UNFORGIVEN

Unforgiven (1992) is one of my dad's favorite movies. It is a western set in the late 1800's. After finally seeing the film, I now understand why my dad liked it so much. The western scenery is beautiful. The movie fits the mold of a western pretty well, with the depiction of the main characters as cowboys. Munny is shown to live on a small, solitary farm. This gives us an idea of the development of the frontier at the time. The town of Big Whiskey is a typical one-horse type town. There's a saloon where the men go to drink and there are prostitutes that live and do business upstairs. And of course there is a sheriff, Little Bill. Little Bill isn't the typical sheriff though. The common portrayal of the sheriff is one that is tough but fair, and that gets along with most of the towns people. In Unforgiven, Little Bill is a bit power-crazed. He doesn't seem to enforce many laws except that against guns in the town. And he is pretty wary of newcomers. In this film, as in many westerns, the main character is often what some would consider "the bad guy". He is trying to serve justice to the women in the brothel, however, doing so requires being an assassin. The audience is made to sympathize with the character who's main goal is to kill. That is a big part of westerns. Justice is usually served by killing wrong-doers. But Munny is shown to have a good heart. When one cowboy is dying after Munny shoots him, he begs for water. Munny tells his friends to give him some and promises not to shoot. He shows sympathy, even though he is the one inflicting the pain upon the young man. Also, when the Kid kills his first man, he freaks and says he never wants to kill again. Munny sympathizes with the Kid, surely remembering his first time, and offers the Kid a drink of whiskey. Unforgiven has been said to be one of the greatest westerns ever made, and I have to say it is a pretty good one.

CRASH

Crash (2004) is one of the most thought-provoking films that I have seen in a while. This film is one about racism and how every day, people are confronted with racism. Although racism supposedly isn't as widespread anymore, I think that people just don't realize that it really still is. People don't realize that although they don't necessarily act as hatefully towards certain races as they did in the 1960's and earlier, they still have ideas of certain stereotypes, and expect certain traits from certain races. In the movie, when a black man gets a ride from a police officer, he notices that the officer has St Christopher on his dashboard. When the man reaches in to his pocket to show the police officer, the officer thinks that the man is reaching for a gun, and shoots him. The stereotype of black men carrying around guns and killing cops causes an innocent black man to be killed. Although it wasn't a hate crime, it was done out of fear because stereotypes are what keeps racism going strong. In another part of the movie, two thuggish-looking black men are offended that a woman clung to her husband when passing them. They then hijack her car to get back at her, feeding the stereotype that the woman was probably thinking when she grabbed on to her husband. Although racism is a nasty thing, people act as though it is with out cause or justification. When people reinforce a stereotype, they are not helping their case. This is two-sided though. When someone expects another person to act a certain way, they often will. This is called self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone vandalizes a man's convenience store, calling him an Arab even though this man is not an Arab. However, he grows so angry, he finds the locksmith that didn't fix his door and pulls a gun on him. The racism of the vandalizers causes the shop owner to act in a way that a stereotype might expect him to act. This film calls to attention a lot of social stigmas that are often ignored. It causes you to stop and think about the way you act yourself.

BRICK LANE

Brick Lane is a film about an Indian woman living in a bearable but unsatisfying life in England. She was set up to marry her husband by her father without ever meeting the man, and her husband has no sympathy for her feelings or happiness. The film has a feminist vibe to it, as the main character is a woman, and the movie is made to instill frustration and empathy in to the viewers. At first, Nazneen, the main character, simply sits back and lets her husband walk all over her. She is trying to save money for a plane ticket home to visit her sister, so she buys a sewing machine. Her husband, who doesn't approve of his wife making perhaps more money than he, buys a computer and doesn't tell her that she will be the one paying it off. There is nothing Nazneen can do but work harder to pay off the computer. This film makes the audience so frustrated with Nazneen's situation. She is trapped in a situation with no easy way out. She has an affair with a younger man, but when things start getting too serious, she realizes this is not what she wants. To the surprise of everyone, she works things out with her husband, and although they stay somewhat together, he moves back to India, and she stays in Brick Lane with her two daughters. This is the most shocking part of all, since all through the film, she wants to go home to Bangladesh, but in the end, she realizes that England is her home now. This film is not what one would expect. It has feminist themes, however, she resolves her problems in a very unextreme way. The audience is expecting her to leave her husband and make some sort of feminist statement. However, she stays true to her values, and the audience finds out that she actually does love her husband. He turns out not to be the horrible guy everyone thinks he is. This film was a very emotional film, and the filmmaker did a good job engaging the audience and call attention not only to feminism, but also to the importance of family.

Portfolio

The final portfolio is a terrible thing for the national board to institute. Having taken English 1101 over the summer I took for granted how long it would take me to finish that final assignment and it almost cost me my grade. This assignment takes several hours and is very much a pain in the ass. With the amount of reading and writing involved it would be best to start this project right now. As you are reading this blog you could be reading through one of your essays and finding part of your portfolio instead of just wasting time. As you start you should read all of the questions and then skim your paper seeing as how you wrote it therefore you should know what is going on and should remember all of the points and thus you would be saving time by skimming.

The business of fancydancing is a tribute to homosexual life. The movie is covered in secrecy though. Not only in the fact that the two men are hiding their gay ways, but also the fact that they are an interracial couple and so the movie almost seems to hide the fact that its about gays and not about interracial love.

Redefining Cinema: The Documentary

Since the beginning of film, there are two greater categories of division that separate all productions: fictional and factual. Sure, cinematic experiences have been divided by genres, sub-genres, categorical movements, and historical movements, but the primary breakdown of films is into two categories. This is according to John Izod and Richard Kilborn's article, "The Documentary". For most, it is obvious what films fall into the fictional category, for they are typically mainstream features with success to some scale that are meant to entertain. Documentaries, however, are often underappreciated pieces of film meant to instruct or inform. As John Grierson, the man credited as being the forerunner of British documentaries, put it, documentaries are "a creative treatment of actuality." In other words, documentaries need to be more than just raw film of real life, for they must uniquely educate or be culturally enlightening. Critics do not necessarily agree with Grierson's as a whole, though, because they believe that it is hard to present reality with the intentions of moving an audience's thought process in a specific direction without the use of artifice. Where does storytelling meet actuality, and if it does, then is the film still a factual account? Many key technological developments and changes in the general audience's mindset have led into a more refined documentary style.

One point of debate for the accuracy of realism in documentaries is dramatic reconstructions, or scenes recreated because footage of the original event could not be obtained. The development of cameras that were hand-held and lightweight allowed documentarists to film on location for nearly any event, which helped lessen the use of re-enacted scenes. However, dramatic reconstructions are still used because cameras are not allowed access in all locations. For instance, scenes involving courtroom events must be re-created because cameras are not allowed in the court of law. The problem with dramatic reconstructions is that they are sometimes not used for an accurate portrayal of an occurrence, but rather to increase the dramatic appeal of a scene to an audience. This is where the question of credibility comes into play with documentaries.

Documentarists must also keep in mind perspective when attempting to stress the importance of a lesser known truth about a generally known reality. A documentary becomes spectacular when it uncovers or captures facts that lye underneath the surface of the obvious, but authors must be careful not to skew reality because of their own preconceptions. For instance, Michael Moore is technically called a documentarist, but his work is specifically made to expose weaknesses or faults in the Republican party, so his films are based on preconceived ideas favored by the filmmaker. It is often easy to get swept away by the strong narration and "value-laden language" of documentaries that coincide with strong selective imagery, but a viewer must inquisitively approach documentaries. Spike Lee is another prominent documentarist of modern times. Most of his films are meant to uncover and educate masses about race relations, urban life, and political issues. His films appeal to a wide audience because he exudes relation to his subject matter.

Documentaries are a quizzical form of film and raise many questions from critics and audiences alike. However, they are effective because they have no limitations on theme or topic. People sometimes look down upon the invasive methods used by documentarists to uncover "the truth" or the unknown, but it is an effective style of film that will evolve and exist in many forms.

Gay and Lesbian film: The Birdcage, The Business of Fancydancing. But classical Hollywood cinema? I thought they were all about the ideal society, where men work and lead the household, while the innocent women raise the kids and cook. Apparently, there actually was homosexuality to be found in older films, and a lot more than I had ever expected or imagined.

However, this homosexuality, as per movie industry regulations, had to be subtle, in secrecy, and often only detected at the time by those who were seeking homosexuality–gays and lesbians themselves. It went by often unnoticed, or in fact humored upon. A very funny scene of this subtle humor can be found in the last scene of Some Like It Hot, in which Joe E. Brown seems to be okay with the fact that the woman he’s fallen in love with is actually a man.



In addition, many instances in which gay men were shown in classical Hollywood film involved the “sissy,” or the effeminate man who clearly went against the ideal man of the first half of the twentieth century. Although this was and still may be a very comical character, it slowly demoralized and degraded the self-esteem of those viewers who were truly gay, because it portrayed them as something less than normal; a people to be ridiculed.

Watching The Celluloid Closet and hearing the guest speakers commentate on the true impact of classical Hollywood films opened my eyes to an entirely different view of the humor that I had never thought about in a criticizing manner. I realized because almost every instance or mention of homosexuals in older films involved humor and ultimately ridicule, it only served to instill fear and resent into the already closeted and embarrassed gay population of the time.

Nevertheless, in today’s world, homosexuality is becoming increasingly acceptable, and so it seems to me that gay humor now may not be quite as malevolent or alienating as it used to be, since there is less to worry about, so to speak, today. I know for sure that one of my gay friends is fine laughing at his own sexuality, because it’s ultimately about confidence; as any people are more socially accepted, they become more confident, and are more comfortable with laughing at themselves.