On Monday - watch Restrepo documentary on Netflix and compare this to Lone Survivor. Here's the last assignment - it is due Monday 2/3 - Compare and contrast the two films (Restrepo & Lone Survivor) include: which one you think is better and why, which is more realistic, which one gives you a better idea of the fighting in Afghanistan, which one is filmed better? Explain and use details! This is worth 75 points. Should be between 3-5 paragraphs. Make sure your missing/makeup work is in - I graded more of your assignments so the grade book is up to date.
Restrepo is on YouTube in 2 parts (for those of you who are absent) Here's Part 1:
Wow, what a year for films! After watching American Hustle, I viewed Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine and I must say you won't waste any money watching this! Cate Blanchett is excellent as Jasmine whose fall from extreme wealth is terrifying, she is also perfect for this role - Cate exudes sophistication and class - perfect match for playing Jasmine. Cate may very well win the Oscar for Best Actress for this role. You see her break apart mentally as the world she knew disappears and she loses everything - her husband, her child, her home, her sister and finally has nothing. Cate is married to Hal (Alec Baldwin) who plays a Bernie Madoff-esque degenerate whose only concern is bedding pretty young women and blowing money. Hal is an older version of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio plays him in Wolf of Wall Street) - he scams people out of their money - Jordan Belfort ripped off people to the tune of $200 million, but in Blue Jasmine we see Hal squander $200,000 of Jasmine's half-sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) lottery winnings. Unlike Wolf, this film doesn't lionize the excess wealth, instead it shows how it destroys lives. The film shows Hal's philandering resulting in Jasmine leaving NYC to live with Ginger in San Francisco. Jasmine is also completely helpless, has no marketable skills and finally has to take a job as a dental receptionist in an office while she studies to be an interior designer. She really has no grasp of reality, for example she flies to SFO first class instead of saving the money and flying with the normal people. Every step of the film shows Jasmine failing and unraveling through her own fault or just bad luck. What is great about this film is how Woody Allen depicts the extremes of social classes. Jasmine is the rich out-of-touch narcissist, she has the best clothes, has a gigantic mansion, frequents the best shows and restaurants, etc. She has everything everyone wants right? Wrong! She also is hooked on pills and vodka martinis, has a cheating husband, a son who hates her, and friends that are shallow and materialistic. Not what I'd want - thank God I have small troubles! On the other hand, Allen shows the working class in a very caricatured way - Ginger has a boyfriend Chili (Bobby Canavale) - yes it is unbelievable but that is his name - who is a car mechanic has no class, says inappropriate comments, is rude and has little to no sense. He's also not above crying in public after Ginger cheats on him with another loser. Allen even uses San Francisco - a city with extreme wealth and poverty - as the place where Ginger lives. Woody Allen might actually be making this film as a metaphor for how the US is becoming very stratified and dangerously unstable - just like Jasmine - the rich are concerned with themselves, they lie, cheat and are driven by material consumption, while the working classes are wallowing in their own ignorance and essentially do the same things as the rich but on a smaller scale. Blue Jasmine, although funny throughout, is ultimately a warning about where we are heading as a society - ignorant, greedy, hooked on alcohol and pills, immoral and fixated on short-term pleasures. I wonder if Aldous Huxley would agree? Here's the trailer:
Just watched the film American Hustle directed by David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook, The Fighter) and it should win the Academy Award for Best Picture. I think this film will beat out 12 Years a Slave, TheWolf of Wall Street, and the other nominees this year. David O Russell even might beat out Marty Scorsese for Best Director since this film has so many Scorsese-like aspects, Marty might as well have directed it.
When I viewed this film I actually thought I was around 10 years old and Jimmy Carter was in the White House. It puts you right back in time - the clothes, music, language, everything feels like the late 70s. The plot is loosely based upon the 'Abscam Scandal' in which the FBI caught a bunch of Congressmen taking bribes from an undercover Arab sheikh. I vaguely remembering this being a big deal at the time, for a few days anyway. The power in this film is the performances of the key actors. Irving Feldman (Christian Bale), who plays a very out of shape con man with a bad comb over, a gorgeous Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) who is the love interest of Irving and also an up-and-coming G man Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Irving also has to content with a high-strung unpredictable wife Rosalyn (Jennnifer Lawrence). These four actors put on a priceless performance in which their interactions and dialogue eventually overshadow the plot and makes the plot secondary. I just wanted to see them together as each scene brings new revelations and twists. David O Russell is at the truly at the top of his game with this film and like Scorsese he includes great music from the 70s, crisp editing, and an uncanny ability to suck you into the world of the film. There are great secondary characters too such as, Mayor Politto (Jeremy Renner) who instead of finding bombs in Iraq is "doing everything he can for the people of New Jeresy", Jack Huston and even Robert De Niro as a rich mafia dude. The only thing missing in this film is Marty Scorsese's name as director and Joe Pesce in polyester. Heres the trailer:
Due on Friday: 1) Compare and contrast Casablanca to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Include how the censorship code played a role in the making of Casablanca, and how Raiders didn't apply the code as strictly, but still stayed in bounds since it attempted to have the style of the films of the 30s & 40s.
2) Briefly describe the making of Casablanca. Extra Credit for anyone attending the Film Club showing of TheGreat Dictator in room 403 on Wednesday @ 2:30
Published in 1932, some 17 years prior to the release of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World presented British writer Aldous Huxley's disturbing vision of the future of England.
Relax: we are not going to read the novel; however, we are going to discuss its depiction of the future.
Let our man Sparky Sweets get us up to speed:
Here is a simple breakdown of the differences between Orwell and Huxley's novels:
Interestingly enough, Huxley was briefly Orwell's French teacher. Perhaps this prompted George to send him a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Huxley, impressed by the novel yet eager for a discussion, sent the following letter to George:
Wrightwood. Cal.
21 October, 1949
Dear Mr. Orwell,
It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals ~ the ultimate revolution?
The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution ~ the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology ~ are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf.
The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful.
My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.
Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government.
Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism.
This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World.
The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war ~ in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.
Here's what is scheduled for this week in Film History:
1/6 - Finish Frank Capra Documentary
1/7 & 1/8 - Censorship in Film, Why is this needed? How did it come about? What is censored and by whom? Examples of censored films, Read article on film censorship - see link below
1/9 - Dystopia Film Project Day, continue with your film project
1/10 - View the film Casablanca and evaluate this film with the Hays Code
*Make sure your assignments are up-to-date, after Wednesday you will not be able to hand-in missing/late assignments.
