"Honey" film review.
"HONEY" What genre of the film is the poster advertising? How do you know? What conventions are presented? Using my own knowledge of the advertisement of the film poster "Honey", the genre is conveyed to be a romantic urban comedy drama which is set in New York. The poster portrays a variety of conventions which include friendship as shown by the main star Jessica Alba (Honey) and her friend Joy Bryant standing side by side. Other conventions also includes romance and dancing, these conventions help indicate as to what the genre of the film is and perhaps gives some kind of clues to what it's about. Using the images we get from the poster the movie looks predictable, even if you are simply an adolescent who is only there to watch the main character in sexy dance wear. Who are the actors? What films have they been in before? Why were these actors chosen? On this particular poster there are five main actors whose names are mentioned Jessica Alba, Mekhi Phifer, Lil Romeo, Joy Bryant and Missy Elliot. However the main character Jessica Alba is the focal point, this is due to her success in a drama series called "Dark Angel", there is no doubt that the main star was chosen because she brings a unique vibrancy as she is dashing and desirable thanks to her curvy frame accompanied by a bright pearly white smile that can instantly change the whole perspective of the poster and the
"How does Alfred Hitchcock manipulate the audience to make the viewing of Psycho a frightening or worrying experience?"
Psycho Coursework Essay Charlotte Read "How does Alfred Hitchcock manipulate the audience to make the viewing of Psycho a frightening or worrying experience?" Introduction: For this essay I am going to describe, in detail, what Alfred Hitchcock did to make Psycho an innovative film, a new one that hadn't been around before. It is famous because at the time it had a huge effect on the audience, we're analysing how and why it did. In the 1950's America had a totally different disposition. There were certain boundaries for films in the past. There was never any flesh shown that was too provocative, kissing wasn't included in films. For example at the end of a big love scene between two people there was no big kiss, people would kiss on the cheek. When films were being played in multiplexes, anyone could walk in at anytime as films were on a loop, with cartoons and the news interspersed into it. Hitchcock wanted to change the course of cinematic history, so he changed the whole process of presenting, producing, making and promoting a film. This was so he could get to the fan base he wanted, so he could create a mass emotion and following. He wouldn't let anything else be shown in the cinema and everyone queuing outside would have to keep quiet about what they were to see. No one could suddenly walk in halfway through; you either saw it or you didn't. The film had
"In what ways is watching Film/TV an active process of interpretation, rather than a passive process of 'assimilating' information?"
"In what ways is watching Film/TV an active process of interpretation, rather than a passive process of 'assimilating' information?" There are many ways in which an audience of Film or Television actively interpret what they see on screen rather than simply absorbing it, we as viewers, at least to a certain degree, are active in constructing meaning rather than, so to speak, just letting it go over our heads. Fundamentally it is important to note that, no matter how strong a debate may be for an audience being passive, we are still undertaking some process of cognitive activity just to merely comprehend a TV programme or film. When we visually perceive something, an image on screen say, there is a basic cognitive process already in action, which is, that we compare what we see, to what we already know, and to what we expect. However, there are those who criticise TV and the moving image as being a passive and mundane leisure past time. For example, Frank Lloyd Wright described TV as 'chewing gum for the eyes' and Ernie Kovacs called TV 'a medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well done'. Although, Ien Ang, for example, concludes that the TV audience as a whole is stereotyped and labelled as 'couch potatoes', but they should not be, as 'the ordinary viewers' perspective is almost always ignored...' and 'living with television involves...interpretations' (Ang 1991:
"It's All in Your Mind": Candyman and the Myth of the Black Male Rapist
David S. Neale Lewis Gordon AA 10 August 2, 1999 "It's All in Your Mind": Candyman and the Myth of the Black Male Rapist The movie Candyman1 resuscitates the age-old myth of the black male rapist. According to Angela Davis2, the historical pretext of the black male rapist was created in order to justify the gruesome practice of lynching blacks3. As Davis explains, it became "necessary" to avenge black men's assaults on white womanhood4. In Candyman, the title character is the black rapist; he uses a hook for a hand-turned-phallus to rip white women5 apart "from their groin to their gullet"-nothing other than a rape-murder. However, given the fictitious nature of the myth, its presence in the film immediately raises questions about the validity of Helen's experiences with the legendary hook-wielding black man. As I will show, Helen may have participated in what Don Belton calls the "scapegoating of the black male body"6 in order to soothe her guilty conscience about the crimes she likely committed. Thus, by deploying the character of Helen in this manner, the film does no more than recycle harmful stereotypes about, and incite our contemporary society's fears of, black men. To explain the connection between the myth of the black male rapist and the observation of its deployment in Candyman, I first want to provide some background about it. In Women, Race & Class,
So…What's Memorable About This Walk?
So...What's Memorable About This Walk? Romance, tears, and not a well developed character in sight - what else do you expect from the director of the so called box office hit The Wedding Planner? Adam Shankman conjures up another film that targets such a narrow audience that it completely misses the sweet spot with the majority of movie-goers. A Walk To Remember may have been ignored by most film viewers, but the posters featuring Mandy Moore and Shane West lured enough preteens and early teenagers to actually make a profit. Although, put a good looking male who falls in love with a "Plain Jane" on the screen, and the girl masses will follow. This film gave the audience two narrative arcs for the price of one. It first began as a typical teenage movie where opposites attract, but then progresses into a mawkish tear jerker. Putting two narratives into a 100 minute feature length film forced Shankman to cut a few corners. By doing so, the characters were poorly developed, subplots were wrapped in unconvincing ways, and the entire film seems rushed. Even after all this, the tender faces around me still gasped on cue and shed tears when the characters did. Landon Carter (Shane West) and a bunch of his beer-drinking, blaspheming friends begin the film with an initiation rite gone terribly wrong when another young man jumps from an industrial scaffolding into a shallow river.
Television now stands in the foot prints of where film was once stranded. This statement is referring to television being viewed as an art.
Television now stands in the foot prints of where film was once stranded. This statement is referring to television being viewed as an art. Over the last few decades film studies within universities have elevated film to that of an art. Television studies seem to be few and far between. So where does television stand in terms of art and what needs to happen to elevate its status and acceptance within the art community. Television today is produced much like film during the major studio hay day. When something works (ex. Reality TV) they run with it until it runs dry. This is naturally part of the TV enterprise because viewers are needed to keep advertisers interested, and advertising is needed to keep the networks financially happy. Old Hollywood's answer to the studio was the auteur. This was a filmmaker who was able to work within the heavy constraints of the studio and still add his/her artistic touch. In television today you have a handful of shows that cross this boundary (ex. X-Files etc.) and overcome the constraints of a national broadcast. Another positive for TV is networks such as HBO which have done away with constraints altogether. Since HBO has its own in house productions and doesn't rely on advertising (viewers pay to have access to it) it gives its own productions much more time to develop into there potential. This is in sharp contrast to that of major
In what way is 'The Quick and the Dead' both a typical and untypical film from the Western Genre?
In what way is 'The Quick and the Dead' both a typical and untypical film from the Western Genre? In this essay I will be looking at the main points of the film to show how it is both typical and untypical of the Western Genre. The film 'The Quick and the Dead' is a Western film that is mainly situated around 1 central character and their motive to get revenge. Ellen, 'a Cowgirl' rides into town to take part in a gun-fighting contest that is held every year. At first when asked she claims that she is simply taking part for the $123,000 prize money, however we later discover that she is taking part to avenge her feathers death. Her father was hung while Ellen was at a very young age, she was made to watch this happen and although given the chance by her fathers killers to save him, she couldn't. The main person responsible for her fathers death was a man called Herod, he is the 'Outlaw' of the town where the gun-fighting contest is being held, the people of the town re extremely afraid of him and Herod knows this and takes advantage of them. For example a young boy told Ellen that Herod takes 50c of every $1 in the town. As a young child whilst witnessing her father being hung, Ellen was given a chance to save her father. Herod gave Ellen a gun and told her she could have three shots to shoot through the rope that her father was hanging from. Ellen was extremely scared and
Film & Ideology - FIGHT CLUB
Topic 3 - Film & Ideology - FIGHT CLUB (David Fincher, USA 1999) Ideology is "the body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system" (Oxford Dictionary). Self-destruction, purpose, reality, perception, control, masculinity, violence and chaos are all given thorough examination through the interwoven journey's of the main characters in the film. Fight Club is a film that challenges these ideological underpinnings to which our society is founded upon. It questions the audience's view of reality, and brings forth a culture of somewhat misguided hope that through an altered perception, anything is possible. Fight Club by David Fincher, is one of only four films made by the director whose credits include: * Alien3 (1992, Twentieth Century Fox) * Se7en (1996, New Line Cinema) * The Game (1997, PolyGram) * Fight Club (1999, Twentieth Century Fox) All four films could fit into the category of dark thriller, even though their styles range from sci-fi, through film noir and mystery, to surrealism. All his films tend to exist within a "realm of darkness" (Brozy, 1999-2000:14) "Rarely is there a scene in the daytime that isn't under lit, or blackened by a thunderstorm. Fincher once said that he believes in making movies that scar. He
Film Analysis - Edward Scissorhands - by Tim Burton
Film Analysis "Edward Scissorhands" - Katrin Dreher "Edward Scissorhands" by Tim Burton is a fantasy story contrasting both fairytale and horror-imagery. Dominated by two controversial themes, it is a love story between a beauty and a beast as well as a dark parable about loneliness, nonconformity, and the intolerance and tyranny of suburban small minds. The story is about an Avon lady named Peg Boogs who discovers the unfinished experiment of a mad scientist: a weird looking and shy man/monster called Edward living in the neighborhood's old abandoned castle. The scientist died before replacing Edward's large shears with real hands and so his creation is left unfinished and all by himself until Peg shows up. She attempts to bring Edward into her subarban uniform world to live among her skeptical family and gossipy neighbors where at first he experiences positive reactions when he transforms the neighborhood into a fantastical garden by coaxing beautiful topiaries from tress and bushes and when he invents new individual haircuts for all of the town's women. He almost becomes somewhat of a celebrity. But it is hard for Edward to find his place within the superficial harmony and uniformity of suburbia and so later on we find him turned into the hated, mistreated figure of a weird and dangerous outsider and, in the end, he has to flee back to his own environment. The
Film Analysis - The Matrix.
Yr 12 Second Term Assignment - Film Analysis The Matrix The clip that I have decided to analyse is from the film Matrix, it is the main climax form the entire film. The visual signifiers within this clip are Neo and Agent Smith as these are the people that are emphasised within the clip. During the clip, both of the characters do not make any direct mode of address with us and the camera, they only make eye contact with each other. The mise-en-scene of one particular frame is of an empty underground station. This is evident, as within the frame you are able to see disposable coffee cups and used newspapers flying around. The used newspapers flying around are placed within the frame to emphasise that the underground station is completely empty and also helps to stretch time as the newspapers fly around in slow motion. It can also be described as an indexical sign as it shows that it is a windy day. Also, within the mise-en-scene the character of Agent Smith is given the image of a serious and menacing man, this is shown through the stiff grey suit he's wearing and his stern facial expressions. Neo's costume is a long black leather jacket this is the typical costume of the heroes within the film. His relaxed hairstyle shows that he is a 'cool' type of guy; however within this particular clip his facial expressions show that he is angry and full of vengeance.
