Bad Day at Black Rock Kathryn Abbott October 29 2015 DRAMA 3030 The unexpected arrival of a stranger to a small, Midwestern town creates a feeling of scepticism and suspicion, and through this the explicit meaning is revealed: Fear of the unknown and the moral and physical deterioration of a town left to its own devices. The film exemplifies these concepts through the use of mise-en-scène, and vivid cinematographic elements. The blood red coloured train stands out against a muted background.
A few weeks ago I went to the showing of a piece titled Braided Sorrow at the University of San Francisco Lone Mountain Theater. Braided Sorrow is a performance written by Marisela Orta, was directed by Roberto Varea and was presented by the USF Performing Arts Department. When I arrived to the performance the first thing that I noticed was the set up of the stage. It looked very different from usual. This past spring semester I was in a class taught by Professor Varea (The director of the play) and throughout the semester we were required to go to a number of performances.
“I will never be satisfied!” Many athletes may have heard this statement once or twice in their athletic careers from their coaches, but to hear it come from a parent is very unexpected. In the documentary Trophy Kids, follows the story of five families whose life is centered on their child’s success in sports. It goes behind the scenes of what each of the parent’s strategies are in order to push their child to the next level of becoming the next all-star athlete.
The film I am analyzing, A League of Their Own, would be categorized as a narrative film about the growth of women’s baseball teams during World War II. It follows the dramatized story of Dottie Hinson’s time in her baseball league and their struggles to make women’s baseball be taken seriously; however, the film focuses more on Dottie’s personal goals and relationships. With the added personal challenge of Dottie’s increasing rivalry with her sibling, Kit, as well as the uncaring attitude of their manager, Jimmy Dugan, Dottie’s tale is filled with tension and emotion that is shaped to draw the audience in. To showcase the drama of the film and to help the audience become attached to the stories of the characters, the movie uses flashbacks, comedy, and interpersonal drama to manufacture the story of our main character, Dottie, more interesting and engaging to the audience. As is easily evident simply by the summary of the movie, A League of Their Own is a nonfiction, narrative film made for entertainment and drama, and uses the time period as the circumstances of the story relevant to the audience.
The late 19th century consisted of rigid work hours for children, the growth of strikes, and the use of yellow journalism. It was a challenging time for anyone below the upper class to live in. This is demonstrated throughout Newsies, a Broadway Musical displaying the challenges from this time period. Child labor, a major part of the movie, was the way of life and consisted of young children doing hard work as a vital part of the nation’s economy and income of families of the time. Another part of the movie, strikes, were the people’s way of refusing to work as a result of not getting their desires.
O Brother Where Art Thou? is a film that will take you on a perilous journey with Ulysses Everett McGill and his simpleminded cohorts. This film may be set amidst the early 1930’s Great Depression era, but it still has a Homer’s Odyssey feel to it. Down in the dusty and highly racial south, Everett recruits a couple of dimwitted convicts, Pete Hogwallop and Delmar O’Donnell, to help him retrieve his lost treasure and make it back home before his wife marries another suitor.
The movie chosen was “On Golden Pond.” The life transition and developmental issue present in the couple are the father 's cognitive decline and age-related memory loss, familial conflict and divergence between father and daughter. Norman and Ethel appear hunched and infirm which is a sign of osteoporosis or general bone density decline, and their hair is gray and thinning. Ethel seems to be in better shape than Norman. The movie is filled with conflict and resolution.
Madison Avenue advertising executive Roger Thornhill’s (Cary Grant) life changes drastically after he is kidnapped and mistaken for a spy named George Kaplan. After a successful escape from attempted murder by Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), Roger Thornhill begins a journey to search for George Kaplan. On his itinerary, he meets the beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint). A romantic relationship is started between the two, leaving Thornhill to believe that Even Kendall would cooperate and help him to meet Kaplan.
“A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory.” Louis Zamperini dealt with bullies at a young age when his family moved from France to America. He began to get in trouble with the authorities, often running from them, but when his brother noticed he could run, his life changed. Zamperini joined the school track team and excelled, eventually moving on to the Olympics. However, in a twist of events, Zamperini joins the army and finds himself stranded at sea, then stuck in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp.
Jumping the Broom is a light-hearted comedy about two African American families joining together for a wedding weekend to celebrate the marriage of Jason Taylor and Sabrina Watson at her wealthy family’s estate in Massachusetts. After Jason and Sabrina meet in Manhattan, the two start dating, and a short five months later they become engaged. Jason comes from a blue-collar family in Brooklyn, but became a successful businessman working on Wall Street. Jason’s mother, Mrs. Taylor, is a postal worker and is deemed as lower class, whereas Sabrina’s parents both come from wealthy families and lead an upper class lifestyle. When the two families’ get together for the first time at Sabrina’s family’s estate on Martha’s Vineyard, their class division becomes quite apparent and conflict quickly ensues.
The film ‘Good Will Hunting’ directed by Gus Van Sant is a movie which follows the life of Will Hunting who is gifted with astonishing skills for maths but whom suffered with a fear of abandonment. He developed a defense mechanism which affected his ability to create long lasting relationships. An important extract from the movie is the scene ‘ It’s not your fault’. This scene conveyed the impact of childhood traumas, the effects of suppressed emotions and the idea of soulmates. These ideas were manifested through the use of various film techniques, such as camera shots and movements, music and dialogue.
‘I’m not a psychopath; I’m a high functioning sociopath, do your research,” (Polaek 389) ‘Surveying the Post-Millennial Sherlock Holmes: A case for the Great Detective as a Man of Our times,’ explores the characteristics of three of the modern variations of Sherlock Holmes within films. In 2004 House M.D. was released, this new series aiding to Holmes being the most human literary character with the most on screen appearances, surpassing hamlet by forty-eight portrayals. (Polaek, 385). Sherlock’s characteristics are portrayed as a child in an adult body, he is described as fighting his addiction, and finds sanity within music, and aside from one friend keeps to himself. The end of the year in 2009 Warner brothers produced the movie Sherlock
The show Band of Brothers was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks who, at the time, recently had success with a World War II film entitled Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg and Hanks used their expertise on war films to craft the exceptional television series Band of Brothers which originally aired on HBO in 2001. The show follows “Easy” Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division, from the moment they begin their training to the moment their deployment ends. Throughout the show we see the men of “Easy” Company mature a thousand times over. The men experience love, loss, and death at rate that is inconceivable to someone that has never experienced the theatre of war.
In 2015, HBO aired a six-part, true crime documentary series titled, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. Writer and director, Andrew Jarecki, examined the details of three crimes associated with Durst, including the disappearance of Durst’s first wife Kathy, the murder of his dear friend, Susan, and the murder and dismemberment of his neighbor, Morris Black. While the mini-series was met with acclaim, many – including myself – criticize The Jinx for its storytelling approach. The series seemingly blurs the lines of storytelling – for entertainment purposes – and journalism; raising many questions regarding ethics. Initially, Durst approached Jarecki regarding an interview after he saw All Good Things, a film Jarecki had released
Movie Analysis: Something the Lord Made Something the lord made is a movie depicts the tumultuous relationship of two leading pioneers in the field of surgery. The white surgeon Alfred Blalock and the black cardiac pioneer Vivian Thomas. Their partnership lasted for over thirty years and during that time important breakthroughs were made both in the field of medicine and in that of social equality in America. The reason why I chose to write an essay about this movie is due to the important events that transpire in it.
