Formulating nationalist conversations: An investigation of the function of West African Cinema
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Traditional African filmmakers, considered themselves part of an emerging third world cinema and used film as a tool of revolution, a means of political education to be used for transforming consciousness, however now there is a new generation of filmmakers that have been supposedly "freed from...
Film Critique: The Asphalt Jungle
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
The first wave of urgency to escape the world of corruption, greed, and immorality inside the shady underground of the urban city ("the jungle"), is brought forth by protagonists Dix Handley and Alonzo Emmerich in two scenes of John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. The first scene takes place in...
Spike making Malcolm his own
Essay - 7 pages - Film studies
Despite intentions to stay true to an original source, a director's view will almost undoubtedly change certain elements of the film. This happens in the case of Malcolm X. Spike chose not to tell the story chronologically, as the autobiography mostly does, and this adds to the film in many...
Analysis of do the right thing, spike lee (1989)
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Do the Right Thing was released in May 1989 in Cannes. Spike Lee directed, produced and wrote the screenplay for the film. It tackles the subject of race relations by depicting the ethnic communities of the Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, where Spike Lee grew up. Spike Lee plays the...
What makes a popular soap opera?
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
A soap opera is a work of fiction taking the form of a serial, generally televised or radio phonic. They made their appearance with the radio in the Thirties. When the large networks started to develop, naturally these series followed .This designation comes from the fact that the first American...
Comments on "Thank you for smoking" by Jason Reitman in the light of business ethics
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
“Thank you For Smoking” is a movie from 2005, about a tobacco industry lobbyist, Nick Naylor. As the negative effects of tobacco on health are no longer easy to deny, the tobacco companies join in the creation of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. The purpose of this academy is to prove...
Shrek
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Shrek the ugly, antisocial Ogre is happy living by himself in his swamp, frightening away any visitors, until he rescues a non-stop talking donkey and then gets invaded by a host of displaced fairy tale characters, evicted by the evil Lord Farquaad who wants to chase away all different and...
Sound in two Hollywood films: 'singin' in the rain' and Thelma & Louise
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
Singin' in the Rain is a musical created in 1951 by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, Thelma & Louise a road movie created in 1991 by Ridley Scott. These two works could sound different; nevertheless they have a common point, which is the important role of sound, and especially music, within the...
Olivia Ruiz in concert at the Bataclan on 3 and 10 of April 2006: From "the real TV" to "the real artist performer"
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
In France, the Loft Story TV programme paves the way for the real television. Now, lots of viewers watch “ordinary” people eating, sleeping, and arguing… Overnight these stage actors become famous just having talent to be on television. Andy Warhol was right when he said “In...
Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliette
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge are two movies directed by the eccentric Baz Luhrmann. In these love stories, Baz Luhrmann especially stake on the visual and the abundance: the abundance of decorations, the abundance of colourful visuals (Moulin Rouge « uses the colourful musical setting of the...
Sex and the city: Analysis of a sitcom
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Sex and the city is a popular American cable television program, which is adapted from Candace Bushnell's book of the same title. Sex and the city was the idea of a single woman in her thirties writing about relationships and using that column as a tool of self-discovery about her own life,...
Film studies: signs and postmodernism
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
‘L.I.E: Long Island Expressway. You got the lanes going east; you got the lane going west. You also got the lanes going straight to hell...' Thus opens L.I.E., a film about a fifteen-year-old boy who becomes involved in an unusual relationship with a much older man. Here, the first words of...
Schubert's piano trio in e flat in Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick, 1975
Essay - 2 pages - Film studies
In this paper, I will analyze the use of Schubert's piano trio in e flat op. 100 in Barry Lyndon, a 1975 Stanley Kubrick's film. First, I will consider the music independently of its original context. In a second part, I will see how Kubrick uses it in its film, and whether the music fits in the...
Disney: The beauty is the beast
Essay - 7 pages - Film studies
Walt Disney Productions is a multimedia conglomerate, not only producing a majority of the children's cinema on the market today, but also submersing itself in the children's toy market, owning television stations such as ABC and the Disney Channel, and even creating their own town called...
Alice and Anna: The women of 'Closer'
Essay - 9 pages - Film studies
Feminist film criticism during its glory days focused on three major themes: the objectification of women on the screen, their marginalized role in the narrative, and the effect that movies as a product of popular culture have on that popular culture. These three perspectives, which began to be...
Masculinity in Korean and western films
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Korean cinema has made significant progress over the years. Two of the greatest Korean movies are A Stray Bullet (Obaltan) directed by Yu Hyun-mok (1960) and The Coachman directed by Kang Dae-jin (1961). A Stray Bullet is about a man named Chul-ho who leads a life of honesty and morality. Despite...
Dark comedy in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
Joel and Ethan Coen have made eleven very different films since 1984. From a film noir set in rural Texas to a Homer's “Odyssey”-inspired convict film, their films jump from genre to genre. Each one, however, is imbued with the Coens' authorial signature. Their heroes are flawed, their...
The cultural effects of Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 film Borat
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan has garnered much critical attention for its humor, both positive and negative. Cohen plays an extremely bigoted Kazakh journalist named Borat trying to understand American...
Kurosawa's samurai films and the Westerns that were inspired by them
Essay - 7 pages - Film studies
The films of Akira Kurosawa, from his adaptations of Shakespeare's plays to his samurai films, have influenced filmmakers from the 1950's to the present. This influence is most obvious in the Westerns that were adapted from his samurai films. In 1960 “Seven Samurai” (Kurosawa, 1954) was...
Cinema of the absurd: The baby boom generation in The Big Lebowski
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
After World War II, America experienced what would eventually be termed the “baby boom,” in which about 75 million births occurred between the years of 1946 and 1964. The “baby boomer” generation has been constantly examined since its inception, and the world during its time...
Sexuality in modern melodrama
Essay - 7 pages - Film studies
The depiction of sex and sexuality in American cinema was slow in maturing, but in the last two decades there have been a growing number of popular melodramas that depict sex as a meaningful part of a relationship. This practice distinguishes modern melodramas from the classical Hollywood type....
Films on the ongoing war in Iraq
Essay - 14 pages - Film studies
Since the start of the U.S. war in Iraq in early 2003, the citizens of the world have been bombarded with news coverage the likes of which has never before been seen in the history of armed conflict. Likewise, the world of cinema has embraced the conflict in Iraq in many varied forms and with...
Similarities in the films of Alfred Hitchcock
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Alfred Hitchcock's “Strangers on a Train” (1951) carries with it the signature of its auteur director. Hitchcock's other films are marked in the same way using similar themes, character types, and storylines. “Strangers” is most similar to “The 39 Steps” (1935) and...
Women in the films of Jean-Luc Godard
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
Since 1959 and the release of his first film, Jean-Luc Godard has engaged audiences with a varied body of work. He has entertained, quoted, lectured, and bored, inevitably. Throughout his entire career, both the depiction of the female and her role in his films has been of the utmost importance....
The ideology of film: The portrayal of Women & Blacks in baseball films
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Ideology is a very broad topic. Described as “a body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class or culture” (Giannetti 428), ideology can be discussed anywhere when dealing with any kind of social opposites. In filmmaking, all types of beliefs...
Dragon ladies and China dolls: Images of Asian American women in American film
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
The image of Asian American Women in film has undergone many changes from the 1920s to today. With stereotypes such as “dragon lady” and “china doll” and the practice of yellow-face, Asian American actresses had plenty of obstacles in the world of film. Actresses such as Anna...
Manipulation of space and sexuality in L'Avventura
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
In Rudolf Arnheim's Dynamics of Architectural Form, Arnheim argues that in many ways, physical space is less important to human beings than the psychological perception of space. For the average man, experience isn't made up of isolated incidents, but rather an “experience is generated only...
Shakespeare in vegetable underpants: Peter Stein and Peter Zadek's opposing approaches to Shakespeare
Essay - 9 pages - Film studies
“Shakespeare in underpants,” is how Peter Stein has described the work of fellow director and rival Peter Zadek, while the latter has called Stein's work boring and overly polished to the point that his actors become overcooked “vegetables” (Patterson 132, 168). Both German...
Transformers: America in disguise
Essay - 8 pages - Film studies
Michael Bay's Transformers is a genre pastiche, combining elements of action films, science fiction, high school dramas, general comedy and even moments of direct satire. Most interesting, though, are the ways in which Bay's film ties into the genre of war cinema and the modes and conventions it...
FESPACO: More than a film festival
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
With the revolution of filmmaking has come the need to bring films and filmmakers together. The creation of film festivals provides a place where filmmakers can showcase their films. Thousands of film festivals have formed around the world over the past decades. Some are larger and more...
