A Highway Called 301

After viewing the movie A Highway Called 301 I have come to the conclusion that this film is definitely an avant-garde film due to the fact that the movie was a matter of interpreting images and sounds not organized according to narrative logic. This movie was very difficult to grasp partly due to the fact that I am not use to seeing movies that do not have a clear narrative and plot.

A Highway Called 301 was a documentary style movie that showed images of the trip on 301 which runs from Florida to Delaware. The movie was divided into four short videos leading up to 301. The first film was silent, creating a mood of tension. It flashed images of animals on the screen with static occurring in the background. There were dull colors of gray and greens as well. The music gave this short film a sense of being ere. The second film showed through images the war in America. The music played a detrimental part in this film as well as the choice to use black and white. The same images of a five dollar bill, a bird and a little boy kept repeating over and over again, which really freaked me out. There was then a video of Washington D.C. and this was the first video that offered dialect and was a typical documentary style movie. There were people admiring the white house. The main theme to this video in my opinion was capturing moments through photos. The final short film was on an eighties style exercise video. The entire video kept repeating the words, “Tighten your buttocks all the way, tighten those buttocks, tighten those buttocks.” It was literally five whole minutes of the same thing. Finally, after this introduction, the movie finally started.

301 started with live images of heavy snow outside of a deserted building with flashing warning signs. A handheld camera seemed to be used because the images on screen were not steady. There were images of deserted gas stations and even absurd images of deserted mattresses. The movie was very repetitive with the constant sound of a static radio in the background. Some obvious motifs were images of arrows, doors, windows and sidewalks. The meaning that I got out of these images was that they are things that we see every day but constantly look over due to the fact that we are always rushing from place to place.

This movie was very abstract with no human forms. It was unlike anything I have ever seen before and it was very hard to follow. While watching the movie, I looked around the room and everyone seemed to be so engaged and analytical. They had their heads tilted in amazement, making me feel very out of place. The only thing I left 301 thinking was that the director did make me feel as if I was a passenger in the car and the television screen was the window that I was looking out of. This was definitely not a typical Hollywood film that people would spend $9.50 a ticket at a regular movie theater on a Friday night.

Catfish

When I first heard that the name of the movie that was going to be playing at the Christian Study Center was called Catfish I had no clue what to expect.  I kept questioning what catfish had to do with anything. This curiosity caused me to finally go to the screening to see what this movie was all about. I quickly learned that just because the name of the movie was Catfish, it had nothing to do with the actual fish. The movie was actually a documentary about Facebook. It proposed the argument that on Facebook, you can create your own identity and distinguish for yourself the line that divides reality and truth from fantasy.

 Nev, the person in the film whose life was being documented, started communicating with this little girl named Abby, who was a child prodigy at drawing. He became close with her mother Angela, as well as her entire family. Abby would send her paintings to Nev, and they were constantly talking over Facebook. Nev even had a love affair with Abby’s half-sister Megan. Months went by and things were going smoothly until Nev realized that Megan was lying about being able to sing. What she was claiming was her voice was actually a random voice found off of YouTube. This made Nev put everything into question and the deception came to the light. After going to Michigan, he found out the truth. There was no drawing Abby and definitely no Meg. Angela looked nothing like her pictures on Facebook. Everything was made up, making Nev feel foolish for so easily accepting the information given to him from off of Facebook. Angela, a lonely housewife who has to care for her husband Vince’s disabled sons has many regrets. She escapes through Facebook, and creates a world that she wishes she could actually live. This explains the fabrication that got out of hand.

Some people argue that this is not a real documentary, which makes this movie very controversial. Just the fact that there is so much debate over this movie makes the structure ingenious. This was a point brought up in the discussion after the screening that I would have to agree with. Basically, we are all like Angela in some way or another. Most of us have a Facebook, and on our page, we romanticize ourselves and manipulate what we want others to see. We shade the truth because we do not want to put our faults out there to be judged. The final argument that can be made out of all of this is whether or not it really matters what reality is? Are we really going to go around questioning if everything is real, or just take things for face value and live our lives? There is no general consensus however; I plan on just living my life. I learned an important lesson from Catfish. This movie taught me that there are people out in the world who create fake lives and live through them like Angela. Without Catfish in our lives, life would be dull. Catfish keep us on our toes, constantly questioning the world around us.

    

A Single Man

The review of A Single Man by Robert Ebert is a complete plot synopsis. It takes you through the entire film, from start to finish in great detail. Ebert does take the extra step to analyze George’s personality by mentioning that George’s “thoughts cannot be read in his eyes.” This explains who George is in a nutshell and how he acts throughout the film, a dismal man. The final two paragraphs of the review are dedicated to the director of the film, Tom Ford, but as I was reading the review, I could not help but ask myself, “Is this even a review?” I was expecting a lot more out of Ebert, and was highly disappointed with the way that this review was approached. Not once did Ebert give his opinion of the film’s content. I believe that, in a partial way, Ebert achieved Sontag’s prescription for a successful criticism because it did give a thorough description of the film however; I would have to argue on the form. I feel that if Ebert would have given just a brief synopsis of the plot and then went about describing the content and his opinion of such content, the review would definitely have been more meaningful. Ebert might have been hesitant to say anything negative about the movie because of the fact that the subject of the film, homosexuality, is touchy and he did not want to look like he was attacking the gay community.

The element of mise-en-scene that really stuck out to me was the lighting aspect of the film. Ford’s use of color is truly artistic. Some examples that stuck out to me within the film was the scene were George was going to the store and spotted a dog (the same dog that him and his lover Jim had) and starting to sniff the dog. Although this is a sort of creepy act, the artistic part was when he started sniffing the dog, the picture got saturated. Another part that was artistically presented was when George was driving out of his driveway and the scene was desaturated, but when he came across the little girl Jennifer, things went in slow motion and the image got saturated and the pink in her dress was bright. This was very artistic because in my opinion, it expounded upon the theme of the film which is to cherish every small moment in life.

Blog Assignment 1

Psycho!!!

There are examples of enigma all throughout the Hitchcock movie Psycho. The audience is constantly left to question what is going on. In my opinion, a good example of this is when Marion stops at the Bates Hotel. Norman Bates, at first glance looks like a normal, nice guy who seems to be infatuated by Marion. He offers her dinner due to the fact that it is raining heavily outside. All of a sudden, you hear the voice of his “mother” which completely threw me off. When the two finally sit down to eat, Norman seems fidgety and is acting quite weird and anxious. When Marion goes back to her room, Norman gets even creepier by stalking her through a hole that is connected to her room. Peeping Tom! She is taking a shower and then out of nowhere, an “old woman” comes with a knife and slaughters Marion. This in itself was confusing because if you recall, Norman said that his mother was ill, so how could an ill old lady have enough strength the kill Marion. Also brought into question is the fact that the mother’s face is never shown. At the end of the movie, the solution is given, but while watching the movie for the first time, I had no idea what was going on, and why it was happening. Obviously, we the audience knew something bad was going to happen because while Marion was taking her peaceful shower, there was non-diegetic music playing that was racy and caused anxiety in the audience. A scene where a delay was introduced for me was the scene where Marion steals the money. I questioned why she was even stealing the money because it happened so fast. I honestly thought that she was going to put the money in the bank. I guess I am just naive. I knew that the audience would eventually get an answer because Marion was the central focus. The fraud was that Marion, while in the hotel, seemed to be contemplating giving the money back, as she subtracted the amount that she used. This could also work as the equivocation because it is a mixture of fraud and truth. We never really get to see if she returns the money because the disclosure is that she is murdered. I do not believe that a partial answer is given. The effect of this delay in my opinion is to evoke complete confusion, and keep the question of, “what is she running from?” in our heads. She should have been running from that psycho killer. Hitchcock really engaged the audience in his film.

The movie Psycho is in no way a classical paradigm. When the antagonist, Marion dies, the audience is left confused and unsatisfied. After the main character died, I didn’t understand why it happened and I was hoping that she would make it through her harsh stabbing. I was wondering why she was even killed. Was it because the mother was jealous of his son being infatuated by another girl or was it because the mother and Norman knew about the money she had, and wanted it in order to build a new hotel on the main highway to get more business? Because of this, I believe that this movie is a writerly text because the audience could interpret the movie in many ways. For example, when Marion was packing her things to leave town, I honestly had no idea why she was doing so. Could it be because she wanted to be with her lover Sam? Could it be because she just wanted to start new, and this was her only opportunity to do so? Toward the middle of the movie when Marion stops at the Bates hotel, I had no idea what the point of the movie was. I was completely confused until the very end when things were explained.

Movie Review on Full Metal Jacket

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19870626/REVIEWS/706260302/1023

In the film review by Robert Ebert, Ebert gives a very thorough review of Full Metal Jacket. His review is much different than many other reviews I have read in the past in the mere fact that this review offers more than a plot synopsis. He does tell some of the vital background plot that one would need to know in order to understand the points he is trying to make. Although the only movie I have seen by Kubrick was Full Metal Jacket, Ebert does draw many parallels to some of Kubrick’s other masterpieces, basically stating that this movie is tasteless and not unique in many ways.  Ebert states that, “The crucial last passages of the film too often look and feel like World War II films from Hollywood studios. We see the same sets from so many different angles that after the movie we could find our own way around Kubrick's Vietnam.” In other words Ebert is saying that he feels like this movie was not very creative. The way that Ebert makes the movie sound, I honestly would probably not even waste my time watching this movie, or at least  try to look at different reviews to see if I could find any praise about the film. Ebert does an excellent job and I can definitely tell that this is not his first review. He is definitely "literate" in the visual literacy of movies.