Recently I took a trip to the movie theatre, not to see Kingsman: The Secret Service, not to see Fifty Shades of Grey, but to see The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. After reflecting on the film, I would have to say that I was entertained, but not as impressed with the first movie or the television show. Nostalgic episodes of the silliness of SpongeBob was missed, such as when SpongeBob and Patrick create an "imagination box". Personally, I thought nothing in the film had me laughing my heart out, but it held my attention. An aspect I wish that was touched more on was Squidward's personality. Movies such as The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water are very powerful, as they bring us back to childhood memories. We watch shows/movies for various reasons and the sense of nostalgia is definitely a contributor. Producers are aware of this, and use this as an advantage to create/revamp films, hoping it would spark our interests. I know this has happened to me through various movies such as the first SpongeBob film, The Hobbit, all superhero movies, etc.
The animation was in the movie was impressive -- there seemed to be an improvement, yet kept true to how the characters originally looked. A majority of the movie was in 2D, and when switched to 3D for the latter portion of the movie, the animation was surprisingly fluid with for the art style. This creative effort should be noted.
Ultimately, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is a movie that I do not regret seeing, but the movie did not personally take me back to my childhood.
Interesting to know that the Spongebob Movie was not terrible at least! I have yet to see it myself, but I am a little sad to hear that the nostalgia was a bit of a hit and miss as I greatly enjoyed the television series as a kid. However, you have sparked my interest in seeing the 3D style implemented where you noted it was a "creative effort [to] be noted" whereas I had heard from a friend that the 3D part being at the end was slightly a let down.
Wait a minute, we were supposed to stop watching SpongeBob? I didn't get the memo. I kid. Anyways, the SpongeBob movie looks like it rocked the box office, mostly due to our generation - the 90s kids who watched the show in the glorious early 2000s. It's fascinating because it's a movie tat appeals to a demographic that really isn't going to movies as much as it used to. I think nostalgia can't always take someone back to their childhood, even if their mind is super open. Sometimes things don't work. But I'm happy that so many people enjoyed the movie - including me.
I've been meaning to see the spongebob movie, There is no better series which defines our generation like spongebob. It's the one show where I have quoted in various different places and there's always another of our age who gets it. This lives with me forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk8xlsp1pQ
On March 4, 2015, I went to the movie theater and watched the film “The Drop Box”. It was actually released several years ago, so I believe it was a 3-day special for it to be played in the theaters once again. I will warn you that the film is religious based in the sense that it follows a pastor and his ministry in Korea. A short synopsis of the film is that it is a sort-of documentary depicting this pastor in Korea who created this baby drop box on the side of his church where people could anonymously place their baby into it. He built this because of the high rates of abandoned babies in Korea. It is common culture for the babies to be abandoned on streets, usually dying because of the cold. They are abandoned because of social injustice in the sense that single mothers are looked down upon and promiscuous women are shameful. They are suddenly branded and unaccepted by society, even families will disown these girls. One might wonder about abortions, but this also causes a problem for the young women because their citizenship numbers are taken down whenever they go to the doctor and so it would be on their permanent record that they were at one point pregnant and had an abortion. This is something that is quite appalling to Americans and others not of that culture. The film does not try to outright fight against this but depict what a pastor decided to do in response to this culture being a problem at large.
Cinematographically, I would like to comment on how the film was entirely subtitled as the pastor and all those in the film spoke only Korean. I want to highlight this in comparison to sound films where audiences are of the same language as the film is and in comparison to text cards used during silent films. Subtitles aid in translation, although they can be visually distracted, taking away from the eye being able to view the entire shot. However, they were very necessary and perhaps this is what the silent film purists were against: films that relied on the understanding of the same language. As the answer to not understanding the spoken language came in the form of subtitles, it was completely necessary for this type of film because it was a documentary.
I would like to note that, aside from the outside commentary that happens at the beginning and end of the film (as if it were a presentation), “The Drop Box” documentary part of the film is not biased in the sense that it is forcing religion on its viewers. Kudos to the American director who went to Korea for months and filmed all of it, capturing many heartfelt moments. In the way it was filmed, it was the reality of a sad situation in Korea, but I would say it is also a lightened blow in that we see the great hope and happiness portrayed but there are many struggles for these drop box babies that was not entirely mentioned. That aside, “The Drop Box” captured some beautiful moments of humanity. It showed how all life is important, even those of the disabled. It is a place where we can see happiness in these children’s eyes where they have felt love despite having been thrown away for being of the abnormal. It was inspiring to know of these people who, despite being seen as weak and useless by society’s standards, they had much more love and happiness that even normal people today could never achieve, and all because someone took the time to care and love them, not disregard their precious life.
You brought up an interesting point about how subtitles can take away from the cinematic experience of a movie. This is certainly true in most cases, but it gets the job done.
Could you ever imagine watching a movie such as The Avengers, dubbed in Spanish? Sure everything is the same, but the voice acting is completely changed. The tone, expression of the voice, and diction is completely changed when translated to a new language. In cases such as this, if not a foreign English speaker, I think I would personally prefer watching the film in English with subtitles than translating the film into Spanish.
Every movie is different, but I could not agree with you more about the impact of subtitles on a film.
Sometimes I'm confused about media reviews. As in, reviews for media. Is there such thing as a movie being a masterpiece? What does that entail? Does EVERYONE have to love it? What about video games? I mean, Half-Life 2 is the greatest video game of all time, hands down. No contest. That's what I say. And if you look at the game's reviews, you'd think that way too. But play it, and you might have completely different opinions. I digress. The thing is, every once in a while there comes a movie that reviewers slam. And I mean tear apart into itty bitt little pieces. Last year, my friends and I rented and watched a movie that was called, by Richard Roeper, the "Citizen Kane of awful." Wow. Jeez. what movie was that? Movie 43. Look it up real quick. On Wikipedia, or Youtube. It's one of those celebrity comedy movies, with a bunch of different situations. The humor is gross, dangerous, and utterly insane. The first skit features Hugh Jackman with testacles on his chin (By God, I wonder if when he signed on to be "Wolverine" in X-Men [2000] he could have imagined him playing a role like that). And honestly, my friends and I found it pretty funny. Heck, at late night with my roommate my roommate and I were just quoting it. It's the kind of sick-humor, strange movie that appeals to you - not when you're alone, but when you're with a group of friends on a Saturday night. So how did it get labeled as one of the films of all time, if it's at least funny> I mean, I was entertained. I think there's just a point when a reviewer sits back and says, "that was completely ridiculous," when something just goes out of the way to be obscene. But you know what, Movie 43 fulfilled its purpose. It entertained me for ninety minutes, and it entertained my friends. It was funny enough to get laughs; it was memorable enough to be quoted. A good movie isn't always a good movie for everyone, and a bad movie isn't always bad for everyone. I guess it's just weird how these things work out. But seriously, only watch this film if you're willing to release all maturity.
I too enjoyed the film Movie 43, it was full of the sick and twisted humor that the immature teenager in me loves. And much like you I quote the movie constantly with my friends; we don't even need a reason to say it or an explanation as to what we're even saying: the minute someone starts quoting Movie 43, the rest of us can instantly recall exactly what point in the movie that the line was said. I also really enjoyed the fact that it was kind of like a movie within a movie, and that the one producer who was listening to all of the skit ideas kept saying how stupid and immature they all were. The movie was literally insulting itself, it knew that it was bad, but it knew that it would make people laugh regardless. I also heard from my roommate that many of the actors tried to get out of doing the movie when they found out just how stupid it was, but they were all obligated by contract to keep filming. That just makes the movie even funnier knowing that many of the stars were acting against their will.
One of the funniest movies that I've ever seen in my life has got to be Mystery Team. The first time that I saw it was when I was a freshman in high school at my friends house; his mom rented the movie for us because she thought that we might like it. The first time I watched it with them we were laughing so hard that we missed half of the jokes. However the humor is not for everyone; I tried to show the movie to my parents but my mom and sister left after the first inappropriate joke and I barely got a chuckle from my dad. Regardless though I loved it and I still quote it to this day, often without even realizing it. In fact when I showed it to my roommate recently he said that he was glad to finally see the movie that way he could no where a lot of my references come from. Anyway, the movie is about these kids who started a "detective agency" when they were seven and are now stuck in the past -- reliving their glory days -- despite the fact that they are now eighteen. The three main characters still act like seven year olds and because of it, they continue to associate with elementary school kids, they have never had girlfriends or even talked to girls before, and everyone from their high school thinks that they're losers. Then on one fateful day they are given a chance to prove themselves when they are tasked with solving a real mystery. As stated before they encounter very mature -- or should I say immature -- situations along the way. Overall I really enjoyed this movie when I was younger because it was so inappropriate and funny, but I enjoy it now for another reason. It's a movie about teenagers who are unwilling to grow up, and I have to admit that this theme really hits home now that I'm on my own for the first time. The movie showed me that growing up and moving on is a necessary part of life, but at the same time it lets me hold on to my immaturity, even if it's just for a little while longer.
Mystery Team sounds like it has a great premise for a comedy, so much so that I might decide to watch it with my friends one of these days. You mentioned the teens' unwillingness to grow up and throw away their immaturity, and I think that's interesting because some of Chaplin's films seemed a bit immature to me, but only slightly. Nonetheless he still managed to create films that made me chuckle a little bit at worst. I believe that without at least a small touch of immaturity, a comedy will quickly fall flat, because i think immaturity is the root of most aspects of humor.
An all time favorite movie of mine is the 1995 Academy Award winning best picture film, Forrest Gump. If you haven't seen this film, it is the tale of a man who may not be so smart, but knows what love is. What I find quite endearing about this film is that it encompasses a large portion of United States culture and history from 1944-1982. Of course the actual moments the fictional characters take part in are all made up, but many of the events and innovations shown in the movie parallel the timeline which they historically did take place. The ambition of this movie just to interweave so many historic moments during this rich period in U.S history never ceases to astonish me. Forrest Gump's own story line is one that encompasses all great factors of an epic life journey. It has both love, lost, and comedy in a simplistic way to really help the audience understand the world from Gump's view. The audience is also given the chance to view complicated and explosive events that American's dealt with at the time such as the Vietnam War, the drug induced 70s, the civil rights movement, Cold War tensions, three presidents, the effects of HIV/AIDS, the start of apple, and various other historical events through the eyes of a good of heart individual with not too much of a sense in what was going on. One of the most important aspects of this movie is the character development of Gump which is built upon and molded by individuals he meets on his journey. In the first half of the film, Gump is somewhat of a blank simpleton who does a lot of listening and following with not to much after thought. But as the story progressed to the end, I think a symbolic change for Gump was when he finally became a father, effectively showing he gained the ability to be responsible for, not just himself, but for someone else. From what I could understand, this film was also ground breaking in its use of CGI to place Gump in actual archive footage, adding to the sense of realism of the film. This epic American dramatic comedic romance film will always be one of my favorites and a classic. It told a beautiful story with historical ties about a simple American facing the challenges of a big changing world.
I agree this is a very good movie! It is fairly historically accurate too which is cool. I always like films that take place over a long period of time, I think it allows for more character development and growth. Also the larger time span of this movie gives audiences a personal perspective of historical events, which is much more interesting than reading facts from a text book.
Being a historian at heart, I must agree with you. Forrest Gump is great film. The events the character goes to or experience throughout his life are amazing. Not to mention the film has many iconic movie quotes like: "Run Forrest Run" and "Life is like a box of chocolates". The reason I like this film is the same reason why I like Billy Joel's song "We didn't start the fire", they both have history overflowing from their veins. Great movie!
The most recent film I have watched is called “13 Conversations about One Thing”, which was released in 2001 and directed by Jill Sprecher. I had never heard of this movie, but I found it at the thrift store for 99 cents, and decided to purchase it. I did not have high hopes for the film, but was pleasantly surprised by the morality theme we don’t often see in popular media. I highly recommend watching it, especially if you gravitate towards independent movies. The film style and plot set up is similar to the movie “Crash”, as it is following 5 individual characters who lives are separate, but they have an experience/relationship that gives them something in common to one of the others. Through this complicated assembly of people five individual stories come together to produce one cohesive plot.
The first scene of the film sets, which takes place in a bar in New York City, introduces the theme for the film. The scene ends with the quote “show me a happy man and I will show you a disaster waiting to happen”. This film is centered on its characters trying to define, and find happiness. These stories challenge popular ideas of what will bring happiness; including money, sex, relationships, and achievement, and explores the duality of one’s own happiness as it relates to others. Each character believes they know what makes them happy and each character finds out they are wrong. The distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘success’ vs ‘failure’. The best example from the film is the story of Troy (Mathew McConaughey). Troy is a prosecution attorney who defines his happiness by “successfully prosecuting the guilty”, the more criminals he puts away, the greater his happiness. This idea of success= happiness is rejected in the film. One night Troy commits a hit- and – run, and appears to get away with vehicular manslaughter. His guilt from this action affects him. Troy is still highly achieving at work, but begins to see his success, prosecution of criminals, is also a loss for another. Once he has to face that he too deserves to be on the opposite side of the prosecution, his meaning of happiness is lost.
Sound, or lack thereof, in films has been an importance concept in this class. But I don’t think we spent enough time on music in film. Many of the films we watched where entertaining, but how much of that was the film and how much of that was from the music? For me, if it was not the comedy of the film, it was the soundtrack. And considering most of the films we watched had the music added after the film’s original release, I don’t know how people back then could watch truly silent films. I know I wouldn't like a film without music. Music creates more than pleasing sounds; it helps create the environment within the film. Take ‘Star War’, Darth Vader wouldn't be nearly as fearful without the song Imperial March. ‘Indiana Jones’ not as exciting without its theme. ‘Jaws’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Home Alone’, ‘Jurassic Park’, all of these create memories of their iconic theme songs. Something even more funny is that all of these movies mentioned above all have theme songs created by the same man: John Williams. He has also created the soundtracks to ‘E.T’, ‘Hook’, ‘Schindler’s List’, ‘War Horse’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ ‘Lincoln’ and many of the Superman movie themes. On a funnier side note, he also created the themes to 4 Olympic Games, NBC’s Sunday Night Football, and the old TV shows ‘Lost in Space’ and ‘Gilligan’s Island’. If you want a memorable song for you movie or show, you hire John Williams.
While sound is important in films, I think such an importance took hold later on in film history. The gimmick of sound was it's main supplement to film, and then later on did it become such a thematic tool for filmmakers. In early film, sound was quite messy and jarring as we saw in "The Broadway Melody", where sound was subjected to lots of hard cuts.
By chance, I recently saw Keanu Reeves's film, "Side By Side". It's a documentary on how digital film is replacing actual film, in movie development. It was pretty extensive in both digital and real film's invention and reception, and how they are both used in the industry today. There's a lot of parallels between the emergence of digital film with the emergence of sound. Ever since Lucas basically championed digital film in the first place, he was treated with malevolence amongst his colleagues. The reasons for using real film in movies are primarily that of an artistic reasons. Digital film did not take off immediately as many members of the old guard of film refuse to use the digital counterpart. It was seen as a gimmick when used in Star Wars. It wasn't until the movie Sin City came out did directors give notice to digital film, as Sin City literally needed to be digital in order to pull off the director's artistic vision. Digital is thus slowly taking hold amongst the newer generation of directors, while members of the previous generations, such as Scorsese and Tarantino use traditional film. However, at the end of the documentary, it is interesting to see how so many of these directors acknowledge that digital is the future, yet so many of them insist on going down with the ship. ^ Tyler Hayduk
I think that it is interesting to look at the use of digital film in modern movies. While Sin City depends upon digital film to produce the desired effect, I think that some films over-use digital effects. For example, the later Transformers movies use a huge amount of computer graphics for both the robots and the human stunts. I think that the films become so unrealistic that they sacrifice the suspension of disbelief from the audience.
The comedies we've seen in class consisted of little to no spoken words, which always intrigued me because almost all comedy films, videos, and clips today use words to convey their humor. A couple of weeks ago I saw a video of a South African stand-up comedian by the name of Trevor Noah. His jokes consist largely of stories of his life, and behavioral impressions of different kinds of people (namely African Americans). Noah's entire act would be void if he didn't have the technology necessary to record and project his voice, because there is no other way to tell the stories or jokes, or do the impressions that he does using only gestures and animations. Yet Directors like Chaplin and Keaton did an outstanding job at provoking laughter from audiences of the early 1900's, as well as many people today. The only parallel between both forms of comedy is the use of facial expressions to bolster the humor, but even then they are not used nearly as much by Noah as they are in silent comedies.
In my Netflix procrastination before finals, I watched the first season of the 2014 science fiction television show "The 100". The series depicts a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth’s atmosphere was contaminated by nuclear fallout. Humanity was forced to live in a space station known as the Ark, a life-sustaining collection of space stations that formerly belonged to separate nations. The Ark was meant to support humanity for 200 years, when the Earth could supposedly be inhabited once again, but the ship’s systems were failing after only 97 years. In a desperate attempt to see if the Earth could harbor life after only 97 years, 100 teenage prisoners were sent from the Ark down to the surface of the Earth. “The 100” were immediately faced with the challenge of survival and establishing order.
I would even go so far as to say that “The 100” is the next great science fiction television shows for today’s teen and pre-teen audiences. While the writing and direction are outstanding, the real crowning jewel of the series was its cast. The show boasts a cast of diverse young actors from various ages, genders, and ethnicities. This added both realism and depth to the show. Also, none of the main female characters are weak or unimportant. The women are warriors and leaders instead of replaceable romantic interests for male leads.
Oh, and there’s also a love triangle. No movie or television show with teenagers would be complete without one.
This Post Contains Spoilers
ReplyDeleteRecently I took a trip to the movie theatre, not to see Kingsman: The Secret Service, not to see Fifty Shades of Grey, but to see The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. After reflecting on the film, I would have to say that I was entertained, but not as impressed with the first movie or the television show. Nostalgic episodes of the silliness of SpongeBob was missed, such as when SpongeBob and Patrick create an "imagination box". Personally, I thought nothing in the film had me laughing my heart out, but it held my attention. An aspect I wish that was touched more on was Squidward's personality. Movies such as The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water are very powerful, as they bring us back to childhood memories. We watch shows/movies for various reasons and the sense of nostalgia is definitely a contributor. Producers are aware of this, and use this as an advantage to create/revamp films, hoping it would spark our interests. I know this has happened to me through various movies such as the first SpongeBob film, The Hobbit, all superhero movies, etc.
The animation was in the movie was impressive -- there seemed to be an improvement, yet kept true to how the characters originally looked. A majority of the movie was in 2D, and when switched to 3D for the latter portion of the movie, the animation was surprisingly fluid with for the art style. This creative effort should be noted.
Ultimately, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is a movie that I do not regret seeing, but the movie did not personally take me back to my childhood.
Interesting to know that the Spongebob Movie was not terrible at least! I have yet to see it myself, but I am a little sad to hear that the nostalgia was a bit of a hit and miss as I greatly enjoyed the television series as a kid. However, you have sparked my interest in seeing the 3D style implemented where you noted it was a "creative effort [to] be noted" whereas I had heard from a friend that the 3D part being at the end was slightly a let down.
DeleteWait a minute, we were supposed to stop watching SpongeBob? I didn't get the memo.
DeleteI kid.
Anyways, the SpongeBob movie looks like it rocked the box office, mostly due to our generation - the 90s kids who watched the show in the glorious early 2000s. It's fascinating because it's a movie tat appeals to a demographic that really isn't going to movies as much as it used to.
I think nostalgia can't always take someone back to their childhood, even if their mind is super open. Sometimes things don't work. But I'm happy that so many people enjoyed the movie - including me.
I've been meaning to see the spongebob movie, There is no better series which defines our generation like spongebob. It's the one show where I have quoted in various different places and there's always another of our age who gets it. This lives with me forever
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk8xlsp1pQ
On March 4, 2015, I went to the movie theater and watched the film “The Drop Box”. It was actually released several years ago, so I believe it was a 3-day special for it to be played in the theaters once again. I will warn you that the film is religious based in the sense that it follows a pastor and his ministry in Korea. A short synopsis of the film is that it is a sort-of documentary depicting this pastor in Korea who created this baby drop box on the side of his church where people could anonymously place their baby into it. He built this because of the high rates of abandoned babies in Korea. It is common culture for the babies to be abandoned on streets, usually dying because of the cold. They are abandoned because of social injustice in the sense that single mothers are looked down upon and promiscuous women are shameful. They are suddenly branded and unaccepted by society, even families will disown these girls. One might wonder about abortions, but this also causes a problem for the young women because their citizenship numbers are taken down whenever they go to the doctor and so it would be on their permanent record that they were at one point pregnant and had an abortion. This is something that is quite appalling to Americans and others not of that culture. The film does not try to outright fight against this but depict what a pastor decided to do in response to this culture being a problem at large.
ReplyDeleteCinematographically, I would like to comment on how the film was entirely subtitled as the pastor and all those in the film spoke only Korean. I want to highlight this in comparison to sound films where audiences are of the same language as the film is and in comparison to text cards used during silent films. Subtitles aid in translation, although they can be visually distracted, taking away from the eye being able to view the entire shot. However, they were very necessary and perhaps this is what the silent film purists were against: films that relied on the understanding of the same language. As the answer to not understanding the spoken language came in the form of subtitles, it was completely necessary for this type of film because it was a documentary.
I would like to note that, aside from the outside commentary that happens at the beginning and end of the film (as if it were a presentation), “The Drop Box” documentary part of the film is not biased in the sense that it is forcing religion on its viewers. Kudos to the American director who went to Korea for months and filmed all of it, capturing many heartfelt moments. In the way it was filmed, it was the reality of a sad situation in Korea, but I would say it is also a lightened blow in that we see the great hope and happiness portrayed but there are many struggles for these drop box babies that was not entirely mentioned. That aside, “The Drop Box” captured some beautiful moments of humanity. It showed how all life is important, even those of the disabled. It is a place where we can see happiness in these children’s eyes where they have felt love despite having been thrown away for being of the abnormal. It was inspiring to know of these people who, despite being seen as weak and useless by society’s standards, they had much more love and happiness that even normal people today could never achieve, and all because someone took the time to care and love them, not disregard their precious life.
You brought up an interesting point about how subtitles can take away from the cinematic experience of a movie. This is certainly true in most cases, but it gets the job done.
DeleteCould you ever imagine watching a movie such as The Avengers, dubbed in Spanish? Sure everything is the same, but the voice acting is completely changed. The tone, expression of the voice, and diction is completely changed when translated to a new language. In cases such as this, if not a foreign English speaker, I think I would personally prefer watching the film in English with subtitles than translating the film into Spanish.
Every movie is different, but I could not agree with you more about the impact of subtitles on a film.
Sometimes I'm confused about media reviews. As in, reviews for media. Is there such thing as a movie being a masterpiece? What does that entail? Does EVERYONE have to love it? What about video games? I mean, Half-Life 2 is the greatest video game of all time, hands down. No contest. That's what I say. And if you look at the game's reviews, you'd think that way too. But play it, and you might have completely different opinions.
ReplyDeleteI digress.
The thing is, every once in a while there comes a movie that reviewers slam. And I mean tear apart into itty bitt little pieces. Last year, my friends and I rented and watched a movie that was called, by Richard Roeper, the "Citizen Kane of awful." Wow. Jeez. what movie was that?
Movie 43.
Look it up real quick. On Wikipedia, or Youtube. It's one of those celebrity comedy movies, with a bunch of different situations. The humor is gross, dangerous, and utterly insane. The first skit features Hugh Jackman with testacles on his chin (By God, I wonder if when he signed on to be "Wolverine" in X-Men [2000] he could have imagined him playing a role like that).
And honestly, my friends and I found it pretty funny. Heck, at late night with my roommate my roommate and I were just quoting it. It's the kind of sick-humor, strange movie that appeals to you - not when you're alone, but when you're with a group of friends on a Saturday night.
So how did it get labeled as one of the films of all time, if it's at least funny> I mean, I was entertained. I think there's just a point when a reviewer sits back and says, "that was completely ridiculous," when something just goes out of the way to be obscene.
But you know what, Movie 43 fulfilled its purpose. It entertained me for ninety minutes, and it entertained my friends. It was funny enough to get laughs; it was memorable enough to be quoted.
A good movie isn't always a good movie for everyone, and a bad movie isn't always bad for everyone. I guess it's just weird how these things work out.
But seriously, only watch this film if you're willing to release all maturity.
I too enjoyed the film Movie 43, it was full of the sick and twisted humor that the immature teenager in me loves. And much like you I quote the movie constantly with my friends; we don't even need a reason to say it or an explanation as to what we're even saying: the minute someone starts quoting Movie 43, the rest of us can instantly recall exactly what point in the movie that the line was said. I also really enjoyed the fact that it was kind of like a movie within a movie, and that the one producer who was listening to all of the skit ideas kept saying how stupid and immature they all were. The movie was literally insulting itself, it knew that it was bad, but it knew that it would make people laugh regardless. I also heard from my roommate that many of the actors tried to get out of doing the movie when they found out just how stupid it was, but they were all obligated by contract to keep filming. That just makes the movie even funnier knowing that many of the stars were acting against their will.
DeleteOne of the funniest movies that I've ever seen in my life has got to be Mystery Team. The first time that I saw it was when I was a freshman in high school at my friends house; his mom rented the movie for us because she thought that we might like it. The first time I watched it with them we were laughing so hard that we missed half of the jokes. However the humor is not for everyone; I tried to show the movie to my parents but my mom and sister left after the first inappropriate joke and I barely got a chuckle from my dad. Regardless though I loved it and I still quote it to this day, often without even realizing it. In fact when I showed it to my roommate recently he said that he was glad to finally see the movie that way he could no where a lot of my references come from.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the movie is about these kids who started a "detective agency" when they were seven and are now stuck in the past -- reliving their glory days -- despite the fact that they are now eighteen. The three main characters still act like seven year olds and because of it, they continue to associate with elementary school kids, they have never had girlfriends or even talked to girls before, and everyone from their high school thinks that they're losers. Then on one fateful day they are given a chance to prove themselves when they are tasked with solving a real mystery. As stated before they encounter very mature -- or should I say immature -- situations along the way.
Overall I really enjoyed this movie when I was younger because it was so inappropriate and funny, but I enjoy it now for another reason. It's a movie about teenagers who are unwilling to grow up, and I have to admit that this theme really hits home now that I'm on my own for the first time. The movie showed me that growing up and moving on is a necessary part of life, but at the same time it lets me hold on to my immaturity, even if it's just for a little while longer.
Mystery Team sounds like it has a great premise for a comedy, so much so that I might decide to watch it with my friends one of these days.
DeleteYou mentioned the teens' unwillingness to grow up and throw away their immaturity, and I think that's interesting because some of Chaplin's films seemed a bit immature to me, but only slightly. Nonetheless he still managed to create films that made me chuckle a little bit at worst. I believe that without at least a small touch of immaturity, a comedy will quickly fall flat, because i think immaturity is the root of most aspects of humor.
An all time favorite movie of mine is the 1995 Academy Award winning best picture film, Forrest Gump. If you haven't seen this film, it is the tale of a man who may not be so smart, but knows what love is.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find quite endearing about this film is that it encompasses a large portion of United States culture and history from 1944-1982. Of course the actual moments the fictional characters take part in are all made up, but many of the events and innovations shown in the movie parallel the timeline which they historically did take place. The ambition of this movie just to interweave so many historic moments during this rich period in U.S history never ceases to astonish me.
Forrest Gump's own story line is one that encompasses all great factors of an epic life journey. It has both love, lost, and comedy in a simplistic way to really help the audience understand the world from Gump's view. The audience is also given the chance to view complicated and explosive events that American's dealt with at the time such as the Vietnam War, the drug induced 70s, the civil rights movement, Cold War tensions, three presidents, the effects of HIV/AIDS, the start of apple, and various other historical events through the eyes of a good of heart individual with not too much of a sense in what was going on.
One of the most important aspects of this movie is the character development of Gump which is built upon and molded by individuals he meets on his journey. In the first half of the film, Gump is somewhat of a blank simpleton who does a lot of listening and following with not to much after thought. But as the story progressed to the end, I think a symbolic change for Gump was when he finally became a father, effectively showing he gained the ability to be responsible for, not just himself, but for someone else.
From what I could understand, this film was also ground breaking in its use of CGI to place Gump in actual archive footage, adding to the sense of realism of the film.
This epic American dramatic comedic romance film will always be one of my favorites and a classic. It told a beautiful story with historical ties about a simple American facing the challenges of a big changing world.
I agree this is a very good movie! It is fairly historically accurate too which is cool. I always like films that take place over a long period of time, I think it allows for more character development and growth. Also the larger time span of this movie gives audiences a personal perspective of historical events, which is much more interesting than reading facts from a text book.
DeleteBeing a historian at heart, I must agree with you. Forrest Gump is great film. The events the character goes to or experience throughout his life are amazing. Not to mention the film has many iconic movie quotes like: "Run Forrest Run" and "Life is like a box of chocolates". The reason I like this film is the same reason why I like Billy Joel's song "We didn't start the fire", they both have history overflowing from their veins. Great movie!
DeleteThe most recent film I have watched is called “13 Conversations about One Thing”, which was released in 2001 and directed by Jill Sprecher. I had never heard of this movie, but I found it at the thrift store for 99 cents, and decided to purchase it. I did not have high hopes for the film, but was pleasantly surprised by the morality theme we don’t often see in popular media. I highly recommend watching it, especially if you gravitate towards independent movies. The film style and plot set up is similar to the movie “Crash”, as it is following 5 individual characters who lives are separate, but they have an experience/relationship that gives them something in common to one of the others. Through this complicated assembly of people five individual stories come together to produce one cohesive plot.
ReplyDeleteThe first scene of the film sets, which takes place in a bar in New York City, introduces the theme for the film. The scene ends with the quote “show me a happy man and I will show you a disaster waiting to happen”. This film is centered on its characters trying to define, and find happiness. These stories challenge popular ideas of what will bring happiness; including money, sex, relationships, and achievement, and explores the duality of one’s own happiness as it relates to others. Each character believes they know what makes them happy and each character finds out they are wrong. The distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘success’ vs ‘failure’. The best example from the film is the story of Troy (Mathew McConaughey). Troy is a prosecution attorney who defines his happiness by “successfully prosecuting the guilty”, the more criminals he puts away, the greater his happiness. This idea of success= happiness is rejected in the film. One night Troy commits a hit- and – run, and appears to get away with vehicular manslaughter. His guilt from this action affects him. Troy is still highly achieving at work, but begins to see his success, prosecution of criminals, is also a loss for another. Once he has to face that he too deserves to be on the opposite side of the prosecution, his meaning of happiness is lost.
Sound, or lack thereof, in films has been an importance concept in this class. But I don’t think we spent enough time on music in film. Many of the films we watched where entertaining, but how much of that was the film and how much of that was from the music? For me, if it was not the comedy of the film, it was the soundtrack. And considering most of the films we watched had the music added after the film’s original release, I don’t know how people back then could watch truly silent films. I know I wouldn't like a film without music. Music creates more than pleasing sounds; it helps create the environment within the film. Take ‘Star War’, Darth Vader wouldn't be nearly as fearful without the song Imperial March. ‘Indiana Jones’ not as exciting without its theme. ‘Jaws’, ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Home Alone’, ‘Jurassic Park’, all of these create memories of their iconic theme songs.
ReplyDeleteSomething even more funny is that all of these movies mentioned above all have theme songs created by the same man: John Williams. He has also created the soundtracks to ‘E.T’, ‘Hook’, ‘Schindler’s List’, ‘War Horse’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’ ‘Lincoln’ and many of the Superman movie themes. On a funnier side note, he also created the themes to 4 Olympic Games, NBC’s Sunday Night Football, and the old TV shows ‘Lost in Space’ and ‘Gilligan’s Island’. If you want a memorable song for you movie or show, you hire John Williams.
While sound is important in films, I think such an importance took hold later on in film history. The gimmick of sound was it's main supplement to film, and then later on did it become such a thematic tool for filmmakers. In early film, sound was quite messy and jarring as we saw in "The Broadway Melody", where sound was subjected to lots of hard cuts.
Delete^ Tyler Hayduk (I've been forgetting to add my name to these things)
DeleteBy chance, I recently saw Keanu Reeves's film, "Side By Side". It's a documentary on how digital film is replacing actual film, in movie development. It was pretty extensive in both digital and real film's invention and reception, and how they are both used in the industry today. There's a lot of parallels between the emergence of digital film with the emergence of sound. Ever since Lucas basically championed digital film in the first place, he was treated with malevolence amongst his colleagues. The reasons for using real film in movies are primarily that of an artistic reasons. Digital film did not take off immediately as many members of the old guard of film refuse to use the digital counterpart. It was seen as a gimmick when used in Star Wars. It wasn't until the movie Sin City came out did directors give notice to digital film, as Sin City literally needed to be digital in order to pull off the director's artistic vision. Digital is thus slowly taking hold amongst the newer generation of directors, while members of the previous generations, such as Scorsese and Tarantino use traditional film. However, at the end of the documentary, it is interesting to see how so many of these directors acknowledge that digital is the future, yet so many of them insist on going down with the ship.
ReplyDelete^ Tyler Hayduk
I think that it is interesting to look at the use of digital film in modern movies. While Sin City depends upon digital film to produce the desired effect, I think that some films over-use digital effects. For example, the later Transformers movies use a huge amount of computer graphics for both the robots and the human stunts. I think that the films become so unrealistic that they sacrifice the suspension of disbelief from the audience.
DeleteThe comedies we've seen in class consisted of little to no spoken words, which always intrigued me because almost all comedy films, videos, and clips today use words to convey their humor. A couple of weeks ago I saw a video of a South African stand-up comedian by the name of Trevor Noah. His jokes consist largely of stories of his life, and behavioral impressions of different kinds of people (namely African Americans).
ReplyDeleteNoah's entire act would be void if he didn't have the technology necessary to record and project his voice, because there is no other way to tell the stories or jokes, or do the impressions that he does using only gestures and animations. Yet Directors like Chaplin and Keaton did an outstanding job at provoking laughter from audiences of the early 1900's, as well as many people today. The only parallel between both forms of comedy is the use of facial expressions to bolster the humor, but even then they are not used nearly as much by Noah as they are in silent comedies.
Connor Chase
Here is a link to Trevor Noah
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LQw_J-sbeU
In my Netflix procrastination before finals, I watched the first season of the 2014 science fiction television show "The 100". The series depicts a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth’s atmosphere was contaminated by nuclear fallout. Humanity was forced to live in a space station known as the Ark, a life-sustaining collection of space stations that formerly belonged to separate nations. The Ark was meant to support humanity for 200 years, when the Earth could supposedly be inhabited once again, but the ship’s systems were failing after only 97 years. In a desperate attempt to see if the Earth could harbor life after only 97 years, 100 teenage prisoners were sent from the Ark down to the surface of the Earth. “The 100” were immediately faced with the challenge of survival and establishing order.
ReplyDeleteI would even go so far as to say that “The 100” is the next great science fiction television shows for today’s teen and pre-teen audiences. While the writing and direction are outstanding, the real crowning jewel of the series was its cast. The show boasts a cast of diverse young actors from various ages, genders, and ethnicities. This added both realism and depth to the show. Also, none of the main female characters are weak or unimportant. The women are warriors and leaders instead of replaceable romantic interests for male leads.
Oh, and there’s also a love triangle. No movie or television show with teenagers would be complete without one.