Crazy Ladies and a Crazy guy

HEATHERS was definitely different. yeah that perfect to start off saying. I can recall myself thinking that this movie seemed like it was going to have the same feel to say the Breakfast club or even Faris Bueller's day off, with the whole upbeat mood , but I was mistaken. I mean don't get me wrong there were a lot of moments where i thought that it looked exactly like these other movies, because the director was the same, but this one seemed like it was supposed to be taken as the same idea as one of these upbeat films, with just a dark side.

The overall film I thought was really nicely done, the story really caught my eye because as I said earlier I wasn't really used to this kind plot from this point of time. Over all I would have to say that my most favorite part would be the character of JD. Now a lot of people don't really like this character because he was the antagonist, and a bit crazy, and at times seemed "insignificant", but the overall tone to Christian Slater's character was...amazing. I personally would have to agree with the half of my class that believes that he was a type of anti hero, even though it may be hard to believe. The reason I say this is because like in the Third man we are given a character that is portrayed in a certain way to the audience, in this case an attractive, smart, witty, relatively likable character that we can generally recognize with, like Henry Lime. I mean like deep down JD does have justification for what he is doing, come on he says it, but like the way he says it just makes it wrong, I have this basic theory that I use to try and figure out if a character is really bad or not at that is called the ratio rule. now the basis is that if you take the three basic meanings behind the character and ask yourself if at least two of them are "negative" then he probably is bad. Alright so J D, kills people...bad, has reason to fix society...good, is a psychopath...bad, thus he must be bad haha . Alright now take Walter White from Breaking Bad.
Married for 20 years with familly always played by the rules...good, becomes a methamphetamine cook...bad, has cancer, so he is making drugs to take care of his family when he is dead...good. Walter is a good man doing a bad thing for a good reason, but JD is a bad man doing a bad thing for a good reason. 2 are bad so in my view he just doesn't make the cut no matter how well he is portrayed.
I thin that the perfect comparison to JD's character would have to be like it was said in class...the Joker. Reall both of them didn't really have a great excuse to why they were commiting such horrendous acts, but they still did them for there own personal pleasure. I thought that both of these characters had some sort of mental illness, but in Heathers, nothing was explained, and in the dark knight he changed his reasons every time. I think the quote from Alfred in the Dark Knight explains it perfectly. "Sometimes there are men, who just want to watch the world burn."

Some formal elements that I really liked would have to be the different things that you would see on the set, for instance while watching JD, he always seemed to have this blue light on him for some reason and it wasn't soft at all it was really noticeable. Now it could be because he was tightly bound to the character of veronica who is always wearing blue for some reason. I guess whet it was were the colors in general... I know it was an 80's film so the colors were bold but that's not what i mean. why did all the Heathers and Veronica have all different colors that they had to stick to? The only reasonable explanation that I could think of would be because it had to do with the pecking order of the school. Even in croquet each girl was a certain color, and if one wanted to change it up then she would get harassed.

The reading that went along with this film really was enjoyable to me, A. because it was really easy to understand compared to a lot of the other readings, and B. it really put a lot f meaning behind some of the images that were scene on screen when viewing the film Heathers. Now it really talks about the post-modernist themes in the movie like repeated references, but to be honest that was interesting to read but not very useful in breaking down the film. What i did find interesting though is when the author said that in the end nothing really changed. This I would have to totally agree with. I say this because nothing really did change, except 3 kids are dead. sure we have this new leader of the school , but we always had a changing role for leader in the film. I guess I really enjoyed it because it just pointed out the obvious to me when no one else in the film really was.

Overall thought it was a really great film i definitely recommend it, see y'all next time.

Shaft B****es!

Shaft...what a fun ride of a film. I knew I was in for a wild ride just as soon as the intro music consisting with funk was introduced. the actor of shaft was what I would have to say as perfectly fitting for the way that I have heard stories about shaft over the years. I have heard many depictions of shaft, and have com up with expectations that I would have originally thought to describe his character, for instance i thought he was going to be a lot like huggy bear from Starsky and Hutch. I had no idea that he was actually a police officer, and a private eye at that, I always thought he was just some kickin ass black dude with no concrete affiliation with anyone. boy was I wrong.

Now when it comes to the cinematography of shaft, my expectations fell pretty close to what I actually saw onto the screen, except for the intro. I actually really enjoyed that walk sequence which included a lot of long shots far away from the shaft himself just showing him interacting with his environment. I ll get back to that in a moment , but the shots I would have to say were realy nice in that sequence especially when the chorus would say his name and it would be a close up on his face, classic action movie style haha. anyways to get back to what I was saying earlier showing shaft in this certain way( interacting with his environment) really sets the tone for the characters overall "swagger & style" for the rest of the film. I mean here we have this black male walking through the middle of traffic,not giving a shit, in what I believe is New york. that was just seemed like a statement of the character and just set the bar for what to expect.

Alrighty well anyway in the article we have this really rare distinction between the shaft of the 70's and the new and improved shaft of the 2000's. now what I came to take from the article is that these two men, both playing the same character, just don't act the exact way. One acts as if it is his mission to just fight and keep fighting till his mission is complete and the other really carries the whole legend behind shaft of being the ladies man. I really think that this is a very important part to how we look at masculinity today. On top of this the conversation that we had in class broke it down even further to help explain it to us. For example we talked about how the new shaft was just this kung fu guy that just seemed to beat people up for the answers he was looking for just like a Jason Statham...Crank. However the old shaft had this intimidation factor that he threw around in a brilliant way. The 70's shaft new he was bad ass and that's what really made me respect him as a character, which was the whole point of his character doing that. He no matter what the dangerous situation brought always stood up in the face of the antagonist and said " man you ain't going to do shit"....amazing; just the perfect line to say.

Alright well this is the part where I just have to ask a huge question concerning masculinity, through a story of my life. well the other day I was walking around enjoying the weather and I came to a crosswalk with no light just a sign that said pedestrians have the right away, so naturally I walk. in the middle of this walk this guy almost hits me coming about 3 feet away even though you could clearly see me before hand. Anyways he gets pissed and yells out the window and I then yell back at him, basically the point being we might have a problem. Now nothing happened eventually just drove away because of traffic, but my question is what Should I have done? Naturally I felt like going Jason Statham on his ass and wrecking him, just like the media shows today how masculinity is defined in films.However do you think If I pulled a 70's Shaft and just intimidated and stood my ground, would I have had better results than if I were to just fight? Overall could I bring back the techniques in masculinity of the 70's to replace the today's standard of kick ass ask questions later. Think about it.

Alright see y'all next time!

Vanishing Point

Now in my opinion Vanishing Point just topped all of the films that we have scene in our class by a lot. The reason I say this is because usually when we learn about some background of the film or about the characters I'm normally not really interested, or I'm more blown away by the cinematography in the film. However, when I watched Vanishing Point Not only was I fascinated in how they shot the movie, but I also really enjoyed the story behind Kowalski and the era that this story to place. Now when I first started watching this film I thought I was just going to sit and watch a movie about some guy in a car, like I'm sure most of my other peers also thought, but when you get into it the subtext of the film really takes you places.

The character of Kowalski really seemed to stand out through out the film as this hero doing something great for the American people that were treated unjust or something like that, but in actuality that's not really what he was going for and he really didn't care to be a hero for this part of his life. In class we disscused how people saw him as this great rebel leader against "The Man " because that is what people including the friendly Dj Super Soul made him out to be. Maybe Kowalski was once this hero they talked bout because he had this background of being in the army and police force both being highly decorated, but since he lost out on all of these better off opportunities, he is just driving. His character is one made out to be one big contradiction.

I really liked the whole aspect of freedom discussed in the article and further discussed in class. The article talked about how as I said before, people portraying kowalski as this hero, but how instead he is just making it possible to get the feeling of freedom that he has been denied of his whole life. He wants to speed. That is how Kowalski is able to get this feeling of freedom, by going really super fast and breaking the limitations that normally constrict people to a certain speed. That is also one aspect I found to be pretty funny in my own humorous mind. I thought it was great how he wanted to go super fast, so he was taking speed to give himself the rush, as well as all of the cinematography aiding that feeling with quick cuts that seem to amplify the drug use.

Alright now I have a theory about something mentioned in class but I don't think anyone really answered it or made it very clear as to why this happened. In the end, right before Kowalski meets his demise, we see a close up shot on his face, and what do we see; a smile. Why on earth would he smile? Now bare with me, but I really think that it has something to do with his past of trying to win or do the right thing, and always having things crushed in front of him. Now personally when I'm trying to do something that I really want to do and I have come pretty far to almost finishing, I really don't want things to come and mess them up. But when that does happen , and it does happen eventually, you really need to just laugh and say "god damn it". So im guessing its one of those this that you need to laugh or smile to keep from crying. Now I could be wrong but if I was in that position I believe that I would laugh as well.

A lot of people thought that the final ending of Kowalski was kinda boring and just kinda fell short of the story, but I really think that him doing what he did was the perfect ending. It was the ultimate F*** you, your going to take my speed and freedom away form me. He even sped up to crash...amazing. Anyway I loved it, a great way to ultimately break the limitations that seem to restrain him throughout his life.... just perfect. On a side not this film reminded me of the character of Walter White on Breaking bad because of all of the let down he experienced in his life, which would then change when he discovers he has cancer so he start to do the opposite. I don't know both of those guys seem amazing to me.

See y'all next time!

Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove was in my opinion one of the funniest films i have seen come out of that era hands down. Just to start off, I would just like to say that the character of Dr. Strangelove and how the actor played him was hilarious. All of the small subtle gestures that were made by the actor just seemed to capitalize on the comedy. I would have to say that the part where he cant help but Nazi salute to the president, and then fight with his hand just made me laugh so hard and made me think that this movie was ridiculous.

Going along with what I said before, the characters of the film were really interesting. each one seemed to hold very interesting qualities that just seemed to bring out other weird qualities that were found in the other characters. Now I haven't seen a lot of Stanley Kubrick's films but what he did to the characters in this film made it hilarious to watch. the thing that I found very interesting in the character development would have to be how masculine many of the characters were, compared to how feminine the president was throughout the movie. The way that the advisers gave helpful information to the president was like they were throwing there weight around while yelling at him. On top of that the President seemed to just stand by and take the abuse, and even at times when the advisers were fighting each other the president wouldn't like to engage in the confrontation. Now in my opinion I couldn't help but think of a marriage in this day of age when I saw the president interact with his board. Maybe its just me but by the way the president acted, I could see him in a sun dress.

Stanley Kubrick's visuals in this film are what I would have to call amazing. Aside from all of the humor that would be used in the film, the Cinematography would have to be one of the most eye catching parts of the film. What I found to be most interesting would have to be a lot of the camera work, the editing/ composting techniques used at the time, and the overall shot selection. I thought it was really great how interesting the inside of a B- 52 could actually be. For instance when the bomb hatch wouldn't open, a lot of the camera work involved super fast zooms onto some of the toggles and switches, which seemed to just amp up the situation that was happening.
Along with this we talked in class about how Kubrick seemed to use a good amount of WWII footage to give off the feeling of being a standard war movie at the time. however we come to realize at the end that this is defiantly not the case, seeing the main crisis was not averted and the end of the would eventually came. Overall my absolute favorite effect would have to be when the cowboy pilot is riding the nuclear warhead down onto the Russian base,ultimately I thought that it was a great shot with the background moving perfectly with the for ground character. Oh yeah and on top of that I thought that it was great that this scene was reenacted in the film Armageddon when one of the scientists is rideing the nuke out of the space shuttle...hilarious.

The article actually brought a lot of the tone used in the film into a better perspective for me. what I mean by this is for the most part I could not for the life of me figure out why the people in the war room acted like the crisis was not that big of a deal even though basically everyone on the face of the earth will die. Now when I saw this I was like what the F*** because are they really just gunna lay back and have this happen? On the contrary the article explained that this wasn't that uncommon. One section of the article explains that for a chunk of time the New York Times published articles of subjects such as How To Live With Your Radiation Fallout, or even 92 out of 100 Can Be Saved. I just thought that it was kinda ridiculous to think that we could live with something like this happening so we shouldn't really so anything about it. What a Crazy state of mind right?

Overall this film was amazingly hilarious to watch, and just fun I highly recommend it
See y'all next time