I am choosing to write about the Harry Potter series for my cult film. The thing that I think this series has that establishes its cult following is the fact that it is supernatural. In our world there is no such thing as magic. There are no witches, or wizards, no dragons, or spells and potions, everything is just plain old boring and normal. So seeing a young boy experience these types of supernatural things is something that fills the void in our own hearts because we do not have anything close to that kind of magic. Now the fans and followers of the Harry Potter series or as they call themselves “Potterheads” bring the story of Harry Potter to life by writing fan fiction. There are so many instagram accounts, and facebook and twitter accounts dedicated to fan fiction for Harry Potter, like scenarios if Sirius had not have died, and so on. They mix themselves into the stories sometimes as well bringing forth a more personal touch. And not only do the fans have fan fiction where they can imagine themselves as a part of Hogwarts, but in Universal Studios in Orlando Florida there is a Harry Potter World called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, with everything Harry Potter down to Ollivanders Wand Shop where your own wand picks you just like it did to Harry. For Potterheads there are so many outlets that they can live through that really bring this series to life. I am a fan of the series although I have not read the books, (I know I know how can I be a fan without having read the books) and I love all of the different opportunities that us fans are given. It is really neat how people have truly brought the series to life.
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Was the main character in Hurt Locker a hero? This question may seem simple but I actually am having trouble finding an answer. So what defines a hero? I looked the definition up and according to dictionary.com a hero is “a person noted for courageous acts or nobility of character”. So by definition yes I’d say that James is a hero because he was courageous and what he did by defusing bombs and by serving his country, but how could he be a hero and not love his child. In my eyes my mom is a hero in the way that she loves me, but if she did not love me I would not see her in the same light. So in the eyes of James’ son (when he gets older of course) his father would not be a hero, he even said to him that the only thing he could love is the work that he did in the military. What I am saying is that where I might see James as a hero through the actions he did for his country, not everyone might. So maybe his actions that he did while serving his country were heroic but him leaving his family is not. These kinds of movies are hard to watch because everything our soldiers are doing is scary. It is intense and to me it is terrifying, I wish that the world were at peace with each other but that is not the case. I found this movie to be very interesting and I am glad that I watched it.
As I read through the script I came across a pretty big difference in from what was shown and what was written. For example in the movie Charlotte had just finished putting up little flower decorations and she lays on the bed and the next scene is John talking to her as he is packing up all of his equipment for work. In the script on pages 59 and 60 it says that he is in the shower. Now I don’t think that the difference here is too big but what I can see is the fact that Charlotte is being spoken to with his back facing her as if he is just talking to her just because. Had he had been speaking from the shower I think the same thing is present but with what they did in the movie it actually shows his physical back turned to her. Shortly before this scene on pages 51-55 Charlotte has a day of traveling and exploring and when she gets back in the script it has her interacting with John and then calling her friend or sister Lauren. Whereas in the movie it has Charlotte completely alone for most of the day and the calling her friend/sister. And what Lauren responds at the end of the call is different from what she says in the movie. I feel that showing the interaction between her and John on top of what happened throughout the day at the temple would have been important to know. I remember when I watched it I was confused as to why Charlotte was calling her talking about how she didn’t know who she married and that he was using hair products and everything. Also at the end in the script it says that a baby is heard crying and then Lauren says, “You’re so lucky you don’t have any kids yet and you can go off to Japan…call me when you get back.” But in the movie she says, “Okay have the best time you know? Just call me when you get back okay? Bye, love you.” The movies portrayal of this scene shows how little this person cares about what Charlotte is going through. Where the script is just blaming everything on the kids. Lastly in the script on page 100 there was no interaction between Bob and the 100 year old lady other then them sitting next to each other but in the movie they have a long conversation that is pretty humorous and when Charlotte walks of the the hospital room Bob is holding a stuffed animal. In the script it tells us that he gets the stuffed animal from the gift shop. I feel that it would have been helpful to have known where it came from because it was a little rundown him just holding this stuffed animal but it works I suppose.
I believe that in some ways and at some points Daniel did have a connection to his adopted son H.W. I believe this because if he did not when Eli was baptizing him and cleansing him of the evil spirits he was crying, he was in aguish over what he had done, abandoning his son. There is no way that Daniel did not care for his son or else he would not have cared enough to get him back. I am not saying that he only cared about his son, because he did find a way to be joyful while his son was in pain, I think that he cared about other things more then he cared about him son, but that still means that he cared at least a little bit. Their relationship was never strong, and in the end it becomes even worse because he continues to give H.W. reasons to hate him, and he acts as if he does not care about him in the slightest. In all honesty I am kind of confused as to what happened in the end between Eli and Daniel, because I thought that Eli was good. But I suppose that they were similar in the sense that they both seemed to care about their own wellbeing before they cared about the wellbeing of others. They were different in the sense that Eli still helped people, he gave people something good and true, to believe in and Daniel stole from people and tricked them. They both didn’t seem to be good people, plus Daniel was a murderer so there is also that fact. Daniel shows the typical American capitalist spirit because he wants more. He wants power, and he will do whatever it takes to get to that position. He became a born again Christian to gain more land so that he could run a pipeline through it for more oil. I do not think that there is much that he wouldn’t have done for his company.
Well I did not have an easy childhood. I’d much rather not go into detail as to why that is, but as I watched Boyhood I greatly related to the pain Mason went through. My dad is out of the picture in my life and because of him and the choices he made I was constantly moving around in both homes and mainly in schools. So I was able to relate to Mason through that aspect, I also sort of grew up around the same time, he’s five years older then I am, so I remembered a lot of the little things that he had like the video games, and the different kinds of cell phones. I empathize most with Mason's mom. I am very close to my mom and I watched her go through a lot of pain because of my dad and literally everything else that has happened in my life. And yet she always found a way to keep my four siblings and me safe, well fed, and happy. So watching Mason’s mother strive to keep her family stable and happy reminded me a lot of my own mom (although my mom has yet to remarry). “It’s always right now, you know?” This quote I laughed at when I heard it because my first thought was, “Well duh!”. In all honesty though I take this quote to mean that everyone should always live for the moment, live in the now. There is no time like the present, you know all of those cheesy quotes. Because right now is what matters, who cares about what happened two minutes ago, right now we are living, right now we are experiencing life. Right now is what we should be worried about. This was put at the very end of the movie to conclude it because throughout those twelve years of making that movie it is still now, it is still prevalent and important.
I have what is known as a Frankenstein complex, I fear that that things that we build will turn around and destroy us. So watching these movies and reading these articles, was definitely not my cup of tea. In 2001: A Space Odyssey A.I. was portrayed as a system that ran everything where as in Ex Machina A.I. was an actual physical robot that looked, walked, talked, and acted like a human. The male protagonists in 2001 and Ex Machina were both intelligent beings and they knew much about technology and how it worked, it seems that in the end they were in similar situations. In 2001 the man had to disassemble the A.I. system Hal and then was shot into some portal thingy and grows old and becomes a fetus which makes no sense but anyway. In Ex Machina the man, Caleb, helps The A.I. robot, Ava, escape and in the end she leaves him to die, and the audience is left on the edge of their seat because there was no real resolution. The film I thought was most accurate was Ex Machina because of my Frankenstein complex and I am afraid that those kinds of machines will want to kill us so yeah! I think that what is being let out about the A.I. is how it works. When I was reading the article about the anatomy of an A.I. it was very interesting because it went into detail on how Alexa works and it talks about the materials that go into the makings of phones and smart watches and all of the electronics. All of those things were things that I had not known prior to reading that article, so that is why I feel that that is what is left out about A.I. They are not things that just are, they have to be built, put together in a way that I will probably never fully understand. I think that the black monolith represents the unknown, the science that I am terrified of, the things that man have just barely scraped the surface of. In all honesty that movie was so very confusing for me so I could be very very wrong but that’s what I am thinking it could possibly stand for. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/01/01/ex_machina_s_ava_getting_a_human_body_scene_is_the_gayest_of_the_year_video.html
“Jungle Fever” was a very powerful film. It addressed how both black and white people (at the time) reacted to an interracial couple. It was interesting to see how both black and white people did not like that a black man and a white woman were in a relationship and the reactions from both races were fairly similar. Neither race thought that it was “right” to taint either race with the others’ blood. It was seen as disgraceful some might have even said disgusting. For Flipper, the black man, it was seen as he was embarrassed to be black, or something along those lines which was definitely not the case. Angela was beat by her father for sleeping with a black man and Flipper was looked down upon because he was with a white woman, in one scene a black waitress would not serve Flipper and Angela because he, a black man, brought a white woman to eat at the restaurant. Another thing that this film touches on is sexism, way back when women had a set of strict rules that they had to follow most of them things like cooking, cleaning, making the husband happy, and Pauley’s dad touches on this in the scene when Pauly is in the bathroom crying. His dad says that his late wife was a “real woman” and that she knew and always did her “wifely duties”. As a female I have never been a fan of any type of sexist anything, so when I heard him say that I very much so wanted to punch the screen. But I had to keep in mind that back then that is how men viewed women, no that does not make it okay, but it does explain it a little better. Overall I enjoyed this film, it was very enlightening and very well done.
Personally I did not like the movie but that is because I thought it was silly to kill everyone off in the end. Though in all honesty, in my opinion, it helped to prove the point that gangs and being feared by others does not always, or normally end well. What I mean is that this movie did not endorse the idea of gangs and drugs, it did not paint them as a good lifestyle. Billy Costigan, who was innocent the entire time, was dragged into a terrible situation and in the end he was killed because of it. Not only him but many others as well. The killing just kept going on starting with Captain Queenan, so these gangs can be dangerous for those who are in them and they can be dangerous to anyone who is in contact with them, even those who are trying to take them down. So let’s talk about Billy again here. He was an innocent guy with an infamous dead father, he was practically manipulated into bringing down this big time drug lord gang leader Frank Costello, and he, Billy, was a good person. In the end he is shot by someone trying to protect themselves from getting caught for being a mole for the drug lords, who in turn is also shot and killed by Collin Sullivan who was doing the same thing. He had a kid on the way (possibly at least that is what I am choosing to believe because it would only make sense that what the Psychiatrist wanted to tell him was that she was pregnant) and he left her heartbroken. All because of a lie that he was tied up in. An innocent who lost his life for no reason to gangs and drug lords… I would definitely consider that to be a bad thing.
Okay so I just watched Sierra Burgess is a Loser last night and before I get started, I thought it was an adorable movie. So this movie is about a girl who is not what society would call pretty and cool, who gets a text from a random cute football player, but the catch is he thought he was texting this gorgeous popular cheerleader. So she (Sierra) pretends to be that cheerleader (Veronica) and basically catfishes the guy (Jamey) because she really likes him. As I watched this movie I noticed a lot of different things such as: because the whole poem of this movie was based on texting and phone calls I noticed that when Sierra’s and or Jamey’s phone was about to get a text or call the camera had the phone in the shot along with either Jamey or Sierra. Another thing I noticed was anytime Sierra did something that was empowering like standing up for herself they shot a medium close up, which really helped to show her strength and how powerful she felt in that moment. In a later scene the head cheerleader who was always unkind to Sierra (whom Sierra was pretending to be) was seen crying on the floor about her breakup. As Sierra approaches Veronica the camera captures her from a low angle showing that she was the one to look up to. And the camera also captured Veronica at a high angle showing that she was the one to look down on. Yes I know that this is not a classic movie with a perfect amazing cast I mean it is a Netflix film! I just really liked the idea of using what I learned in class and putting that perspective into the things I watch on a daily. I really found it interesting how by the angle of the camera the audience can interpret the scene in a different way. |