Wes Anderson

For my final blog post I chose the director Wes Anderson. The movie of his that i watched outside of class is The Life Aquatic. This movie is about a ocean explorer who loses his best friend and co worker to the unknown "Jaguar Shark". He sets out to find the shark and kill it. Then his so called son comes forward to help him and then all the chaos starts. pirates take their ship and Steve (Bill Murray) gets into a huge gun fight. It is absoulutly hilarious.

Wes Anderson is one of those unique directors that if you see one of his movies and then another you can just tell that they are made by the same director. That is why he falls under the category of Auteur because of the common characteristics that runs through all of his films. the most obvious one would have to be the general look to his films. The colors he uses in his films are just odd compared to a mainstream film, but that is what seperates him from the rest of the crowd. for example the yellow jump suit in Bottle Rocket is just weird, but it completly directs your attention to the character wearing it. Or when Max from the movie Rushmore wheres his bland school uniform everywhere it just makes the character stand out. The thing that stands out in the movie The Life Aquatic is the team jumpsuits that they wear. they are baby blue and all matching with red caps. Another common theme through out Wes Anderson films is the main character. He always has his main character be off the beaten path in a sense. Each of his main characters is an odd duck. For example Digdun is a plain old idiot who has ridiculous ideas that make absoultly zero sense. Or Max who is a strange kid who is smart but does not apply himself to school but instead to extracurricular activities. Finally Steve Z who films his best friends death or how he fights off pirates that took his ship. Wes Anderson is Auteur because of all these triats that he uses in each of his films. Through this unit i plain to watch Wes Anderson's latest film The Darjing Limited.

Altman

Robert Altman is definitly one of the more odd directors that we have veiwed. His style is without a doubt a one of a kind director. his plots are pretty out there. My favorite element of Altman is the music that he choses for his movies. The way he mocks country music in Nashville, with the different performers. Or how he uses practically one song for the Long Goodbye. The one thing i did not like about altman is his plots. they don't actually flow well in my opinion. Nashville had absolutly no point to it. i didnt really like the Long goodbye etheir because you never really figure out why the villian does what he does. Then Marlowe just kills him. I felt that their needed to be a little more information before it ended. Other then that i pretty much liked Altman.

Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock is considered one of the greatest film directors of all time. he is world renounced and a common household name. he brought a new angle to film that was never seen let alone considered before. He changed the course of history through the motion picture! I think that i can confidently say that no one director has had so much tribute paid to him through film.

All the movies that we watched of his were good but if i were to pick a favorite i would have to go with Rear Window. i liked it the best because of how original it was. i have never seen a movie where almost the entire movie took place in a single set. Or when the villain looks directly at the camera. it just gives you the shivers when you watch it. i also liked how it started out dual and boring and just rocketed into a fast paced thriller. The best part though was how the ending credit real mimicked the beginning credit real.

All of the movie we watched were Hitchcock classics but i feel that if we were to watch Pyshco or some other movie like that we would have got the entire Hitchcock experience.

Kurosawa

This was my favorite set of movies so far. I was a huge fan of kurosawa. i liked almost everything about his movies. I would have liked them a little more if they were in english that way i could pay attention to the hidden detail instead of reading subtitles, but o well. I really liked the setting of Ran and the main character of Yojimbo. i hope he combined the two at some point in his carreer. i found that his attention is due to the fact that he was some what of a samuri. He devoted each day of his life to perfecting his art and everything else he did trying to be the best at it. that in my opinion is the ultimate code of the samuri. Another thing that interested me about this director is his use of the same actors over and over. i found this to be odd because the normal hollywood director uses the same actor maybe three times, excluding sequals, through out their carreer. i think that this is a testamony to the work and respect japanesse actors had for Kurosawa, that they would work for him that many times.

I have decided that my ultimate Kurosawa movie has the passion of Murkami from Stray Dog, the comedy of Yojimbo and the epicness of Ran. i think that my best bet for that kind of movie is Seven Samuri, hence why i have decided to do it for my essay on tuesday. I don't know much about it only that it is extremely long, though i have to say my expectations are very high i feel like it will meet them without a problem. If the next directors are anything like Kurosawa in the sense of being awsome at what they do then the rest of this year will be great.

The Shining

This is the most fasinating film made by this director. It starts out with us being introduced to the torrence family that will be living in the Overlook hotel for the winter. Right away we find out that Jacks son is telepathic or something of that sort. We also are told that the hotel manger killed his family and himself. The Torrence family lives fine for the first few weeks and then strange things go a foot at Overlook hotel. Jack and his son Danny start seeing ghosts and what not throughout the hotel. Then Jack goes mad and starts to attack Danny and Wendy. The summer caretaker has a dream murder at the hotel and he rushes back to see whats up. Jack kills him and chases his son into a labrynth where jack gets lost and we see him the next morning forzon to death. then kubrick cuts to a picture at a new years party in 1920 and we see jack in the center smiling.

the weird thing about this film is that it is not about ghosts at all. Its all abouts The film is trying to show us how alchol abuse can turn a person into a monster. we see how Danny gets frightend when his dad loses it. Kubrick used mirrors when ever a ghost was present. given us the idea that maybe jack is not seeing ghosts but is just losing his mind and is just talking to himself. The picture at the end was a huge mind blowing event. what does the picture tell us. in the end it only leaves us with more questions then with answers. i feel like it is saying that jack was just absorbed into the history of the overlook hotel. and that everyone who was in the picture went mad just like him.

Full Metal Jacket

This was one of Stanley Kubricks best films in my opinion. I think that it is also one of the ones that I can most relate too. Kubrick brings a sense of insanity to this film because of the way the story is laid out. the film starts out with some poor recruit who is nicknamed "Pyle" at boot camp being picked on until he loses his mind. Then he kills himself along with his drill sergent. then the movie jumps into the middle of Vietnam where the mentor of the deranged Pyle's joins the crew of a former boot camp buddy. the film gets weird at the end when the film just abburptly ends with the main character killing a young women who was a viet cong sniper.

The significant message that Kubrick was trying to show society through the use of film is one of compassion and understanding. He tried to show how war changes people. He does this during the last part of the film when he has the innocent semi normal "Joker" give a mercy killing to the wounded sniper. when Joker shots the sniper the audience is in a sense of shock and confusion, because no body is expecting him to kill her and then the movie aburtbly ends using his transformation into a killer as closure to the film. The other purpose for this film is to inform the public to somewhat respect our soliders and that we can't blame them for following orders. at the end of the film we feel a sense of compassion for the soliders who were killed and whos personality's were warped by these tramatic events. For example when Pyle starts calling his gun "Charlene" and becomes detached from the world. these are the people that Kubrick was trying to get society to help. Through this film Kubrick gives us the insit that was despritly needed in order to spark some sort of change. I don't know how much has changed in todays world but in my experience no longer to people spit on soliders.

Battle of Algeirs

I liked this movie alot. Mainly because it was more of an action film then anything else we have watched so far this year. i also was a big fan of how the film was not following any particular character. i also feel that it is interesting because it relates to modern events like Iraq or Afghanistan. This movie brings up the issues of freedom and rebellion. The film shows how heros of the war were men and women who felt deeply for their cause and were willing to die for it. It is a movie that inspires everyone who watches it to stand up for what is right. It also shows how everyone can make a difference in the world. My favorite part of the movie was when Ali La Pointe was cleaning house in the casbah, for instance when he gunned down that one guy who was doing drugs and having sex with prostitutes. Or when the little kids beat down that drunk guy and then pushed him down the stairs. This movie is really good, I liked it so much i actually got my dad to go out and buy it for me.