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Ok so I’ve been thinking about beginnings in movies.  Not too much, but I have.  Here’s what I’ve thought about.

The opening music changes everything.  A good score can even get people into the credits.  An example might be The Good the Bad and the Ugly” (thanks Craig).  In that film, we see monocolor stills from the movie, and cheesy animations of people getting blown up by cannons.  But the score is so intense, I thought it was awesome.  Star Wars is the same way.  Imagine the explication in A New Hope scrolling off into space to Beth playing harpsichord.  The beginning to Star Wars is especially interesting.  The old movies had that epic in media res opening, where the story starts in the middle and ends before the end.  I suppose Return of the Jedi gives us plenty of closure, even down to glowing Yoda.  But it was cool while it lasted.

 There’s a big difference between a movie that starts with a long credit reel and one that saves all the credits for the end.  Too much or too little opening credit can be disturbing. Usually, I like to settle in to my surroundings during a brief but informative opening credit sequence.  If I have to wait forever to see the movie, I’ll admit getting a little bit grumpy.  But when it starts right up, like they do sometimes with those pre-credit bits, I am almost always caught off guard. 

 Gonna go finish getting ready to present today, see you all later

I was wondering about Little Women and its impact on the women who read it.  Based on Dr. Campbell’s reading of some famous female comments on the book, it would seem that the only daughter anyone bothers identifying with is Jo.  I think that might not be true.  Perhaps we only hear from the Jo-people because of course we’d never hear from the Beth-people and the Meg-people are too busy.  It would be difficult to prove, but perhaps Little Women is an important feminist text because it liberates multiple lifestyles, rather than just pushing Jo-feminism on everyone.  Jo’s noise drowns out the silent ones, the Beths and Megs and Amys.  Little Women would then be a moderate feminist text, one that declares each sister viable.  I mean, we all know people who are like Jo and are like Amy and Meg, and I happen to know a Bethlike person.  Not to say that all women fall into one of those categories, but many women have to choose one or some combination of the sisters’ decisions in life.  Therefore, the sort of people who love Jo are going to be writing about Little Women while the ones who love Beth might be just quietly being good and rereading the novel after charity work. 

My roommate listens to gansta rap.  It’s all about black people shooting each other and selling drugs and, when it is happy, driving cars and sleeping with hos.  It doesn’t appeal to me, but he is from the inner city and I understand that it appeals to him.  Little Women, to me, is like gansta rap.  The lyrics in some songs are great, my favorite: “I wear a gun like a girtle/ My bullet proof car got me feelin’ like a turtle”-Lil’ Wayne in “I’m a G.”  It’s clever and funny.  Little Women is also clever and funny, but serious too.  It’s a wonderful story about wonderful people doing wonderful things- but even Jo seems too good to be true.  It seems like a morality play, to teach women how to be good.  I suppose where it might be revolutionary, would be that part of this good is strength.  The most interesting parts are when Jo rejects Laurie or remembers him with mixed emotions.  But let’s face it, Laurie’s a bit of a loser. 

 I think the film caught the “feel” of the novel.  It’s a story where the people never dissapoint me, which is kinda boring.  I’ll edit this later, or comment on it, as I’m sure class will start to change my mind.

Alright, so I gotta put down my steamin’ blues harp and write a little FTC before bed.  I’m no great blogger, but Stephanie has called me out on it so now I gotta get back into things.

 SO the spear danes in days gone by… no that’s not right.  SO the most interesting thing from the last class (better) for me was the thought that the cuts in a film are the film’s meter.  I’ll say right up front that I’m a scansion geek, I will smile if you speak in iambs for more than a few feet.  I’ll have to investigate it closer, but I think it might be right, the beats of a movie are the cuts.  Being a poor movie-watcher, I tend to get caught up in movies to where I miss most meta-clues that I assume are scattered around when they are in film specific wrapping.  But I’ll try to pay some more attention to cuts and then I will get back to you about what I think of movie-meters.   Tonight I watched Dead Ringers by Cronenberg and though it mostly made me want to hide my eyes, I did notice the film-iamb coming into play.  It seems a staple of dialog, to break up a speaker’s words by looking at the other guy (or in the case of Dead Ringers, the same guy).  One guy talks-look at the other (maybe he says a little).  First guy talks some more- cut to other guy (maybe says a little).  After a while, they might switch. 

 Of course, meter and cuts are just analogous, not exact, but the analogy allows me an entrypoint into understanding the art of cuts.  So bear with me.

Blogging is tricky- it didn’t seem like it would be so hard to keep current, but I always fall behind and never read as many as I should.   I wonder if anyone else is having trouble adjusting to the new century?  Should figure out that RSS thingamabob, I guess. 

 Should go to bed.  But maybe a little more blues, first. 

I thought the old man in Yojimbo was pretty interesting.  As with most of the movie, he fills an archetype of the old and good man who cannot perfectly understand the hero.  I think that he is the only human in the film.  The rest of the characters are divorced from their humanity, whether because they are evil and we can’t accept them because they are evil, or in Sanjuro’s case, because he is a force of nature.  The old man is the only decent human being in the movie.  Even the family Sanjuro frees makes him sick, as the husband lost his wife through gambling.  And when they mess with the decent old man, that’s when Sanjuro gets really pissed off.  I think Sanjuro goes to save the old man immediately because the old man is the only person Sanjuro encounters that doesn’t make him sick.  The town is his toy until the innocent and the good are threatened: then Sanjuro gets deadly.  The old man reveals Sanjuro’s morality.  I’d like to be a little weird and go on to say that the old man is most directly tied with the audience.  He often says exactly what we are thinking, things like “you fool!  you shouldn’t do that!”  Of course, we are thinking something more like, “you fool!  you shouldn’t do that!  But I’m going to really like watching you do that!”  Our faith in Sanjuro and the action movie makes us less human than the old man, wanting to see Sanjuro go lay down some slayin’ on the evil men of the town.  Because really, the old man is the only one who seems to want the town to heal.  We the audience are like Sanjuro: only interested in watching the surgery without sticking around to watch the slow recovery.