Journal #3

King Kong (1933) - King Kong is a story that almost everyone knows these days because of this movie and the many remakes and re releases that have followed since. The story is about a giant ape basically. The movie starts with a director offering a job to a young actress named Ann Darrow(Fay Wray). The crew for the movie then heads on a trip by boat to find an island that is not on any map. The crew finds the island and they figure out that the island is inhabited by a tribe and prehistoric creatures such as dinosaurs and snakes and this 50 foot tall gorilla. The natives of the tribe take Ann hostage while they are on the island and present her to King Kong in a ceremony. King Kong fights with dinosaurs who are trying to capture Ann and she is rescued by the crew while King Kong is fighting dinosaurs. The crew is fascinated by the beast and they subdue him and take him to New York City with them. When King Kong arrives in New York City he goes on a rampage in the city.

King Kong was well received by both the public movie goes and by the critics. Today this movie is listed as #41 on the American Film Institute’s list 100 years…100 movies and is listed as one of the greatest movies of all time on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 greatest movies and critic Roger Ebert calls King Kong one of the top movies of all time. Since the movie was first released in 1933 it is hard to know what the people during the 1930s thought about the move but based of off box office numbers and what critics say you can tell people enjoyed it. The movie was the highest grossing movie of 1933 and one of the top 5 of the 1930s. You can tell people liked the movie based off of these numbers since it was released during the Great Depression and during that time people did not have the extra money to go see many movies. As for what critics have to say they believe it is still the best monster film ever made. “Kong is still King” says critic James Berardinelli when compared to the other monster movies such as Jurassic Park. Critic Ephraim Katz sums up everything about King Kong when he says “King Kong proved an immediate hit at the box office, returning $5 million in North American rentals on a $650,000 investment. The film went on to become a classic of its genre and part of American culture and folklore.” Shows the public interest with the box office hit and shows how it is still so well known 75 years after the original release. One of the original reviews from 1933 says “after the audience becomes used to the machinelike movements and other mechanical flaws in the gigantic animals on view, and become accustomed to the phony atmosphere, they may commence to feel the power.” The audiences did enjoy the movie and felt scared by it once they got used to the animals. The movie was so well received that it has been re released or been the basis for a new movie many times. King Kong was re released in 1952 and Time Magazine called it the “Movie of the Year” 20 years after the original release. In 1976 and 2005 recreations of King Kong were released.

I feel that the movie was widely accepted because it was so different for the time period. Sure nowadays the special effects of that movie are almost comical but for that period of time the special effects were incredible. The movie also scared audiences and was the first of its genre so people were curios to it and ended up enjoying it. This movie is still considered a great movie because it was the first of its kind and people will always enjoy a scary movie. What surprised me though was that the movie was not nominated for any Academy Awards after being so well received by the public and such a different style of movie for its time. There was no special effects category at the time though.

Film Review

Organized crime, mafia or mob business can lead a person to the top of the world and to the bottom of the ocean depending on their decisions. The movie Goodfellas is about this exactly, the rise and fall of people in the mob.

Goodfellas is based on a true story of Henry Hill, an Irish-Italian immigrant growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s. The movie was directed by Martin Scorsese with screen play by Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi and is based on the book Wise Guy by Pileggi. Goodfellas follows Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci) in their journey to work their way up the ranks in the mob. Henry has always wanted to be a gangster and starts working for the local mob and skipping school and makes more money than some adults while he is only a teenager. Henry becomes good friends with Tommy and Jimmy and the three starts a daring life of hijacking and stealing. The movie follows them through some of the largest hijackings, the good life of making enormous amounts of money, murders and competition from rival mobs and one huge predicament that could lead to their downfall.

One of the reasons that I enjoyed this movie so much was because it was very realistic. The plot is very believable because of the acting, casting, dialogue and events of the plot. All parts of the movie are believable, nothing is over the top. I think the main reason everything is believable is because the movie is based of off real life events from the life of Henry Hill but the acting and dialogue help very much. The dialogue contains many swear words, particularly the F bomb, which is very stereotypical in movies that are about the mafia. Lots of yelling and they all have thick Italian accents which are also stereotypical of the mafia. The acting of laughing very loudly and either having a bright smile of the face or a scowl add the effectiveness of showing the mafia. I believe that the casting for this movie was done very well because all of the members of the mob in this movie don’t need make up or costumes to look like they belong to the mafia. Many of them have starred in other movies/shows about the mafia such as the Sopranos.

The cinematic aspects of this movie are used to enhance and emphasis what is going on. The use of low key lighting in this movie really enhanced the mob. The mob is a shady business and the low key lighting helped to emphasize this with all the shadows where business is being done. Also used was unrestricted narration especially in the beginning. During the first 10 minutes it is almost all narration by Henry Hill setting up the story and the giving the audience background information about all the characters. Throughout the movie unrestricted narration by Henry Hill occurs along with narration by Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco), Henry’s wife. This gives the audience a full understanding of what is going on and leads to suspense when the audience knows who might die soon. During the beginning narration Scorsese uses many freeze frame shots while introducing characters and showing major events to add emphasis to these people and events to make sure the audience remembers them. The shots are fairly lengthy in this movie and the camera pans the scene often to show the audience the surroundings. One lengthy shot that stands out in my mind is a steadicam shot that follows Henry and Karen from their car through the back entrance, hallways, past the patrons, through the kitchen and into the Copacabana club all in one shot. Lastly this film has been credited to using music phenomenally well. There is almost always music playing to enhance the mood that is being portrayed in the movie, the music is always fitting and used very well.

The story line alone in this movie makes it a good movie in my opinion but the cinematic aspects make it a great movie. I really enjoyed the story line because I find criminals to be very interesting but the use of all the cinematic aspects made everything that much better to turn this movie from good to great. Scorsese does an amazing job and really captures the life of Henry Hill along with the rise and fall of the mafia men.

Critique the critic

The movie I chose was Superbad because it is one of my favorite movies so I thought it would be interesting to see what critics had to say. I chose to read a review by a woman named Amy Biancolli from the Houston Chronicle. I really wanted to see what a woman had to say about a movie geared toward teen age males with mostly male humor in it. Almost all of what this critic had to say I completely agreed with.

To my surprise “even this middle-age hausfrau can appreciate the zonkered comic force behind Superbad” (Biancolli). This movie was marketed toward teen males and is a story about three high school senior guys attempting to get booze to a party to get their crushes intoxicated so they can finally score before going off to college. I figured not many women would find this movie to be funny because of all the potty humor and sexual jokes but this critic actually enjoyed the movie. Many women who I have talked to could not stand this movie so I was very surprised to see that a middle aged woman enjoyed it and teen age girls did not.

“You can look at Superbad one of two ways. It's either a genius-touched stream-of-conscious- ness odyssey about young men in pursuit of an elusive ideal — something James Joyce might have written after a long night downloading porn — or approximately two hours of penis humor. It all depends on your age, mood, tolerance for five-alarm profanity and, quite possibly, gender.”(Biancolli)

This quote sums up the strong differences between people when talking about this movie. It seems to be a love it or hate it movie. I completely agree with the last part about age, mood, and tolerance for profanity. It seems that teen age males in a good mood that are used to profanity would be the ones to love this movie. But I can also see why people do not like it because of all the profanity and it is a movie about teens that not many adults would go and see. She says quite possibly gender but I think gender is a definite factor in liking or disliking. The dialogue can be described as “a nonstop stream of F-words and S-words and D-words and so on through the alphabet, a blue-mouthed exposition on sex and the teenage boy.”(Biancolli) All the jokes in the movie are male oriented and the movie is all about teen age males and their goals, the females in the movie are just there for the males almost, they don’t have a very in depth character. Girls tend to like girl oriented movies and guys tend to like guy oriented movies.

The one thing that this critic failed to comment on that just about every other critic said that I came across while researching for this journal is the purpose of the movie as a whole. What this movie seems to want to do, and many other critics agreed with, is be a completely hilarious movie that keeps you laughing for most of the movie. This movie kept me laughing for almost the entire time along with the people I saw it with. The story of the movie itself is almost a joke, get booze to a party so they can get with the girls they have had crushes on, and people seem to over analyze this movie for its flaws in plot depth, it seems to just ramble, and for the dialogue containing so much profanity but these are the characteristics that make the movie so funny. It would be very hard to make a movie this funny with the reasons that made it funny, random and unnecessary profanity along with sexual/bathroom humor, have an in depth plot and dialogue.

The critic made very good points concerning who would enjoy this movie and also showed me that teen age males are not the only ones who can enjoy this movie. I agreed with almost everything she had to say besides the gender part. She related this movie to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, which was a new connection. Most other critics related it to The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. It was interesting to see what a middle aged woman had to say about a teen age male comedy.

Biancolli, Amy. "Teens Behaving Badly is Supergood." 17 Aug. 2007. Houston Chronicle. 11 Feb. 2008 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/movies/reviews/5030667.html.
Picture: http://www.worstpreviews.com/images/posters/superbad/superbad2_large.jpg

Movie Clip

The clip I chose is from the movie Happy Gilmore. This scene is the first time that Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) hits a golf ball and realizes that he can hit a golf ball a very long ways. In this scene the speed of motion changes from a normal speed to a slow motion shot during his second swing. This is used to dramatize the swing and show how significant it is. Also the speed of motion changes to very rapid as the camera is acting like it is the ball while flying through the trees after his first shot. This is used to show how fast and how far the ball travels. Other elements of film used are extreme long shot and long shot. This is used after his first shot and shows how far away the house he hit is. The extreme long shot is to show that he hit the ball an extraordinary distance even with his funny swing and lack of practice. The long shot is shown right in the beginning and shows the full bodies of the workers and the house with its belongings outside. This is to show that the house is being emptied and taken away and to give a perspective of the things inside the house and how the workers are being short of careless with the things being spread out throughout the yard.

Art of Film 1

One of my favorite movies is Superbad. The movie is about three high school seniors, Seth, Evan and Fogell. The movie follows the three on their journey to get booze to a party and finally get the chance to score with the girls they have had crushes on forever. Fogell gets a fake ID but is in the middle of a liquor store robbery and is taken by the cops. Seth and Evan assume he is busted for a fake ID and take off and try and get booze another way since they promised the girls they would bring some. The story follows the boys and they all eventually make it to the party after many twists and turns.

I liked this movie because it was very funny and pretty accurate of high school seniors. They just want to have fun before going off to college and some of the characters remind of my friends. I was always laughing during this movie because there are very outrageous moments during the movie that thinking about them happening in real life would be very funny. Seth is not the smartest out of all of them and provides for many funny quotes through out the movie. Fogell is very nerdy and has his fake ID name be McLovin. This movie has very many funny parts in it and being able to picture my friends in the same situations makes it even funnier.

Critics give the movie fairly good reviews. On rottentomatoes.com their meter gives the movie an 86% and an average of 7.2 out of 10. Critics say the movie is funny but does not have much depth, but does what it is meant to do which is being a funny movie for teen viewers. They say outside of teens not many people will enjoy it that much but I know of parents who have enjoyed the movie. Lots of critics say the movie is one of the best raunchy/teen comedies from the recent years. Even critics agree that this is a good movie.

Photo from http://api.ning.com/files/9sBeItJ5wz6XcfyMPJnWI4i0c8f*cv8ZN2QrVYaLBpo_/Superbad.jpg