Film/Text/Culture Autoblog -Summer 07

The end is now? What?! We just started!  That’s the thing with summer courses… you start and it seems like the very next day you’re done.  I suppose it is time to reflect…
I enjoyed The Glass Key, although I probably wouldn’t have ever watched it if it was up to me to do it on my own… now that I’ve watched it, I thought it was pretty entertaining.
Yojimbo wasn’t too terrible, although the fact that it was a Japanese movie trying to be a western irritated me ever so slightly.
I like the Little Women movies just fine, though my favorite is the 1994 version.  I can’t help it, I love Winona Ryder as Jo.
Out of Erroll Morris’ documentaries my favorite was “The Thin Blue Line,” I found it actually quite entertaining to watch… I’ve never been big on documentaries, but I felt like this one was a good one!
I’m still […]

Original post by Amanda

What a great movie. This was another movie based on obsession, but this obsession was a lot darker than Portrait of Jennie. The obsession here leads to death. I think it was interesting to see the Madeline/Judy character play out, you could really tell when she was “possessed” by one woman or another. The plot is very similar to Portrait of Jennie when you think about it: both characters in both films are obsessed with each other, both can’t see each other often (in Vertigo she has to pretend she is dead and he has to keep his distance when he is stalking Madeline), and it ends with the girl dying. Only Hitcock decided to do it in a creepier way.

Original post by khusband

After finishing Yojimbo for the third time I wondered to myself what is the addictive nature of this movie. I found myself not solely thinking of Yojimbo but wondering about other movies that have recently had a similar almost “obsessive” effect. There are some films that truly do revolutionize movies. Be it through innovative techniques, or the artful use of existing ones, some movies are constructed in such a way that makes them timeless. Recently I have been drawn to foreign cinema, first as a way to improve my Spanish and as I later as a source of great interest. After watching Yojimbo and continuing to watch more foreign films I have decided that the single most driving force in the cinematic world today is the cultural exchange between film-making countries. Often we describe globalization in a purely economical sense, or as a culturally […]

Original post by onda

Kathleen’s blog entitled Drama, Romance, Fantasy — Oh My addresses some of the differences that arose in turning Portrait of Jennie into a film.  I agree with her in that Spinney has a much larger role in the film than she did in the book, but I don’t really feel that Spinney’s interaction with Mathews changes very drastically from book to movie as Kathleen suggests.  In each medium I saw a distinct, reversed role of gender between the two characters.  In her blog, she then talks about some of the special effects and usage of color in the film, which I didn’t cover extensively in my paper, so check it out.  Kathleen also included a link to a website that covers the movie’s failure when it was released, which is very interesting.  I really agree with what she closes her blog with, “Interesting how a movie may seem better over […]

Original post by cdame2of

Film directing over the decades has been a very involved art. When one looks back at the progression from the earlier soviet-style films…
Haha. Just kidding. Please don’t shoot yourself.
This post is actually about Miller’s Crossing. Specifically how, in my view at least, it did by far the best job of bringing out Ned and Madvig’s relationship to one another. Granted, this isn’t a particularly bold assertion to make given that the only other film in the unit that really attempted this was Heisler’s The Glass Key, and that film was working under the restraint of the Hayes Code. So really the focus here is going to be more on what I feel the Coen Brother’s did right as opposed to how I think Heisler dropped the ball.
Perhaps my biggest gripe character-wise about the film The Glass Key was the way in which it portrayed Ned and Madvig. […]

Original post by crain2mn

Since my first glance at the syllabus I was quite certain of what my final paper would analyze: something Errol Morris. Last semester in a Geopolitics course I had the pleasure of viewing The Fog of War, though it was through much different eyes than how I view it today. This class has given me a new lens (pun slightly intended) through which I am can view films, with more awareness and respect for elements other than solely the plot. Needless to say I was quite excited to see other Errol Morris films—and they did not disappoint.
I have chosen to analyze Fast, Cheap and Out of Control along with cognate film The Fog of War. My discussion will start with the films relations to an article in Film Theory and Criticism, before I proceed into a […]

Original post by malbrooks

I have to say I am not surprised that I was underwhelmed with the movie Portrait of Jennie. While I was reading the book I couldn’t help but think to myself: “this was not a book that should be made into a movie”. Sure at the very basic level the story was put onto screen, but the choice make the reality of Jennie more questionable really took away from the meaning of the book. Most of all the movie lacked a lot of the central ideas in the book about art, and the purpose of art. It was interesting to hear that selznick went bankrupt while producing the movie, because this does not seem like the kind of movie that you would choose to make if you were close to bankruptcy. This movie was most definitely not a sure thing. I’d like to hear if anyone […]

Original post by onda

After reading Portrait of Jennie, I was immersed in a sort of dream-like state myself. I had many questions that seemed rather over-played and obvious at the time; however, after attending class (and thinking a little bit longer about it) I realize that these questions are to be appropriately discussed at length and with no unfortunate conclusion. Obviously, that is the making for a good book.
I also wanted to take a greater look at art in literature. Specifically, the portrait of a character has been used in many great literary works to address the age-old questions of what is life? Time? Do they coexist? I found myself rifling through my British literature textbooks (and sounding strangely like the voice from the beginning of the movie of POJ) for My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, or The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
I had read them both in high […]

Original post by elizabethomas

Little Women is a novel published in 1868 and written by the American author Louisa May Alcott. The story concerns the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. The book was based on Alcott’s own experiences as a child in Concord, Massachusetts with her three sisters, Anna, May, and Elizabeth.

Several movies have been based off of the novel, Little Women. In the 1949 version, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, the most noticeable diversion from the novel was the fact that Beth March (Margaret O’Brien) is portrayed as being the younger sister to Amy March (Elizabeth Taylor), while in the novel she is older. This noticeable change was due to the fact that the studios had to deal with the actors and actresses they had available to them. Since O’Brien was considered the best choice for the […]

Original post by Amanda