infringement. Nosferatu was meant to be destroyed but there were too many copies; and thank goodness for that because it ended up being one of the greatest movies of the vampire legend. The director ended up establishing one of the two main techniques of horror movies. It is called the “Nosferatu-type”, which is a living corpse with rodent features (such as long fingernails and incisors), associated with rats and plague, and neither charming nor erotic but instead very repugnant. The victims usually die too. This technique is still very much alive in new age movies, TV. shows, music, and video games. In 2000 several episodes of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command featured a recurring villain NOS-4-A2, which was a robot that feeds off of any thing mechanical. Nosferatu even made a cameo appearance on Sponge Bob Square Pants, became inspiration to music groups, and even a dark magic spell in video games.

In the 1930’s Universal Pictures Co. became known for horror films, bringing a series of successful gothic features. One of the best known was James Whale’s Frankenstein(1931). This film was very loosely based on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and was heavily influenced by the 1920’s German expressionist films. Frankenstein was known for the “Dracula-type” techniques. The Dracula –type is basically a charming aristocrat adept at seduction and whose bite turns his victims into new vampires. It was such a success that Universal Pictures Co. made a series out of the film; Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The film even influenced The Blair Witch Project (2000) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988).

Charlotte Warder

Romance

This morning a man was seen walking into Holly Golightly’s apartment. It was said that he said for about 45 minutes. Then Holly was seen walking out of the building but not him. Later that night Holly was seen walking up the outside stairs to the mystery man’s apartment. She went in and stayed till late hours in the night

A week after Hollys mystery man comes around her "husband" comes back to town. A close friend says that he is taking Holly home!

Holly and her mystery man neighbor were seen in Tiffany's getting someing engraved but later that week they were spotted at the libaray and Holly looked very mad. As if they had called it quits says an onlooker.

Aparntly they have not because they were seen kinolding in the rain yesterday and a close friend to them both has told us that they do like each other and are dating.

citizen kane

Charles Foster Kane was a very wealthy newspaper publisher whose life is the subject of the movie. He grows up to be an arrogant and callous man, but very powerful. Kane has many actions in the film that seem contradictory and unexplainable, but they are really not. If you take a look at his childhood most of his actions can be explained. When Kane is only eight years old he is sent away to live with his mom’s banker, Thatcher, because his mom comes into a big fortune. This sudden separation from his mom keeps Charles from growing past the needy and aggressive behaviors of pre-teens and always keeps him longing for some type of emotional attachment. He could never get close to Thatcher, Kane kept pushing him away when he tried to act parental, or anybody else. That is why as an adult Kane’s obsessive spending and collecting reveal that he is trying to fill that empty space inside him with objects instead of people, because everything he buys is for the sake of having it, not because it gives him joy. All Kane really wants is something that he can love. An example of this is when people kept talking about Rosebud and wondering who or what it is but nobody could figure it out. Finally it ends up being his sled from when he was younger and got it taken away from him, but then he got another one named Crusader. Though it was not the same because Kane was just trying to fill that hole.

Film Noir

Film Noir is a stylistic movement/sub genre type of film that came about after World War II. The absence of light; characters that striking in their absence of good, or light, motives and attitudes; and the special plots with there lack of upbeat endings, light-hearted moments, or happy times are what make up the “Film Noir” form. The past couple of weeks in class we have watched Laura, The Maltese Falcon, and Touch of Evil. All these movies are great examples of Film Noir because they are all different forms of the genre but they are still alike.
The movie Laura is said to be one of the most stylist, elegant, moody, and witty classic film noirs ever to be made. With a great cast of unique characters, like the shadowy Laura, a dim-witted and slithery Vincent Price, and a unconventional and puzzle playing dectivie Dana Andrews; interesting plot points; and the lighting through out the film make up its traits for a film noir. There are many film noir plot points that make up the movie like the anything but upbeat ending where Vincent Price tries to kill Laura and ends up dying, the unlight-hearted moment when people find out that Laura is not really dead so now they have to figure out who died, and the many unhappy moments were people deal with the death. Also the lighting in this movie is very classic to the Film Noir type because it was rarely that light and always very shadowy.
The Maltese Falcon is one of the most popular and classic detective mysteries made, also considered one of the first dark film noirs movies. This movie leaves the audience with a distinctly down-beat conclusion and bitter taste witch is classic in film noirs to have a lack of upbeat endings. The Maltese Falcon characters that play corrupt, deceitful villains, low-life crooks, and tough heroes are classic to the making up of the film genre. Yet again the light is shadowy and dark through out the movie.

Charlotte Warder