SUSPIRIA

This movie is beautiful. I love the set design. The music went so perfectly with the setting. It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on though. I found myself having to rewind scenes and re watch them. I don't exactly understand why she didn't leave the school!  At the beginning of the story, Every time something scary was about to happen, you would hear this scary music box song and heavy breathing.  With all the flashbacks to that girl screaming about the blue orchid, I was expecting something scarier. I was expected a scarier twist. I thought the main character was very interesting. She arrives at this studio that turns her away, and sees a girl screaming and crying in the rain, then comes back the next day. She seems naive at first, and then slowly puts all the clues together. After throwing out her food, which had been poisoned by the witches, she musters up the courage to investigate what all the other girls disappeared while doing She hardly even finds anything that the audience doesn't already know. There was so much build up, but it was almost to nothing. I think it’s a pretty decent climax when she finally kills the witch. That was pretty exciting. Was that witch the one who was breathing heavy? Was she the thing that possessed everyone? I feel like there was something creepier going on, something else that was not addressed. 

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD!

SPOILER ALERT! I WILL BE TALKING ABOUT THE ENDING!

 How ironic that the one person who was trying to save everyone, the one person who didn't do anything stupid, gets shot by the people who were supposed to save him! I love the way that this movie was set up, just a casual day, doing everyday activities, just joking around with your brother and then BANG some weird stuff starts happening! Those are my favorite types of films, the kinds that really suck you in, and before you know if you are at the climax of the film. if think that the director did a great job creating tension between the characters. Especially Harry and Helen Cooper. You can tell that Helen is quite annoyed with her husband; she thinks he is a wimp. You can tell she wears the pants in the relationship. The manly competition between Harry and Ben is also funny to watch. I loved the way that the movie was shot, I really felt like I was in the house with everybody, looking out the windows at the approaching zombies. I really found the character development of Barbara compelling. She also becomes a zombie after her brother dies. 

Comedy

There is a lot more to comedy than I thought. Coming into this class I honestly thought there were only a few types of comedy, romantic, action, and some old school slapstick. Now I know that there is Black, dark, deadpan, verbal, screwball, satire, parody, slapstick, romantic. I’m sure there are many more, but for just 2 weeks that is a pretty exciting upgrade in my knowledge on comedy. Through Sleeper, Some Like it Hot, Dr. Strangelove and various in class clips, I have seen detailed examples of each of these type of comedies. Black and dark comedies deal with matters that are usually too taboo and not funny, and make them funny. Such things would be murder and theft. In serial mom Kathleen Turner kills people on her spare time. This would normally be horrific, but for some reason it is really funny. Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which a persons facial expressions do not change. There is a lot of deadpan humor in Sleeper, Woody Allen does ridiculous things to the people around him, and the people around him do not flinch.  Verbal comedy is the back and forth bickering between two of three people where they go back and forth, with short witty and wrapped exchanges. There is a lot of this in Sleeper between Diane Keaton and Woody Allen. Screwball Comedy is a type of comedy where the people in the film will go from being friends to foe, from hating each other to loving each other in a matter of seconds. In satire comedy, people’s vices or shortcomings are exposed and made fun of. A parody is the act of poking fun at something that has previously been done. An example of this would in how in Dr. Strangelove; they make a parody of the atomic bomb. Slapstick comedy is when the comedian does exaggerated physical violence or things with their body that are outside the boundaries of what most people normally do in public. This is the type of comedy that Charlie Chaplin made so famous. Last but not least, the romantic comedy like all the other sub-genres I just mentioned, there is a little bit of this in every genre of comedy.  This type of comedy is pretty self-explanatory. It is when in a film there is some type of love interest that turns into "true love" and manages to survive through the funny obstacles of the film.  

 

 

DR. STANGELOVE!

So I feel kind of lame. The reason for me feeling this way is that I had quite I hard time getting through this movie. I felt like I was supposed to LOVE IT! But to tell you the truth I kept falling asleep. Maybe I just needed more sleep; of maybe it was the echoing in the chapel, or the soft blankets of my room on my second attempt. Anyway it was very funny though. I see where Tyler Perry and Eddie Murphy got the idea to play every character in their films. I love the three characters that Peter Sellers played; they were all so different and funny. It really reminded me of, I hate to use this reference again, but Mike Myers in Austin Powers. There are so many similar plot lines in the films. This film is a satire, throwing shots that the cold war. They sort of make fun of the Atomic Bomb, and how ridiculous it was to even build something that could destroy the world. They do this by making a bomb called the "Doomsday machine!" Although they tried to not make it too obvious, this movie is definitely based around a specific group of people.  One example would be Ripper and Turgidson, they are said to be based on or compared to the Air Force general Curtis LeMay and the Strategic Air Command.  

1. QUESTION OF THE DAY?

I understand that genre is the categorization of the themes seen in common in art, music, and movies. However, I was having trouble figuring out exactly what the Auteur theory is and its relationship to genre?

SLEEPER!

Im pretty sure I just fell in love with Woody Allen all over again! This movie is so saturated in comedy. We've got slapstick, deadpan, verbal, black, screwball, parody and satire. In the scene where they first wake him up after being asleep for 200 years there is a lot of deadpan and slapstick. He doesn't quite know how to walk, and the doctors try to make him look as normal as possible. the doctors are so deadpan, not even laughing, and Woody Allen is literally running over their toes in a wheel chair. there is a lot of verbal comedy between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. They go back and forth and back and forth bickering, one minute friends the next foe and then back again. I found the parts where they kill/erase peoples brains for talking to Woody Allen, was funny, very black. You can tell that so many movies have used inspiration from this film, and have almost done parodies of this film. In Austin Powers, they wake him up 20 years later, after he had been frozen in the 70s, and they have him "fight crime". I thought that the "miss America" brain washing scene, was very similar to  the one that happens in Zoolander! What i liked about this movie was how Woody Allen actually did a lot of science fiction research. i thought it was also funny how he decided to depict the people in the future. they were all so stupid, and had PHD's in things like Oral Sex and massage. 

Some Like it Hot

Of all the movies I have seen and have not seen, I was really surprised that I hadn't seen this film! It is one of the most talked about films of all time. It is quite embarrassing to say that I have not even seen a movie with Marilyn Monroe before either. I didn't realize this until I began to watch. She is so mesmerizing on film! Between her bubbly voice, her sweet troubled girl personality, and the filter they put on the lens every time they shoot her, one cannot help but fall in love. 

This Billy Wilder film was made in 1959. It stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. This film is about two musicians who are gravelling for gigs around town, so that they can eat. On their way to a job, they witness a mob killing. They then split, taking the next ticket out of town, which just happens to be an all girl band traveling around the country. The only catch is that they have to blend in with the ladies in order to hide from the mob. this includes wigs, dresses, and heels.

Just when they think everything will work out, the mob shows up at the hotel they are performing at. Throughout this edge of your seat run from their death, there is hidden love affairs between women and men that are secretly men and men, and between women and women that are secretly women and men.

This film is really ahead of its time. There is subject matter regarding men marrying men, cross dressing, and mob assassination. I was pleasantly surprised. t might be a stretch but I noticed some similarities between this movie and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. e way that Viola dresses up as a man and then falls in love and has to fight her urge to take her costume off. I found this similar to how Josephine dresses up as a woman to save his life, and then fights his urge to take her costume off once he falls in love with Sugar. 

Fresh Start

Over the next few months I will be watching movies and reviewing them and their genre. Some movies I will be watching are Sleeper, Some Like it Hot, Night of the Living Dead, The Maltese Falcon, and Bonnie and Clyde. The Genre I am beginning with is Comedy. Dr. Strangelove, It happened one night, Some Like it Hot,  and Sleeper will begin my marathon through this genre.