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.
Having seen a wolf on a regular basis myself when I lived in Wolf Creek Montana, I related to Farley Mowat’s opinion in the book Never Cry Wolf. As the book was written by the main character, Farley Mowat, and published in 1963. Since then the average opinions may have changed. Mowat created the strategy of gaining the reader's trust to change their opinions about wolves once he was sent on the “lupine project”.
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.
Why This Video Clip of My Practice is Significant to Me This video clip is a snap shot of the second semester of my second year teaching. At the time, I was a U.S. History teacher and department chair at South Atlanta High School. South Atlanta High was and is one of the lowest performing high schools in Atlanta Public Schools and serves a highly traumatized student population. This video clip is significant to me because of the high expectations and engaged class culture that is demonstrated in the video.
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a film that the focuses on the Louisiana levee as a barrier between two completely different ways of living. Benh Zeitlin uses the community of The Bathtub to shine a different light on poverty. He discusses the idea that not all people share the belief that the higher your quality of life is, the happier you are. In fact, the people of The Bathtub do not have a linear view of socioeconomic circumstance at all.
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.
The Life of Farmworks The movie, The Harvest, reveals the hardships that farm workers go through in the perspective of three teenagers. The main characters of this movie is the three teenagers, whose names are Zulema, Perla, and Victor. Within this movie, we get to see an insight of what is their day to day life, their struggles, and what they want to do. Even though, they are all similar in a way they are also different from one another.
Throughout life we are told to express our individuality and swim against the stream of the general population to put emphasis on the characteristics that make us, in short, individuals. Cherishing what makes an individual special and different is what establishes roots in creativity and self expression, however there is a forced false sense of comradery in today’s society that takes the form of involvement with the masses; peer pressure forces many people to fall into the mold of an average character. The Academy award winning film, “The Incredibles” displays the themes of expressing one’s true self and special qualities, and in contrast repression by society to fit a basic mold. These themes are elaborated on through the development of the main characters and expressed further through the supporting roles and their dialogue and endeavors.
The film Dances With Wolves is a moving, culturally significant American western film produced in 1990 and directed by Kevin Costner, who also plays the lead role of John J. Dunbar. It portrays a fictional account of the relationship between a soldier and a tribe of Sioux indians. In the beginning, Dunbar is an injured soldier who accidentally makes himself a hero while trying to commit suicide by riding his horse in front of the enemy. When given a choice for where he wants to be stationed he requests the frontier, because he wants to see it “before it’s gone. ”While stationed alone at Fort Sedgwick in Dakota territory, he befriends the people of a nearby Lakota tribe.
Men are dogs. At least, that is what Angela Carter compares them to in her short story “The Company of Wolves.” In the story she sets up a village terrorized by vicious animals. The children carry knives when they leave the house, the farmers lock up their animals at night, and people lose loved ones. However, the villagers slowly begin to realize that the wolves they believed to be the culprits behind the bloodshed, are actually werewolves; men who turn into beasts.
Pulp Fiction, a gangster film centred around crime and drama, was directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, staring John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Samuel Jackson. The Oscar award winning film details the lives of two hitmen, a gangster, and the gangster’s wife Jules Winnfield (Samuel Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), are on a mission to retrieve a stolen briefcase from their employer, and mob boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). Mia, (Uma Thurman) plays the role as Wallace’s wife, who is spends some time with Vincent, while Wallace leaves town for business purposes. Even though the lives of these individuals seem interesting enough, each of them wove together to create a film involving a series of funny, bizarre, and suspenseful
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.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS BY JONATHAN DEMME In many ways, ‘The Silence of the lambs’ is different from its predecessors in the Hannibal cannibal novel series. A 1991 horror-thriller movie directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and Scott Glenn. In the film, a bright, young FBI Trainee Clarice Starling is chosen by Jack Crawford of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit to interview Hannibal Lecter, a former psychiatrist and the cannibalistic serial killer whose insight leads to the pursuit of the serial killer named ‘Buffalo Bill’, who skins his female victim corpses. Compared to its immediate predecessor ‘Manhunter’ of 1986 movie, ‘silence’ is very much a skillful adaptation and brilliant execution of the plot taking an advanced step from the ‘Manhunter’.
Adversity in “The Intouchables” “My true disability is not having to be in a wheel chair. It’s having to be without her.” (The Intouchables). Lines like that are just a piece of the great undertaking directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano took when they decided to be part of The Intouchables.
Lion, directed by Garth Davis, is a compelling interpretation of a remarkable true story of Saroo Brierley, lost as a child and reunited with his family 25 years later. Throughout Davis explores the unique circumstances under which Saroo is separated and reconnected with his family and his journey along the way. At some points of the film, I was confronted by how Saroo, a five-year-old boy, expertely navigates, with great instinct and genuine innocence, through an extended, yet life threatening ride. To put it in other words, Lion is a journey that grabs you entirely; whether you want it or not, and you are involved in each and every scene. I instantly fell in love with the connection and relationship between Saroo and his older brother
