Film/Text/Culture Autoblog -Summer 07

This post is a bit random, but after watching Miller’s Crossing I decided to rent another Coen brothers film. I chose Barton Fink—and wow. What a film.
I wanted to talk about it for a bit, even though it’s not technically part of our class material. Since I watched it, which was a few hours ago, so many parts of it have been continuously running through my mind, I suppose trying to find some clarity. There are a few parts that definitely stand out in my mind, though. If you haven’t seen it yet, quit reading and go rent it. For real.
First of all, towards the end when the hotel is burning and Charlie returns. I can only imagine that the hotel is now symbolic of hell, maybe it […]

Original post by malbrooks

Okay, so I’m a little behind in the blogging world. It looks as though most of my blogging will have to be done on the weekends, seeing as though I spend most of my quality time during the week on 95 driving to my classes (fantastic). So forgive me if I’m speaking about topics that have already been discussed, but I have things to say so here I go!
Miller’s Crossing. I feel as though that first scene says so much about the progression of the movie: the plot and the characters, as we have already mentioned in class.
We talked at length about the ice cube sound, so I won’t go too deeply into that. I do have to say, though, that it was a brilliant way to tie together two constants […]

Original post by malbrooks

Prompted by today’s class discussion, I decided to look into some of Camille Paglia’s work. I was expecting to find some Gloria Stienem-esque academic talking about how tectonic patriarchal forces compel women to empty the dishwasher. Turns out my conception of her writing couldn’t be further off target. She certainly doesn’t seem to think particularly highly of men, but a large part of her work seems to be a reaction against the gender-equity brand of feminist thought that pervaded 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s. I came upon a list of her quotes and was surprised by their blunt, unapologetic nature. Some excerpts:
Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.
Woman is the dominant sex. Men have to do all sorts of stuff to prove that they are worthy of woman’s attention.
Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs like […]

Original post by crain2mn

Ok. Let’s reveal another interesting fact about me to open this post. My parents named me after Katharine Hepburn. Except they didn’t like how she spelled her name. So they changed the second a to an e. So I’m really not named after Katharine Hepburn. Plus I’ve never seen her in a movie in my life. And let me just tell you, after watching this 1933 version of Little Women, I really do not want to be associated with her. I’m sure she’s probably done some really good movies (unless my parents were just crazy when they named me) but she sucked in this one (In my own opinionated and well chosen words.) I hated how unfeminine and tomboyish she was. I know Jo is supposed to be tomboyish, but Hepburn takes it to the extreme. Very extreme. The book Jo loved to do boy […]

Original post by khusband

While there are many possible symbolic meanings of the hat in Miller’s Crossing, I saw the hat as an homage to the Glass Key. Through Tom’s dream about the hat the Coen brother’s are showing Tom’s attitude’s similarity to the attitude of Ned in the Glass Key. Throughout the beginning of the movie Tom is looking to recover his hat, and ends up getting it from Verna, so in some ways she can be seen as the one possible meaning of the hat. Using Verna as the hat we can correlate Tom’s eventual killing of Bernie as his letting the hat go. Until the moment he actually kills Bernie it is still possible for Tom to be with Verna. In the end Tom gives up everything and this defeatist attitude is exemplified in his refusal to go after the hat in his dream. He […]

Original post by onda

The use of Camera Focus in Miller’s crossing got me focusing on it much more when I was watching movies over the Fourth. I have always enjoyed photography and the powerful nature of carefully framed and thought out images, and a lot of the trouble I have with film is that it is hard to truly appreciate the individual frame, because of the speed of change in scenes. Watching an Inconvenient Truth I noticed that the director played with focus in an interesting way: he chose to focus at times on Al Gore’s computer leaving Gore, the protaganist, unfocused in the background. This had an interesting way of distancing the political, and personally held beliefs of Al Gore, and focusing on the scientific evidence, as symbolized by the computer. For me camera focus, and more importantly unexpected use of focus, can be one of the best […]

Original post by onda

I just wanted to blog briefly on something that caught my attention in the prologue of Miller’s Crossing, especially comparing Miller’s Crossing to The Glass Key. That was the portrayal of Leo, as played by Albert Finney, who was the Paul character for the Coen brother’s adaptation. As opposed to Paul, who was a blustery, brash character with the intelligence to get himself into profitable situations but not through them or out of them, Leo seemed much more controlled, sophisticated, even academic. Of course, the relationship between the Ned/Paul character was still born out in Miller’s Crossing, with Tommy being more intelligent and splitting away in the end, but it was far harder to condescend to the Leo character in terms of intellectual power. I was wondering if this was a directorial choice by the Coen brothers or if it was simply a matter of acting styles changing since the […]

Original post by anniek